I have been MIA for a few days and I hope that none of you were worried. Naomi and I are fine but Polly, my cat has had some issues.

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I’ve been having a great run on WordPress for the past few weeks. I set myself a schedule and tried to post to all my favourite challenges every week, unless the subject matter was really something that didn’t appeal. I started getting the sort of stats that I’ve never had consistently with this blog, over a hundred views a day. Of course, some of those views might not have been real people or might have been real people who visit blogs in order to get views for their own but I know that quite a few were fellow bloggers participating in those challenges themselves.

Then I didn’t post for about four days. I had planned to be away over the weekend but I didn’t schedule anything. In the event I didn’t go away. Polly, my cat, became unwell during the week and I had to cancel the trip so she could go to the vet. More about Polly later.

We also had the news about the death of Her Majesty the Queen of England. That made me sad in the way you feel when something you have taken for granted all your life disappears forever. I didn’t want to write about it though. Maybe later. With one thing and another I was not a happy camper over the weekend and I just didn’t feel like writing. Result, my stats did not even make double figures for three days. Much worse than usual. Maybe lots of regular readers were feeling like me.

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Now let me tell you about Polly. Polly has never been the world’s most energetic cat and she rarely jumps on to things. She’s the only cat I’ve ever had that would not jump onto the table or kitchen counter to look for food. I have to put her food high up because if I didn’t the dogs would eat it. I always had to be careful of that with Cindy because she could reach the cat food if it wasn’t carefully positioned but Teddy and Toby would certainly take it if it was on the ground. However, Miss Polly doesn’t like to jump from ground level, she will use a convenient chair as a first step. She currently eats on top of the clothes dryer and if I put something on the chair next to it, she will come back and let me know she can’t get to her dinner. She’s been doing that for years but lately she’s been making heavy weather of even getting onto the top of the armchairs where she likes to sleep.

Early last week Naomi noticed she was limping a bit. We thought she’d knocked her leg, or maybe had a bit of arthritis as she is nearly ten years old now. It got worse though so Polly was barely using her back legs and we started trying to get a vet appointment for her. Vets are very understaffed around here though and our local vet couldn’t see Polly until this week. She was getting worse so I started calling other vets in the area. In the end we took her to one of the vets at Penguin on Thursday.

The vet said that Polly had an enlarged spleen. and that she would do some tests and possibly a chest X Ray in case she had a blood clot. We ended up leaving Polly there over the weekend as the vet said that complete rest would be the best thing for her in an environment where she wouldn’t move around too much or be startled by the dogs. She was given some medication for pain and the vet also started Polly on Clopidogerel which I learned is a medication also used by humans.

Yesterday, Monday, we picked Polly up from the vet and she is now residing in cat quarantine in a small portable enclosure. She has her kitty litter, bed and food in there. She’s still a bit shaky on her feet but does look better than last week. We have a course of tablets for her which I administer by crushing in her food. Polly will try to bite you if you give her a tablet orally. Even the vet couldn’t do it. She has had a chest X Ray and it appears that her heart and lungs are fine. So, we hope that the course of medication will clear up her problems. The vet also believes that Polly might be hypo thyroid so we will have to look into this later.

Polly was delighted to be home and all she wanted to do was rub herself against me. She’s not usually so affectionate. She was less enthusiastic about the enclosure and miaowed practically all evening. I had set it up in my bedroom so she’d be away from the dogs although Teddy went to visit. She stopped when I went to sit with her but I had to give her a few stern “Go to sleep” commands when I wanted to go to bed. I may move her into the living room if I can rearrange things a bit. She might prefer being where everyone else is during the day and to be honest my bedroom is so tiny that the enclosure takes up about half of it.

We have to visit the vet in a week for a check-up. I think it is probably going to be a slow recovery. There are enough tablets to last about two months. However, so far, she seems to be doing OK. She hasn’t shown any adverse reaction to the medications and is obviously not feeling much discomfort. She was very cranky and didn’t want to be touched prior to going to the vet. Now she just wants to roll over and get tummy rubs.