I had been told that the training procedure with kittens was difficult. It's not. Mine had me trained in two days. ~Bill Dana

Rhody, five months old, at about 8 pounds
9/7/11

Our electricity went off at 3:40pm on Thursday afternoon. We waited for a few minutes and then Charlie checked our meter and it was blank. Our neighbors were also without electricity so we knew something else had happened.

By listening to the radio, we learned that the County of San Diego, south Orange County, Imperial County and part of western Arizona went dark. About 1.4 million customers were without power.

It was caused by a maintenance worker in Tucson, Arizona. He did something major wrong!

We were in the last day of a terrible heatwave, so thank goodness it was cooling down that night so we could sleep.

I woke up at 3:00am and the power was on. I think I must have heard something come on and it woke me because that is the time most people say they got power back too. So we were without power for about 12 hours. It could have been worse.

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Rhody seemed to be doing very well after his vet checkup last Sunday. Although he had a bad report that day because his right paw was not healing properly, we were giving him his pain meds and antibiotics like we were supposed to do. He was even having to wear his collar to keep him from biting his paws.

On Wednesday, I checked his paws and they looked pretty good. They didn’t seem to be open or have anything stuck to them. That evening we decided to remove the collar.

Whenever we’d had any cat declawed before, we never had any problems with them healing. I think the twins were running up and down the stairs a day or so after they came home from the vet. They had to get used to not having claws when they climbed the cat trees, etc., but it never really was an issue.

Rhody seemed perfectly normal. He was playing with his toys. He was eating fine. I checked his paws again on Thursday night and they still looked good.

On Friday morning, I was in the kitchen getting ready to feed the cats. I noticed that Rhody didn’t come in to eat. That is totally not like him. He likes to eat several times a day because he’s a growing boy.

I found him in the livingroom, lying on the floor. I petted him and noticed that he felt hot. I picked him up and brought him to the family room and sat down with him. He was very lethargic. I told Charlie that something was wrong with him. We both agreed that he felt like he had a fever.

I offered food to him, but he refused to eat. So, I laid him on a blanket on the couch. When I tried to examine his paws, his right paw seemed to be swollen and painful to him. It looked like he had also gotten some cat litter on his paw.

We had filled one of the litter boxes with “Yesterday’s News” litter and it was in the middle room upstairs. But, we really didn’t enforce Rhody staying in the room for long. Soon he was wandering around the house. Since we’d never had any problems with the other cats, we thought Rhody would be fine after a couple of days and going back to the regular litter boxes would be okay too. Apparently we were very wrong in our decisions.

The vet didn’t open until 8:00am and it was only about 5:00am. Rhody was really needing to go back to the vet. We were very concerned about him.

I called the vet’s office at 8:00am, but the recording was still on. I waited for a few minutes and called again. They answered and I told them the problem. They said “Bring him in.”

We immediately got him to the hospital. It was about 8:30am. When we checked in, we were told then that “The doctors won’t be in until 9:00am.” Well, it would have been nice if they had told us that on the phone.

Anyway, the hospital’s computers were also offline from the power outage yesterday. They didn’t know who had appointments, etc. Although we didn’t have an appointment, we had basically told them that we thought Rhody had a fever and it was urgent that he see a doctor.

As we waited, other people started coming in. One man came in with his daughter’s cat. He did not have an appointment either. Most of the other people who showed up probably did have appointments, but the staff didn’t know for sure.

So, when the man with the daughter’s cat got called into a room, we had already been waiting for about an hour and we’d been there before him. Charlie went up to the desk and asked them if they had forgotten about us. They assured us that they had not.

We had arrived at 8:30am and at 10:00am, a technician came to take Rhody back. She said that the doctor would see him, but there was no empty room and they would check his condition in the back. We were at least glad that he was getting taken care of after him being in the kennel for 1-1/2 hours.

When the technician returned, she said that Rhody had a very high temperature and his right paw was swollen. This was exactly what we had reported when we were trying to get in to see a doctor earlier. We kind of thought that since we were the first ones to arrive at the office, and since Rhody apparently had a fever, we would have gotten attention first.

But, we were glad he was being attended to now. We waited a little while longer. The technician came back and said that they had to soak Rhody’s paw in an antibacterial bath and clean it out some. The doctor would also be seeing him. It would take awhile so she suggested that we leave him and come back.

We were both worried about Rhody, but we left and went home. I had an appointment at 11:00am and went to that and then ran some errands.

When I returned home a couple of hours later, Charlie had just gotten off the phone with the vet, Dr. Bernhard. He said, “I was just politely scolded about Rhody’s condition.”

The vet was very upset that we had let Rhody’s paw get infected. He said that we could come and pick Rhody up, but that he would have to return Saturday and Sunday to get his paw soaked. He said, “Oh, and as we were cleaning the paw, we noticed some cat litter. Should I send “Yesterday’s News” home with you.”

Charlie said, “No, Doctor. We have learned the error of our ways. We will take care of Rhody when we get him home. We will confine him this time.”

The doctor wasn’t finished with him yet. He said, “Oh and I noticed that you just had Rhody in here last Sunday and Dr. Carpenter had to clean his paws then too!” All true. We have been bad parents and we know it. I pictured Charlie lying on the carpet by the time Dr. Bernhard got through with him!

So, we went over to pick Rhody up. We were relieved that we didn’t have to see the doctor face to face. Rhody had been given an antibiotic injection and we had pills to give him every 12 hours. I also was told to finish up the pain meds, which were every 12 hours. He had a little bandage on his right paw. It looked like a boxing glove.

When we got him home, we took him straight up to his room. I fed him and he was pretty hungry since he hadn’t eaten earlier. But, he was a different kitten from the one we took to the vet at 8:30am that morning, burning up with a fever.

He was purring and relaxed. He didn’t like his bandage, but really didn’t bite at it or anything. After he ate, I gave him some pain medicine and he curled up and went to sleep.

I checked on him during the rest of the afternoon and he was just fine. I had thought of sleeping in the room with him that night, but he was settled in the cat bed and I didn’t really need to keep an eye on him.

This morning I went into the room and he was asleep, but woke up and was very happy to see me. I fed him. I wanted to get him on a regular schedule for his meds, so I gave him his antibiotic and pain meds.

Charlie took him back to the vet this morning. This time, Rhody got a good report card. His paw looked better. He came home with a new bandage and will have to go back again tomorrow.

That is when Charlie will have to come face to face with Rhody’s regular vet, Dr. Carpenter. She is the one who has seen Rhody since the first time I took him in. She also is the one who did his surgery, so I know she’ll have something to say. She will probably not be happy that we didn’t follow her instructions from last Sunday. But, he said he would tell her, “I’ve already been scolded by Dr. Bernhard, so I don’t need another scolding.” I think he can handle it though.

More later.........