Jim’s Random Notes

Kameeke got her name from the little boy next door whose attempt to say “come here, kitty” sounded like “ka mee kee.”  Debra acquired the cat in early June of 1989, about two months before we met.

Kameeke had been a part of our lives from the first time I went to pick Debra up for a date.  Debra showed me in and asked me to sit for a few minutes while she finished getting ready to go.  She said that the dog (Sandy) didn’t like men very much and would probably be standoffish.  The cat, she said, was unlikely to appear, as she always hid when company came over.

When Debra came back downstairs after about five minutes, the dog was plastered against my leg on the couch, and Kameeke was curled up in my lap, purring.  When she saw that, Debra says, she figured I couldn’t be all bad.  If the cat and dog liked me, there must be something good about me.

Kameeke wasn’t a hugely affectionate cat.  She’d come by now and then for some loving, but then would hop down and go off to her corner.  She liked being in the same room as the rest of the family, but didn’t need to be reassured every moment.  That suited me just fine, as I don’t think I could handle having a cat lying on my chest and drooling on my face all the time.  A few minutes here and there was quite sufficient.

Kameeke carried her age well.  She started slowing down, of course, but she’d still tear through the house from time to time, and she never lost her fascination with string.  It was only just recently that the years started catching up with her.  At some point we realized that “cure” wasn’t an option, and when it became evident that all of our efforts were just prolonging her suffering, we acknowledged that it was time to let her go.

We’re richer from having known her for 20 years: countless smiles, some real belly laughs, and most importantly the love she showed when she crawled up and asked to be petted while she purred.  We’ll miss having her, but will always remember.

Rest well, Kameeke.

Just wanted to share this video from yesterday’s treadmill session.  They’ve reduced the water level and increased the speed.  Charlie is improving by leaps and bounds every day.  Perhaps soon he’ll be leaping and bounding.

The title pretty much says it all.  The physical therapist at A&M sent us these videos of Charlie walking yesterday.  This is just two weeks post-surgery, after not walking for almost two months.  He still has a long way to go, but he’s getting there pretty darned quick.

They tell me that they’re feeding him four full cans of food a day. That’s more than double what we normally feed him, but I guess he’s got a lot of weight to put back on.

We’ll be heading over there tomorrow to pick him up.  We’ll decide over the weekend whether we’ll be taking him back or continuing the therapy here.

Charlie has had a very difficult two months.  He was improving after his back surgery in December, but right after Christmas he had a setback.  He spent most of a week at the vet’s office, and on New Year’s Day we were on the road with him to Texas A&M University Veterinary school for an MRI.  The MRI revealed a cyst of some kind on his spinal cord (actually in the membrane around the cord).

After a few weeks of continued physical therapy and consultations with doctors, we determined that he wouldn’t get better without surgery to remove the cyst.  So we took him back to A&M on the 20th, and he had surgery on the 21st.  The surgery lasted about six hours.  Surprisingly, Charlie was awake and alert the next morning, hungry and in good spirits.  Debra went to see him over the weekend, and Charlie started physical therapy on Monday of this week.

Jennie, the 4th year veterinary student who is his primary caregiver took this video of Charlie walking on the underwater treadmill on Tuesday—just six days after his surgery.

They had to put the treadmill on incline because the day before, Charlie was holding his legs up letting his back end float while he padded along on his front feet.  With the treadmill on incline, he can’t cheat.

We went over to pick Charlie up this afternoon and bring him home for the weekend.  He’s apparently been somewhat homesick or something–not wanting to be there.  We’ll keep him here for the weekend and then I’ll take him back on Monday morning for another week of therapy.  After that, if he continues to improve, we’ll likely bring him home and continue the therapy locally.

Ever the charmer, Charlie has endeared himself to everybody at the hospital.  Especially Jennie, shown here with her favorite patient.

Charlie has lost a lot of muscle mass in the back, what with being immobile for most of 8 weeks.  He’s shaped like a lightbulb.  He can’t yet stand on his own, but his legs are already much stronger now than they were when we took him in for surgery.  It’s going to take a while and he might not regain full function, but I expect he’ll at least be able to walk again.

I can’t say enough good things about the staff at Texas A&M’s Veterinary school.  They’ve been incredibly helpful and, most important, up front and honest about the risks of surgery and about Charlie’s chances for recovery.  They’ve also given Charlie very good care and seem to be very personally involved with his treatment.  If I ever have another pet who has a condition that my normal veterinarian can’t handle, I’ll go directly to A&M or to the nearest major university vet school if I move away from here.

We noticed Charlie having some trouble walking about two weeks ago, and the Saturday after Thanksgiving it got bad enough that we had to take him to the vet.  His back legs were working, but not well, and he was whimpering a bit as if in pain.  When that dog starts showing pain, you know there’s something wrong.  After x-rays of Charlie’s spine and a night of observation, we were referred to a specialist.

We went to the specialist on Tuesday of last week.  He did a myelogram, consulted with a radiologist, and diagnosed a ruptured disk or some other type of blockage that was preventing Charlie’s back legs from working fully.  He recommended surgery, as those kinds of injuries don’t typically fix themselves.  The surgery was yesterday (Monday).

Charlie came through the surgery fine.  He’s still at the vet, though, recovering.  Unfortunately, the doctor didn’t find what he was looking for:  no evidence of a ruptured disk or other type of injury to the spinal column that would cause the blockage.  He did, however, see some swelling in the area, which would present as a spinal injury in the myelogram.

The most likely diagnosis now is a fibrocartilaginous embolism (FCE):

FCE results when material from the nucleus pulposus (the gel-like material which acts as a force-absorbing cushion between two vertebrae) leaks into the arterial system and causes an embolism or plug in a blood vessel in the spinal cord. The condition is not degenerative, and therefore does not worsen. FCE is not painful for the pet, but some permanent nerve damage is likely. Roughly half of all patients diagnosed with FCE will recover sufficient use of their limbs.

Searching for “fce dogs” on the Internet will bring up some frightening pages, many of which indicate that the neurological damage is permanent.  After last night’s reading, I was resigned to Charlie being partially paralyzed for the rest of his life.  But after talking with the doctor today and reading some case studies, I’m much more hopeful.  The doctor, based on his experience with about 200 FCE cases, says that there’s a 60 to 70 percent chance that Charlie will recover fully.

It’s unfortunate that he had to go through what turned out to be an unnecessary surgery, but all the tests indicated that the surgery was the proper course of action.  Charlie’s pretty miserable right now, but he’s still relatively young (7 years old), and very strong.  I expect he’ll be recovered from the surgery very quickly, and then we can see about getting some of his mobility back.

Every time I get to thinking that maybe Charlie’s learned not to mess with the local wildlife, he does something incredibly stupid to set me straight. Last night I let him out just before going to bed. He stood there by the door for a minute and then took off around the corner after something. 30 seconds later he was running across the yard with his face in the grass, and the unmistakable aroma of skunk assaulted my olfactory system.

Yes, Charlie got another skunk. More correctly, the skunk got him. Not only does the dog stink (he’s at the vet now, getting a skunk bath), but the skunk let loose around the side of the house–right next to the air conditioning unit. The house reeks. I’m at home today with the windows open and the whole-house fan pulling in the 95-degree air, hoping to get rid of that smell.

This is Charlie’s second skunk. I had hoped that after the last time he would have learned that the stinky black kitty with the white stripe is strictly hands-off. Sadly, he seems to be a slow learner.

Yesterday was beautiful: calm, sunny, and 80 degrees. I had a few hours of outside work to do, what with rearranging the compost pile and vacuuming dirt out of the pool, and Charlie said he’d come out to help. Some help he was. I took a break after a couple of hours and caught him lounging in the grass:

“Charlie! I thought you were supposed to be helping me work. Or at least patrolling the yard to keep the squirrels and cats out.”

Uh oh. He caught me.

“But, Dad! It’s such a nice day. And I’m cute! Scratch my belly?”

“No, Charlie. You have work to do.”

“Nope. I think I’d rather just lie here and enjoy the sun.”

Hard to argue with that logic, ain’t it?

Little Foot is the neighbor’s cat. For the five years we’ve had Charlie, I’ve been warning the neighbors that if he catches the cat in the yard, I can’t be held responsible for the outcome. My neighbor said, “I know.”

Charlie cornered Little Foot yesterday–in a plastic trash can that had been knocked over by the wind. I won’t go into the whole sequence of events, but I will say that when Charlie’s head came out of the trash can he a very fuzzy growth attached to it.

The picture above doesn’t even come close to showing the damage that cat did to Charlie. The back of one ear is raw, his throat is scratched (apparently from the cat’s back claws), and he even has scratches inside his mouth. The last time I saw the cat, it was up in a tree. I suspect it wasn’t seriously injured.

I’m starting to think that Charlie should stay clear of the neighborhood wildlife. He killed a fawn years ago, and I found a dead bunny once, but mamma deer got the best of him, as did the skunk last year and the cat yesterday. I hate to think what’d happen if he found a raccoon.

Stupid dog.

Tasha the poodle came to us in May of 1997 along with her mom, Tiffany. Tasha was tiny when we got her. I think she weighed all of five pounds. I was always afraid that I’d somehow hurt her.

Timid as she was, and kind of dull personality-wise compared with Tiffany, Tasha still managed to work herself into my heart. She’d come by and look at me with those adoring eyes and there’s no way I couldn’t love her. She wasn’t particularly snuggly towards me, but when she did curl up with me she’d just sprawl out. She’d lie there for as long as I’d pet her. Crazy little poodle.

The thing we’ll remember the most about Tasha, though, is that she always put Charlie in his place. That’s right, our six pound toy poodle kept our 70 pound pit bull in line. If he ran her over, she’d get up and give him a nasty scolding. More than once she ended up literally hanging from his lip, she bit so hard. That was quite a trick, too, considering that she didn’t have a whole lot of teeth left. Charlie always looked properly contrite. He’d shake his head and slink away carefully so as not to incur her wrath again.

Tasha was sick a lot. She had a collapsed trachea, enlarged heart, hip problems, back problems, and undoubtedly other problems of which I know nothing. When we got Charlie five years ago, we thought Tasha was on her last legs. Charlie perked her up, though, and she was quite spry for the next few years. Last summer she got sick and bounced back. Same thing happened again in November. We’d think, “this is it,” but somehow she’d miraculously recover.

But not today. She’d been deterioriating quickly over the last several days, and this morning she wasn’t moving well at all. A few hours at the vet and we determined that she just wasn’t going to get better this time. Something was causing the bones in her vertebrae to deteroriate, making it increasingly difficult for her to walk or stand. There was nothing that the doctors could do for her. They told us that they couldn’t even understand how she’d lasted this long.

We cried. Of course we did. But we couldn’t watch her in pain any longer. We petted her and said goodbye, and held her as the doctor administered the shot. Tasha was a part of our family, a source of amusement and a loyal friend. We will miss her.