Cats’ Eyes

No, this isn’t about the cats’ eyes that you find down the middle of the road although, while we are on that subject, I can’t believe how much easier they make driving in the dark.  I only mention this as we don’t have them in France and I never fully appreciated them before.

I had to take my cat, Salem, to the vet yesterday which is always an experience.  Firstly, I thought I’d vaccinate two cats with one stone and take him, together with one of my other four cats, and get the annual boosters done at the same time.  If you’ve ever tried getting an unwilling cat into a basket where there is already another unwilling cat just waiting for a chance to escape, you will understand why I ended up taking only one of them. 

Anyway, something was wrong with Salem’s eye.  He had come home and there was lots of thick white liquid oozing out (‘lovely’, I hear you say!) and, at first, I thought he had lost his eye.  The pupil had almost disappeared to nothing and he couldn’t really open the eye up at all.  Valerie the Vet took great pride in showing me a moving display (in the mobile sense, not the emotional) on her computer which demonstrated the cat’s eye and an imaginary object piercing it and a hole appearing – amazing really, it’s quite an education going to the vets these days.  She put this special liquid in his eye and, in fluorescent green, a little hole showed up in his cornea.  He must have managed to poke himself in the eye with a branch or something.  I have to put eye drops in three times a day for two weeks and the vet suggested keeping him in so that he will always be around when the eye drops need to be administered. 

There are two big problems with this.  Firstly, if I keep him in, he has to have a litter tray and nothing delights my dogs more than having their favourite snack offered up to them in their very own home (‘lovely’, I hear you say again).  Secondly, if you’ve ever wondered whether it’s possible for one person to hold a cat still, whilst holding its eye open and administering eye drops in one smooth action, I have tried this out for you and can tell you that it’s not.  The morning and evening doses aren’t too bad as my daughters are around to help but the midday one is impossible.  I have to take him back to the lovely Valerie Vet in a week’s time so I hope that the amount of drops I am managing to get in will do some good.

Salem

 

I always find that visits to the vet, like all bad things, come in threes.  As I have so many animals the chances of this are magnified so, watch this space.

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