Well, that was a busy weekend. First, the good stuff: Science Girl’s NW Coyote Tracker has really taken off. KOMO never ran their piece about the situation, but there was an article in today’s P-I about urban coyotes; the site gets mentioned at the very end. Also, the local NBC affiliate, KING-5, came out and interviewed SG this afternoon and ran their piece tonight. Still pending is an interview she gave to the Seattle Times. As I write this, around 7:30 PM, NWCT has had about 1600 hits today alone. SG says she’s got about two dozen coyote sightings in queue to be posted. Congratulations to SG for providing an outlet for people to share their information, and for getting out the news that people need to keep their pets inside.
Speaking of pets, we come to the less-good news. Martin, our 19-year-old cat, spent the weekend in the hospital. He’s had kidney disease for some time, but the extreme (for here) heat last week sent him into the beginnings of kidney failure. So he spent Wednesday – Sunday getting IV and subcutaneous fluids. Since there is no such thing as dialysis for kitties (and if there were, it would probably be kinder not to administer it), the idea was to sorta flush out his system and get the kidney values down. The BUN (blood urea nitrogen) got down to acceptable levels, but the creatinine is still elevated. It’s down from where it was, of course, but it’s still high – normal is under 3, and I think he’s around 5 and change, if I recall correctly. We brought him home last night, and have been administering all sorts of new meds plus pushing subcutaneous fluids on him, daily. That involves sticking him with a needle and dripping fluid under his skin. Oddly enough he doesn’t like it, and we’re both a little wigged out about it, too. I think we’ve gotten the hang of it now, though, and can get through it so that it’s minimally painful for all concerned. Thankfully, Martin is a pretty forgiving guy.
We take him back to the vet on Wednesday, to get his creatinine levels checked again. Hopefully they’re continuing to trend downward. They’re never going to be normal, but lower is obviously better. So we do our thing and hope for the best.
She was great! I would have just stuttered and sputtered and finally ended up staring blankly at the lens. The bizarro editing in the park cracked me up, too. Informative and entertaining!
My sister lives in the hilly part of town and often hears coyotes running through her back yard at night; she says she can never get used to the sound.
Hope Martin feels better soon.
Posted by: Joolie | July 24, 2007 at 06:58 PM