David E. Larsen, DVM

Dixie carefully closed the exam room door. She had just finished getting the next patient ready for my exam.

“This guy just arrived from California,” Dixie whispered. “The cat is old, and he is pretty proud of that fact. His name is Bob, and the cat’s name is Ruby.”

I entered the exam room and patted the old cat’s head. Then I extended my hand to Bob. Bob was a big man. Not fat, just a large older gentleman. His six-foot-four-inch frame towered over me, and his hand engulfed my hand. But I still managed a firm handshake.

“What are we doing for Ruby today, Bob?” I asked.

“You guys are right on the ball,” Bob said. “You had the names down without even looking at the record.”

“Well, we try hard, but we also cheat a little,” I said. “Dixie filled me in on the other side of the door.”

“Honest, too,” Bob said. “I like that. We just moved into town, and Ruby is probably the oldest cat you have seen. I just wanted her checked out. The move was long, and there was a lot of stress for her.”

“Moves are pretty stressful for cats,” I said. “Even short moves are often difficult for them. Does Ruby live inside?”

“Yes, she lives inside exclusively anymore,” Bob said. “In her younger days, she spent a lot of time outside. She is seventeen years old now. We try to take special care of her. Doc, you probably haven’t seen a cat this old.”

“We see a lot of cats in Sweet Home,” I said. “I rarely see a male cat that makes it to fifteen. Fourteen seems to be the magic year for them. But we see many sixteen-year-old female cats and a few who make it to seventeen. The oldest cat I have seen was twenty-three. She belonged to an old lady in the nineties. She told me she had to crawl under the bed to retrieve her cat for the appointment. That most of been quiet of a sight.”

“Well, seventeen is pretty old for a cat,” Bob said.

“Oh, yes, she is in a small group with dwindling numbers,” I said. “Do you just want an exam for Ruby, or do you want me to do blood work and a urinalysis?”

“Down south, we usually take her in for an exam every three months or so,” Bob said. “They never asked about a lot of lab work.”

“A lot of old cats die from kidney failure,” I said. “We should at least be doing a urine sample. And after a trip like she has just been through, it might be wise to run a blood panel, just so we can make sure everything is working like it should.”

“You will probably need to keep her for a couple of hours to finish that,” Bob said. “And you are  right, and we don’t want anything to happen to her that we can prevent.”

So, with that decided, we kept Ruby for a couple of hours, collected blood and urine samples, and completed a comprehensive exam. She passed everything with flying colors.

“Do you think she is really seventeen?” Dixie asked.

“She looks pretty for good for that age,” I said. “Did Bob bring any records from his previous veterinarian?” I asked.

“He said that she was never sick, so they didn’t bother with records,” Dixie said.

Bob was pleased with the results and made an appointment for a recheck in three months.

***

Three months later, Bob and Ruby were back in the clinic. Bob had quite a discussion at the front desk. Bob was sure our records were wrong, Ruby was nineteen, not seventeen as our file indicated.

“Doc, this cat just amazes me. She gets healthier as time goes on,” Bob said. “I am thinking that she will live to be thirty.”

As Bob loaded Ruby into his car, Dixie smiled at me.

“She probably will live to be thirty,” Dixie said. “If she continues to age two years every three months, thirty if not too far off.”

***

That became the routine; Bob and Ruby would be in the clinic every three months. Every visit, Ruby was two years older. 

Bob had some bad news on the fourth visit, just before Christmas.

“We will be moving in a couple of weeks,” Bob said. “All this rain is too much for us to endure. This move is going to be a short one, just over the mountains. We have bought a new house in Redmond.”

“I sorry to see you go, Bob,” I said. “But, you will have a dryer climate over there, maybe a little colder in the winter, but not near as much rain. Do you want to take a copy of Ruby’s records?”

“She has been as healthy as a horse on every visit,” Bob said. “There is no need for records. She will have her twenty-fourth birthday this coming spring. Probably the oldest cat most vets have ever seen.”

“I am sure she probably is, Bob,” I said,

We never had any news from Bob, but if it was up to him, I am sure that Ruby lived to be thirty.

***

It was a couple of years later when Jack came in with his old cat. He set the carrier on the floor, carefully pulled an ancient Siamese cat from the carrier, and placed her on the blanket he had spread on the table.

Jack was a large animal client from Brownsville. I had worked on his cows almost from the day we started practice.

“Doc, I have never asked you for a miracle, but that is what I am after today,” Jack said, tears welling up in his eyes. “This old cat is my daughter’s, and we want to get one more Christmas with her. This cat is twenty-six years old. So, I know I might be asking a lot, but our daughter is coming home for Christmas, and I am looking forward to one more picture of her and this old girl.”

“Jack, are you sure of the age?” I asked. “I mean, it is easy to lose track of the years with a cat.”

Jack struggled to get his wallet out of his hip pocket. Then he thumbed through old papers and receipts before finally pulling a tattered and crumpled old photo from the mess. 

“Here is the proof, Doc,” Jack said. “Sue was almost a year old in this photo. It was her first Christmas. And the kitten she is holding is this old girl right here. And Doc, Sue will be twenty-six next month.”

“Well, I would say I had better get to work if we are going to buy some time for this old gal,” I said. And what is this old gals name?”

“Well, we call her Cleo,” Jack said. “Actually, she was named before we got her and that name was Cleopatra.”

“Yes, I think Cleo is a better name,” I said. “Jack, Cleo is a little thin and might be dehydrated. Why don’t we plan to keep her overnight, do some lab work, and see if we can make her feel a little better for Sue’s arrival? Jack, Cleo is ancient. We can maybe buy her time, but we will not make her a young cat. You understand that, I hope.”

“Do what you can, Doc,” Jack said. “Like I said when I came through the door, we are after a miracle. So yes, we understand Cleo’s situation.”

We kept Cleo for the night. After collecting blood and urine samples, we started her on IV fluids.

My heart sank when I looked at the lab results. I had expected Cleo to be in kidney failure, but her blood values showed her failure was advanced. Cats seem to adjust to kidney failure and hold out pretty well right to the end. We were going to have to be lucky to be able to get her up for Sue’s visit.

I gave Jack a call with the news.

“Jack, I had expected Cleo to be in kidney failure, but the lab work shows a pretty advanced status,” I said. “If it was you or I, we would be on dialysis. Unfortunately, for Cleo, that is not an option. What we can do is limited. We will do some peritoneal dialysis this evening. That is where we fill her abdomen with fluid, allow it to stay to absorb some of her toxins, and then draw it off. That and her IV fluids and a special diet will get her through a few days. If you want to extend that time, we could use some diuresis, where we give her daily fluid to run through her kidneys to get as much use out of them as possible. But we are talking about weeks, not months.”

“Sue arrives the day after tomorrow,” Jack said. “If I followed all that, we can buy her enough time for Sue to say goodbye. Then I don’t think we will want to put Cleo through a bunch of misery to buy a couple of empty weeks.”

“We will get started on her treatment,” I said. “Plan to pick her up tomorrow. I think you can expect a couple of days, but three days without additional treatment will be the end of it. And Jack, just a word of advice: the one mistake people make is to wait too long before deciding to put a pet to sleep. It is better to be a day too early than a day too late.”

“Okay, Doc, we will pick Cleo up in the late morning,” Jack said. “That should give Sue a few good hours with her. That will be good. We will give you a call when we are ready.”

Cleo felt significantly better after treatment and a day of IV fluids. Jack was pleased with her progress when he picked her up.

It was two days when he called and asked to speak with me.

“Doc, I can’t thank you enough,” Jack said. “Sue and Cleo had a wonderful day yesterday. Sue was sad, of course, when I told her of Cleo’s prognosis, but they loved the time with each other. Cleo slept at the foot of Sue’s bed, just like in the old days. It was sad, but Cleo died during the night. That spared Sue the struggle to make that final trip to your office. Thanks again, Doc.”

“I’m glad we could them that time,” I said.

I was lucky that Jack choked up a little and allowed that to end the conversation. I was also a little choked up as I hung up the phone.

“Cleo died?” Sandy asked.

“Cleo died,” I replied. “At home and happy. Things worked out the best they could for everyone.

Photo Credit: Avelino Calvar Martinez on Pixabay.

David E. Larsen, DVM

I slowed as I made the turn onto Kings Road out of Liberty. Albert had said he had the cow tied to the fence beside the road. I stopped when I came to the cow. Albert was waiting on the other side of the fence.

The cow’s nose was a little crusted with blood around the nostrils, and she had some foamy saliva that sometimes reached almost to the ground.

“She looked a lot worse last night,” Albert said as I stepped out of the truck. “I almost called you then, but she seemed okay otherwise. I thought I would give you the night off. Blood was coming from her nose and in that saliva last night.”

Albert held the barbed wire apart with a foot on the lower wire and pulled up on the upper wire. I carefully crawled through the fence.

“I bet that hurts to stretch that wire like that,” I said. “My grandfather would have tanned our hides if we had messed with a fence like that back in the day.”
“It’s a lot easier than paying you to drive all the way to the barn and walk back here,” Albert replied.

“Is this cow eating this morning?” I asked.

“Yes, and she was eating last night,” Albert said. “That’s why I figured things would wait till morning.”

“Are the others all okay?” I asked.

“Everyone is normal as can be,” Albert said.

I stuck a thermometer in the cow’s rectum while talking with Albert. Her temperature was just slightly elevated. I put my stethoscope on her chest and listened to both sides.

“She has normal lung sounds and just a slight temperature,” I said as Albert looked over my shoulder the entire time I examined the cow. 

I listened to her gut.

“Normal rumen motility and normal gut sounds,” I said. Albert grunted his approval.

“What do you think is going on with her, Doc?” Albert asked.

“I think I better get my nose tongs and get an exam of her mouth and nose,” I replied.

I grabbed her nose with the tongs and tied the tongs to the top of the fence post. The cow was cooperative throughout the process.

I opened her mouth and pulled her tongue from one side to the other. I couldn’t see any problems. There was some dried blood around both nostrils.

“She was bleeding pretty good last night,” Albert said. “I usually don’t check these cows in the middle of the night, but my wife has been worried about this little heifer that will calve in the next couple of weeks. I just came out to check on the heifer when I saw this old girl.”

I untied the rope and lowered the cow’s head. As I released the tongs, I noticed a spot of blood between her eyes. I explored the spot with my fingertip.

“I think I have found her problem,” I said.

I retrieved my clippers from my medical bag and shaved the hair from the spot on the cow’s forehead.

“What’s going on, Doc?” Albert asked as he was trying to see over my shoulder.

“There it is,” I said, pointing to the neat hole. “That’s a bullet wound. By the size of it, probably a twenty-two.”

“She’s been shot?” Albert asked. “Why ain’t she dead, Doc?”

“She’s shot between the eyes,” I said. “That’s too low to hit the braincase.”

“When the mobile slaughter guy comes, that’s where he shoots them,” Albert said. “Those critters just drop like a ton of bricks.”

“Close, but he either shoots a little higher or uses a bigger rifle,” I said. “If you ever have to shoot a cow, the best place is to shoot them in the back of the head. Midline, right on the poll and straight down. You can’t miss the brain that way.”

“How does the mobile slaughter guy do it then?” Albert asked.

“Well, he does it more than once every five years,” I replied. “He is pretty practiced. But if you have to shoot a cow between the eyes, you draw an X from the eyes to the base of her horns or where the horns should be. Then you aim at the center of the X.”

“Then it’s a sure kill if you hit the mark,” Albert said.

“It is easy to miss the mark,” I said. “And then the cow suffers and the people watching suffer. I had to look at a neglected herd of cows once. I went there with a deputy sheriff. There was one cow that was bad enough that we decided it had to be shot. I told the deputy to shoot her in the back of the head. He said he was always told to shoot them between the eyes. He pulled his pistol and shot her between the eyes. She bellowed and shook her head. Blood flew from her nose. He shot her two more times with the same result each time. Then I moved him over behind her head and had him shoot her like I told him to do in the first place. One shot, and she was dead. I think he learned a little that day.”

“So the guy who shot this cow just missed?” Albert asked.

“He was hunting at night,” I said. “You probably almost caught him when you went out to check the cows. He shined a light and shot at the pair of eyes glowing in the beam. So he hit his target. It was just the wrong place to aim. I would guess this old gal made some noise when she was hit. That’s when he knew she wasn’t a deer. He probably left in a hurry.”

“What do we do for her now?” Albert asked.

“I don’t think we have to do much,” I said. “Trying to do anything with the bullet would do more damage than good. I will give her some acting antibiotics, and you will just need to keep an eye on her. As long as she is eating and acting like a cow, we are home free.”

I loaded the cow up with Dual-Pen and puffed some furacin powder into the bullet hole. I felt this was all for the show; she was probably going to heal on her own.

“I have a call out this was on Friday,” I said. “If you have her up in the corral, I’ll stop by and take a quick look at her. My guess, though, is she will be healed by then.”

Albert called the clinic on Thursday evening to say that the cow was doing well, and he didn’t think I needed to stop by to check on her.

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