Charlie (a rewrite)

David E. Larsen, DVM

It was a bright sunny afternoon in early June when I pulled up to the gate of the McCubbins’ farm. Frank had a llama with a vaginal prolapse and was close to her delivery date. When I got out to open the gate, I noticed a feral momma cat with a litter of 4 kittens. The kittens looked to be about five to six weeks old. The remarkable thing about the litter was one Siamese cross kitten with long hair. My kids would love that kitten, but the whole group scattered when I tried to approach them.


I continued on to the barn after closing the gate. Frank and his ten-year-old grandson were waiting for me at the barn.


“I tried to catch a wild siamese kitten down at your gate,” I said. “There was a mamma cat with a litter of five kittens, but they were pretty wild.”


“Well, that’s too bad,” Frank said. “We have too many cats around this place as it is.”
Frank’s grandson disappeared without a word.


“The girls tell me you have a llama with a vaginal prolapse,” I said. “That is pretty unusual. I have seen a few of them after delivery, but I haven’t seen one in a pregnant llama. When they occur in sheep before delivery, it is usually due to triplets, where there just isn’t enough room in the belly. Vaginal prolapses are always difficult to manage before delivery.”


“Why is that?” Frank asked. “I would think it would be pretty much the same.”


“Yes, it is pretty much the same, except after delivery, you can just sew things up for a few days,” I said. “Before delivery, if you do that, there is a chance of losing the baby. Most people can’t watch these mammas around the clock.”


“So, how do we solve that problem?” Frank asked. “This isn’t a four hundred dollar calf.”


“Today, I will try a trick not taught in school. It was relayed to me over dinner at a local veterinary association meeting by an old veterinarian over twice my age,” I said. “I was fresh out of school, and he latched onto me when I came through the door. I think he was seventy-two and mostly retired, but he bent my ear all night.”


“I’m not sure I like the word, try,” Frank said.


“That’s why they call this veterinary business a practice,” I said. “Most of what I know and do, comes from trusted practitioners, either in school or practice. We end up standing on the shoulders of many people who have come before us. You just have to trust someone who has spent his life doing the same thing you are doing. I have every confidence that this procedure will work. I probably used the wrong word when I said trick.”


“Okay, I trust your judgment,” Frank said. “And I’m not interested in sleeping in the barn for the next week.”


After carefully washing the prolapsed tissue, I lubricated the mass and carefully pushed it back in place. She did some straining, and it was evident that she would push things out again.


Now for the trick, I washed a wine bottle one last time, rinsed it with Betadine, and lubricated it with KY jelly. I carefully inserted the bottle into the vagina, blunt end first. It would serve as a pessary, preventing the vagina from prolapsing again. When the cervix dilated and the baby entered the birth canal, the bottle would be easily pushed out and followed by the baby. This trick was from the 1930s, but the results were expected to be far better than any modern method.


Once I had the bottle in position, the llama relaxed, and she quit straining.


“What do I have to do with her now? “Frank asked.


“I think you can expect her to birth in the next few days,” I said. “So, you want to keep a close eye on her. There is always a possibility of a uterine prolapse after delivery. In the llama, that doesn’t happen often, and I don’t know if having a vaginal prolapse before delivery increases the chances of a prolapse following delivery or not.”


“I think I hear you saying that if it happens after delivery, it is easier to handle,” Frank said.


“Yes, if you find it right away,” I said. “But it also can affect her future fertility.”


“I am intrigued about how different generations of veterinarians share information,” Frank said as I cleaned things up and started putting my equipment back in the truck. “How often does that happen?”


“Frank, it is the backbone of the profession,” I said. “Young veterinarians come out of school with the basics but need some direction in applying them. They usually go to work for older veterinarians. Those employers and older colleagues hand down information and skills that never make it to the textbooks.”


“I sort of find that interesting,” Frank said. “I thought it was all book learning from school.”


“The veterinary profession, maybe more than other professions, has a generation gap that is hard to bridge,” I said. “Over the last hundred and some years, the profession has had multiple upheavals. Before the Model T put the automobile in the hands of the working man, veterinarians were horse doctors. There was a horse in every household. Those guys went the way of the bicycle repairmen almost overnight. So the profession became a profession of cow doctors. Horses, dogs, and cats were just sidelines. Then in the 1960s, pets started becoming more of a thing, and horses, dogs, cats, and pocket pets soon became the mainstay of the profession.”


Frank and I were still talking when Frank’s grandson returned carrying the Siamese cross kitten in his hands.


“I went down to the gate, and they were still there,” the grandson said. “The mamma cat was wild, but the kittens hung around. I just called this one, and he waited around long enough that I could catch him.”


“Let me look at him,” I said as I took the kitten from the grandson’s hands. It didn’t take much looking to realize that he was covered with ringworm.


“What are you going to do with him?” I asked.
“I’m going to keep him.” the boy replied.


“That will be fine,” I said. “He will grow up to be a good cat for you. Especially since he was raised by a feral momma cat. She was out there teaching them how to hunt. But, just as a warning, this kitten is covered with ringworm. You want to get that cleared up before you handle him much.”


“What should we do for treatment?” Frank asked.


“If you stop by the clinic, I can give you some shampoo and a couple of pills that you can chop up and give him a piece every day for a few weeks. And if you change your mind about the kitten, I will take him off your hands.”

***

It was probably 2 weeks later when Frank called the office.


“Are you still interested in taking that kitten?” he asked. “I have a grandson who is covered with ringworm. And, by the way, that llama gave birth a couple of days after you worked on her. When I came out to the barn early in the morning, the baby was up and around, and the wine bottle was lying in the middle of the pen. Pretty good trick, I would say.”


Frank was happy to deliver the kitten to the clinic. We named him Charlie, and he was an irresistible kitten.


We started with an anti-fungal bath and topical treatment of Charlie’s ringworm. Even with careful treatment and stern warnings, our kids developed a few ringworm lesions before Charlie’s skin was clear.


Charlie proved to be a super cat. He grew large, measuring nearly 3 feet from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail. He was a ferocious hunter. There was nothing safe in the back of our property.


We had many molehills when Charlie arrived. Before the beginning of his second summer, he had eliminated the entire mole population.


Charlie was very much my cat. I would leave the bedroom window open and unscreened during the night, and Charlie came and went as desired.


It was common for him to bring his trophies and leave them at the foot of our bed. Mice and bats were standard. One night I heard him come through the window, and he jumped up on the bed. This was something that he seldom did. The next thing I knew, he dropped a mouse on my neck. Thankfully it was dead.


During Charlie’s fifth year, he went hunting one evening and never returned. We could only guess at his demise, but it was likely by a wily coyote or a much bigger cat than he, both of which were common on our hill. Charlie’s loss was sad for the whole family, but maybe the most painful thing was watching the return of the molehills the following spring.


I have always held out for the chance that Charlie had found his old hunting grounds on Frank’s side of the hill. Maybe he preferred hunting with his mother.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash.

Ageless Ida and Kitty, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Ida was sitting beside her daughter, waiting patiently, with Kitty nestled in her lap. Ida was my oldest client, a tiny, frail old lady with snow-white hair. She lived by herself, but her daughter, Lila, was close at hand. Lila was no spring chicken herself.

Ida drove until a couple of years ago. She had expressed her disappointment to me when they took her driver’s license away. She was fiercely independent, and she hated to have to impose herself on her daughter.

Kitty was an old tabby cat with a white blaze and a white chest. The record did not have a birth date for Kitty. That meant the girls probably disagreed with Ida’s guess. Maybe I should resolve that issue today.

Ida slapped at her daughter when Lila tried to help her stand up with Kitty. She also refused the helping hand offered by the girl showing her to the exam room. She ambled toward the exam room with measured steps and cradled Kitty in her arms.

“Kitty’s has not been feeling well for several days,” Ida said as she carefully positioned her on the exam table. “I had to crawl under my bed to get her this morning.”

I had to take a moment to process that statement. I am not sure I could crawl under a bed to retrieve a cat, and I am a young man. Imagining this frail little lady crawling under her bed was difficult to conjure up in my mind.

“Ida, you shouldn’t be doing that at your age,” I said. “You should get one of your grandsons to help.”

“They are always busy, and Lila is in worse shape than I am,” Ida said. “Besides, if you quit doing things for yourself, pretty soon, they stick you in one of those prisons that they call all sorts of fancy names today.”

“That’s pretty good advice,” I said. “Let’s look and see if I can find out what is wrong with Kitty.”

“Kitty is very old, she is 26 years old now,” Ida said.

“That is pretty old for a cat, are you sure of the date?” I asked.

“David, I got her as a kitten for my 70th birthday,” Ida said. “I should know her age. I named her Kitty because cats never pay attention to a name but always come when you call kitty.”

“I had no idea she was that old,” I said. “I don’t think I have seen another cat near that age. I did have a client who moved here from California with a 17-year-old cat. That cat aged 2 years every 3 months, according to the owner. It was 25 when he died a year later.”

“I have a picture of Kitty and myself at my birthday party,” Ida said. “That was the last birthday party I allowed Lila to give for me. They are sort of silly for old folks. They just use them as an excuse to take their picture with you. Just because you might not be around next year.”

Kitty was lying on the exam table, unmoving through all this discussion. I petted her head and then ran my hand down the length of her body. There was a bump when I cross her abdomen. I felt closer. It was a tumor, the size of an orange.

I looked at Ida, and she had a tear on her cheek.

“I felt it last week,” she said. “I prayed it would go away, but that didn’t help.”

“Sometimes, we can remove these with surgery,” I said. “That might be difficult at Kitty’s age.”

“No, I told her I wouldn’t let you do any of that to her,” Ida said, tears streaming down her cheeks now. “I don’t know what I am going to do without her, Doctor. She is all I have to talk with now, all my friends are long gone.”

Ida was purposely avoiding the discussion of euthanasia. I knew it had to be discussed, but I wanted her to bring it up. Maybe that wasn’t going to happen.

“You should get a new cat,” I said. “We could find you a kitten.”

“That wouldn’t be fair to the kitten, David,” Ida said. “I am not going to be around forever, you know.”

“You could have your Granddaughter help pick her out,” I said. “She could know that it would be her responsibility when the time came.”

“That might be a thought,” Ida said. “But what are we going to do with Kitty? I don’t want her to suffer.”

“Is she eating at all?” I asked.

“She has been under my bed for 3 days,” Ida said. “That is why I had to crawl under there to get her.”

“I think she waiting to die,” I said. “Maybe it is time we talk about making that an easy process for her.”

“Yes, I think that is what I thought when I called Lila this morning,” Ida said. “Then, I can take her home and bury her beside her favorite place in the back yard.”

“You should get one of your grandsons to help you with that chore,” I said.

“The ground is still soft, David,” Ida said. “I am not helpless. That is something I would like to do privately.”

“It will only take a moment for me to put her to sleep,” I said. “You can wait out front if you like, and we can bring her out in a small box.”

“I think she will like to be looking into my eyes when she goes, I will wait right here,” Ida said. “And I will take her home wrapped in her blanket. She would like it that way.”

And that is precisely how it was done. Ida carefully wrapped Kitty in her blanket and wiped a tear from her eye before gathering her into her arms.

“Thank you, David,” Ida said. “I will think about that kitten.”

I watched as Lila helped her mother out the door. Ida slapping at her as she tried to hold Kitty.

That was the last time I saw Ida. Her obituary was in the paper a few months later.

Photo by Belén Rubio from Pexels

It’s a Hard Job

 D. E. Larsen, DVM

I was finishing up in the surgery room when Sandy entered the room. 

“You have Pat in the exam room,” Sandy said. “She is worried that her new kittens are dying.”

“Tell her I will be just a couple of minutes,” I said. “I just have to clean up a bit.”

“I think you should come now,” Sandy said. “She was crying when she came through the door.”

So with my surgery gown, hood, and mask, I enter the exam room. Pat is seated in the chair, holding her two kittens and sobbing. The kittens look fine. I untied the top of my mask, so it hung from my neck.

“Oh, Doctor,” Pat said. “I’m so embarrassed. I thought these two were dying. My father cautioned me about distemper shots, and when I came home from shopping, these two were lying on the rug in the family room. They looked dead to me. I couldn’t believe it, and I didn’t want the girls to come home and find them. I just scooped them up into the carrier and ran down here. Then I sat down to wait, and they were up, wanting out of the kennel. I guess there is nothing wrong with them.”

“Well, there is no need to be embarrassed,” I said. “Let me get a look at them and make sure everything is okay. Then if they are fine, we can make this visit a vaccination visit. Your father was good to caution you.”

The kittens played and wrestled with each other and my hand while I looked them over.

“It looks like you have a couple of normal kittens,” I said. “Have they had any vaccinations yet?”

“No, I guess I didn’t know they needed any vaccinations,” Pat said. “Dad said if they get distemper, there isn’t much to do for them. He said he would see all the kittens in the barn wiped out from distemper when he was a kid.”

“It sounds like he grew up a lot like I did,” I said. “Barn cats were never vaccinated, and only the strong or the lucky survived. And even today, once a kitten this age gets distemper, there is often no saving them. It is not uncommon for a kitten to go from normal in the morning to dead in the evening. Their only defense is vaccinations.”

“Can you vaccinate them today?” Pat asked.

“Yes, I will give them their initial vaccines and deworm them,” I said. “Dixie and Sandy can talk to you about what you need to keep your fleas under control. Then we will look at them in 4 weeks for boosters, and we can talk about spaying or neutering them then.”

“We haven’t decided about neutering these two yet,” Pat said. “We think the girls would really enjoy raising a litter of kittens.”

“That’s fine, in my opinion, but I work with a couple of groups who deal with finding homes for many kittens every year,” I said. “They would shudder at your thoughts. Just make sure you have homes for all the kittens before you go down that path.”

We vaccinated the kittens with a combination vaccine for distemper and respiratory viruses. We also used a separate vaccine for the leukemia virus. Then I popped a worm pill down each kitten.

Have you got names for these two yet?” I asked.

“No, the girls are still arguing about the names,” Pat said. “We have only had for three days now, and I guess we are not really sure about who is the boy or the girl.”

I glanced at each kitten. They were both girls.

“They are both girls,” I said. “They are both calicoes. That is the first clue.”

“Oh, that might mean we could have a lot of kittens,” Pat said.

“Yes, a lot of kittens,” I said. “Sometimes you get lucky with a small litter, but I guess we see litters of 4 kittens most of the time. I have seen litters of seven or eight before. That could mean you would go from a population of two cats in the house to a bunch of ten to fifteen overnight. And that doesn’t even mention the hassle of a bunch of tomcats on your doorstep when these two come into heat.”

“Okay, we will take that into consideration,” Pat said. “And I promise you I won’t rush in here and disrupt your day again.”

“You don’t worry about this morning,” I said. “We all learn as we go along in this life. If you have an emergency, call if you can, but come in if you can’t. If you have any questions, we are here to help you out.”

“So then, just what was I seeing when I came home this morning?” Pat asked. “I mean, they really looked dead, or almost dead.”

“It’s a hard job, you know, being a kitten,” I said. “Kittens play hard, and then they sort of collapse and sleep however they hit the floor. You will likely see that again during the next few weeks. But next time, you will be prepared.”

Photo by Yayuk Lestari on Pexels.