Yesterday morning, while Obie was waffling on the doorstep about whether he wanted to come inside, Kelly managed to shoot past him and get outside. Rather than panic about it, we let him stay out for a couple of hours until he was ready to come inside by himself.

We had given up letting him go outside after he got into a big fight and ended up with a tear in his right ear. But he’s so bad-tempered inside, that we decided to give it another try. Our main concern was how he might interact with Smokey.

So far, Smokey gets along fine with Obie. I even saw him come onto the back deck and try to go nose-to-nose with Obie. Obie wasn’t quite sure about that, so Smokey retreated, but there was no drama.

This morning, we put Kelly’s collar on him and let him go out with Obie. The two of them spent a long time eating grass together in the front yard. And then, amazingly, Randy saw Smokey hang out with both of them and Kelly was okay with it. That’s a relief. We probably will continue to let Kelly outside first thing in the morning for an hour or so. Not that it’s made him any less bad-tempered once he’s back inside. I may have to go back to his original dose of Prozac. We’ll see.

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I got out of bed immediately after my alarm went off, rushed through my morning routine, skipped my PT exercises, grabbed the cat carrier, and hurried out to see how Kelly was doing before I called the vet hospital.

To my tremendous relief, he was alert, aware, and moving about normally. He ate a small amount of food for me. I think that enough of the Lactulose must have gotten into his system to make a difference, and it takes 24-48 hours for it have an effect. Meaning, I think he finally pooped during the night and is recovering.

I gave him another dose of Lactulose this morning. It’s some kind of non-digestible sugar that acts as a laxative. It’s also sticky as hell. Kelly doesn’t like it, of course, and shakes his head, which gets it all over the place. It sets up stiff in his fur and is hard to comb out. If you’ve ever been doused with champagne, you’ll know what I mean. If you haven’t, take it from me, it sucks.

He’s actually asked loudly for more food during the day. He’s not fully back to normal, and not eating his usual amount of food, but he’s way better than he was. He also hasn’t had his Prozac for a couple of days, so his bad temper toward Ozzy and Tilly is on full display. I’ll let it slide for a day, but will have to get him back on it by tomorrow.

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Kelly remains extremely sick. He won’t touch food and we haven’t seen him drink water all day. He kept throwing up until I think he simply ran out of anything to throw up, even phlegm. I gave him more Lactulose this morning, but a while later he threw up again and what I cleaned up looked a lot like the medicine. I think he urgently needs fluids, but we don’t have any. We used to give fluids frequently and had ringer sets around, then all of our old cats died, so we didn’t keep any on hand.

I contacted the emergency vet clinic in Redding. The tech said there’s a shortage of veterinarians and there wouldn’t be one available by the time I got there. Plus we have a winter storm coming in. There’s a high pass I have to get over to even get to Redding, and making that drive with possible snow and ice is risky.

My local vet hospital isn’t technically open on Mondays, but there’s always a tech there and they all know me. I plan to get Kelly there as early as possible tomorrow morning. Even if there’s no vet available, they can get him on fluids and maybe an IV until a vet can look at him.

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Poor Kelly has been throwing up all day. He was throwing up liquid this morning around 9:30. He ate gooshy food, but a bit later, he threw up every bit of that. Around 4:30 pm, he had another round of throwing up. Naturally, he doesn’t want to eat. Why do cats always pull this on a weekend when the vet clinic isn’t open?

He’s had intestinal problems in the past, causing him to back up with a blockage. I have medicine on hand that was prescribed for it, and while I can’t be sure that’s the problem now, I’ve gone ahead and given him a dose of that. We’re watching carefully. If he doesn’t improve, we may have to take him to an emergency clinic that’s over an hour’s drive away, so I’m really hoping he improves.

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Very pissed off with Kelly today. He’s gotten more and more obstreperous about his weekly “bath”, which consists of being combed, having his ears cleaned, rubbed down with a wet sock saturated with anti-allergen liquid, then combed again. He’s been swearing at me a lot, but this time he lunged at me and raked his claws at my face. He left a scratch on my forehead. I gave him seriously negative feedback for that.

Now I have a bandaid on my forehead and it feels weird. I’m considering upping his Prozac to the original half a pill instead of the quarter pill he’s getting now.

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Kelly has been on the kitty Prozac for nearly four weeks. The first couple of weeks he was such a zombie that it worried me. After that, he seemed to return somewhat to normal, but I noticed he was having trouble in the catbox. It was taking him forever and a lot of effort to poop. I gave him some doses of Lactulose. It seemed to help somewhat, but not enough. It wasn’t constipation, it was some other kind of issue.

Which is why Kelly had a last-minute trip to the vet yesterday. The vet couldn’t find any kind of obvious problem except for one oddity – Kelly’s anal glands were excessively full. So off he went into the back for some lucky tech to empty Kelly’s anal glands. That is not a job I would wish on anyone.

Kelly came back with a cleanly-washed butt scented with “Cherry Blossoms”, per the vet. We had a laugh about that and the name of the other butt-cleaning scent that is offered: Sugar Cookies. Somewhere in some pet products corporation, someone is having a laugh at people with cats.

The vet strongly agreed with my suggestion that we cut Kelly’s dose in half. Kelly had his first reduced dose this morning. He’s already hissing at Tilly again. Sigh...we’ll see how it goes.

A large chunk of yesterday was also spent texting with a neighbor, N., who is the granddaughter of the woman that considers Charlie her cat. Unfortunately, Charlie showed up with an injured leg a couple of days ago and his supposed person was doing nothing about it, so N. stepped up to take action. She texted me because many months ago I used a gofundme to raise money to neuter neighborhood cats. I offered to have N.’s own two cats fixed, but nothing came of it. The money has been sitting in my savings account ever since while I debated what to do with it.

She texted me to ask if I would be willing to use that money to get medical help for Charlie. We’re talking about a single mother with a couple of toddlers and a seriously sick grandmother, who is nonetheless taking responsibility for Charlie. Of course, I said yes. I contacted the vet’s office to make sure they understood that I’ve be covering a specific chunk of the bill.

N. was afraid Charlie had a broken or dislocated leg. He was in a lot of pain. It turned out that he was probably bitten by another cat and it got badly infected. If N. hadn’t gotten Charlie to the vet when she did, he might well have died from it.

I suspect that Charlie once again got into a fight with Obie. Obie showed up a few days ago with some bits of fur pulled out and a small nick on his left ear. He seems to lead with his left ear when he fights. His left ear is battle-ragged.

The vet is keeping Charlie another night because the poor cat is in such bad pain, which makes me suspect the infection remains serious.

I asked Charlie’s person (the grandmother) more than once to try and keep Charlie inside, but she won’t do it. Maybe this will change her mind, though I doubt it. People that won’t take proper care of the cats they claim as theirs shouldn’t be allowed to have them.

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Here’s what Kelly’s poor ear looks like now.

The vet gave me meds for him. They don’t use amitriptyline anymore and what they use now is literally Prozac.

He’s been on kitty Prozac for three days. They said it takes a couple of weeks to fully work, but I saw a change pretty quickly. It hasn’t affected his appetite and he’s still eating well, but I’m concerned by how inert he is. I’m going to talk to the vet about reducing the dosage. I don’t want a zombie cat.

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We got a better look at Kelly’s ear last night. We found that he has a large rip in his ear, in addition to the other damage. Now this beautiful boy has a torn-up ear. I’m deeply upset about it and wish I’d never let him go outside. There’s nothing to be done about it now, but we’re not letting him out again.

He’s been doing little else but sleeping yesterday and today. He’s snarly and unhappy about losing what freedom he had. I’m going to have a discussion with the vet about putting him on Amitriptyline for a while. It’s a mild trank. I had to use it on another cat many years back because she had bad PTSD and kept attacking one of my other cats for no reason. She eventually calmed down. Maybe it will work for Kelly, too.

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Around the middle of the day, Kelly showed up on the back deck visibly shaking from excess adrenaline, with fur in his mouth, and looking like he might have some fur missing himself. We quickly let him in. His right ear was bloody and left a trail of blood droplets, so I hauled him into the guest bathroom. Randy brought me Bactine and antibiotic ointment, then I cleaned up Kelly’s ear. He has a bit of a gouge on the back of his right ear, plus another scab that I had noticed yesterday was pulled off, leaving him with two bald spots on that ear.

Best guess is that he was off somewhere fighting with Charlie, but we didn’t hear anything. At this rate, he’ll end up with a ragged ear like Obi.

He is now grounded. No more outside for him until his ear has healed, and then we’ll have to reconsider this whole going outside business. He won’t be happy about it, but I told him “Tough, buddy, you’re grounded.”

He wasn’t too upset to eat a bowl of food, though.

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A major Kelly update. Kelly has become our Problem Child. On his own, he’s a sweet, affectionate boy. Unfortunately, he’s disruptive because he can’t get along with two of the other cats.

When he first encountered Ozzy, Kelly reacted with his usual defensive hiss and ran away, which triggered Ozzy’s aggressive instincts. It’s been downhill ever since. Ozzy, who is twice Kelly’s weight, continually trolls and harasses Kelly, so that Kelly never has a moment’s peace. He can’t simply relax anywhere in the house. He spends most of his time hiding behind the blinds in the living room or Randy’s office or our bedroom.

And Kelly has a vicious dislike of Tilly, even though she’s utterly harmless and only tried to be friendly to him. The problem, as I see it, is that Tilly now lives in my office. My office used to be Kelly’s safe place. I think he sees her as usurping his safe spaces and he resents her for it. He hisses and snarls at her anytime she comes near him.

He began to act out. I left the laundry basket on top of the washer while doing a load of laundry. When I went to put clothes in the basket, I discovered it was full of cat pee. Luckily, I realized this before putting the clothes in.

Randy and I discussed it and decided that we would start allowing Kelly to go outside during the day in the hope that would give him the time and freedom to destimulate. He showed up as a stray originally, so he knows the neighborhood and is comfortable outside. His rabies shot was current, but I took him to the vet to have his other vaccinations brought up to date. I got him a collar with his ID on it. We didn’t want anyone else thinking he was a stray.

I think it’s helped. He’s absolutely determined to go out first thing in the morning and is pretty good about coming in during the day to get food. Fortunately, Kelly and Obie are good buddies and get along fine both inside and out, so there’s no problem with Obie.

But there’s a new problem. Kelly has gone from being the indoor sentinel who warned us about Charlie coming into the yard to the outdoor warrior sentinel. He’s wildly aggressive toward Charlie and determined to get into a fight with him. I found out that our closest neighbor has been feeding Charlie, so Charlie has been coming around a lot more. I keep having to run outside into various neighbor’s yards to the sound of battle yowls, chase Charlie off, and herd Kelly inside. It’s a real pain. I need to talk to my neighbor and ask her to stop feeding Charlie.

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