Dorf Post-Op

Thank you for all your wonderful messages and kind thoughts yesterday. We all appreciated them so much!

So here is Dorf this morning in his new get-up from the Vet Dentist. (Yes, his eyes really do look that weird. I think he is still high from all the meds.) This time she inserted a feeding tube in his neck and I have to give him 45ml of canned a/d 4 times a day (he's a big boy at 17 lbs.), and also give him his antibiotics through this tube. There is a bandage around his neck to hold the feeding tube at the suture site, and then he has this butt-ugly "sweater" thing that he wears to keep the feeding tube pinned against his body so it doesn't flop around and he can't pull it out. Sorry Daisy, but we think the Fashionista Police would cite you for wearing something like this. It isn't "cute" in any form of the word.

I personally think this "sweater" looks like a he-man shirt that a beer-bellied hillbilly would wear to a family reunion. But that's for another day....

Anyway, there is a certain protocol to using a feeding tube, which I've never done before. I've force fed hamsters, buns, guinea pigs, and poodins with syringes in the mouth, but never via a feeding tube. I have to inject 5ml of water initially before I start feeding, then feed half the food, inject 3ml of water, then inject his liquid antibiotic, then the rest of his food, then another 5ml of water to clean the tube out so it doesn't get clogged with food. This whole procedure is supposed to take less than a minute because I should be inserting about 1ml per second. All while Dorf is raised to a certain degree, not lying down. Wouldn't you know that Paw is in Catifornia this week?

Don't know why Dorf didn't get the feeding tube the first 2 times he had teeth extracted. Getting him to eat has been the biggest hurdle each time. He wants his crunchies regardless of how much his mouth hurts. He doesn't want his crunchies moistened. He doesn't want stinky goodness. He doesn't like tuna, or any kind of bean food except for yogurt and shredded sharp cheddar cheese. But when he was recovering, all he wanted were his hard crunchies, and he isn't supposed to have hard crunchies for 2 weeks after surgery. This time he doesn't have a choice.

He had his remaining 11 teeth extracted. The Vet Dentist said that if he were only having one or two succumb to Feline Odontoclastic Resorptive Lesions at a time, then she wouldn't take them all, but since he has had so many bad teeth over the last 10 months, she would just take the rest out. Once she performed the digital x-rays, she discovered that his remaining upper canine had an oronasal fistula, which I think means that the lesion had eaten through to the nasal cavity and she had to repair that.

Hopefully, Dorf will recover quickly from all this and go on to live a painless, carefree life. Cats don't have trouble eating without any teeth because they have a very hard palate and they can crunch hard foods with their gums and mouth. Their teeth were designed for tearing and shredding meats from bones, and the little crunchies that we feed them nowadays are usually eaten whole. (Trust me, I've cleaned up enough yak to know this is true.)

Please continue sending your healing thoughts and purrayers and purrs and headbutts for Dorfie.

Luf, Maw