The House of Bodily Fluids

Me and the missus were awakened at 5:00 this morning to the sound of our cat Fred retching on the bed between our pillowed heads, as this is the area that Fred has deemed his favorite sleeping spot. This isn’t the first time this has happened, but this time the missus was able to grab said Fred in mid-retch and fling him off the side of the bed to do his puking on the floor instead of the bedsheets. Fred is about 21 years old and has gone from being a magnificent specimen of over18 pounds with a long, luxurious gray coat and a long, luxurious gray tail to now a skinny, stinky, matted-haired, no-tailed 7-pounder who poops and pees and vomits all over our lovely home. God love him, he tries to get it in the litter box, but he usually manages to pee on the floor around the box (thus the adult-sized pee pad ever present at the litter box). He’s lucky to poop at all, so the poop ends up wherever he can get it out, i.e. this morning after cleaning up the spew on the bedroom floor, my bare feet encountered Fred’s night-time stool sample as I was preparing to throw out the cleaned-up vomitus. Fred has a chronic kidney problem and is prone to urinary tract infections, and to keep him alive I have to force-squirt Clavamox antibiotic into his mouth twice a day (he really loves this), and we have to inject him with lactated Ringer’s IV solution subcutaneously nightly (he doesn’t seem to mind this so much). Indeed, I got a good deal on a case of lactated Ringer’s at Costco a couple of weeks ago. Otherwise, Fred sits on the kitchen counter all day long and screams for food. His food is on the kitchen counter because the damn dog will eat it if it’s on the floor, but that’s another story.

Our beagle, Lenny, is a rescue who had been passed around from house to house and shelter to shelter and finally hit the jackpot when we “adopted” him. Lenny thinks that the bodily fluids constantly emanating from his buddy Fred are a delicacy, so another consideration in cleaning up Fred’s vomit this morning was once again trying to keep Lenny from licking it up. Lenny can tell when Fred’s working on a poop and will follow him around with his nose in Fred’s butt waiting for the warm loaves to fall from the vault, so to speak. (As I sit here typing, Fred has again shat on the kitchen floor and Lenny snatched up another treat) He can smell Fred poop a mile away, and I think Lenny has managed to dispose of more of it than I have. Lenny has been known to wake up in the middle of the night to snack down on a newly-expunged Fred turd out in the hallway. Lenny himself is a mighty urinator and goes outside to pee on an average of 8 to 10 times a day. As we don’t have a back yard for him to just go do his thing, this means getting the leash out and walking him those 8 to 10 times a day. Otherwise, Lenny will just pee on the floor. Lately, he has taken to peeing on our balcony (and trying to lick it up), so in the relative heat of the summer, the smell of urine seems ever present in the background. I do a Lysol-and-broom on the balcony about every day, but like lilacs or honeysuckle, some smells linger and just don’t seem to go away. As mentioned, Fred’s food is on the kitchen counter, but when we’re not paying attention, Lenny manages to get on a kitchen chair and leap to the kitchen counter to devour any food left on Fred’s dish. Lenny knows he’s not supposed to do this, but it’s one of the great joys of his life, so he’s always alert for his next opportunity. Well, a couple weeks ago, he was once again on the counter eating Fred’s food when I happened to catch him. On leaping to the chair and to the floor, Lenny accidentally caught one of his back claws somewhere on the chair and yanked it clean out, so when he hit the floor and walked away, there were little puddles of Lenny blood all over the house as he walked. More bodily fluid. So, Lenny went to the vet and had it cleaned and dressed and had to wear a dressing and a sock and a cone on his head (and be dosed with the above-mentioned antibiotic Clavamox) for a couple of weeks. He really, really loved this. I’m starting to get some insight on why Lenny was passed from house to house and from shelter to shelter.

Ah, the joys of pet ownership.