Revenge of the Cyst (not Sith)

Hmmm, perhaps I’ve invented a new tongue-twister for geeks and hypochondriacs…. “the sith’s sick sheik sifts cysts”.  I don’t think it makes any sense, but it’s original.  Feel free to use it if you’re watching Star Wars while re-enacting that episode of “The Brady Bunch” where Cindy is being teased for having a lisp, and works on her problem by learning tongue-twisters.  Starring Robert Reed as Obi-Wan Kenobi, with special appearance by Ann B. Davis as “the voice of Yoda”!

I guess I’ve been ignoring the little dogs a bit since the kittens arrived, especially Phoenix.  The bathtub where I used to keep all her special shampoos and grooming tools has been filled with boxes of cat litter, bags of kibble, a trash can, etc.  It means that when I want to give her a bath I need to go on a cleaning surge first, and after that I barely have the energy to think about bathtime.  I don’t know my lack of diligence about bathing her is the cause, but Phoenix has had an outbreak of sebaceous cysts in the past week.  We noticed one after it had ruptured and left a big bloody spot on her back, in a place where the vet had identified a soft lump of fatty tissue a few years ago.  The tissue had never changed that I noticed, yet suddenly it was an oozing cyst with an unpleasant core.  I shaved it and cleaned it out, and so far it’s healing up very quickly and is barely noticeable.  I checked with the vet about it, and she said to just keep an eye on it, but if it healed properly we didn’t need to take an immediate action to remove it.  I think that happened last Thursday, and then this Wednesday (yesterday), Flippy noticed that a little lump on Phoenix’s upper eyelid had also suddenly tripled in size and looked ready to burst.  We’d been told by the opthalmologist that this lump was a little ingrown follicle (I can’t remember the proper name for it), and he plans to remove it whenever Phoenix has surgery for her minor entropion issues.  We’ve put that off because it’s not a serious problem and the entropion isn’t damaging her eye or even irritating it (as far as the vet can tell), but this jumbo lump may mean surgery needs to be hurried.  Even the eyelid lump ruptured as I was looking at it and it drained quite a bit, so it’s gone down in size but is still in a precarious place.  Phoenix is on antibiotic eyedrops, and hopefully those will help prevent infection to the cyst, but I’ll be keeping a close eye on it (no pun intended).  With the kittens needing to be “snipped” next week, we really don’t have the funds for Phoenix’s surgery as well, and we might have to juggle a bit.  I feel terrible for thinking it, but I’ve pondered the notion of having the kittens “speutered” at the animal shelter instead of at the vet.  Their service is open to anyone with an appointment, and I think the cost is about $20 per cat, for a total of $60.  In contrast, our vet quoted us a cost of about $400, and that included her giving us one neuter “for free” (it didn’t include pre-op blood work, either—that upped the price to $700).  I don’t want to seem ungrateful if we don’t have our vet do the surgery, and I’d feel better with our vet doing the surgery because she does a much smaller volume than the city clinic.  On the other hand, if we had “cheap fixes” for the cats, we’d have money for Phoenix’s eye surgery.  A dilemma, and one I need to resolve by next week.

One last thing to add… last night I was feeding the kittens before bed, and found a sample bag of Innova Evo on the bathroom counter.  I decided to just give the kittens the kibble to use it up, as I figured a small bag wouldn’t be detrimental.  I noticed two things—one, all three kittens chose to eat the dish of kibble before they ate their wet food, and two, all the kittens stank to high heaven this morning during their visits to the litterbox.  Nasty!  I hadn’t planned to try this experiment until next week, but I think this is proof that no-kibble poop isn’t nearly as smelly or voluminous as all canned-food poop.  I need to figure out how to keep them all eating the Merrick food without having to take out a second mortgage, because the kibble is less expensive but it makes having seven cats very unpleasant to the nose.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/30 at 11:54 PM

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  1. Thanks for the wonderful comment on my page. :)

    Wow, I definitely give you a lot of respect for how you’ve been able to open up your home to so many loved ones.

    I do have a curiousity question though - when my cat, Darren, eats wet food…it really is worse in the litter box.  However, he has feline cystitus (sort of like the cat version of a tendency to create kidney stones) and so he gets special wet food in the morning and special formula dry food at night.  Maybe it’s the special formula?

    Posted by prajantr  on  03/31  at  03:34 AM

  2. Hope all your “sith” problems get worked out. 

    I can’t feed my 5 cats the wet stuff.  It makes them AWFUL!!!  They have diarrhea everywhere and smelly too!!  I have good luck with Nutro Natural kibble.  A whole lot less mess and smell.  Just could be because all cats, like humans, are different.

    Have a good weekend!

    Posted by Cheryl  on  03/31  at  07:03 AM

  3. Your cats are polar opposite to The Finn. He is allowed to keep a dish of kibble out at all times (easy in a 1-cat household, just keep it high enough the dog can’t reach), and that’s one thing. He gets wet food at certain designated times, and the wet food poo…oh my lord, it singes my nose hair. From the other end of the house.

    Then there was Sprocket and the bright green poo, which frightened me, but luckily it wasn’t a radioactive Shih-Tzu. It was…well, you’re far more responsible than I am, so you probably don’t need to be told not to feed your dog bites of your blue cotton candy.

    Posted by Helly  on  03/31  at  02:07 PM

  4. 1. (To Helly):

    Get off the laptop, get of the hotel room, and get down to the casino.  If they reinstitute our state income tax because of lower gaming revenues, I’m blaming you.

    2. (To Cheryl and Helly):

    Beats me, man.  I don’t get it either.  I haven’t approached the issue scientifically, but anecdontally, both Flippy and I have observed that when the kittens eat kibble, they stink and have gas, but when they don’t eat kibble they don’t stink, don’t have gas, and have smaller “litterbox output”.  We haven’t observed this in the adult cats, but they were never big litterbox offenders anyway.  Maybe there’s something about kitten metabolism?  I do know that since I switched the adult cats to all wet food, they have reduced litterbox output, but I haven’t calculated if they’re eating a reduced number of calories.  How about I’ll go figure that out?  Just a minute…

    ...The difference is nominal.  When eating kibble + canned, the adult cats ate 123 calories.  When eating just canned, they eat 126 calories.  So, the reduced output of “poop” (if I can continue to use scientific language), must be due to something they aren’t eating, and that “something” must be a kibble ingredient.  Maybe one of the filler ingredients, like corn?  I don’t know.

    The only thing I can add to this is that I’ve done a fair amount of reading about raw food diets, but only for dogs.  People who feed their dogs a raw food diet of raw meat and raw vegetables claim that their dogs produce a smaller volume of feces and that it doesn’t stink.  I don’t know exactly how they determined the “doesn’t stink” part, but let’s assume it was through non-gross methods :-)  Maybe something about this has affected my cats… maybe the canned food is less processed than the kibble, and that’s reflected in their bowel habits.  Why it doesn’t work this way for everyone I can’t say.  Kibble = smaller, tidier poop makes sense to me, but that’s not what we’re finding in our house. 

    Our next experiment… the little dogs.  Flippy isn’t happy about it, but I want to put them on canned food for a month to see if Phoenix shows any health improvements.  Poop news to follow!

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  03/31  at  04:39 PM

  5. Hello, prajantr!  Our cat Derek had blood in his urine last summer, and he was diagnosed with a UTI and bladder crystals (not stones).  He was then put on special food to prevent the crystals from forming, and like your cat, he was getting both wet and dry.  We ended up feeding this wet/dry prescription diet to all our adult cats, just to ensure Derek didn’t eat any food other than the prescription diet. 

    Unfortunately, after we started feeding all the adult cats the prescription diet, two of them, Derek and Chelsea, began to get fat.  Really fat.  I cut back on the amount of food and they kept growing.  When I asked the vet about it, she thought the kibble was to blame because it contained a lot of carbs, so now we don’t feed the adults any kibble at all.  They’re just eating the wet prescription diet, twice a day, and they’ve been fine.  I think I’m seeing a bit of weight loss from Chelsea, too. 

    I always thought wet food would be the most smelly thing to feed, but so far we’ve had good luck with it.  The main difference is litterbox smell is with our kittens, but even the adult cats are doing fine on just wet food.  It still feels odd that I’m not giving the cats any kibble, but if it means the adults lose weight then it will be a good thing.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  03/31  at  11:58 PM

  6. Poor Phoenix. I think taking them to the Humane Society for their snips sounds very reasonable. I’m sure your vet would agree. A difference of over $600 that can be put toward your pup is not chump change. But that’s just my admittedly outsider’s view. Very interesting about the kibble and canned foods.

    Posted by Diana  on  04/01  at  04:54 AM

  7. Poor Phoenix.  I wonder what is causing these cysts.  About the neutering.. I think the most important thing is that they are neutered.  The humane society here does a great job and if it means that amount of cash savings.. I say go for it.

    Posted by Simply Coll  on  04/02  at  12:12 PM
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