cats

Oh boy. You'd think I'd remember after $2,000 in hospital bills, but ...it turns out that was one of the cheaper visits to that hospital, unfortunately. As I recall, they were never able to diagnose it for certain, but they were pretty sure it was some sort of infection in the blood, probably from a tick.

Our cats are all indoor only, so we had no idea where she would have found a tick. We had just moved to a new house a month or so before that happened, and the previous owners had a dog, so our theory is that there was one in the house that got her. We were going on a trip with the cats a few weeks after that, so, before we left, we bug-bombed the entire house, in the hopes it would take care of any other ticks that might be present.

Then, a few weeks after the hospital visit, we noticed when we were going to bed that she seemed to be focused on her own tail, which was unusual. We tried to distract her and it seemed okay, but when we woke up in the morning, there was blood all over the house - she'd attacked her own tail and got it bleeding, then walked all over the house. My wife took her to the emergency vet again while I cleaned up the mess...it was in our bedroom, my office, the hallway and steps, and all over the first floor. They tried to bandage it, but it wasn't healing, so eventually they had to dock her tail a few inches. Apparently this is something that can happen to cats after a trauma like the first infection, no real cause other than that.

We now put that monthly flea and tick on our dog (who we adopted well after the incidents above) and two of the three cats; the third one is way too skittish to allow that...but he's never going near a door that's open anyway.