Tuesday, March 14, 2017

6th Anniversary of Sandpiper Cat Blog! And an update.


It's hard to believe that it has been six years since Piper came into my life on March 13, 2011. I feel like everyone says that about their pet's "gotcha day," but I think it is pretty different for us. Piper came to us half way through her pregnancy and she ultimately miscarried her kittens that night. She was really only a kitten herself, about 7 months old. And I was 18 years old.

Piper had a busy summer watching the Olympics. She was a big fan of Katie Ledecky, Michael Phelps, Nathan Adrian and Anthony Erwin. She even tried to knock over Usain Bolt!

She and I are in such different places now. Piper is now about 6.5 years old and I'm 23. I was a senior in high school when we rescued Piper and now I am a college graduate and working in New Jersey. Yes, that's right - I don't even live with Piper right now! Which is really hard and sad for a lot of reasons because I have never been without a cat (with the exception of vacations). I miss her a lot and I get to FaceTime with her. I'll see her again in a few weeks when I go home for some dental work. But it is difficult not to live with any cats.

Piper did have some health issues in November and December 2016. In November she went in for her regular dental cleaning and they found a heart murmur. They took her back to the cardiologist and she was cleared to have her dental surgery, but she peed herself. She had a urinary tract infection and could not safely have her dental. 

A few days after the weird blood episode.

We took her home with pain medication and antibiotics, to get her healthy again. Maybe a week or so later, we had a very scary incident. I came home from shopping and saw blood all over the kitchen. I'll spare you any more details (and definitely no pictures), but as soon as I saw her bloody paws, I knew something was terribly wrong.

Piper with Henry.

My dad and I checked the other cats and decided it had to be Piper since she had blood matted in her fur. We scooped her up and rushed off to our closest emergency vet. They took her back right away to examine her. And to our surprise, they came back out and said they could not find any possible wounds or anything external - and could we bring back our other cats to see if it was one of them? Now that's all good when you have maybe two or three cats. But when you have 8 cats total...not so much. Plus we have a few who we have trouble even catching to go to the vet for their regular check up.


So we took Piper home, put her in isolation and started tracking down and examining all the other cats. After an hour of chasing around the other 7 cats, it appeared that no one had any wounds.


The best we can deduce is that Piper passed a blood clot in urine and the two diffused together to look a lot worse than it was. But still, walking into that scene in the kitchen will be an image that sticks with me for a while.

My mom took these beautiful pictures of Piper in the sun.

Piper did finally get cleared for a dental in December (only about a week before I had my wisdom teeth out, irony anyone?) and she did great. She does have resorption disease and they had to do some extractions. Hopefully, she will not need more in the future, but it is possible. 

And currently Piper has been isolated in my parents' bedroom since all of these occurences...she hasn't really wanted to leave. Especially because Bobby has been agressive towards her. So we have had some unsettled issues, like anyone with mulitple cats might expect. Piper does tolerate the other cats coming in the room, but she tenses up. We are working to try to get her back out in the general population, but it is taking some time.

Thank you to all of our followers for an amazing six years, and here is to more years of blogging! It wouldn't be possible without your support!