Jun 14 2010
Toxic Mama
Native silk moth on my front porch
As if being a part-time prisoner weren’t bad enough for Audrey, I sort of poisoned her.
Just a little bit.
For the past couple of months, she’s been scratching a lot, and I had several flea bites. Advantage is expensive, and at the time, I had three cats and one tube of Advantage. So I delayed, thinking I’d wait until summer kicked in to get more. Since the Advantage supply now meets the demand, I figured I’d anoint Audrey with it.
Easier said than done. She hates being picked up, and is incredibly squirmy. Once I tried and failed to pick her up, she was onto me and out the door. She ran away every time she saw me coming, so I waited until she was napping and squidged it on.
Unfortunately, I squidged it on the side of her neck instead of the middle, and about two minutes later, she went racing through the house drooling like mad. I caught up with her under the wheelbarrow, where she continued to drool and stare at me accusingly with her big green eyes.
I called Megan, who advised me to call Dr. Karen (why didn’t I think of that?). Dr. Karen said not to worry, Audrey wouldn’t die. All I had to do was rinse out her mouth and wash off the expensive medication, which probably was not 99% effective in the five minutes it was on Audrey.
Since Audrey was already deeply suspicious of her jailer/attacker, she was not amenable to my grabbing her, oddly enough. So I had to resort to luring her with treats, then seizing her before she’d eaten more than one and carrying her outraged self into the bathroom, where I followed the program as prescribed. Remarkably, I was unscratched, though neither of us was unscathed.
I gave her more treats and she seemed to forgive and/or forget pretty quickly.
I’m going to see Dr. Karen today* and will re-up the Advantage supply and hope for a better result this time.
*Incredibly, Megan’s cat Harriet has injured her back left leg, just like Meg and Schatzi, so I’m helping Meg with carrying her there, since she is still on crutches and awaiting her date with the surgeon.