Lola the explorer

Last night after I had my bed-time snack in the kitchen, I decided to clean my face and paws -- sitting on the dining room table. Mom saw me and said, "Lola, you're not supposed to take a bath on the table." How was I to know? It was my first time on the table. No one has used it since I've been here, so I didn't know what I was supposed to do there.

Today I explored some places I hadn't been yet. I checked out the bathtub (see the photo here) and the cabinet below Mom's sink (photo here). I've been in Dad's closet several times, but he forgot to close the door again today, so I made sure to go in again. I never miss an opportunity!

I found a chair I hadn't tried out, so I tried it for the first time today (photo here). Mom noticed and told Dad to come look. I heard "Scooter's chair" and thought maybe I wasn't supposed to be there, but no one told me to leave. I believe I've tried all the furniture in the house now.

Tonight I pulled the letter Q off the keyboard on Mom's laptop. Then she told me it's not her laptop, she borrowed it from Coco's mom. Coco's mom is part of the reason I'm living here, so I'm sure she won't mind. She told my mom that Burmese are very sweet. She was right -- I am! I could have pulled off an important letter. How often is Q used, anyway? There's no Q in Lola. There isn't even a Q in cute.

Lola

surprise!

It didn't surprise me, but it surprised Mom and Dad today when I jumped higher than they've seen me jump. First I jumped onto this tall chest in Dad's hobby room. I started from an end table nearby, but it was still a pretty good jump for little bitty me.

When Dad opened the coat closet door a little later, I was right there -- lickety split -- to go inside. I explored the corners, then I saw it! There's a shelf up high that I really wanted to get to. I backed up, I looked up at it, I paced back and forth, trying to figure out how I could get there.

Dad told Mom to come look at what I was doing. Mom got the camera and started taking video, but she didn't expect me to jump. It's way too high for me, she thought.

But how do I know whether or not I can jump that high, unless I try? Wanna see? Watch the video here.

Leapin' Lola

on the road again

It's been a week since the vet took all my teeth. I was up and down for a while -- feeling great one minute but not so great the next -- but I'm doing a little better each day now. My mouth is healing but those stitches drive me crazy sometimes, so I'm trying to get them out. I shouldn't have been so cooperative when Mom trimmed my claws yesterday -- now they're not as good for digging stitches out.

My kitty cold is starting to get a little better, too, especially today. I breathe easier and sleep better now. I can still sneeze and spray "stuff" several feet, though!

It may not be a superhighway, but I'm still on the road to recovery.

Since I've been feeling better, I've done some more exploring around my new home.
*whispers* I found some secret hiding spots where no one can find me. I'm a good girl, though, so I always come out of hiding -- after everyone quits looking for me. ;)

Lola

Good news!

Yay for the good news today!

First good news:
The histopathology (that word's hard to thay with no teef) report shows the spot on my tongue is infection, not cancer.

Second good news:
I gained 3 ounces! I weighed 4 lb., 1 oz. at the vet today. The vet put me on the scale, saying she expected me to weigh a little less since it's so soon after my dental surgery, but she was wrong!

Third good news:
The vet also said everything in my mouth looked good, even the couple of sutures I dug out are okay -- she's not worried about them.

Not so good news:
I was back at the vet today for an unscheduled visit. Mom and Dad were concerned about my stuffy, bubbly nose that whistles when I breathe and how I try to sleep with my nose pointed up so the icky stuff doesn't clog my nose. It was especially bad in the middle of the night last night. The vet says I have some upper respiratory/herpes virus kind-of-stuff going on, probably because of all the stress I had the past few days, so now I'll have L-Lysine in my food twice a day. It's supposed to taste like chicken, but I'm not so sure it does. I'm already on anti-biotics -- I had the two-week anti-biotic injection after my dental surgery.

Final good news:
Mom's going to serve me my bedtime snack in my heated bed, in the bedroom with the steam vaporizer, the humidifier and the Vick's plug-in, then we're all going to sleep early tonight. She says she hopes we all get a good night's sleep.

Maybe the Tooth Fairy will show up tonight!

Lola ~ still on the road to recovery

the day after

Lola will be on pain meds all weekend so I'll continue to update for her.

She's still doing great. She's eating, and how! I thought I might have to cut her off while ago, but she finally quit after eating an entire 3 oz can of food (pureed and strained), all at once. She waddled away looking like she had a balloon in her tummy, like a kitten who's just eaten. She had a good-sized meal not too long before that, too, and several smaller snacks during the night. She hasn’t vomited at all.

The swelling doesn't look any worse today than last night, so hopefully it's at its maximum. Her eyes right now are more slanted than round because of her puffy face, but she's still beautiful. :)

She's had no problem breathing. When she yawned this morning, I didn't get a look at her gums but I could see her tongue was a good healthy pink. She's still snoring as bad as she did before, and it will be interesting to see if that clears up as she heals.

She's pawing at her mouth some and was digging at it with her back foot this morning, but the vet said she would do that. She still does a few gyrations with her mouth after eating but that's to be expected, too.

Now the only smell coming from her mouth is cat food smell. What a difference! Some of her fur is still stiff from grooming when her mouth was icky and her fur still has some of that smell on it, but I'll give her a Kitty Wipes bath soon. She doesn't mind being wiped with those.

She has been a little smelly coming from the other end this morning, though. I think she's working towards her first post-op poopie. TMI? :))

Her vet emailed again this morning to check on her and to see how we're doing getting the pain meds into her mouth. I had trouble medicating her again this morning. I wrap her like a burrito but can't keep her head from moving no matter how I hold her. I don't need to open her mouth, just get the tip of the syringe a little way in. The medication is absorbed through the mouth and doesn't need to be swallowed. It wouldn't be difficult if I could hold her head, but that's a definite no-no. The vet doesn't want me to scruff her on the back of the neck, either. This morning I finally managed to get the syringe to make contact with her mouth long enough to release the medication, as she was sliding her head inside the "burrito" like a turtle withdrawing into its shell. But it took too many attempts before that. If anyone has suggestions, please send a pawmail.

Otherwise, everything is going very well so far. She's sleeping again right now. When she's awake, she's obviously feeling pretty good and she's her same lovable self. Phew!

Lola's mom

p.s. I'll try to get a photo of her teeth to add later. One is so gross!

Lola's big day

Lola's been mostly sleeping this evening. She seems to be breathing and snoring as usual, so far. We had some trouble getting the liquid pain med (Buprenex) in her mouth this evening. She doesn't want anyone or any syringe coming anywhere near her mouth and I can't blame her. I emailed the vet in a panic, asking if I could put the Buprenex in food. She replied it won't work if mixed with food but asked if we tried wrapping Lola in a towel like a burrito. Sheesh, we live in New Mexico and I forgot about the burrito wrap! That worked and Lola has her pain meds for tonight. We have enough to last through the weekend and Lola should start feeling better by then.

I'll try to relate what the vet told us and showed us on the x-rays.

She said the spot on Lola's tongue is on the top of her tongue, while squamous cell carcinomas on the tongue are usually underneath, so we're remaining hopeful that it is just inflammation, not cancer. She thinks Lola is just very sensitive to bacteria in her mouth and hopes it's inflammation from that, which will clear up now.

Lola's face is already puffy from swelling and may get worse before it starts to get better, but the vet didn't want to give cortisone or anything like that for the swelling because of all the infection Lola has.

Lola did great under the anesthesia. All her vital signs remained stable and her temperature stayed up near normal. She was under for 2 1/2 hours. The vet originally estimated 3 hours, but some of her teeth -- all the upper ones except the canines -- fell out during the cleaning. That saved time and money -- we weren't charged for those extractions! They cleaned her teeth first to get rid of as much bacteria in her mouth as they could before the extractions.

She showed us all of Lola's teeth (we brought them home for the Tooth Fairy, too) and some were so rotted they aren't recognizable as teeth. There was a great deal of bone loss and the lower jaw was so thin, she had to be very careful not to break it, but she didn't! Lola has bone grafts in the lower jaw. In the upper jaw, the holes (fistulas?) left after the canines were removed went all the way up into her sinuses, so no bone grafts were done there because they could migrate up. The bone will grow and repair itself over time.

Overall, Lola did great. She wanted to eat almost as soon as she woke up, and she was eating baby food readily while still at the vet. When we first saw her, she was standing up, rubbing against the bars of her cage and headbutting it! Bonk! OUCH!

The vet thinks Lola's overall health should improve dramatically now, she should gain weight, hopefully get those kidney numbers down, have a whole lot less pain -- and not smell rotten. These first couple days will be rough, but the payoff is going to be worth it!

Just a little while ago, Lola woke up and trotted to the kitchen for food! The pain med must be working. She ate a decent serving but didn't gorge. Now she's sleeping in her heated bed again. Her BIG day is almost completed.

Lola's mom

Home!

Home -- swollen face -- good appetite -- going to be okay -- need to sleep so Tooth Fairy can come.

zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Toothless Lola

p.s. from Mom: She's doing great right now but the swelling in her mouth and face is likely to increase so we'll be watching her very carefully tonight and over the weekend. I'll update with more information when I can, perhaps a little later this evening.

First report

Lola's out of surgery, her teeth were all successfully removed, she did fine with the anesthesia and is now starting to come around. The vet said her teeth were "bad, bad, bad." She also said there was a lot of inflammation in her gums and a spot of inflammation at the base of her tongue. She took a biopsy from her tongue and has sent it to the pathologist to verify that it's only inflammation, hopefully!! We won't have those results until early next week.

From her previous (short) medical record after she was rescued from the city shelter in 2006, Lola had a dental prophylaxis on 3/15/06. On 3/20/06 there is a notation of "mouth is better - ulcerated tongue" but there are no remarks about it after that. I don't know if or how that relates to what the vet found on her tongue today, but I'm going to take the Pollyanna approach for now and say it can't be anything deadly if she's still here 3 years later. I know constant inflammation can evolve into other things, though, so don't take Lola off your purr list yet.

Hazel Lucy added Lola to the C atsters in Need of Serious Purring thread -- thank you.

For now, the vet is concerned that with Lola's short neck and slightly smushed face, her congestion, inflammation and now the additional swelling she'll have from the surgery and biopsy today, Lola may have trouble breathing at first. She'll watch her for the next couple of hours and call again. They'll also see if she can/will eat.

I also asked the vet this morning about taking baseline full-body x-rays of Lola, while she's there. She felt chest x-rays were a good idea but full-body x-rays weren't necessary, so they took chest x-rays before her surgery. She said everything looked "excellent."

So, some good news and some that could be better, but most importantly, Lola is past the first hurdle.

Thank you for the rosettes and messages and especially for the purrs for Lola.

Lola's mom

no news yet

Lola was at the vet at 7:30 this morning. She's such a good girl! I know she was afraid in the car this time because her pupils were huge and she was doing some nervous licking of her lips, but she still just sat and looked all around during the trip. When I reached into the carrier to pet her, she started purring. We've learned she has a very loud purr when nervous, so her purr is not always indicative of contentment, but I could tell she was happy to be petted.

When I got up this morning, Lola galloped behind me toward the kitchen, so eager to have her breakfast. Is that ever hard to deny food to a skinny little cat (with great big pleading eyes!) who wants to eat and who so badly needs to gain some weight! When I didn't give her food, she went back to her heated bed (another bequest from Scooter) and stayed there until it was time to get in the carrier and head for the vet.

Her vet was there to talk to us when we dropped off Lola. I asked her to weigh Lola again -- it was the same room, same scale as used last week at Lola's first visit. I hoped she might have gained an ounce or two after 4 days of BIG eating, but she was exactly the same as last week: 3 lb. 14 oz. Hopefully, she'll gain weight after her mouth is better.

The one thing Lola is not a good girl about is sub-Q fluids. I asked the same vet tech who gave Scooter the sub-Q fluids to come give Lola fluids. While Lola loved her and crawled in her lap right away, she wanted nothing to do with a needle being stuck in her. We tried two different evenings; the tech even brought a tiny kitten needle (25 gauge) to see if Lola would do better with it. It's as if Lola had some experience before with sub-Q fluids, knew right away what was going on and knew she didn't like it. We quit both times when Lola started getting too stressed about it.

If Lola requires sub-Q fluids in the future, I'm not sure what we'll do. We were being extra cautious this time because of her rather frail condition and her approaching dental surgery, but I don't think Lola will suddenly change her mind about sub-Q's. But, the vet still feels her kidney numbers should improve when her mouth is better, so hopefully, sub-Q fluids are nowhere in Lola's near future.

Although Lola hated the vet tech trying to poke a needle in her, she didn't hold a grudge against her at all. She still let the tech hold her while she purred and purred for her, giving her the "Lola love eyes," even after the second evening of trying to poke her. Go figure.

So, if you wanted a lesson today, here are two:
(1) You can never tell beforehand which cats will and will not tolerate sub-Q fluids. Don't assume.
(2) Never ever EVER let your cat's teeth and gums get into the condition that Lola's are. Bad breath, drooling, teeth chattering, teeth grinding, mouth gyrations, tongue flailing, pawing at her mouth, gagging -- sweet-as-can-be little Lola unfortunately had it all. If you notice anything odd, have it checked!

Lola is probably still in surgery right now. The vet thought she would finish around noon and she'll call then with a report.

Lola's mom

middle-of-the-night breakfast

I got fed in the middle of the night last night! When Dad got up to go to the bathroom, I followed him down the hall. Mom looked at the clock -- it said 5:30, so she got up to see if I wanted my breakfast. She stopped to pet me where I was sitting in the hall, then she started across the living room toward the kitchen. I was so excited, I trotted after her so fast she heard my little paws hitting the carpet!

I ate a big breakfast, then we went back to bed because Mom was still tired. A while later, Mom looked at the clock again. This time it said 2:53! I'm a good girl, so I should probably tell her to put her glasses on when she looks at the clock. I should . . . but a full belly at 2:30 made me very happy!

I heard Mom tell Dad I won't be able to have a middle-of-the-night meal tonight and no breakfast tomorrow, either. Tomorrow's the day I have my appointment with the vet who wants all my teeth. :(

Lola