Today has been a distressing day. We arrived to visit Ekanath at 1pm as arranged and we were quite hopefull given how bright he had been yesterday. Today though has not been one of his better days.
When we arrived, he was in the corner of his cage with is back to us and a cone of shame on. usually, he turns to see who is coming in and brightens up when he recognises us, but today he seemed miserable and remained facing the other way. We quickly discovered he has a live drip line in and was sort of the third to the drip, so although we were able to let him out of the cage we had to be careful not to let him range too far as we had to keep tension off the line.
He came out and ait a lot of cat treats and was affectionate although clearly not as bright as yesterday. His breathing was also worse than it had been when we saw him 24 hours earlier.
After a while, he seemed to grow tired (never a good sign in a Bengal, renowned for being nearly tireless) and lay down at Marie's feet. Still, he seemed okay, just a little under the weather.
W had a bit of a chat with his nurse, having not met this one(She wasn't on duty over the weekend and Ekanath had been looked after by another nurse instead. He was clearly more at home with this nurse (He doesn't take to people easily so we knew this nurse must have a way with cats. It turned out she is a cat specialist and also a cat behaviouralist (Thin Jaxson Galaxy but with more hair and no guitar!). she told us a trick to calming stressed cats that I didn't know, apparently gently rubbing or tapping their nose can relax them a great deal. We had occasion to try this on Ekanath later on and it did work.
As it turned out though, not only is she a cat specialist, but she is also very familiar with Bengal's - having a close friend who is a breeder of them. We chatted quite a bit about that and about all the typical Bengal markers that Ekanath has until suddenly and without warning our little guy yet out a pained yelp as Marie stroked his back. His breathing rate shot up and he slumped to the ground, clearly in a bit of distress. This was about 2 and a half hours before his next pain relief was due and it was obvious he was in a lot of pain and consequently distressed. The nurse dashed off to have a word with the vet who said he could have a full dose of Loxicom, 5.2 Mills which the nurse drew but let us give to him. since it should be taken with food (at home we usually mix it with his food) we added a drop to each of ten cat treats and fed those to him, which worked. After about 10 minutes he calmed down and began to pour when petted but he was lethargic again and clearly tiring.
Eventually, about 2 hours after we arrived it was time for us to go, by then Ekanath was as comfortable as he was going to get, for now, I kissed him on his back and head then eased him back into his cage and with a literal tear in my eye left. The look he gave me through the glass panel in the door broke my heart, he was miserable and wanted us to stay. I so wish I could just stay with him.
I had to spend a few moments cleaning myself up so as not to walk out into reception with tears streaming down my face. For those who haven't met me, I am a large man, six feet in height and broadly built, when necessary I can look quite imposing although I try not to most of the time. There I was, this big, tough guy sobbing my heart out. I'm doing it again as I write this. From a chat with the vet, they are trying not to have to drain his chest again as they would rather use a targeted specific antibiotic to kill the infection but the results still haven't come back from the lab yet and the fluid is starting to build up in his chest again, although thankfully slowly. I am worried sick about him and a tinny, pessimistic part of me keeps nagging at my mind, "What if he doesn't make it". I can't even begin to express how utterly and forlornly devastated I would be. I love him so much and watching him like this is killing me, but he is young, strong and determined. Between that and the fact the vets are doing everything, they can I hope beyond hope he will be okay and will get through this.
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