This is EXACTLY how I do not like to spend my Tuesday nights

Yesterday Andrew called me here at work and said that the grey baby, “Nort”, had been crying and was throwing up and then had a fit of diarrhea right in the middle of the living room. He said that she was obviously ill. I told him to race her to the vet and have them call me for payment information. So he got a neighbor to take him to the closest vet and they took her right in. They did a fecal test for parasites and it came back negative. They gave her subcutaneous fluids and gave Andrew some liquid antibiotics and sent them home. About an hour later Andrew called me and said that Nort was acting even sicker than before, so I told him to race her back to the vet and I’d meet them there. So after driving like a maniac…(I hit ever freakin red light between here and HB.) I got to the vets office to find that they are open until 6:00 but the doctor leaves at 5:00. HOW STUPID IS THAT?? So they referred us to an emergency pet hospital in Westminster. Have you ever tried to get anywhere in a hurry on Beach Blvd at 6:00? There was traffic, red lights AND construction. Nort was laying in my lap, pitifully crying, breathing short shallow breaths, eyes rolling back in her head. The hospital knew we were coming so they were waiting for us when we got there. (Of course we missed the drive way and had to make a 5 minute trip around the block!) They whisked Nort away as soon as we got there and then the wait began. (Incidentally we named Nort “Nort” because she has a clef lip and we decided that if she were to snort like the other kittens she would say “nort” instead of “snort”. This fact comes in to play later.)

They asked us over and over if we had any idea what she could have possibly gotten in to. I told them that she had never been outside in her life and that the only things she could have gotten in to were in the bottom of my kitchen cupboard and everything in there was sealed. They told us to go home and investigate and see if there was any moldy food lying around or any spilled cleaning fluids. Well, I knew full well that there was no moldy food lying around but the possibility of something spilled that she could have gotten in to was feasible. So we left Westminster and went home and tore the house apart looking for something/anything that she might have gotten in to. We think we found what it was…but there is no way to be sure. One of them had knocked over a box of Borax soap in Andrew's laundry pile. I would have thought that anything that would have hurt the kittens would have been under the kitchen sink. They have learned how to open the cupboard and there is now way for me to keep the cupboard closed so they had free reign to go in and walk through the soap. So we packed up the soap box and headed back to Westminster. On the ride over I called the 800 # on the box for advice on ingestion of their product and they were closed. Sure glad it wasn’t my human child who had eaten their soap!

When we got back to the hospital they took the soap box from us and then came out and asked us about any possibility of physical trauma. Unfortunately last week Andrew was trying to pick up Nort and another kitty. The other kitty didn’t want to be picked up and scrambled which caused Andrew to trip over a litter box and lose his balance. Nort wound up getting hit on a dresser. She cried for a minute and limped around that night but by morning time she was fine and hasn’t limped since.

They took x-rays and said that there were no broken bones, her heart and lungs looked good but her tummy was inflamed. She wouldn’t hold her head up and it didn’t look good. They had given her pain meds, a sedative, antibiotics and something to try to calm her tummy. Now here’s the kicker….this hospital doesn’t have 24 hour care so we would have to transfer Nort to a hospital that does. So we took her to her 3rd facility of the day…this one in Garden Grove. There was one doctor in this entire facility and thus it took us over 2 hours to get her checked in. As I was filling out paperwork and answering the same questions over and over…the nurse asked me why we named a cute little girl kitty “Nort”. I told her that we didn’t know she was a girl until about an hour previous but we named her Nort because of her clef lip and I reiterated the story about her name that I told you a few paragraphs ago. Imagine my horror when after I told my funny story I realized that this nurse also had a clef lip that had been repaired so well that it was hardly noticeable.

We got home after midnight and I went straight to bed knowing that we had to be back at the Garden Grove hospital before 8:00 AM to pick Nort up and bring her back to the other hospital in Westminster. Why there isn’t a 24 hour pet hospital in the area is beyond me.

Andrew picked her up this morning and took her back to the Westminster hospital and said that she looked really good. The Garden Grove doctor called me and told me that Nort had made a miraculous recovery but was not out of the woods. He said that she was sitting up and occasionally batting at her IV tubing.

At this point I’ve spent around $1,500.00. I’m about ready to hold a car wash and a bake sale.