The agonizing pressure you've been feeling over the past couple of days has been the two-pronged attack of Mars retrograde approaching an opposition to the Sun, while the Sun ramped up to a conjunction with Saturn. Sun + Mars + Saturn = Compound Agony.
Poor
Spike took the biggest hit in our household, although lord knows it's been no picnic for me or Jonny. On Tuesday morning, Spike suddenly and unceremoniously hurled, and for the rest of the day he was Not Himself - listless, pooped out. Since I wasn't feeling so great myself that day, I didn't dwell on the change in his mood until later that evening, when he would normally have been nagging me to play catch with him. Instead, he moped around on the couch, his eyes slitty and watchful.
When he hadn't snapped out of it the next morning, I hustled him off to the vet, who examined Spike and proclaimed him magnificent and, from the looks of things, generally healthy. However, the youngster has a history of unmentionable gastro-intestinal problems, and I had my suspicions. Tests are being done, and meanwhile we're charged with giving him medicine to treat the likely malady.
However, we were given these medications in the not-handy-for-cat-owners pill version. I've been dosing cats for this and that since 1989, and never have I been charged with administering anything in non-liquid form. It looked easy enough when the vet gave Spike his first pill, so I didn't give it much thought. People did this kind of thing every day, I reasoned; we are capable, intelligent people; surely we could manage.
Despite a battle of wills that continued late into the evening and sorely taxed the serenity of our happy home, Spikey won in the end and went to bed dopeless. This morning I got the best of him by hiding crushed up pills into a pliable, if stinky cat treat and tricking him into eating it. But he was not pleased, and with the memory of last night's defeat fresh in my mind I did a little research.
Now, I'm waiting for a call from the vet to say our prescription is ready to be picked up and taken to something called a compounding pharmacy, which will transform the distasteful medication into a lucious, liquid delivery system that is sure to delight Spike - or, at the very least, be easy to slip down his unsuspecting hatch in a big hurry.
It's all worth it. By this morning he was already bouncing back, eating with enthusiasm, showing interest in his toys, and fending off attacks from his sorely neglected sister. Perhaps he would have improved on his own without any medication at all, but I'm not taking any chances. To the mysterious-sounding compounding pharmacy I will go. Maybe they'll have something there for me - I'm not bouncing back from the ordeal quite as quickly as Spike.
