I am at the local veterinary hospital with him. I am hoping they can do the surgery and clean his wound here for less than the 24 hour vet quoted me. Thank you to all of his donors! The goal wasn’t met for the worst case scenario, but I am hoping it will be enough. You all are heroes to Blue! The veterinarian just examined him and wants to x-rays. She says it could have been a BB. She wants to do an X-ray to confirm or deny it was. She will also be checking to see if there is an intestate has spread to one of his teeth from the injury. I will be posting more soon! Thank you again to all of you wonderful people on Lemmy!
UPDATE: It is now 8:24PM and I have returned home from the veterinary clinic with Blue. His wounds were cleaned. After x-rays they opted not to do surgery on his face, but brought to my attention some teeth in his lower jaw that will require extraction. I was presented with a new quote for dental work, after paying $715.06 for today’s visit. The new quote claims that the upcoming dental procedure will cost between $1392.10 and $2533.64. After I paid today’s vet bill with funds from the PayPal fundraiser, I was shocked to hear that the dental work will cost so much. I am postponing it for payday since the PayPal fundraiser now has $609.94 left in it. This amount does not display my pledge for $50, because I was waiting to add it to the fund until I had sold some furniture in my online yard sale. All proceeds are going to Blue’s vet bills. I’m going to need to sell a lot more furniture than what I have in storage to cover this. The toughest part is knowing I will drop him off next week at the vet, not know how many teeth they want to pull, and return to find a cat with all of his teeth missing and some huge vet bill that is more than my paycheck can cover, plus the funds. I am putting it off just so that payday will arrive before the procedure. Does anyone know of a place that does cheap extractions in California? This veterinary clinic seems great, but that is a lot of money, and I still had to drive almost 25 miles to reach it. I had to make a trip there to drop him off for X-rays and cleaning. I drove home to sell some furniture to help put towards the fund. I had to drive back to the pet hospital to pick him up, and then back home with him. I drove nearly 100 miles today and paid over $700 to take care of the cat that is actually owned by my dad (or as I call him, the man who raised me). I’m upset. I’m not upset at the veterinary hospital. They did their job. They need to make a living, too. I’m not mad at the cat. It isn’t his fault that he is sick. I’m mad at my dad. He adopted this cat almost four years ago, on his own, from a shelter, without telling anyone, and now refuses to take care of it. He treats me like crap and he always has. I cook, I clean, I do his laundry and my own, and even cook and clean for his sister when she decides to grace us with her presence. Are they grateful? No. They treat me like I’ve done something to deserve being treated like a second class citizen. He isn’t my biological dad. I’ve been over this on Lemmy before now. Every time I achieved anything as a child, he would just snub it, or look down his nose at me for it. Academic achievements, scholarships, being recruited for collegiate softball, graduating college with a bachelor’s degree, graduating college with a master’s degree, other academic certificates, and even getting married and having a family. He never expressed that he was proud of me. At every one of these events, he made fun of me. You know who was home to help him when he threw out his back? I was. Who was here to help him when he had some kind of mini stroke this year? Me. Who is his favorite child? My older sister. The worst part of this whole current experience with the cat is dealing with Lemmy readers that have bullied me over letting the cat live outside. It isn’t my house and it isn’t my cat. I have to take care of dad, and it’s his house. I don’t have a say in letting the cats be inside. Oh, and who will get the house (my childhood home) when he dies? Probably my cousin and his wife because I hear so much about how they “need a home”. I had to sell my home when my husband announced he was leaving me just before summer of 2013. We reconciled and then split again. We sold our home, then reconciled again, and moved to Northern California. We bought another home; an older Victorian home. He lost his job, and I could pay all of the bills on my salary. I had to put our home up for sale, and ended up losing it in foreclosure. There was no money from the sale. I had to ask my parents for help at age 28, just before my 29th birthday. We were drowning in debt, so I tried to leave my job and join the military, hoping things would get better and I could bring my family on base with me. Things didn’t really improve. Instead, my children live with my mother who shunned me immediately for trying to join the army, despite the fact that her father served in the army during WW2. She has my children; constantly citing my debt and lack of medical coverage from my current job field. What does that make me? Dad’s part-time care giver Monday through Friday and Dad’s full-time care giver Saturday and Sunday.
For those who say, I can’t be mad at him now because he’s elderly and feeble. He intentionally left a bunch of aspirin scattered on the desk today for me to clean up when I arrived home today. He is intentionally leaving cupboards open, and messes on the countertops of the kitchen for me to clean, because he thinks it is funny to make someone clean up after him. It isn’t old age. He has always been this way. He used to do this to my mother (woman who raised me). He would brag about how his family had hired people during his childhood to be their maid and to chauffeur them to school. My family is not rich at all. My grandparents really spoiled him. Oh, and to thank them, he chased their maid “down the drive-way with a butcher knife” at around age eight, for fun, as he described. At that age I guess he enjoyed giving my grandparents a mess to clean up, too, huh? Well now it isn’t just a mess, it’s a medical emergency and it involves some poor animal that didn’t ask to be adopted by a neglectful owner. So here is the mess he has made and I’m cleaning it up, just like mom used to do before she left him.
Here is the new quote. I blocked the exact name of the place because if it turns out to be a BB wound, I don’t want the person who fired it to know where I took my cat for treatment. If someone shot my cat with a BB I might need to file a report with the local sheriff’s department and press charges against the person.
Note: It should not cost more unless he goes into cardiac arrest during surgery.
The vet was not entirely sure what caused the wounds, but X-rays ruled out a projectile being lodged in the skull, so it was not likely a BB. She said that she also noticed some bad teeth in his lower jaw that are not possibly related to this issue. Keep in mind, my elderly father got this cat full grown from a shelter less than four years ago. I don’t think he is to blame for the cat’s lower teeth. Something did appear to have attacked the upper jaw, as evident by the wounds.
Best of luck to you and Blue! A couple weeks ago, my best work buddy “crazy eyes” Mo got bit by a black widow and at one point was not doing very well at all. But once they got his meds figured out, he was back to his old self in no time.
He sure is a cute cat! I’m glad he survived it!
Get it in writing what teeth they’re going to remove. We once took our cat to the emergency vet and they took her back (for an unrelated issue) and then came out and told us they had to remove a tooth (they weren’t asking, they were telling) and our cat has been missing several teeth since then. No chance to get it checked out by our actual vet, just a forced tooth extraction.
Is your cat okay after that? Thats extreme to remove it without telling you, or obtaining your consent first. What was their explanation for that? Can your cat chew food now?
“He intentionally left a bunch of aspirin scattered on the desk today for me to clean up when I arrived home today.”
FYI - aspirin is highly toxic to cats. Not saying he’s intentionally trying to poison the poor thing, but I’m not saying he’s not either. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I didn’t realize that. Wow. He keeps avoiding conversation about the vet bills. He avoided the link to PayPal when I sent it to him. I figured he was just neglecting the cat, but as I reflect more about my own childhood and being raised by him, I can see your point. He hates having responsibility at all. He puts on a good image to everyone around him, outside of the family, but the whole family knows how he really is. You’re right. Maybe he did that intentionally.
Very glad to hear that you were able to get him in today and have wounds cleaned and the X-ray. Sorry to hear about the family situation that led to this. Also, don’t pay any attention to the people online who read one thing about how outdoor cats are bad and now feel the need to tell everyone about it at every opportunity. While the core idea is true, they don’t know and don’t care about what actually happened, so no need for you to care about them. Good luck.
Thanks. The cat enjoys being outside, but I just took over in caring for him. I spent about a year away from my dad, between 2022 and 2023, while living abroad. I came home to find the animals in need of care, and the house in need of cleaning. I feel like I’m still catching up, and now I get to be the bad person for telling him the cat has to stay in the house.
Here are more details of the quoted dental procedure that has yet to occur, as well as proof of today’s vet fees being paid from the fundraiser account:
I am glad Blue has been treated. Hopefully his wounds will heal properly.
I agree with another comment suggesting you get the details of the dental surgery in writing. They should also be able to tell you the urgency of the situation. I’m sorry to hear that the costs are so high and wish I could assist more. My wife suggested asking if the vet clinic can do a payment plan.
My final thought was that if your “dad” really doesn’t care about the cat and is just using Blue to get attention (perhaps he hopes something will happen to him so he can go “Woe is me! Somebody killed my cat!”), then it might be best if you are able to rehome him. He seems like a lovely-natured cat and you clearly care about him a lot; if your “dad” is going to deliberately harm him (or allow him to be harmed), though, Blue may be safer in a new home. I hate suggesting lying, but since Blue has already been attacked you could arrange for him to get outside and “disappear” if you need a way to avoid your “dad” finding out you rehomed “his” cat.
Thank you. I appreciate your input. I’m going to ask another vet for a second opinion. I can’t agree to having nearly all of his teeth pulled knowing it is going to affect his eating habits afterward, too. I want to know which ones are absolutely necessary to pull. It seems extreme.
I’m going to need time to process that last part. I am really attached to Blue at this point. He has gone from being my relative’s cat for whom I began providing care, to my evening lap velcro. I want was is best for Blue, but this is at least his second home since the shelter, and like I said, I am very attached to him now. Can I rehome Dad?
UPDATE: Dad claims he never set the aspirin on the desk. When asked about it, again, this morning, he said, “where did that come from?!?” He acted like he honestly didn’t remember setting the aspirin on the desk. I reminded him that I found it sitting there, in a pile, when I arrived home the other day. I told him that I didn’t put the asprin there, and that it must have been him since he was home during the morning and part of the afternoon. A couple of weeks ago he had some type of mini stroke and couldn’t remember where he was for about an hour. Maybe leaving the aspirin out wasn’t intentional. I want to have him evaluated by a psychiatrist, or a psychologist.
What happened to Blue?
This is apparently an update to a post that I can’t find, then a massive wall of text…?
I thought someone shot him with a BB, or a pellet. There are wounds on both sides of his face. One vet said it looked like a cat bite, another said a dog bite, and then the last one wasn’t sure. I have been fundraising since this weekend on PayPal to afford his medical expenses.
Oh poor kitty. I hope he heals okay.
Thanks. I hope so, too. His face isn’t oozing puss and blood anymore. He was still bleeding at today’s vet appointment, but it was considerably less. I think he’s improving, but this new dental issue just threw a curveball at me.
