Well Poop…Part I

Look at this adorable face, no really do, because she might be super-duper cute, but she also has turned into a money pit and after I tell you the story about her pooper you might not think she is so cute anymore. So just look at her and remember all the good things about her…

Now look at this. Look at this little boy, so blissful with his little puppy and kitty. How happy he looks! Little does he know that right now that dog is infected with what has become archenemies number one in the House of Jaramillo…also known as Giardia and that dog is getting ready to spew poop all over that boy’s home.

Now this is where the story is going to get a little gross. I will edit as much as  I can, but honestly there is little I can do when trying to explain the side effects of Giardia. About two months ago we started to notice that Scioscia had what can only be described as a leaky-bum. You would pick her up and there she blows. Needless to say, it was gross. At first we cut down on the wet food she was eating in the morning, then we though maybe it was her regular food so we invested in a very expensive all-natural cat food, the breaking point was one afternoon that found Todd and me outside, rubber gloves on, ready to try and clean her anal glands. Do you know how hard it is to find the anal glands on cat Scioscia’s size? Alas, we were exhausted with trying to figure out what was making our cute kitty a walking pooper dispenser. We called the vet…
Now let me just say, I consider myself a capable person, but sometimes when faced things such as, oh well maybe if the vet handed me a bill for $170 dollars to run all these tests so they could find what was wrong her so that they could charge another $100 dollars for treatment, I get a little nervous. I want to help my poor kitty and this person who has much more knowledge about the situation than me is telling me I must do all these tests, I want to belive them! So what does a girl do? She calls her husband. Thirty minutes later Todd has a handle on the situation they only ran one test and found exactly what was causing Poop-Gate 2010. This little jerk right here, goes by the alias Giardia lamblia.

Know why he is smiling at you? Because he knows that you are going to spend countless hours scrubbing poop drippings from you floor, taking your cat to vet every other week  for a $20 a pop Giardia Snap Test and basically pulling your hair out and cursing his existence. This little sucker spends all his time in the digestive track taking all the nutrients from food and leaving nothing but slush behind. No solids in a kitty’s tummy, not a pretty thing. I think it is safe to say he is the biggest jerk of the parasite world.
The treatment was just as bad. The first medicine was liquid form in a syringe. Not that hard to give a cat. Then after the second snap test that showed she still had the parasite, we pulled out the big guns, Metronidazole. For two weeks twice a day I had to try and force a pill down little Scioscia’s throat and let me tell you, apparently this antibiotic is the worst tasting thing in the whole world. It didn’t matter what we tried to hide it in, she would find it and spit it out. Then if got moist? Oh boy, all the bets were off. It was so frustrating to me I ended up in tears a few times. Finally we went in for our third test where she was given a clean bill of health. There was a celebration like never before in the Jaramillo’s house. We cheered “No Giardia!!! No diareah!!! No more leaky bum!!!!”
Now if this were a fairy tale that would end with “and mom, dad, kitty and kitty’s bum lived happily ever after,” but this is real life and I just recently came to discover metronidazole only works about 40%-70% of the time and Giardia, being the P.O.S it is, can EASILY come back.
Cut to this week where Todd picks up Scioscia only find she left a lovely little present on his shirt. So now we are back to square one of this battle of good and evil. This time I am prepared though. I spent countless hours on the web finding alternative treatments that won’t brake the bank. There are three really good ones that I am going to try, cost combined they equal about one vet trip so I don’t feel like I am risking too much.  I ordered the first one off Amazon and it should be shipping to our house right now.
So pull out chair and put on your comfy pants, we might be here for a while. I will come back and tell you how well it is working and if not we will move onto the next.
Also I want to bring to your attention the fact, that if you made it this far, you have read an entire blog entry about my cat’s butt…
Til next time!
-Todd and Heidi