Title : Prince Rufus ,_ _ Date : 11th May 2025 |\\_,-~/ Author : Vela025 / _ _ | ,--. Category: Cat, Life, Old Tech, Food ( @ @ ) / ,-' \ _T_/-._( ( A few months ago, our cat Rufus was pretty ill. / `. \ He'd been off his food for a few days and we | _ \ | noticed he hadn't been drinking either. He'd had \ \ , / | an upset stomach for a few days previous. After a || |-_\__ / few days of this (having taken him to the vet ((_/`(____,-' for similar before only for him to make a miracle recovery once we've paid for the "if there's no improvement come back in a few days" consultancy) we realised he wasn't getting better by himself. So on a Thursday afternoon we took him to get looked over. He did perk up a bit at the vets, but he was really dehydrated and needed a drip. They couldn't understand what was wrong with him and so did a blood test. Luckily he'd had a blood test a month prior when he needed to have two of his teeth out, they were apparently rotting...although I'm sure that surgery was the precursor of everything to come. On that occasion we'd only taken him to the vet because we'd noticed one of his teeth had disappeared. The vet thought it best to do an X-ray and a scale and polish of his remaining teeth, which resulting in him recommending to take out 2 more. So a month later we were back again, same vet, same cat, much worse problem. We left him there on the fluids drip and expected to return a few hours later to find he'd recovered with the anti-bionics. Instead his blood test showed he'd used all his white neutrophil blood cells up fighting a infection and his red blood cells were 27% (30% was low end of normal), the problem being that was whilse he was dehydrated so they were concerned with hydration his red blood cells would plummet. They would keep him overnight on the drip and we would return the next day to see how he was getting on. This was the first night Rufus would be away from home for ~10years so we were quite worried about how stressed he'd be, not to mention his health. The following day we returned, he was a little more active but he'd still not ate anything and his red blood cells were indeed dropping ~22% with no improvement on his white cells. They thought it was best he eat something and throught that might be more likely at home with us, so we brought him home and made him boiled chicken and fish but he didn't want any of it, he also didn't drink anything. The following morning (Saturday) they kept him for the half day they were open and put him back on fluids. The next few days are all a bit of a blur. We needed to take Rufus to the emergency out of hours vet where just a consultation fee is £350 (we don't have pet insurance), but our little man was worth it. They kept him for more blood work, and an ultrasound scan. The blood work showed he was now down to 20% and still no white cell improvement. He was pretty chipper for a cat that was so ill the vet had noticed (her name was Karen, she was American) he was patrolling the vets office inspecting everything. We couldn't see him the next day and had a pretty tearful night, we genuinely thought we were going to lose him as they had said the next few hours were vital. The following day we had a phone call from Karen to say that all the investigations had gone well, there was no sign of any cancer or internal trauma but his bloods were getting worse so he might need a transfusion. Because they now knew that he was cancer free they seemed fairly confident it was a bone marrow issue with his new blood cells being killed by him immune system before they're released but they needed to do a bone marrow test to confirm. For this the started him on a high dose of steroids. When we saw him the next day he was more interested in food, but still quite shaky. Whilst they had him under for the bone marrow test they also took the opportunity to fit him with a feeding tube that came out of his neck. He kept trying to shake it lose, and in typical Rufus fashion since fitting it he'd been eating food like normal and they hadn't needed ot use it! ...I'll leave the story of Rufus there for now, I just wanted to get it wrote down whilst I remember it all, but will return to it in next weeks phlog. I'd decided half way through last week that I was going to start calorie counting and getting in to a more structured workout routine as I've gained about 10 lbs in quite a short space of time, which tragically means no more lunchtime breaks to ASDA demolishing a pack of Bourbons or inhaling sweets. Back to this week, it has gone by so quickly! Monday was a bank holiday so I had no jobs on which was nice. I spent most of the day faffing around with Dos Plus and trying to get the GEM Terminal I'd found to compile in Lattice C...spoiler I couldn't, but Rick who visits the BeeBS BBS has managed to so hopefully I'll be able to pick his brain on how to do that. Initially I just want the colours inverted, and I think I've found the correct part to modify, just can't get it to compile! Tuesday was a busy work day, fitting in the usual Tuesday appointments as well as the extras from Monday, I spent the evening trying to learn this weeks new plant names for college. Wednesday was the usual appointments and taking Rufus for his follow-up blood test in the evening, some how I managed to miss the turning to the vets and had to trail back on myself in rush hour traffic arriving bang on the appointment time which was not great as we'd left 20 min spare to get there and considering the vets is about 5 min from my front door, that was a long detour. We prepared hanging baskets at college on Thursday, mine was judged pretty highly which I was really pleased with. We could have taken our own baskets and planters to prep, but the cost of buying the plants was just too much they wanted ~£40 for a basket which led to an audible gasp. I'm now starting to get anxious it's quite close to exam time and there is still so much we've not covered, consequently I spent most of Sunday after the chores and meal prep were out of the way going through the specification and making a start on the topics we've missed. We went to a nice restaurant in town on Friday it was great, even with the calorie counting; which like last time I quite enjoy doing. I've set myself a 1800 cal/day limit which should average 2lb a week loss, but I'm going to give myself 2 months to be on the safe side. I already meal plan every week so it's just been a case of adding the meals to mynetdiary which was the best fit for me last time (2023) so it probably still is. Speaking of food, our Chicken (Andrea) has started to go off her food. She's 10 and the last of our flock...currently living in the greenhouse because of the bird flu precautions. So we've started feeding her porridge and blueberries again, which she loves. This week I noticed that Tom Allen has uploaded a video to his youtube channel. We're both big fans of the Tom Allen and Suzi Ruffel podcast (Like Minded Friends) and have seen them live a couple of times...well the two times they've been live. It's a chat with Rob Beckett and is lovely, no pretence just two friends having a chat about any old stuff, really made me smile! Right that's all for this week, be sure to check out the new page on the M512 in the Acorn BBC section.