Joey’s Pet of the Week – Butters’ Big Adventure

By Scott Lackenby | Dated March 8, 2017

Hey everyone! How are you all? Well what a change a few weeks can make to the weather!?! Summer definitely seems to be a distant memory now.

When it’s not vert sunny outside, you have to get creative if you want to warm up!

It’s been a great week at GVH. Yesterday we had cake to celebrate Nurse Layne’s birthday! And what a cake it was! Nurse Hollie outdid herself with a delicious Nutella cake. If you ever get a chance to try a Nurse Hollie creation, you should definitely do it. She is an AMAZING baker. And happy birthday again Nurse Layne!!

My star this week is an extremely gorgeous little lady name Butters, an almost 2year old Moggy cat from Killara. Butters came in to see Dr Scott Lackenby after she cam home after being missing for 3weeks! The GVH humans freaked when I went missing for a few days, so I hate to think how Butters’ family were feeling when she was missing for that long. Butters also came home with a dead and dried out tick on her, so she really needed a check over.

Dr Scott gave Butters a thorough examination. She was dehydrated and skinny, she weighed only 1.9kg!. She was breathing faster than normal, but she wasn’t making the grunty noise we usually hear when an animal has tick paralysis, and she had a good gag reflex. Dr Scott was suspicious that Butters had been suffering from tick paralysis while she was missing. He admitted her to run some blood tests to make sure everything was ok.

The gorgeous Butters

Once admitted, Butters was started on IV fluids. She was also fed a special recovery food, which she gobbled up. While she would of loved more food, we had to feed her small amount frequently so as to not stress her tummy. Two tick searches thankfully revealed no further ticks or tick craters, but Butters did have a lot of flea dirt and her coat was in poor condition.  Butters’ blood test revealed some mild changes, but given the stress she had been under after being missing for 3weeks, nothing was terribly concerning. If Butters continued to eat well and didn’t develop any vomiting, she would be ok to go home later that day.

Butters developed some diarrhoea just before being discharged, which isn’t uncommon after feeding an animal who hasn’t eaten much if at all for a long period of time. Dr Scott prescribed Butters some medication to help settle her tummy and advised her family to feed her small but frequent meals to help her tummy get used to digesting food again. Dr Scott wanted to see Butters for a recheck in 3-5days.

When Butters came in for her recheck, she was well on the way to being her normal healthy self. She had put on weight, she now weighed 2.35kg, the diarrhoea had stopped, she was eating well and she was no longer dehydrated and her coat was looking much healthier. Butters was even well enough to be vaccinated and wormed!! Hopefully like me, Butters learned not to stay away from home for too long.

Well, better go. I’m pretty sure if I look hard enough, I might be able to find some crumbs left over from Nurse Layne’s cake. Meows for now, love Joey xox