Update on George

I just thought it was a good time to give everyone another update on George. George has been sick and had to have surgery. Yes, it's true. George was evidently bitten on his neck. I felt the scabs and everything was fine. He was healing nicely, or so I thought. The wound developed a huge 5cm abcess on the side of his neck. He was feeling a little listless. I was keeping an eye on it. Day by day, this thing was growing. Sue and I decided to soak it. First we washed it with some hydrogen peroxide. George, of course, was loving this, yeah, right. After the washing, he was having no part of soaking this thing in warm water. Nope, that was too much like a bath.

Well, George was a little upset that night that he could not go out to go eat as his favorite restaurant, Sylvia's. It's a little place just down the sidewalk. A nice homey place, in a basement, but the food is great. There is only one waitress, so service might be a little slow and occasionally a fight will breakout over who should be served. Barring that, it's a nice place.

George settled in for a long night of whatever cats do when they can't go out. He slept for awhile in the chair in the bedroom. Had some milk from my "go to bed" snack of cereal. I save George the milk. We all settled in for a nice night of sleeping or so I thought.

Sue has been having a hard time sleeping past 1am or 2am so she gets up and does some work around the house or plays games on the computer. At 3:30 am she woke me up with the words "San, get up...there are maggots coming out of George's neck". If this doesn't get you up and moving FAST, nothing will. I muttered, "well, at least, the maggots are eating the infection." Spoken like a true nurse. Hey, you can't scare me, I'm a nurse!

It turns out that it wasn't maggots, thank the higher powers that be. It was bloody drainage oozing from his neck. This could be good or this could be bad. We decided not to take a chance. George went to the vet. He got a 2 week antibiotic injection (I was NOT messing with pills and a cat), his rabies vaccination, his neck was shaved and we were told he was going to need surgery. The vet kept him overnight and he had surgery the next day. We got to bring him home after 5pm the day of surgery. He looked so pathetic. He had a tube sticking out of his neck for a drain which would be removed in a week and the stitches would be removed in 2 weeks.

The drain was removed yesterday. He is doing well. He is quarantined for 6 months because it is a bite of unknown origin and his rabies had expired. So the moral of this story is....keep up with your animals vaccinations. George is not going to be happy when he finds out about this 6 month thing.

Now we are watch and waiting for Sylvia to accuse George of eating her cat's food and we can tell her he has been in the house!!!!! I will keep you posted.