Well, Falkie seems to be healing wel from his injuries. The unfortunate thing is that everytime his immune system gets a jab, such as the eye-thing, he creates too much smear in his ears, which eventually leads to an ear-infection. Very fun, especially during the Easter-weekend. I just cleaned out his ears every day, and it seems to work.

As the eye heals, so the ears seem to muster up less smear every day. It does not look red yet, nor does it seem painful(he lets me clean them out easily enough, though clearly reluctantly), or does it smell wrong, so I am really hoping I averted an infection. I have to go to work in the clinic tomorrow, so I will ask the question, but so far so good.

The thing is, since January, we've had a Falkie with an infected eye, a Lulu with an infected eye and a re-infected eye, and now again a Falkie with an infected eye. And this morning we finally saw why: it seems our Prinny is the culprit. This we already suspected but we had no clue why the hell she was always so able to land that claw right in the right eye.
This morning however, we saw Prinny at the food dish with the Falkie. Now, I use large bowls as four of my five cats eat from that food. So they are perfectly able to eat together from that dish. The thing is, that Falkie has the extremely annoying habit to sit right across from Prinny, in the corner, which makes him quite literally steal the food from under her nose.

Sigh, we are back to square one. Someone in this household does not like Lulu and Falkie to use their eyes. And I suspect our Prinny, though Trini might also be the culprit. Falk is again running around with a red eye, squinting and therefore I have to again hunt him down every day to medicate him. It never ends!

The cat is paranoid enough of me as it is, with all the care he already needed. He still runs out of my way when he sees me coming, though he often enough comes and cuddles in bed or on the couch when it is obvious I aint holding no ointments. And now I am gonna give him every reason in the world to keep this behaviour going.

I am seriously considering getting a couple of cat claw clippers, since my kitties don't seem to be able to control themselves and some (aka Prinny) do not comprehend the concept of retractable claws..

Oh well, at least I know better than to panick, since this aint the first time. Yay :P

Ahh, the joy of kittens. When we go to bed at night, we put away the flowers, so they don't tip over the vase to get to the water (Lulu);we secure the easter tree by putting the vase in a cast iron cauldron, so that when they hunt the branches (Arwen and Falcor, sometimes some others), the vase won't tip and the branches won't be dragged through the house; we put away all food that could be dangerous, like chocolate eggs, and we put away their food so the other cats won't gorge on Arwen's food since apparently its 'better'.

Last night, we did all of that, and yet they found something else to do:
I was working on the easter decorations, and they were playing in the easter box yesterday. Now, in that box there are three bags of feathers. I put the lid on the box, but its made of carton, so this morning, I came into the living, which was covered in feathers. Boy, did they have fun *sigh*. As we speak, they are still on the floor. I just couldn't care less. I will clean it up later, as always ;)

When we got up this morning we found something interesting on the floor. It turned out to be a puddle of milk. Apparently they had grown tired of not getting any catmilk from me when they meowed for it, and decided to take matters into their own claws, quite literally.

They attacked our stash of milk, and punctured more than four bottles, one of which they quite literally sucked milk out of. I'm not kidding. Its like a self-service restaurant here or something. We put the remaining bottles in the cubboard under the sink, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Lulu can open those cubboards. She's never opened those but she's quite good at opening others, and Prinny is very good at getting the rest of the team to follow her on a raid. Quite a little general, that one.

The bottles they weren't able to suckle from but were still punctured we put in the fridge, since they were now not sealed anymore. One of the bottles actually has a nail going all the way through a thick plastic cap and the sealing foil that is underneat it. It is just down right scary. This particular kind of milk is actually packaged in big round thick plastic bottles. This means they have a minimum amount of grip and it aint exactly easy to puncture them unless you have like scissors or a knife and considerable strength. Apparently not having these advantages doesn't stop you if you are a cat with nothing else to do, a craving for milk and a great deal of tenacity. Unfortunately, the latter definitely describes our Prinny.

And Arwen isn't the only one with eye-trouble. Someone misplaced a claw in the Lulu's eye two weeks ago, and I thought about a week ago it was healed, when suddenly it got so swollen I considered seeing the eye specialist the next day. I suspect that another claw found its way into that eye, since the ointment I was using was definitely doing the job.

Meanwhile, I was stuck taking care of two kitties with eye trouble this week. Luckily, Lulu's eye looked much better by the time I had to leave for my weekend trip. She also lost her patch of fur this week. We have a partially bald kitty now. A couple of weeks ago, one of the other cats got their nail stuck in Lulu's skin and almost scalped that part of her coat. The wound finally healed and the patch of skin, which I found on the kitchen floor, was discarded. The wound looked like it was healing nicely though.

Hopefully I have five healthy cats again by the end of next week. You never know though. When you have five animals, and especially the type I have, you always have something going on with them. And it aint always convenient either, let me tell ya.

We have an expression in Dutch:Hanging together with hooks and eyes. It means that the person or in this case animal referred to has a poor constitution since they are constantly sick, in pain or constantly get new injuries somehow. Arwen is one of those 'people'.

Last week my mother visited, and Arwen got a bit panicky. She jumped from my arms onto the floor, landed wrong and is now slightly limping, much like the Falkie about a month ago, but not as badly. I haven't taken her to the vet yet, since she seems not really that bothered by her injury. She still jumps, scratches the post and stuff, she is just a bit more careful about it and sometimes lacks some coordination. If it doesn't pass though, I fear we'll be back at the vets office...again *sigh*

Meanwhile her eye is still sorta healing and with the addition of the limp, her body is having too much to deal with and Feline Influenza is taking advantage of it. It is neverending with this kitty. I hope she will get some peace and quiet soon, it is about time, I'd say.

Well, last week we had our final date with the vet. We went there for the very last time in a long time, we hope. The way there is everytime very stressful for her and I do not enjoy putting her through that. We ended up taking a taxi part of the way or we would've missed the vet. She was very happy to see Arwen and even happier to see she was doing ok.

The nasty stuff I had to put in her eye apparently came through. We can finally see her beautiful green eye peeking through, although there is still some regrowth as well. She can finally use it though. She will, however, always have one small eye and one big. You see, while the healthy eye was busy growing with the body, the other one was putting its strength in the wrong kind of growth. It does not show that badly though and she is turning into quite a cute little lady.

After a while at the vets, she made it quite clear that it was time to go home. Never have I heard a more grumpy and vocal Arwen before. So I took her home. She actually walked some of the way herself in her little harnas. Back home, she was greeted by the rest of the colony.

The vet told me to see what would happen now, and not put any medication in the eye anymore. Due to the stress, she has her Feline Influenza flaring up right now, but other than that she is fine. She still has some blurry stuff over her eye but that should disappear in time.

For the time being though, she seems quite content with life, and the vets office is finally not her second home anymore.