Fleas and other ramblings.

I sat down this morning to do some technical work on our website and back office databases, but this came from my fingers instead.

I wanted to share my most recent experience, both for education, and to show how Imagine Home has helped me.  I will ask for your forgiveness beforehand as I tend to get a little wordy.  I promise it will be worth it, just hang in there.

First, a bit of background about how I came to be part of Imagine Home.  Three words:  Jack the Cat.  To this day I don’t know why, but I was selected from Jack’s page to be one of the first members of a wonderful team of ladies helping kitties.  That team has evolved into the current Imagine Home you see today.  I didn’t always rescue kitties.  I always loved them, but never thought of giving of my time to help, and had no idea of the sad state of animal welfare in this country as a whole.  It took a severe bout of depression to lead me to seek an outlet to help save myself.  That outlet came in the form of volunteering at a local 501(c)(3) rescue.  FYI:  VolunteerMatch is a GREAT place to find opportunities for helping in your area.  Then I started following cats on facebook, and found myself watching and following, like with thousands of others, the search for Jack the Cat. The rest, as they say, is history.

I have 4 cats (really 3 and a foster) and flea control is always a problem.  Hugo was born a barn cat and would simply “die” of frustration if he was never allowed outside.  He regularly wrecks screens to get there and will whine for hours if he does not get his way. He never goes far, always coming back in to check where I am, or to use the litter.  No, he will not use the outside as a litter box to save his life, go figure.  Of course I am always diligent about putting flea medication on him year round. But any OTC or vet-prescribed medication gets expensive when you have multiple cats, so I am not so diligent about keeping flea control on the other three (yeah, I’m not perfect, please don’t judge).  What I didn’t count on was my great hunter Hugo bringing me “gifts”.

Hugo snuck in a dead mole while I wasn’t watching and voila! Suddenly the cats are all infested with fleas.  I did the usual spraying of the floors and under furniture with carpet spray killer and treated the kitties with my preferred brand of Advantix.  Fleas all gone.  Unfortunately I missed a few because before I knew it, suddenly they were back with a vengeance.  It was time for another round of meds for all of them, so off to the pet store I went.  Surprisingly they were out of the product I usually use, so I took some time looking at the other brands and remembering all I had heard about each brand.  I also took into account the brands my shelter uses.  I ended up going with Capstar pills.  I had always heard good things about their product and had no reason not to trust it.

Back home and dinnertime.  I put the Capstar in food for all the kitties. Let’s just say I value my skin enough to not want to have to manually give some of them pills.  There, that was done and I thought nothing more of it.  Fast forward a half hour, I am sitting on my couch and Skyla comes to sit beside me.  Only she is panting.  And her eyes are glazed.  Instant panic mode, ya think?  I checked her out a bit more and it looked like she had been given a few shots of caffeine, her heart was racing, she was panting, her eyes were glazed and fully dilated, and she started scratching and almost chewing off her skin.  I heard a grunt, and looked over to see Hank in the same predicament.  A quick check of the other two and they seemed a bit wired, but not like my “grey patrol”.

The very next thing I did was post in our Imagine Home office what was going on.  Within seconds, the other admins were on the net doing research for side effects and finding poison control center phone numbers.  Yes, most of this is already on my refrigerator, but I was not quite thinking clearly.  I also knew sharing with the other admins would make me feel less alone in my terror, and the more eyes the quicker things get done.

• Capstar Customer Service Hotline:  1-800-332-2761
• Animal Poison Control 1-800-939-0936 

Of course I have already sent a pic of the product batch to my shelter to see if they have any in their inventory.  I will also be calling CapStar as soon as they open, to report this and determine if they have had other reports.

I am extremely lucky to have one of the best vets in the world.  They are less than a mile from my house and are 24/7 on call.  Within 20 minutes of my initial call to them, Hank and Skyla were with me at the clinic being checked by the vet. If I remember correctly, the last emergency I had (sadly, the euthanasia of my sweet Annie after her multiple stokes paralyzed her) was less than 10 minutes from my call to their exam, that is how good they are.  My next phone call was to the director of my shelter for her experiences with Capstar.  Hank and Skyla came from there so the director has known and cared for them both since they were babies.  Meanwhile our admins have found all sorts of articles about Captsar and the symptoms my kitties were showing, poison control centers, natural flea remedies, and a host of other information.  The final result was definitely a bad reaction to the Capstar, although strangely enough, the symptoms usually only show up in dogs, it is extremely rare to find in cats.  My vet commented how shocked she was to see not only one case, but two in the same household (not related).  The vet said they would be fine within 12 hours and gave them both a mild sedative to help calm them. Within an hour of getting home, both kitties were calming down and almost back to normal.  The only good thing I can say is at least the fleas were all dying in droves!!

There is a moral to this story somewhere, and take from it what you will, but here is what I took from the whole experience:  I would not have made it through the evening without my litter sisters (the Imagine Home admins) right beside me the whole way.  Our bond has gone beyond saving kitties to a full fledged support system.  I feel so privileged to be a part of this group, and hope you enjoy all of our efforts as much as we do.  Right now it seems we only do transport, but it is what we know and do well.  Our ultimate goal at Imagine Home is to be a one stop place for just about everything kitty.  Our website is in the works, and our CafePress store should be available within the next few weeks.

What will you do when your kitties are suddenly sick?  Do you have a 24 hour on-call vet? Do you have friends you can call to help? Do you know how to find out what is causing it?

Imagine Home can be one of your sources. It’s what we do – for the kitties. <3