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Last Updated: 12/3/11
There is a video of Dude on my video page!
Photos are listed from newest to oldest.
Doodally on an air mattress on 7/18/11.
Doodally on my bed on 7/3/10.
Doodally on my bed on 7/3/10.
Dude on 10/6/07.
Dude under the Christmas tree on 1/1/07.
Doodally on 2/19/05.
Doodally in April of 2003, very sleepy!
Polky on 8/20/97.
Polky is better known as Dude, Doodally, Poopene, or Poopette. Doodally is all white with three gray dots on her head (thus Polky from polka dot) with medium-length, soft hair. She was born around 9/2/96. I picked her from her brothers at a local vet clinic on 10/11/96 when still too young. The first time I saw her, the week before, at only five weeks old, she sat in a pie pan full of litter with her eyes a quarter open and a piece of clay litter on her head. I feel in love instantly. I thought I could replace some of the love Bootsy gave me but this cat is totally unlike her. She only purrs and cuddles occasionally (like when I am too ill to respond). She bites, claws, runs, jumps, and generally acts like a crazy beast most of the time. As a kitten, Dude loved to have fights with little stuffed animals and hauled them all over the house. She also takes the bath drain and sink plugs out and loves to play with running water. She tore up and ate wall paper, curtains, and rugs until she was three years old. Although she is destructive, she is cute while she does it! As of July 1998, she began coming to me purring while I was on my bed but as soon as I touched her, she was off galloping around the house to eat more curtains. She ate at least 100 square feet of curtains before we got new ones (without wool in them). Needless to say, she had enough fibre in her diet! Dude only eats dry cat food. We got new curtains in the fall of 1999 which she has not bothered since they were not to her liking I guess! She did like eating the plastic table cloth cover though so we put up one of those motion sensors that squeals when she got on the table. It seemed to work but we let it lapse after the batteries kept dying.
I did not keep records here about Dude when she was young as my web site was small and just getting started then.
Dude had her yearly checkup on 3/23/00. She was 8.2 pounds. As she gets older, Doodally has become more affectionate as long as Gino is not around. He attacks her every chance he gets. When she tries to be affectionate with me, he thwarts her by leaping on top of her.
Her checkup was again without incidence in 2001, 2002, and 3/27/03. As of 2/14/04, I can say that Doodally does like cuddle sessions now but only if she is tired. She is much less active now but can still bounce around the house with Gino in pursuit at times.
Dude had her yearly checkup on 3/16/04. There is nothing to report except she is 8.6 pounds. She was 9.7 pounds on 3/27/03 so I cannot imagine she lost that much. Dude is sometimes grumpy and sometimes sweet.
I had Doodally microchipped on 3/13/05 at a clinic.
On 3/15/05, Doodally had her yearly checkup. She put up a nice fight. She was up to 9.0 pounds. She got her exam and distemper shot. I also had a baseline body function blood test done since she is almost 9-years-old. It showed a dozen values that were border line or slightly over (the vet did not say what). He did say that the creatinine was 2.5 (normal is up to 2.4). I hope she is not going to have kidney failure soon too! For now, she is okay.
On 3/17/06, Dude had her yearly checkup. I have decided not to have yearly distemper shots anymore. There is too much literature now showing they do more harm than good. For some of my cats, I may still have them done every three years. Dude gets a high fever after every shot so I will only get her the rabies shots from now on. So, this day, she just had an exam. The vet could not find a thing wrong with her. She was down to 8.5 pounds but she does fluctuate a bit, or the vet scale is no good!
Since Gino is on special food now, the only dry out during the day is his food. Dude only ate dry her whole life although the canned food was always available. At night, I lock her up separate with her regular natural dry food. On 3/25/06, for the first time ever, I saw her tentatively eating some canned food. I guess she was desperate. It would be better for her. She has always had issues where she wanted to consume too much fiber, starting with when she was a baby and literally ate the wool curtains until we got new curtains. In a short time, Dude came to be eating Gino's vet diet (as do the other cats) but I wish she (and they) would not!
On 3/21/07, Dude had her yearly checkup. I thought she was heavier but the vet said she was 9.7 pounds down from 10.9 on 11/1/06 when she got a rabies shot (I guess I forgot to add that on this page!). Doodally has a lot of fat rolls under her belly. Dude has a Grade 2 heart murmur. The vet said it was noted before but I did not note it here (I try to write everything down here for a record). They worked on Dude in the back as she put up a fight. I assume she was properly examined but do not know. I had a geriatric blood panel run, and everything was fine. Her cholesterol was a little high and her platelets a little low (but they were clumped). Her T4 was normal. So, she seems fine.
Doodally had her yearly check up on 3/24/08. She was down to 9.2 pounds. They found nothing wrong and did not mention the heart murmur (I forgot to ask). Her blood test results were similar to last year with only a slightly high cholesterol and the rest normal.
Dude had a senior exam on 2/18/09. She was up to 9.5 pounds. The vet could not find a heart murmur. I had blood and urine taken. The only thing off was that high cholesterol again. Her T4, kidney values, counts, etc. were all normal.
Dude had another senior exam on 8/26/09. She is up to 9.7 pounds. This vet (a different one) did not hear a heart murmur. The vet said she needs to have some of her back molars removed as they are too dirty to clean. Her back gums are red (gum disease). He tried to take blood from her, stabbing her in three locations at least but she put up a fight, and they did not get enough to test. He said they can do a quick test while she is knocked out on the day of a potential future dental cleaning. It really is surgery since with animals (unlike humans), they completely knock you out. Since Dude almost died after being spayed, I am scared to put her through this. If I do not though, bacteria could spread from her gum disease and kill her eventually.
Doodally had dental surgery on 10/13/09. The vet did a quick blood work test to be sure her kidney values were normal. I am not sure which things he tested. Dude got IV fluids with sedation. The vet removed two molars and cleaned the rest of the teeth. The tech said after the plaque was removed, the roots were exposed. Her weight was 9.6 pounds. She also got a rabies shot while there. I was given six doses of Buprenex to give her every 12 hours for the pain. There was worry that she would not want to eat but she wolfed down some tuna the next morning.
Dude had a senior exam on 2/24/10. The vet said she was just dandy and did not need her blood work done at this time. Her weight was down to 9.3 pounds.
Dude had a senior exam on 8/17/10. Her weight was up to 9.5 pounds. The vet found nothing wrong. Her blood work was normal except for the T4 which was 5.4. Less than 4.0 is normal. Elvisina had hyperthyroidism first confirmed with a T4 of 14 so I am not too worried about Doodally who is showing no obvious signs of the illness. I sure hope she does not progress in to it as pilling her would be very difficult. I doubt I would get the iodine treatment done again after it destroyed Elvi's thyroid, and she was on pills for hypothyroidism for the rest of her life.
Polky had her blood tested for T4 again on 11/30/10. Her weight is down to 8.8 pounds which is troubling. I got the results on 12/2/10, and her T4 was up to 6.6 from 5.4. The vet says she has feline hyperthyroidism. My cat, Elvisina, had that too. The options are medication twice a day forever (about $1000 a year with monthly blood tests), surgery (which my vet does not do), and radioactive iodine (was $1300 in 2005, who knows now). Elvi went to Radiocat but the radiation killed her entire thyroid and gave her hypothyrodism. She ended up with twice daily pills anyway and kidney failure. So, I do not trust Radiocat with Dude. The problem with the pills is that Dude is so aloof and runs off when she sees any person or cat. Sometimes she will come to me but then runs off most of the time when I try to make contact. I cannot imaging trying to catch her twice a day especially once she learns it is so I can jam a pill down her throat. Also, the pills made Elvi stop eating completely and could hurt Dude more than help. I am picking the pills up 12/3/10, and I will try to give them to her and see what happens.
The prescribing vet who I do not know said to give half of a 5 mg pill of methimazole twice a day. When I picked it up, the vet I know was there, and she said it would be okay to try to see if she is okay on once a day. I had a plan. It worked the first night. I put the pill in a pill pocket and left it for her at night when she is in the basement alone. She actually ate it in front of me. As a test, I tried to catch her all the next day whenever I saw her and never did. Hopefully, once a day will do for now. As I type this, she actually just walked by!
On 12/8/10, I cut up a bunch of methimazole pills in to quarters and put a quarter in to each pill pocket. Dude really likes the pockets, and I am trying to get her to take one twice a day. This dose is half what the vet suggested but those on the Yahoo feline hyperthyroidism group say that cats are often given too much methimazole to start. Since Dude's T4 is not that much above normal, I will try the lower dose and see how that turns out.
Doodally went to the vet on 1/3/11 to recheck her T4. Her weight was up to 9.1 from 8.8 pounds so that was good. Her T4 value came back as 1.5 which is perfect! We are keeping her on a quarter of a pill twice a day with a re-test in a few months.
Dude had a recheck on 3/1/11. Her weight was up to 9.3 pounds I think (they told me but did not record it on her record!). I got some methimazole in gel form (12.5 mg methimazole per mL of gel; 0.1 mL per dose) for her ear to give her when she does not eat her pill pockets with the pills. That had happened up to that point about 10 times but less so leading up to this appointment. I will try the gel a few times just to know how to use it when/if it is needed. I also got some eye drops because her left eye has been goopy but not very much. The drops are 0.3% gentamicin sulfate. The vet did not hear her murmur but could not really properly exam Dude as she started to swipe, hiss, and lunge to bite (she had had enough torture). We are waiting on blood results from a feline hyperthyroidism monitoring panel (T4, BUN, creatinine, 3 liver enzymes, CBC but no glucose). The results came back with a T4 of 1.8 and all other values normal. The vet left a message so I do not know the actual values which would really be nice to know! Anyway, her current methimazole dose is working.
Polky had a recheck on 8/16/11. Her weight was down to 8.2 pounds from 9.1 pounds on 1/3/11. The vet could also hear her heart murmur and was not able to the few times before. These things would indicate that her hyperthyrodism is not under control which I knew. She only takes her pill pocket in the evening. In the morning, about 5% of the time, she takes a pill, about 35% of the time I get the ear meds on her ears, and the rest of the time, she gets nothing (she hides)! Her exam was otherwise normal. I mentioned that she seems to be having wheezing/asthma attacks more often but that treatment would be futile since she will not let me put medication in her mouth; really I cannot catch her most of the time! Blood work showed all was normal except platelets low at 192 10^3/uL(normal 200 to 500) and T4 was up to 4.5 ug/dL (normal 0.8 to 4.0). I had them actually e-mail me a scan of the report this time and will now request those so I can see the actual numbers that I am paying megabucks for! I have increased her nightly pill dose from a quarter pill to a half of a pill. When I can get ear meds on her in the morning, I will do that too.
The vet suggested weighing her. Her first weight at home was 9.0 pounds on 8/20/11. It is a different scale than the vet's; I do not know which one is more accurate. On 8/27/11, the scale said she was only 8.0 pounds! Hopefully, it is just a bad scale! I am using the scale for human weight and holding her to get a total weight and subtracting my weight. I could not catch her the next week but on 9/10/11, her weight was only 7.5 pounds! She is dying, and there is nothing I can do. My mother will not allow her to do the radioactive iodine, and Dude will not take her medication in the morning. She just gets a half pill at night. Her other blood work is normal so it does not make sense why she is going downhill so fast. She is still pretty active. On 9/17/11, Dude weighed 7.5 pounds.
I finally got a weight on 10/18/11. It was still 7.5 pounds so at least she is not losing more weight but she is definitely smaller. She was still 7.5 pounds on 10/30/11.
Polky went to the vet on 11/29/11. Her weight was 7.4 pounds. Her blood results were normal except for a T4 of 5.1 ug/dL (normal is 0.8 to 4.0 ug/dL), platelets of 115 (normal is 200 to 500 10^3/uL; but they clumped so the result is not accurate), and lymphocytes of 816 (normal is 1200 to 8000). The vet called on 12/3/11 to discuss the results. She suggested upping her dose from half a pill to three quarters of a pill. This will be more work making up the pills. Since I cannot get three quarters in a pill pocket without her starting to realize there is a pill in there, I think I will do her usual half pill around 6 pm and then put a pill pocket with a quarter pill in her dish overnight. Most nights, she is by herself in the basement and will eat a pill pocket from the dish (on nights when I missed the ~6 pm pill). On nights when another cat ends up in the basement, I will have to skip the extra quarter pill but that is not often, maybe once a week. She totally refuses to eat one in the morning. I have no idea why. At least this way, the medication will be spread over a few hours.
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