This Week On Veterinarian's Hospital...

Just heard back from the vets. They can't find anything wrong with Vir, which is almost disappointing, because if he had some kind of obvious hormone imbalance, maybe we could actually fix him. But I'm glad to know he doesn't have diabetes, anyway.

Happiness, however, does indeed have thyroid problems. Which doesn't surprise me at all, as I realized after doing a little research that she has had some of the symptoms, including drinking more water than usual. Fortunately, her blood levels weren't too awfully high, meaning we seem to have caught it early. (Go me, being conscientious about the critters' check-ups!) The bad news is that she's going to have to take pills for at least six months. Twice a day. Yeah, as if giving pills to a cat wasn't hard enough... Do you have any idea how hard it is to do anything twice a day at consistent times when you work rotating shifts? And then after the six months, we get to figure out whether to keep giving her pills, or whether she should have surgery to remove the glands, or what. Apparently radioactive iodine treatments work well, but there are two problems with that: 1) It results in a radioactive cat who has to be quarantined for two weeks, and 2) because you need a special license to handle the radioactive materials, almost nobody does it. Apparently the last time they checked, the nearest licensed facility was in Colorado. I... do not have words for how much I do not want to drive to Colorado with a cat. But that was a while ago, I guess. They're going to check into whether there's anything closer now. We'll see...