Molly Moves to Wellington

A six hour journey to the Kapiti Coast, overnight in a strange house then another drive south to another house in Wellington. Molly coped just fine with all that upheaval.

I thought the transition from Te Awamutu to Wellington had gone smoothly but then the problems began. Molly threw up on the carpet (it's fairly new) three times. So I was torn between despair over the carpet and despair over my poor suffering pet. She's now fulltime on a liver management diet which she doesn't particularly like but has settled her digesitive system.

The main problem now is that she's finding the catflap a challenge to use. It has two magnets (one on the base and one on the flap) to keep it flappable but not flapping in the wind. Molly is pushing feebly at the flap and it won't open for her, although in one strong gust of Wellington wind it blew open then swung back and hit her on the nose.

So I rigged it up to make it swing open one way only so she could use a gentle push to get in. However at 4am on Saturday morning I woke to the sound of Molly hissing and when I investigated I saw a feline intruder who had entered through the catflap then couldn't get out again. The cat saw me, ran headlong at the catflap, bounced off it, rushed across the room, leapt onto the sofa, climbed up the curtains and dangled off the curtain rail. I opened the front door and the back door but it just charged madly around the house and then head butted the catflap again. Finally I got the catflap open and it fled. Hopefully that's the last we see of that mad beast. Today I've put Molly on a catflap training programme by putting her outside and wafting canned salmon in front of the catflap. The lure of salmon was enough for her to put a bit more effort into pushing the catflap open and she received several rewards of canned salmon. Now I'm just hoping the salmon treats don't upset her liver and digestive system again ...

Does my cat need a CAT scan?

After blood tests, a microbiology culture, an X-ray, two lots of antibiotics and three visits to the vet the cause of Molly's nasal discharge is still a mystery. Although it has eased and she seems happy enough there is something not quite right in her tiny little nose. The vet mentioned an MRI or CAT scan as they suspect a foreign body, maybe from a previous event in 2007, could be causing the problem. But they admit they don't really know, and without more sophisticated (and expensive) investigations the problem will remain a mystery. After discussing the situation with the vet today we agreed to leave the mystery unsolved for now as Molly is OK and the antibiotics seem to have dealt with the recent infection.

Molly's Murmur

Molly has had an on-and-off runny nostril for a while so I thought I'd better get it checked out at the vet. She has had the problem before and although it's never been definitively diagnosed a round of antibiotics helps clear it up. Today the vet also discovered that she has a heart murmur. The valve in the right side of her heart isn't working properly and she needs to have some blood tests and an x-ray. She's 11 years old so she's getting on a bit. She was trembling with fear in the consulting room. The vet clinic is a very scary place for a scaredy cat, poor old thing.

Trivia fact: When I got Molly from the SPCA and chose her name I had recently moved to my house. I didn't know at the time that one neighbour had a cat called Holly, another neighbour had a cat called Polly and my immediate neighbour called her car Molly.