Quarantine, Day 1

Yesterday was day 1 of the quarantine.

It went relatively well. Midnight has settled down to being confined to the room, and is spending most of his time lounging around. I made the mistake of opening my bra drawer while he was curious about what I was doing, and he promptly took up residence. So now there's a blanket covering my bras, and Midnight is king of all he surveys from three drawers up.

Midnight with the Catnip Lion in my bra drawer. 2017.

He's clingy. As long as I'm in the room, he's all right, but if I leave he starts clawing at the door. To be expected; I'm his only company, and he's an outgoing cat.

He doesn't like having his wound hot packed. And cats heal so fast, a scab is already forming and I have to keep hotpacking the wound to try and get it off so I can keep the wound flushed. It's painful for him, and he starts drooling directly after. It panicked me the first few times--excessive drooling is a sign of rabies. However, he only does it after I work with his wound, and some quick research on my part shows that drooling is also a symptom of pain in cats. Poor guy.

I was taking him into the bathroom to tend to the wound, but he keeps trying to lunge out of my arms between the bedroom and bathroom. I unearthed the plastic cat tub, and all future wound treatment will happen in the bedroom.

I can't keep things as sterile as I would like, but the gauze is sterile, the gloves are sterile, and I do a two minute hand wash before starting anything, so I'm doing the best I can.

He wasn't eating much yesterday, until I tempted him with a can of cat food. Usually he eats dry food, so he dove into the wet food face first. Even his usual favorite treat of turkey sandwich meat didn't make him do more than nose it a bit and lick at a few tidbits. Thank goodness for canned cat food.

He really enjoys the Catnip Lion (a lion toy that he stole from some other house--sorry to whoever it belongs to!--that I spray with catnip spray). Normally I'd tussle with him a bit while he's in the catnip haze, but he's not as gentle as he usually is under the influence of catnip, and if he does have rabies, I'd rather not contract it myself because he accidentally nipped my hand while playing with me.

He's given up running away from me when I tend the wound. Although to be fair, his "running away" is more of a "belly to the ground slinking walk," as he's never protested too energetically anything I've done to him, whether it causes him pain or not.

So day 1 is down and we're halfway through day 2. 19.5 days to go. We can do this!