猫たち
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Introducing Our Feline Family!
我が家の天使
Shadow & Tiger
Shadow（写真左側）は、ブラックタビーの雄でTiger（写真右側）はオレンジブラックタビーの雌で、兄妹です。約7年前に近所のシェルターから引き取ってきました。それ以来、Shadowは大手術2回を経験、膵炎を発症し、生命の危機にありました。そんな彼の闘病記録やTigerのアレルギーの話などを書いていきたいと思っています。二匹とも私が作った生えさを与えています。（缶詰のえさも少しあげています）生えさの方が二匹とも調子が良いようです。生えさのレシピなども今後ご紹介したいと思っています。
天使にひとめぼれ
生後4週間。見た瞬間に迷わず選びました。
闘病日記～猫肝リピドーシスと慢性膵炎～
Shadowは、慢性膵炎という疾患を持っています。生まれつき膵臓が弱かったわけではなく、これは過去2回も異物を飲み込んだことが原因で発症しました。
初めての異物誤飲
Shadowが1歳になったころのある朝、いきなりShadowが吐き始めました。毛玉を吐こうとしているのかと思ったのですが、朝ごはんの前だったので吐くものがなく、胃液だけでした。吐き気は止まることなく20分おきぐらいに吐き出すので、かかりつけの獣医に電話をしました。異物誤飲か何かの中毒症状で体内から不要なものを吐き出そうとしているかもしれないので、吐き気止めを直ぐに処方しない方が良いので翌朝まで様子を見て欲しいと言われました。翌朝になっても状態が改善しなかったので直ぐに病院へ連れて行きました。エコー検査をして消化器内の水分の流れに何か問題がないか見てみよう、ということになりました。エコー検査と言っても人間のように直ぐに何か見えるものではなく、長時間観察で消化器内の流れを見るものです。エコー検査では特に問題が見られず、改善する気配もありません。先生が100％確信があるわけではないが、異物があるような気がするので、開腹手術してみないかと言われました。他に原因も分からないのでそのまま手術してもらうことになりました。先生が思った通り、胃と腸の境目に大きなゴムチューブのかけらが見つかりました！エクササイズ用のゴムチューブの欠片だったようで1センチほどの長さがありました。何故？！この時は先生の判断で処置が早かったこともあり、手術して異物を取り出したら、ご飯もパクパク食べられるようになり、回復もスピーディーでした。
Second Foreign Object
Two years later, one morning, Shadow started vomiting again. We were very puzzled because we had been super careful about rubber and rubber tubes since the last incident, so we never imagined he had the same problem! Unfortunately, in these two years, the animal health care system in Victoria has dramatically changed. We could no longer take our babies to our vet as an emergency. Any urgent case must be dealt with the central animal hospital that is designated as an emergency hospital. Don’t get me wrong. Everyone at the central vet hospital is super nice. It was just that it took a whole a lot longer to go through the process of diagnosing. We had to leave Shadow in their care for observation for two days without any improvement and ended up coming home because he just couldn’t eat or sleep there with all other sick animals in the same area. By the time he came home, he had lost so much weight, and three days had already passed without him eating. We talked with our vet, and she was kind enough to reschedule some of her patients so that she could take a look at him. Since he had a history of foreign body, she suspected he might have something but couldn’t be sure, and her clinic didn’t have the proper equipment such as ultrasound. (You need to be certified to use ultrasound or endoscope on animals.) Since he couldn’t eat, she put a catheter through the side of his neck down to his stomach and asked us to put liquid food to keep him alive. However, he was getting weaker and weaker by the minute. He still made no improvements. If I remember correctly, it was about a few days later, he projected out some water he just drunk. We took him to the central again, and this time they finally found an obstruction in his intestine with ultrasound. From there, everything went very quickly. Our vet took him in for surgery (she had kept close contact with the central, and they had decided that it would be best she would operate on him, considering our financial situation), and she did indeed find another piece of rubber tube. It was almost embedded into the wall of his intestine, all squished and eroded. Because of the condition of the tube, we wondered if it was from the first incident. Anyway, the surgery was a success.
This was taken when we were still trying to figure out what was going on with him. You can see a catheter sticking out on his neck, and he had a collar to protect that area. He was losing weight by the second.