Hee Seop’s Hospital Visit

According to the Cornell Feline Health Center, there’s a ton of plants and food to keep your cats away from during the holiday season. And the rest of the year, too. Poinsettias are one of them, though according to the article, they aren’t as bad as say, mistletoe, which can cause death. Lilies are also listed. I used to think this was just relevant around Easter time, you know, as in, Easter lilies? Turns out that even a teeny tiny amount of any lily can kill your cat.

It was already a stressful weekend, about a month ago. Hopper was at the vet that Saturday to have her heart rate and blood pressure re-checked (that’s another story), and as she gets older, she has less patience for vet visits. On Sunday, we were expecting new bedroom furniture to be delivered — we finally got a platform bed with storage drawers underneath; I’d been concerned about Hee Seop’s safety because he had long ago created a hidey-hole by tearing open the box spring, to which he normally retires after a meal. You know how hard it is to get a cat out from under a bed as it is? Heh. Try getting one out from inside the bed. So if there was a fire or something, well, I didn’t want deal with that.

At that time, I still had trouble communicating with people, especially face-to-face because of my anxiety, so I was glad Brian was home for the furniture delivery. However, early that morning, we noticed a huge streak of orange smeared across one of Hee Seop’s snowy cheeks. If he’d gotten into the trash or sink, I didn’t know what he could have eaten because we didn’t have anything with tomato sauce or chili (the culprit last time) the night before. Then Brian found a chewed-up petal on the floor below the mantle, where we keep fresh flowers.

Brian buys a new bouquet each week, and this time I noticed what I thought were lilies, but they were orange, so I wasn’t sure and didn’t think they were a big deal. Still, I got all paranoid and we looked up cats and lilies on the Internet. I can’t remember which site it was, but it said the teeniest, tiniest amount ingested of any part of a lily could cause serious, probably fatal problems. The site said that if the cat’s treated within 6 hours of ingestion, the survival rate was high; between 6 and 12 hours, touch-and-go; after 18 hours, forget about it.

Fortunately, it hadn’t been more than 6, and I insisted that Brian take him to the pet ER. I so badly wanted to go because Hee Seop’s still such a shy guy and only goes to the vet once a year because he’s so healthy. He doesn’t leave the house, otherwise. And having worked at the pet ER once upon a time, I know how chaotic and busy it is, especially on the weekends. In addition, our vet is a cats-only hospital, so the poor guy would have to deal with the presence of dogs. Who knew how long we’d be there, and one of us had to stay home.

I was able to deal with the furniture guys on my own, which was nothing compared to my concern over Hee Seop. He was hospitalized overnight. They had him on fluids because lilies mainly affect the kidneys. According to the notes, he wouldn’t eat, tried hiding inside his cage, and was very scared and nervous — but sweet! The next morning, Brian transferred him to the regular vet where the poor guy was hospitalized the rest of the day.

Hee Seop survived the ordeal — having ingested the lily, as well as the anxiety he must have felt around all those strangers, strange smells, and the poking and prodding. When the regular vet sent him home, they told us to watch out for vomiting, lack of appetite, and lethargy. He was totally fine, other than his confusion at there no longer being an “under the bed” in which to take refuge.