A long time ago (April 2009!) I went to the dentist to have some cavities filled, and they numbed me, then came in to the room and told me “Oops, we don’t have an in-network dentist here today. Do you want to pay out-of-network fees and continue?”
Um. No.
At the time (full story here), I was trying to be chill about it, but it’s something that’s made me feel more annoyed over the years. I mean, WTF? Get your ish together! We have a different dentist now (who has it together, but doesn’t clean our teeth as well. Sigh.)
Long story long, I inadvertently did that to Khali today. At the last veterinarian visit for Apollo and Starbuck, the vet gave (well, sold) me some Gabapentin to help relax the cats for their next appointment, and to use to sedate them to trim their nails at home.
So Khali had her annual well appointment today, and I gave her the drugs two hours before her appointment, then the vet had to cancel the appointment… which is no big deal (I already had to rescheduled twice) but now I feel like an a-hole for sedating my cat for no good reason! Like, I feel REALLY guilty! You pick her up and she’s just like a limp noodle. Khali is NOT like that. She has fight-or-flight turned on 80-90% of the time.
She’s fine, I just feel so bad. Poor thing.
We did take advantage of it to clip her front nails though. They’ve never been clipped! You can hear her walking around on the hardwood and tile in our house, and her nails were so long they started to curve too far. So I’m happy we could do that. But I am really not sure if we’ll use this just to clip their nails (Starbuck needs hers clipped too…).
I just hope she snaps out of it soon!
I sat her down next to Apollo and she plopped right over to him. She hardly ever stays where I place her!
Poor baby!! Sedated pets is so hard to see. We had to give Chewie some gabapentin when he tweaked his neck and it makes him so drowsy and glassy eyed. Same thing with trazadone he’s supposed to take before vet visits. I’ve noticed that Chewie gets so sleepy but fights it as hard as he can. I suppose it has something to do with his anxiety and need to be alert at all times.
It is hard to see! And I feel so bad I can’t make her understand it’s okay and I will take care of her and that she doesn’t need to be anxious. How long does it take Chewie to come out of it when he takes trazadone before visits? And how many days in a row did you have to give him gabapentin? It would be so hard to have him not be himself for days!
It probably takes him about 4 hours to fully succumb to and then sleep off the trazadone. The gabapentin was longer, but thankfully we mainly gave it to him at night and he didn’t fight that one as much.
Ahh good to know. I hope he doesn’t need either any time soon! 🙂 <3
Awwww poor Khali. While it would be nice to be able to have the cuddles, it’s not fun to see them in such a blah-like state! Especially since she’s being not like herself at all!
How do you give her the pill? I don’t even know how I would sedate Lila like that. It’s a fight every month just to give her flea/heartworm treatment! (And forget about her nails. I haven’t cut them since early last year! It’s too traumatic for her, lol)
Exactly! Although after I wrote this I did sit next to her on the couch then had her on my lap for a while and that was pretty wonderful. I’ve never done either before. And she was purring and rolling around and exposing her belly, so I think she liked it.
I opened it up and put the powder from inside of it in her wet food. I wonder if this would work for Lila, if your vet thinks it’s safe? I thought there was no way in hell we’d ever be able to clip Khali’s nails, but we did it!
Aw, poor Khali! At least you were able to cut her nails, so it wasn’t a total wash. But, still, I get how you felt guilty about doing that to her. How long did it take her to snap out of it?
Yeah! I am glad we could trim them. She needed it.
She was kind of back to normal this morning! So more than 12 hours! Maybe she will be back to normal by 24 hours at 2 pm?
Fingers crossed!