Trip to the Vet and More Family

When we arrived home from PA last Friday, I noticed that Ariel was sneezing occasionally. We are used to cat sneezing unfortunately, as Crookshank has had allergies for years. It is worse in some locations than others, but we do have an antihistamine we can give him that helps a lot. But Ariel has never sneezed so that was unusual. It didn’t seem like much at first. I looked it up online and the info said that cats can get upper respiratory infections that are similar to colds in humans. Sometimes they go away on their own, but sometimes not. So we decided to just keep an eye on her.

In the meantime, we were traveling. Over the weekend, we watched her. She seemed to be holding her own – eating, drinking normally. But she seemed to be sleeping more and not having as much energy as usual. When she laid on my lap, I could feel a spasm occasionally that reminded me of a cough. She was also sneezing more often and sounded stuffed up when she breathed. So we decided we better get her in to the vet. I looked up vets on Yelp and found one only a few miles away that had good reviews. When I called yesterday morning, they didn’t have any openings and gave us an appointment for Tuesday afternoon. I took the appt as it didn’t seem like Ariel was in dire straits.

Shortly after I called the vet, she really started sneezing. I was concerned that waiting over 24 more hours would give the infection more time to gain hold, so I went back on Yelp and found another vet, the Veterinary Medical Center of Fort Mill. It was even closer, only 2 miles away, and AAHA accredited. So I called them and they were very nice, giving us an appt at 12:30 – only 2 hours later!

Wow, what a great experience. When we arrived at 12:15, they got us right in to an open room. There was a blanket on the floor, sprinkled with cat nip and some treats. All of the staff was SO friendly. We had an awesome vet for the cats in KY, so our bar for vets is set really high, but this one was right up there. Turned out that Ariel did have an upper respiratory infection, and they were able to give her an antibiotic shot so we don’t even have to wrestle a pill into her for the next 10 days. It turned out to be such a blessing in disguise that the other place couldn’t get us in.

Last night, we had another family visit – to catch up with Harry’s nephew CW and wife Kris. (We went to their wedding in Jacksonville in April.) They happened to be visiting Kris’ brother who happens to live right here in Fort Mill (which we didn’t realize until they got in touch with us to tell us they were only a few miles away). They invited us for dinner last night so we had an enjoyable evening chatting with them, and partaking of a delicious meal!

We got back home to find that Ariel was perking up. And this morning she seems much better – still sneezing occasionally, but sounds much less congested. So we are very happy with our decision to get her into the vet right away.

Tonight, we are heading to Andrew and Amanda’s for dinner. We have seen many amazing pictures of meals that Andrew whips up and are looking forward to trying one out ourselves!