misspelling deliberate.

we took ororo to the vet today, and, man, was that an expensive visit! granted, over half of it wasn't even her, but it's still her fault, so to speak.

as mentioned before, we've had something of a serious flea problem. in the past, we've used advantage with good results, but we couldn't find a petsmart out here and petco didn't carry it (though the online store does, but we really needed help pronto, not 6 weeks from pronto). so we tried hartz.

bad, bad idea.

the hartz doesn't work as well and we've noticed the fleas are as bad as ever within 2 or 3 weeks (for a product that's supposed to work a month). vagner slept a lot after both applications, although we assumed that a lot of that had to do with his definite distaste for being medicated at all. i've been quite irritated at spending the amount of money i did and not having a product that works well. today the vet told us that the hartz is also often unsafe for pets. (guess what got thrown out as soon as we came home?)

then, right about the time we started using the hartz, we noticed roro was losing her fur. at first we thought maybe it had to do with the fleas - all that scratching. but even when the hartz was "working," she was losing fur, mostly off the tail end. by this last week, she literally had a bare butt and the furlessness was moving up. since vagner wasn't having the same problems, i figured it for an allergy, and i thought maybe she was allergic to the hartz since we'd never seen anything like this in her before. this is not her usual reaction to fleas, nor did she react this way to the advantage when we used it before.

yesterday we finally found a petsmart, which has a vet associated with it. so we made the appointment for tonight and, when saxy got home, we put her in the crate and away we went.

roro doesn't like cars. more specifically, she doesn't like traveling in cars. i don't think she stopped mrowing the whole way up, or the whole way back, for that matter. in the middle, we were told that she's allergic to fleas, and she was given a cortisone shot to ease the irritation. we also bought advantage for her, the other 2 cats, and gypsy. all told, the visit cost us $112.

the cortisone seems to be working already. she's been at the cat food dish at least 4 times since we got home, which is more than she usually goes all day. she even got a bit of fancy feast (as did the other cats) when she came home. between the cortisone and the advantage that we applied almost as soon as we came in, she ought to be feeling pretty comfortable again fairly quickly, allergy reaction or not.

i am a bit suspicious of the timing of this "allergy." i can't remember for sure, seeing as my memory has a 5 minute lifespan, but i wonder if the hartz helped this allergy along. she'd never been allergic to fleas before and she has had them since coming our from cali. and it seems odd to me that the hair fall out got worse after the hartz.

the advantage stuff may be pricier, but i think we'll stick with it now that we know where our local petsmart is, for the comfort of all animals, not just poor allergicat ro.

(as for the whole new cat in the house thing, still a lot of hissing going on, but hitomi is sneaking out of the carrier now and again, has figured out where the cat box is, and seems to be starting to settle in a little. she does seem to have made the carrier home base though.)