Xander Goes to the Vet Again

Over the last 4 or 5 days Xander has started to sneeze again. And when he sneezed on me it was very wet. He also threw up at least 3 times over the last week; I found some other stuff but am not sure who the culprit was. The last time he went to the Cat Clinic was about 3 weeks ago; so he's become more relaxed about going to the vet.

Relaxing in the carrier on the way to the vet.

Xander has an upper respiratory infection again. Because he's come down with it again, I asked them to test him for FIV, Feline Immunodeficiency Virus. When we adopted Chibi 10 years ago we found out she was FIV-positive. She was tested 3 times; since she was young we wanted to make sure the 1st positive was not a false positive from maternal antibodies, and 2 more times with the ELISA and Western Blot tests. At that time FIV-positive cats were assumed to have a limited life span and owners of FIV-negative cats were advised to not have an FIV-positive cat in the household. We decided to keep her anyway. We kept Chibi separated from the other cats at night and only allowed her to play with them when we were home and closely supervising them since biting is how FIV is transmitted. Every year we tested Xander, Shiro, & Momo to see if they had FIV; each year they came back FIV-negative. After about 5 years we let Chibi mingle with the rest of the cats with less supervision and stopped testing them every year for FIV. The good news is that Xander is still FIV-negative, so living with Chibi for 10 years has not affected him. But he will have to take clavamox twice a day for 10 days for the respiratory infection; plus prednisolone every other day for his asthma.

During my walk this morning I saw another house being demolished. This one is about a block away, near the school. Because of the restricted size of the property they don't have the screening around the property up yet. The other house is about half a block away from us; they put the screening up at least a week before they demolished the house, which happened on Monday. I'll try to get a photo of the 1st house tomorrow; there was too much activity blocking my view today.


Curtis & Lori landed in Skagway this morning. They boarded a train for a tour through the area. More photos of the tour tomorrow.

The Norwegian Pearl berthed at Skagway. (Photo by Lori)

Getting on the train at Skagway. (Photo b Lori)