Crazy Morning, Poor Flash

Hello everyone, this is Morry.

Normally when we walk the boys to school, we leave through the third garage door.  It has a remote keypad.  We don't bring keys with us because we just punch in the code.  In the meantime, we've added some things to prevent a potential thief from circumventing the garage door opener.  As we left this morning, we hit the keypad to have the door go down.  It didn't go down and required us to hit the button several times.  We walked the boys to school and then came back.  As we tried to get into the garage, the keypad just wasn't working.  No matter how many times we pressed the code and hit open, it didn't work.  We don't have a key hidden outside and we're very good about locking all the doors and windows.  Just before we called a locksmith, Rachel thought to check to see if the keypad was battery powered.  So I opened it up and it was.  The backlight was still coming on on the keypad, but we had hope.  Rachel went across the street to see if our neighbor had a battery, but they weren't home.  Just as she was walking back, other neighbors came home.  We told them our dilemma and then went and got a 9V battery for us.  I put it in and, thankfully, the garage door opened.

When we got in, we decided to call the vet.  Flash was sneezing quite a bit yesterday.  He ended up sleeping on my legs which he never does last night.  This morning he didn't do any of his normal routine.  Rachel looked at him and he had a goopy eye.  The vet said to bring him in and Rachel made a 10am appointment.  Around 9:25 we started our attempt to get him into the carrier.  We got Mottel's old soft carrier.  Flash was sitting on Evan's bed.  Rachel sat with him and I brought it up.  I closed the door behind me as I came in the room.  Rachel grabbed him but he squirmed and used his back legs and claws to kick off of Rachel's stomach.  He got under the bed.  I was able to coax him out and Rachel grabbed him again but again, he was able to claw her and get away.   This time I had Rachel flush him out of the bed and I grabbed him and we were able to put him in the carrier but we could not zip it in time.  He really scratched our hands up and peed in the carrier and managed to get away and under the bed again.  It was now around 9:45.  So I finally said, enough is enough.  Rachel went and got Calvin's hard carrier while I picked up Evan's mattress and put it against the wall.  Then I picked up the box spring so Flash didn't have anywhere to hide.  I was able to get Flash again and we were able to shove him in the carrier and close it.  Not before, Flash had really ripped up my right hand.  One cut wasn't very wide but it went really deep.  I think his claw must have gotten stuck in my finger.  I felt it as I was getting him in there.  By this time it was after 9:50.  Rachel called the vet and told them she'd be late.

When Rachel got to the vet, they took Flash's temperature.  It was 105.  The normal range for a cat is between 100 and 102.  They wanted to do a chest x-ray.  They were able to get one x-ray but on the second x-ray, Flash bit the technician.  Flash is not up-to-date on his rabies vaccine.  It was due in August.  Calvin is on a November schedule. So we decided to hold off getting Flash's vaccinations until November so they could go together.  We knew it was tough to get Flash, so we thought bringing both of them at the same time was not only convenient but would help calm Flash.  The problem is that since Flash bit someone at the vet and he wasn't vaccinated, the city requires that Flash go into quarantine for 10 days.  The technician actually had to go and be treated for the bite.  The vet was supposed to find out where they could quarantine Flash and let us know.  He needs his antibiotics and animal control might not be equipped to handle that so they were planning on quarantining him at the vet.  We have not yet heard from the vet as of this writing.  We're trying to find out where he is.

So it was an eventful morning.  The rest of the day was fairly standard and uneventful. The morning more than made up for it.

Until next time...