Hospitalization Check-In'ers

[AmbrosiaWriter]

My Animal ER is 24-7, 365(6). This means that if your pet has to be hospitalized here, you can wake up at 3 AM and go "OMG I'M SO WORRIED ABOUT MR. FLUFFY BUTT VON REGINALD THE THIRD" pick up the phone and call us for an update.

We actually encourage people to do this if it means setting their mind at ease about their pet. However, there is a caveat--

If we have emergencies in the hospital at that time, I will give you basic information on how your pet is doing "resting comfortably, just got treatments, hasn't eaten yet but he hasn't vomited either which is good" but I can not go into test results, or anything that is medically related.

If there are emergencies in the hospital at the time you called, I will make a note that you called, say the doctor is in with an emergency, and make sure said doctor will give you a call back once we have things stabilized.

This does not mean to call me back every ten minutes asking if the doctor is free yet. This does not mean driving down here to "visit" because while we do allow visiting, if there are emergencies you might end up waiting upwards of an hour to sit with Mr Fluffy Butt von Reginald the Third because we cannot allow you into the ICU, all our rooms are taken, or the technician is trying to stabilize a pet and can't drop everything to disconnect MFBVRIII from his IV just so you can use it as a method to try and weedle in an update from the doctor--- who, by the way, IS TRYING TO RESUSCITATE A PET THAT JUST CODED.

Screaming at me about this is only going to put you on the bottom of the call back list unless we need authorization for something to happen immediately. (You'll still get your call back, but Lady Sky Dancer MacNutter Duffet's owner will be called first.)

I understand pet parents are worried. But when hospitalized the technicians, even during rushes, are making time to make sure all our in patients are stable, comfortable, and up to time on their medications and feeding.

So for my sake, stop tying up my phone lines and screaming at me when the doctor can't take your call because said doctor is still working with the pet he was the LAST time you called... TEN MINUTES AGO.


~FIN~

[Pixi_kitty]

I will say, I'm very thankful my vet has that same attitude. I make it a general rule not to call them more than once a day because I understand they have a job, and, as in all medical areas, no news is generally good news.

I did appreciate when my cat was last there, I called in to check on her at like eleven at night. (She sleeps in bed with my every night so I was more aware of her being away then.) The person who answered told me that last time they checked on her, she was still sleeping, and the doctor was busy with essential things, but would call me with an update when he could. That was good enough for me.

[fireheart]

Please tell me that the cat is an actual cat you have at the practice, that name just made me giggle.

[AmbrosiaWriter]

Please tell me that the cat is an actual cat you have at the practice, that name just made me giggle.

No I was just making fun of my friends who will name their pets these ridiculously long names but only end up calling them the first. Kind of annoys me.

We have had a Kitty Cat, Meow Meow, Cat in the hospital though....

[Captain Trips]

I find myself wondering how often you get this:
"Let that other dog die, for all I care. Mr. Fluffy Butt is the only one that matters!"

Does it help to remind them that you are, after all, a hospital emergency room? (Thought not - what site are we on?)

[Seshat]

My cousin once named a cat 'Runny Fasty Snowy Kitty-Cat Puss Puss Puss'.

In his defence, he was a small kid.

[wolfie]

I find myself wondering how often you get this:
"Let that other dog die, for all I care. Mr. Fluffy Butt is the only one that matters!"

If you do get this, my understanding is that the "Alphabet soup" law prohibiting turning away emergency patients applies only to HUMAN hospitals. Would it be helpful to point this out to the SC, noting that if they take this attitude Mr. Fluffy But will NOT be welcome on the premises after he is discharged from his current stay?

[bbbr]

my family has a "kitteh kitteh", also known as "shaggy pyscho momma bitch-cat" (that's her formal name on the vets records). She looks and acts like a Maine Coon 99% of the time but likes to attack dogs "because" and she's took a chunk out of the vet when we got her fixed post kitten delivery. Her daughters are also a little nuts...

[DGoddessChardonnay]

No I was just making fun of my friends who will name their pets these ridiculously long names but only end up calling them the first. Kind of annoys me.

We have had a Kitty Cat, Meow Meow, Cat in the hospital though....

Mine is Pumpkin DePoodles but normally I call him Poodles. His name came to me several yellow cats ago (he's the Fourth actually) but we're noted for coming up with some "interesting" names.

Mom, when she was growing up, had a Chihuahua she named Poochie D. Puddles.

[Sapphire Silk]

Mine is Taz . . . short for Tazmanian Devil.

Need I say more?

She's a pretty independent sort. I don't get too worried about her.

[Seanette]

My current cat is Allie (I changed the spelling from Alley, thinking that was just a bit too bad-jokey). Her predecessor was Felix, named not for the cartoon (I'd never heard of it, and he was a long-haired brown tabby) but for the Odd Couple character.

I've named pairs of kittens "This and That" and "Lost and Found". OK, I was a teenager at the time and thought it was funny.

[AccountingDrone]

Hm, our current overlords are Jezabel and Five. Previous cats were Puff [hey, I was five ... deal with it =)] Brownie, Dolly, Fancy, Pyewackett [actually 2 named Pye at different times] and Banzai. One of the Pyewacketts was nicknamed Conan the Cat by animal control in Portsmouth VA. He liked going next door and tormenting the pit bulls there. He weighed 22 pounds, of solid muscle. My eldest cat was Puff, she lived to 22, the youngest was Banzai at 11 [he ended up with the whole bladder/kidney thing that hits male cats =( ] Jezabel , my current little old lady kitty is going blind, and she has a sinus allergy to the same pollen I do [we both get runny noses and wheezes at the same time, it is actually sort of funny in a sad way] and is starting to get sort of arthritic in the hind end, we had to build a little ramp so she can get up and down from the bed and I have one of the cat heating pads on the foot of the bed for her to sleep on in the winter.

[retro]

Makes our last few cats' names (Lucky, Tasha and Garfield) seem uninspired in comparison.

I wonder though what her attitude would be if the pet who was coding on the table was hers.....

[raudf]

I have a Dodo-Kitty and a Mouthy-Cat. Dodo was originally Velcro, but the oldest (a toddler at the time) couldn't say Velcro and kept calling him Dodo. Guess which the idiot liked best? Dodo's "full name" would be the "Almost Extinct, Nearly Flighted, Cat of Arkansas," due to how much trouble he got into as a kitten.

Mouthy's name came about because he was the kitten in the litter that would sit in the middle of the room and play "Marco Polo" with his litter mates. He still does that with his boy or me, depending on what his mood is.

[Deevil]

The "worst" long name I gave to any of my animals would have been my long haired silver tabby Her full name was Shasta Ayita Weeko Kasha Igmu (the middle names according the the baby name book* my sister had while I was waiting for Shasta to be old enough to take home [plus one of the few Sioux/Lakota words I knew], would loosely translate to "pretty little dancing girl in a cat fur robe" in various Native American languages), but she was usually just called Shasta-Boo or Boobala... and occasionally Fluff-Butt or Fluffernutter.

*turns out that Weeko does not actually mean pretty, and that's all I am saying about the matter