This morning Kitty was fine. Then this afternoon we came home and he has an open gash in his foot. We have no idea how or why this happened.

Kitty’s wounded right back paw

Close up

So I used my basic first aid skills and put together a few items to help him:

Alcohol, neosporin, cotton balls, bandage, tape

Kitty’s Bandage -He really wants to chew it off

I hope he’s ok and doesn’t get infected or something. We rarely take our animals to the vet because we do a pretty good job of treating things at home. When Schnoodle had liver problems – her eyes were turning yellow from jaundice, she was moping around and drooling- and she almost died, we took her in, but the steroids didn’t work. Our last option was to use herbal remedies;  we found out that milk thistle helps livers, and ever since then we just give her a little bit of that in some “treats” and she has lived another 4 years or so since then! So now we take milk thistle too, as a preventive medicine.

When Kitty had a blocked urethra and was trying to pee everywhere in the house, we called a veterinarian friend of ours (who lives in another state) and she told us to take him to the vet immediately because he could turn toxic and die. Well, it was a Sunday night about 9:30pm and when we called the on-call emergency vet office they said it would be about $200 just to see him, let alone what it would cost to “fix” the problem. So we took a risk and looked up alternative medicine regarding that and found that male cats often don’t drink enough water and get clogged up down there. We fed him canned tuna in water with concentrated cranberry  juice and he was fine by the next day. He also has ever since lived outside.

We were not so lucky with the black chicken, but overall, our rate of home remedy success for our pets has been pretty high! And that’s true even for our own personal health as well.