Hi all!
 
I've been lurking for a month or so now and thought I should introduce
myself and my crew.  My SO and I have four little fuzzies ranging in age
from one to three years old.  Two boys and two girls.
 
The reason I chose to post now is to tell a story that may (or may not) help
anyone out there.  Today I picked up Brandy, our three year old silver mitt,
from the vet after an overnight stay.  On Saturday I noticed that she had
skinny poops and wasn't eating a whole lot.  I made a mental note and moved
on.  On Sunday we saw her backing up and straining, but not much if anything
was happening.  On Monday, we went to the vet.  She didn't notice anything
too extrordinary, but agreed that she was showing symptoms of something that
could be a partial blockage.  We had her x-rayed and saw a little bit of gas
and her intestines were a little bunchy.  Oh, by the way while we were
there, she presented her, ah-hem, symptoms for the vet.  She looked at the
stool and it was very birdseedy.  Her urine looked fine.  We talked about it
and decided to do a barium series on her so we could see what was going on.
The barium x-ray showed something that looked like marble in her intestines
and a big clump of stuff in her colon.  After close examination of a couple
of stool samples, the vet thought she saw plant fibers in the stool.  I
looked at the x-rays and it all looked strangely like the sawdust that comes
from using the wood pellet litter that we had recently switched to.  The
x-ray this morning showed that everything has passed and she should be fine.
 
The moral of this story is, if you do something different with the living
conditions of your little fuzzies home, keep a close eye on them to make
sure they are reacting well.  I don't think Brandy meant to eat sawdust, I
never saw her chowing down in the litter box, but she didn't feel very good
and had to spend the night away from home.  Needless to say all the wood
pellets have been removed from the house and we are using recycled newspaper
litter again.  It may be a little more expensive, but I'll rest easier at
night from now on.
 
Thank you for listening to me, and if anyone else is having a problem with
the wood pellets, let me know.  We're starting to think we're weird here in
Cincinnati.
 
Rachel and the Four Entropy Accelerators (Brandy, Barnaby, Bixby, and
Amanda)
[Posted in FML issue 1848]