Of Rinderpest and Meezer

[mallorys_camera]

As chezsci predicted, Mizz Meezer returned – she is, however, awfully sick. Appears to be some sort of chemical pneumonia, doubtless secondary to having been squirted straight in the face by the skunk. Milo and I encountered an adorable baby skunk yesterday – you can be sure we kept our distance! – so I guess Meezer was just messing with the wrong defenseless animal. She also had a thistle on her nose which I removed, so now she has a major owie there.

Goes without saying that I can’t afford to take her to the vet. Even if I could afford it, I’m not sure I would – she’s mostly an outdoor cat, and this is the kind of stuff that happens to outdoor cats. I powdered her with one of those dry shampoos – she hated it but it killed the skunk smell -- so I was able to bring her into the house. I have her in one of the closets, I am forcing 5 cc of milk down her every hour or so with a medicine dropper – I figure hydration is the biggie. I rubbed a dab of topical cortisone cream into her nose – I figured she’d absorb it and it would provide some systemic, anti-inflammatory effects, help her breathe. Since I’m fairly sure what she has is a chemical pneumonia, antibiotics wouldn’t do any good.

If she lives, she lives.

If she dies, I’ll be sad. But she’s had a good life for the most part, better than it would have been if Ben hadn’t rescued her from that abusive first set of humans.


Else? Lobsang and I discussed the end of the world.

And I learned all about rinderpest, which is the second disease to be successfully eradicated from the planet. Rinderpest is a kind of bovine cousin to measles, and was responsible for a great many Eureopean famines, right up through the 17th century. Its eradication – formally recognized in June – is a huge public health triumph, but have you even heard of the disease? No, you have not. And neither had I.

The next disease on the agenda for eradication is polio which is actually a very stupid choice for eradication, given that it’s asymptomatic in the majority of carriers, and it’s only endemic in a very small part of the world. Measles would be a far better choice – measles still kills close to 200,000 people a year. But Bill Gates has staked the professional reputation of the mighty Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on the eradication of polio, and like everything else, public health is politics.