Fuddland

I made a few videos at the Panda Breeding Research Centre in Chēngdu (成都), the first of which shows two three-year-old giant pandas play-fighting in the cold morning air.

Read the rest of “Panda-ing”…

With domestic cats living longer and longer, they’re starting to develop some conditions that wouldn’t have traditionally presented themselves in your average feline — a fact demonstrated by our cat being diagnosed with hyperthyroidism.

We’d noticed a change in his behaviour in the last few months: he was always begging for food [being very vocal and following us around the house] but despite us relenting more often than not just to shut him up, he was still losing weight, and had increased bouts of dashing madly around the house for no apparent reason. Some quick googling had us suspecting his thyroid was playing up, and this was confirmed by a blood test at the end of last week.

There are three approaches to treatment: daily pills forever, to control the thyroid gland; surgery to remove all or parts of the gland; or injections of radioactive iodine, which destroys thyroid tissue. Our vet has recommended a combination of the first two, so the cat is having his thyroid activity gradually reduced over a few weeks via pills mixed into his food, followed by surgery to remove the gland — going straight to the operation would put too much of a strain on his system.

[Of course there was always the option to do nothing and just keep his ravenous appetite sated — the strain on his heart would lead to heart failure.]

One thing that’s not quite clear to me is what the effect is of having little or no thyroid gland, seeing as the hormones it produces regulate the metabolism and control a variety of other bodily functions, such as blood flow. And the cost of all this treatment? Just over a thousand pounds. He’d better be grateful! At the very least, he could help with the vacuuming once in a while, seeing as it mostly consists of his hairs.