I chose to interview a family member about the care of a cat with a congenital heart defect, and how they have been sucked into the strange world of cat cardiology (and the community of people who have pets with chronic illness).I asked my informant to walk me through one aspect of their daily routine, but allowed them to choose what they wanted to talk to me about.

In December of 2018, the informant’s cat had a heart attack due to a congenital heart defect making the tissue in the heart too thick (hypertrophic cardio myopathy). Since then, the cat has recovered, but requires extra care. He takes several medications and visits the MedVet occasionally, a hospital for animals who need extra medical attention.

The interview covered the morning routine with the cat.

I asked for consent before recording and/or taking screenshots. The participant said that they would prefer that I did not, so I am unable to provide screenshots or images.

Tuesday, June 30, 6:30 PM EST

Direct Observations Interpretation
Zoom background in use—some building in the background Building may be at college where she works? It was a university zoom account
Gesturing to different areas of the house where different activities occur (even though I can’t really see the space because of the zoom background) It seems like the stairs are offscreen to the right and the kitchen is behind the informant
Describes cats waking at 7 AM, going downstairs and feeding them, gestures offscreen to right Upstairs/bedrroms offscreen, probably up the stairs to the right
Gives cats dry food in morning, shows dry food (Iams and Fancy Feast), sometimes puts it on the floor so the cats think it’s treats Why different types of food? For the two different cats? Is it important?

Why put it on the floor? Why is it important that they think it’s treats they eat it anyway?
Shows medicine—first blue bag, rubber/plastic, says “MedVet” on it, has many pill bottles, makes eye contact while showing bag Maybe going to the MedVet is semiregular? There are a lot of medications in the bag
Goes through each medication, explains she gets most of the medications at Walgreens (apparently cats can take human heart medications just smaller doses), but some need to be ordered in the mail  
Shows grinder (looks like a small gear, pill goes in bottom container, twist top into bottom, grinds pill. Top is purple bottom is clear, all plastic) for pills, explains process of grinding pills, mixing with wet food, putting in syringe and giving to (reluctant) cat  
Cat doesn’t always take all medicine, just hope to give him as much as possible I found inexact attitude of “it’s close enough” interesting. Many people think of medicine as very precise, so it was really interesting to hear this perspective
Lets cat outside after medication, checks if it’s dark (more coyotes this year—speculates quarantine/less people means more coyotes around) In a future interview maybe talk about outdoor cats in the neighborhood? (feelings of neighbors, do other cats go out, etc?)
Gets started on other activities for the day Probably housework as well as work on prepping classes for the fall (mentioned teaching, prepping for online/in person mixed)

 

Reflection:

I chose to interview a family member over zoom to discuss caring for a cat with a heart condition. We did encounter some interesting challenges, including the use of a zoom background. This caused some funny instances of objects she was trying to show me disappearing but may have also hindered my ability to see her interacting with her environment. I fount this exercise very useful, as I did not have very much experience taking formal field notes, and this provided a good, structured way to take the notes. Although this was a good start, and I believe it went fairly well, I struggled to keep up sometimes, and may not have been as attentive to physical signs as I should have been. On occasion I found it difficult to focus on speech, facial expression, gestures, and taking my notes at the same time, which may just mean that I need more practice to perfect my notetaking.