You know what Friday brings
Dec. 4th, 2015 12:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydyOk, I have had all the mimosas. My typing is, um, iffy. So deal.
My lovely cat Naomi, who thinks that David is the best person in the world, is fifteen, and likes me ok, has been diagnosed with kidney disease. She needs to eat kidney supportive food, and only kidney supportive food. I have (quickly counts on her fingers) five cats, and two different types of diet. This is complex. I got a kidney food sampler from the vet, and have been trying various foods on her. Conclusion the first: Naomi is not eating enough. While she likes wet food, she eats slowly. She is also exhibiting behavior I associate with cats who are nauseous. To say I am worried vastly understates things. She may be eating some dry food, and I am starting to mix dry kidney food into the usual weight-loss food, with the intent of switching over to dry kidney food on a permanent basis. (Anybody want to buy the remainder of my Blue Buffalo weight loss food? It's high quality, and I just bought 20 lb. bag of it.) Naomi, at the vet a week ago, was down to 7.4 pounds. I am very, very worried. I've never dealt with kidney disease before. Oh, second conclusion: Ninja will eat pretty much anything, provided he hasn't had it before. He broke into the container with the sampler of kidney foods and chewed through the ziplock to eat new and unusual kidney dry food. Best bad cat of the century.
Lady Jane has had a couple of socializing breakthroughs, recently. Not, alas, with Nuit, who has been horrible to her, and she's been horrible back. But two days ago, when Lady Jane Grey was being petted, she felt that she became a bit stroppish, and rather than attack me, she gave a very obvious and particular meow, clearly asking me to back off. Now, if she were a human, I would say that this was a huge step forward because it indicated that she understood that we were in this together, and she was learning to cooperate with me on functional social interactions. Since she's a cat, I have no confidence that I understand her cognitive functions or ultimate goals. Still, I think that's a huge step forward. And the day before yesterday, when she was being petted, she batted at me with velveted paws, and did not bite me. This is the first time, ever, she has been playful with me without hurting me. I complimented her extravagantly. Lady Jane Grey also has a dime-sized hole in her back between her shoulder-blades. I can't tell if this is a recent injury courtesy of Nuit, or if this is a recurrence of whatever caused the lump, previously, in roughly the same location. I've been dosing it with hydrogen peroxide every couple of days, as seems appropriate. It was particularly raw-looking this morning. She's very good about letting me look at it, and swab it with hydrogen peroxide. She really is a very, very fine cat.
Alright. Autocorrect has helped clean up most of my typos, at the risk of making me look completely incoherent. Sorry about that. Me and my mimosas are falling over, now. Good nigh.
My lovely cat Naomi, who thinks that David is the best person in the world, is fifteen, and likes me ok, has been diagnosed with kidney disease. She needs to eat kidney supportive food, and only kidney supportive food. I have (quickly counts on her fingers) five cats, and two different types of diet. This is complex. I got a kidney food sampler from the vet, and have been trying various foods on her. Conclusion the first: Naomi is not eating enough. While she likes wet food, she eats slowly. She is also exhibiting behavior I associate with cats who are nauseous. To say I am worried vastly understates things. She may be eating some dry food, and I am starting to mix dry kidney food into the usual weight-loss food, with the intent of switching over to dry kidney food on a permanent basis. (Anybody want to buy the remainder of my Blue Buffalo weight loss food? It's high quality, and I just bought 20 lb. bag of it.) Naomi, at the vet a week ago, was down to 7.4 pounds. I am very, very worried. I've never dealt with kidney disease before. Oh, second conclusion: Ninja will eat pretty much anything, provided he hasn't had it before. He broke into the container with the sampler of kidney foods and chewed through the ziplock to eat new and unusual kidney dry food. Best bad cat of the century.
Lady Jane has had a couple of socializing breakthroughs, recently. Not, alas, with Nuit, who has been horrible to her, and she's been horrible back. But two days ago, when Lady Jane Grey was being petted, she felt that she became a bit stroppish, and rather than attack me, she gave a very obvious and particular meow, clearly asking me to back off. Now, if she were a human, I would say that this was a huge step forward because it indicated that she understood that we were in this together, and she was learning to cooperate with me on functional social interactions. Since she's a cat, I have no confidence that I understand her cognitive functions or ultimate goals. Still, I think that's a huge step forward. And the day before yesterday, when she was being petted, she batted at me with velveted paws, and did not bite me. This is the first time, ever, she has been playful with me without hurting me. I complimented her extravagantly. Lady Jane Grey also has a dime-sized hole in her back between her shoulder-blades. I can't tell if this is a recent injury courtesy of Nuit, or if this is a recurrence of whatever caused the lump, previously, in roughly the same location. I've been dosing it with hydrogen peroxide every couple of days, as seems appropriate. It was particularly raw-looking this morning. She's very good about letting me look at it, and swab it with hydrogen peroxide. She really is a very, very fine cat.
Alright. Autocorrect has helped clean up most of my typos, at the risk of making me look completely incoherent. Sorry about that. Me and my mimosas are falling over, now. Good nigh.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-04 07:12 pm (UTC)We got a bunch of kidney-failure food samples. The wet ones, she puked up or wouldn't eat. The KD dry she would eat. So that's what we fed her. This meant we had to transition away from any degree of free-feeding: we would feed the cats three times a day, shutting her in another spot so the cats couldn't eat the wrong foods. When we would leave town, the cats got fed just once a day, and everyone got the KD dry for their kibble (it's not the best food in the world for a cat without kidney failure, but as an occasional thing it wasn't a bit deal).
She did fine on the KD for quite a few years, until one day she really wasn't fine anymore. Her final decline was typical for cats with kidney failure, but she was also quite old by then. She came to us as an adult stray, so we were never sure how old she was, but our best guess was that she lived to be 15 or 16.
We had another cat who was recommended to eat KD towards the end, Shadow. Shadow wouldn't have anything to do with the KD, though. I discovered there's actually a website full of information on which commercial cat foods most closely match the nutritional profile of KD (since there are a lot of cats that won't touch the stuff) -- http://www.felinecrf.org/food_data_tables.htm In Shadow's case, giving him the kidney-friendly food didn't help, because the kidney struggles were more a symptom of his overall physical decline, and not so much the cause.
Finally, there was Fred, our first cat. She almost died (as an elderly, ancient crone of a kitty cat), then rebounded on the prescription "intensive care" food, which we actually literally fed her off a spoon. (I think it was being babied that convinced her that life would be worth living for a little longer.) The vet suggested the KD, but once she had pulled through her health crisis we went back to feeding her regular canned food and she was fine with it. (She refused to eat KD. Didn't mind the Intensive Care food, but that stuff's like $4 a can.)
no subject
Date: 2015-12-14 11:34 pm (UTC)Lydy, good luck with the kitties. I've had to stop free feeding because Jez is really far too big for her own good...sigh.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-14 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-14 11:42 pm (UTC)Let's hope Lydy doesn't get her Naomis confused. ;)
no subject
Date: 2015-12-15 12:22 am (UTC)"And what about...Naomi?" in a dramatic voice.
By the way, I adored "So Much Cooking." I'm pretty sure I shan't get the two of you confused, since my Naomi's flights of fiction are largely limited to "I meant to do that" and "I don't remember getting any wet food, surely you are mistaken."