womzilla | A brief kitty update

nellorat usually does the pet updates, but I felt like mentioning this today.

We're trying a new approach for Courageous, focusing on steroids to keep her gum inflammation down rather than antibiotics (though we certainly haven't given up on antibiotics). So when she stopped eating last weekend, she got a steroid shot on Monday in response. Tuesday she still wasn't eating, but Wednesday she gobbled a can of stinky cat food (Fancy Feast salmon).

Then Thursday she stopped eating again, and didn't eat on Friday. So I took her in to the vet's yesterday. (Along with Aimee, whose infected leg gets better by leaps and bounds, thanks to antibiotics and nellorat's physical therapy.)

(Footnote: We take our pets to Central Animal Hospital in Scarsdale, the nearest clinic which treats "exotics"--which is to say, any pet which isn't a cat or dog. There are six doctors on staff currently, with only moderate turnover; three of the current staff have treated Courageous. The doctors are all very nice--friendly, intelligent, willing to explain things in more detail if more detail is requested, and willing to listen to the ideas and concerns of semi-knowledgable laypeople like us.)

As I explained the situation to Dr. Gross, I realized that we hadn't tried giving Courageous her "max-cal" food. Maximum Calorie Eukanuba is a special near-liquid cat food high in fat and sugar, and Courageous loves it. And, sure enough, when Dr. Gross came back with an open can, kitty dove into it like a very hungry cat with a particular reason to be hungry, or some such simile.

Kitty had lost another few ounces due to a week of eating practically nothing, but we have hope that she will be able to go another week or two before her next steroid shot. In the mean time, I will just marvel in how much joy it brings me just to watch her happily eat.