Oh, yeah, hyperT cats, what joy! IMHO, getting a sick cat to eat food is more important than getting the jerk to eat the right food.
The heartbreaking part of hyperT is that it masks kidney issues. From what I understand, kidney cats feel like they have a mild hangover all the time with the iffy tummy that comes from that. Toss in a non working thyroid and things really go to heck.
At one time, I followed the vet’s orders to the letter when it came to my old cats. It didn’t really seem to help in their longevity or quality of life. Now, our old sick cats get whatever they want to eat. They might die sooner, but they seemed happier during the process.
He LOVES the Biome food. Inhales it. But the vet said, feed him for the weight he’s at, and he’s not supposed to be getting more than 2.5 cans a day at his current weight and he’s eating 3 and wants more…
He gets regular urine and blood tests for his liver and kidneys because of the prednisone he’s on.
I’ve got a couple elderly cats starting down the kidney failure slide. In the past with other kidney-cats I’ve tried to do all the special diet stuff and stressed us all out with getting them to eat. This time I’m letting them eat as much or as little of whatever the hell they want. These girls are 14 and 16 and have had good, well-loved lives. If they want rotisserie chicken, canned tuna, and Temptations treats, well then that’s what they can have. If it shortens their lives by a few months I don’t think that’s a tragedy (though I dread the last day) so long as they are content in their days up until the end.
I have no personal experience with cats, but during my dog’s final month she gradually stopped showing interest in any foods except meat. We weren’t sure what was wrong with her at first (it turned out to be horrifically metastasized cancer), so the vet encouraged us to feed the dog what she seemed to want rather than trying to force her to eat dog food. That dog’s final weeks were filled with grilled or baked chicken, roast beef, and the occasional steak…and I’ll always swear she understood that she was being treated extra special.
Bookmarking it for the next time someone explains to me how great American healthcare is. Sorry you’re having to deal with that perfectly-avoidable crap on top of your unavoidable issues.
Enjoy it while you can, Morgyn! Those fuzzy little assholes like to suck us into thinking we’ve finally found the miracle food and then change their minds practically in mid-bite.
Steve has a skin condition that requires daily doses of Atopica (he starts ripping his fur out after missing 2 doses), which only comes in a bitter tasting liquid. Hiding it is such a fun game of fool the cat.*
In the last year, we have gone through pill pockets, canned chicken juice, putting it on his favorite treats, injecting it into little pieces of KFC and are now hiding it in tuna juice. We will probably have to move on in a month.
I didn’t actually come here to complain about cats, though. That’s just so normal that I don’t bother most of the time.
No, I am whining because Diablo 1 and Hellfire have been released again and I seem to have been left for a game. At least Missy is happy, she gets to spend all day on my BB’s lap.
*I tried squirting it down his throat once and he became so head shy with me that I just cannot do it again.
Poor kitty. The ‘I want more food’ howl is the worst. My 2 brat-cats are not sick only finicky. I’ve never found a food they will reliably like daily. 3 yo and zooming on to an early death if they don’t stop. They are very thin Siamese. The vet would like more weight on them. I cut out the Crack treats (Temptations and similar). I make chicken liver treats for them. I have to be careful or that’s all they would eat.
Good luck with your sick kitty.
Thanks. For a sick old man kitty, he’s pretty active and happy. Despite my complaints, I really do love him. I just wish he hadn’t decided to be my personal car alarm that no one comes out to shut off and it just goes on until the battery dies kind of cat, y’know?
So sorry about all of you with cat problems. After what I went through last year, I’ve been really lucky with my remaining kitty. She hasn’t had a sick day in her life. She’s happy with whatever I feed her and never complains if the litter needs changing. Good girl!
Oh, and it’s now Wednesday morning, and I STILL don’t have those meds. The pharmacy has promised them for this P.M.
“Final results” is not the same thing as “results”. “Specific gravity” is not the same thing as “gravity”. “Actual values” is not the same thing as “values”. Kindly concise my ass.
I’m at work yesterday afternoon on a call when I see the school calling my cell phone. I pick it up and it’s my daughter’s school (she’s 10); in fact, it’s the principal. She proceeds to tell me that they have an alert system that will notify the administrators and teachers if a student searches something in appropriate. In this case, apparently my daughter had searched up the word sex.
This doesn’t surprise me - she’s 10, has a 13 year-old brother, at least one of her friends talks about periods, so I’d expect she’d know the word. Plus, and I forgot this while I was on the phone because I was so surprised, we’d been talking the night before about how her best friend’s dad had transitioned to a woman.
All of this was awkward but didn’t worry me terribly. After doing a pretty thorough check of everyone’s phone search history and the ipads and computers at home, everything she has looked at for the past month has been puppies and kitties.
What did give me pause was:
The principal couldn’t even bring herself to say the word sex. She spelled it out for me in a whisper. I’m thinking, shit, woman - you have a PhD in childhood education and you can’t say the word sex? You have to spell it out? Really?
My daughter (who was probably really embarrased because she had to talk to the principal about it) lost her shit when I tried to talk to her. She denied looking it up, said someone was trying to get her in trouble, etc. I didn’t get mad at her, but goddammit it’s hard to talk to someone who’s hysterical.
Anyway, it was just weird. That’s my complaint - it was weird and difficult and I wish she’d come to me first. I’ve yet to catch her in a lie otherwise and her chromebook was unsupervised in the classroom, so it’s possible it wasn’t her, but unlikely. Whatever. We had a talk, she seemed reassured and we’ll keep talking, but goddammit. It’s days like these I wish technology weren’t quite the thing it is today.
When the Bernie was on her last legs (age and hyperthyroid) it became a game to medicate her. She refused pill pockets. Took to digging through her food for pills, or eating around/not eating if I crushed meds. Finally, tried jarred chicken baby food and she snarfed it up.
When it came to the point of no return, I spoon fed her baby food, chicken broth, ice cream, whatever the hell she wanted. She had been my best buddy for over 23 years. She deserved the most comfortable release of life as I could give her.
overly, I think you’ve just unintentionally explained why these days I see references to the gender of horses and kittens.
Yeah, the gender. Because boy colts totally argue with their mommys about whether it is acceptable for a boy colt to wear a Dora the Explorer saddle or not. Or rather, because some people are afraid that the dreaded S-word may lead to dancing…
Two of my aunts had a fight. It was strictly between the two of them; no other family members were involved. One of them lives across the country and won’t be coming to Thanksgiving. The other one has told the rest of us “it’s obvious I’m not welcome, so I’m going to have my OWN Thanksgiving, and none of my kids (even the ones who’ve already RSVPed) are allowed to come to yours,” and then defriended us all on Facebook.
Grow the fuck up, Pat. We invited you after this all went down. But you just have to find a way to stir up shit every damn year, don’t you?
HA. Exactly. I did immediately go through all our devices to confirm that appropriate controls are installed, but I’m honestly kind of surprised she hadn’t googled it before now. She’s way too curious by half and one her friends claims to have a boyfriend who gives her hickies which is a hell of a lot more worrisome to me than my daughter being curious about sex.
And, BrickBat, yeah - he called to “give me a heads up” about my kids’ poor language last Christmas to ask that I curb it this year. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I overheard his older kid telling my son that his best friend in elementary says fuck all the time.
He also told me how furious he was that I and my sister decided on our joint lodgings for family vacation this year instead of looping him in. Apparently he wanted the condo I put a deposit on because his son (out of whose ass our sunshine comes) was so sad when he heard they’d be in the other one. That shares a fucking wall with ours. We talked about this for over an hour. Goddamn family dynamics.
Well crap! New meds. Makes me wanna barf.
Yesterday I took them w/o food. Today right after breakfast. Same nausea. This train is gonna stop. Put a call in to the nurse line. UGH!
My annual holiday rant: The mechanics of shopping are easy. You go through the store and put the items you want into the basket or cart. Then you come to the checkout registers and let the nice cashier ring up your items and you pay for them.
So stop bringing items you do not want to buy and dumping them by the register. If you decide you don’t want something, please hand it to the cashier. Better yet, put it back on the shelf where you found it.
