I want to repeat that EVERYONE IS OKAY & I’m not gonna go into detail but note: if your cat is not eating & your vet in more interested in doing lots of tests instead of GETTING FOOD INTO YOUR CAT, get a new vet. AND GET SOME FOOD INTO YOUR CAT.
ANYWAY what with one thing & another I picked Loiosh up from the vet in Milan, used the squirty-syringe to get some A/D into his face, & then set out for Edgewood while dialing my old vet. Driving an hour anna half to make sure my boy is getting the RIGHT care? oh HELL yeah
& of course I brought all three boys. When I’m anxious about any of my cats, I’m anxious about all of em, & when it’s bad, I need to be able to SEE that they’re okay. So it was a three-cat road trip.
Hades wanted to know why HE didn’t get any A/D. He’s just guarding it up there. Honest.
(It’s basically the cat version of chicken soup & pedialyte, with the consistency of baby food, & it is NOT cheap but if anything is gonna get your cat eating again, it’ll do it. Also I’m never running out of it again.)
look at the PAWS tho
(A couple days later, when I was sure Loiosh was gonna be okay, I split the last of the A/D between their bowls & mixed it in with their lunchtime gooshyfud. Tom carefully licked around the regular stuff to make sure he got ALL the A/D. Hades wandered off after about half a bowl, burped, & slept for six hours.)
My vet wasn’t letting humans in, just asking you to leave the carrier on the bench outside so they could bring in your pet with minimal contact. I don’t have cat carriers so I hitched Loiosh’s leash to the bench & sat about eight feet away. The tech was very impressed, & I told her the story as we both sat in the sun, Loiosh wandering back & forth between us to get pets. I could get used to that sort of thing.
As I reassured the vet a bit later on, when he came outside to confer, I came prepared to stay a couple days if I needed to.
(He looked alarmed & asked if I planned to stay in a hotel. I gave the van a meaningful look. He said “OH good.”)
After they delivered him back to me (another tech came out with him draped over her arm, explained to me that he was “losing his patience” with them, gave him an affectionate noogie, & poured him through the window onto the passenger seat) I drove us all up into the Sandias & found a quiet place to park for a while. (I kept singing “I wanna go where the people aren’t” on the way up the hill.) Loiosh, who’d started feeling better as soon as I got food into him that morning & continued improving as I kept feeding him, was pleased with this decision.
(I note with amusement that the vet techs managed to get his harness back on him upside down. Theory is he was threatening to kill them at the time. I told them he never means it but he SOUNDS like he does. Also he stole my chair in the two minutes I was closing the van window after they poured him back inside.)
It was windy as hell so we wandered the woods only briefly before getting back in the van. I didn’t want to nap — you can’t camp in the Sandias, so I was gonna hafta move before sunset — but Loiosh & I had a nice long snuggle, purring & breathing breaths & just. Being close.
The vet said he’d thought about keeping Loiosh overnight, but since it was clear he was perfectly comfortable in the van (he admired Hades & Tom’s calm, too, while we were chatting) & didn’t need to be on an IV, letting him stay with me for the night made more sense. The vet did ask if I’d be willing to stay in the area overnight in case Loiosh needed more looking over the next day, which of course I was perfectly happy to do.
So I found a nice parking lot, continued squidging food into Loiosh’s face every couple hours, & slept like crap until I heard someone eating kibble round about dawn & saw that it was Loiosh, eating with no prompting for the first time since all this had started. At which point I passed the hell out & woke up around 1:30.
With him clearly on the mend it was time to go home. I left a message for the vet (“Who’s this again?” asked the receptionist. “Oh, Loiosh. Good!”), drove us all home, & was, without the tiniest bit of shame, in bed before sunset.
