I gave Pip some catnip again.
Lucky has discovered that laptops are made of warm.
Simone is as plump and as bursting with sweetness as always. (Yes, I stole that from the copy on the raisin box. Me and my copy-thieving ways.)
Inty is costing a million dollars, as usual.
Her IBD started flaring up again - puking at least once a day - so I took her to the vet. This time we didn't wait until she got so skinny she almost died. $250 worth of testing later, we can rule out thyroid and diabetes and be pretty sure that the increased levels of cat barf in our house are because of Inty's IBD - which, you know, is what we figured was happening before we took her to the vet.
Anyway, now she has a new steroid ($35) and $60 worth of a new prescription food. We've changed from low ingredient - i.e. proteins she probably hasn't encountered and thus isn't allergic to - to a hypoallergenic food. Basically to make the hypoallergenic they denature the protein molecule and chop it up all small in the hopes that the immune system won't respond to a smaller molecule the way that it does to normal big protein molecules. If she keeps barfing and doesn't respond to the steroid, we'll put her back on an anti-nausea drug. And maybe re-start a regime of giving her B-12 shots periodically. That's all if, though, and I'd kind of like it not to progress further because: expensive. Also, the strain of keeping all that chemistry in my head just reminds me of why I never did pursue my childhood dream of becoming a vet: not good enough at chemistry. Or math in general. As an adult, knowing a little bit more about how much vets get to deal with poop and barf and what their earning potential is, I'm kind of glad that I was a quitter when it came to chemistry.
No comment.
No photos in this post were staged, though some were retouched afer they came out of the camera.
9 comments:
Aw, your kitties are lucky. Hope the latest regimen works for Inty.
Damn, girl.
It was a year ago last weekend that we lost Zigsa to IBD. Well, symptomatically similar, intestinal lymphoma. He didn't throw up; he had poop issues.
Do you give the B-12 shots yourself? I know they can add up at the vet's office. I used to give Zigs his at home. I can direct you to a source of B12 if need be.
And I know I said it before, but man, raw food!
Thinking 'bout Inty and her grumpy bowels.
Poor Zigsa.
At this point it might be cheaper to import raw kangaroo and feed it to Inty; I dunno. Sixty bucks for a six pound bag of food is not cheap. The denatured protein food and the new steroid doesn't seem to be helping with the barf issues yet (no poop problems, luckily).
And yeah, we gave her the B12 at home - we're good on shots. If I ever decide to become not-corporate, vet tech is something I'd love to do.
This is what I feed my kitty creatures:
http://felineinstincts.ca/
Sweet web site, I had not noticed slowtech.blogspot.com previously during my searches!
Continue the fantastic work!
Thanks for sharing this link, but unfortunately it seems to be offline... Does anybody have a mirror or another source? Please reply to my post if you do!
I would appreciate if a staff member here at slowtech.blogspot.com could post it.
Thanks,
Peter
Hi Peter - the Feline Instincts page can now be found here: http://www.felineinstincts.com/
thanks for the comment, thanks for pointing out the dead link, and thank you very much for reading!
Cara
Hi there,
I have a message for the webmaster/admin here at slowtech.blogspot.com.
Can I use part of the information from your blog post above if I give a backlink back to this website?
Thanks,
Peter
Hi Peter,
Sorry for the delayed response; yes, I am the webmaster and I'm happy to give you permission to cite and link to this blog as long as you give me credit (which you are obviously going to do). Thank you for asking!
Cara
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