From Aimee:
Robyn, I’m asking for advice/suggestions from you and other readers. I have a cat who is about 20. Although she’s been mostly healthy her whole life, she is pretty frail and starting to have issues. She had a UTI earlier this year, which she’d never had before. She also has feline herpes and takes L-lysine every day for that. She’s been a cat that pukes a lot pretty much her whole life. She’s been eating Newman’s Organic canned food for a while now and it HAD been great. Once we switched her to it, she all but stopped throwing up. Before settling on Newman’s, we’d tried MANY MANY brands. All the grocery store brands get puked almost immediately. We have also tried a bunch of brands at the high end fancy pet store, and most of them make her throw up also. Anything with chunks, most brands with grains, all dry food. Well, the last few weeks, she doesn’t want to eat the Newman’s, she doesn’t like it. At first I thought it was her appetite, but she’s hungry, she just doesn’t want the Newman’s. I tried putting baby food on the Newman’s, but no matter how well I mix it, she’s extremely adept at licking the baby food off the cat food. I went to the pet store yesterday and got a few cans of food she hasn’t tried, so far two came right up, one stayed down. The one that stayed down was by B.F.F., and is a tuna blend. I’m not sure a fish-based food is good for ALWAYS, though? Anyway. She went to the vet Monday and she’d lost half a pound (and now weighs 6 lbs, she’s tiny) since she was there a couple of months ago. Any advice for feeding a finicky old cat?
Although a fish-based food isn’t the greatest choice for always, it really comes down to what she’ll eat – and she’s 20 years old, you know? I mean, if I make it to 100 years old (or whatever the human number of 20 cat years is), the people at the nursing home just better give me all the chocolate I can put in my face. 🙂
Spanky’s 16 and has turned pretty finicky in the past year, and just when I find a food he’ll eat, he decides he doesn’t like it any more. I have a wide selection of canned food that I keep on hand, but not a lot of each since I know he’ll just change his mind without warning. SIGH.
(Oddly, though it isn’t his main form of nutrition, he likes to finish meal times by eating chicken baby food out of the jar. On a plate, he doesn’t care for it, but if he hears me open a jar, he’s at my feet like a flash ’til I put the jar on the floor for him. Weird.)
So, how about it y’all – got any suggestions for Aimee? I’m sure you do – please share!
Update on Tyrion (see his pictures here if you haven’t already) from Gail:
Tyrion has gained weight. His hips are not as bony as they were. He is up to almost 1.5 lbs. he has grown a tiny bit, but has put on a layer of fat. He is still so skinny everywhere but his belly. He does walk and run and play, but tends to roll over as he lives for belly rubs!
Thanks for the update, Gail! He certainly appears to be one happy little man.
Have you ever noticed, as I did today, that Brandywine has on the most lovely gold gloves? or orange… But lovely all the same!
Oh yes indeed, I love her fancy golden-orange gloves. She’s a lady, she wears her gloves at all times (even when she’s being a goofball!)
I love the second to last picture of Kennebec. It looks like Mr. Flower Kitty on the bed fabric is looking adoringly at him (as he should be!)!
I hadn’t noticed that, but now it’s cracking me up!
I just (re-)read about Alice’s wheeze back in her early days with you. Has she got over it? (Pardon my grammar, English is not my native language and sometimes my memory fails me.)
She has completely gotten over it, actually – she just seemed to outgrow it. She had a nasal endoscopy in January 2011. They were looking to see if she had a polyp above her soft palate. They didn’t find that, but they did find a little scar tissue at the back of her throat, the origin of which they were unable to determine. We thought that it was going to be a lifelong issue with her, but a few months later it seemed to just go away. She went from occasionally wheezing to not doing it at all, and it took us a few months to realize that it had stopped. I can’t remember the last time I heard her doing it – I would guess it’s been well over a year.
In the picture of Agata, where you are mentioning the green ring around her pupils…..if you look hard, her pupils seem like they are pulsating!! Freaky, but gorgeous!
Ha – I hadn’t noticed that, but it totally does!
Is Rupert’s tail hanging down between the cracks? That seems like some kind of old-timey Southern saying. “It’s cat-tail-hangin’ hot today!”
Yeah, it was hanging down between the cracks – and it’s TOTALLY been cat-tail-hangin’ hot lately!
This seems to be the appropriate time to mention that my 7-year-old is going through a, uh, challenging phase right now, and has earned herself the nickname Stompers, inspired by a certain wee orange kitten. I’ve cajoled her out of more than one sulky fit with the phrase “Stompers is STOMPING!” which always makes her giggle too much to keep on being mad.
This is way too cute – but I have to admit I totally assumed you meant your 7 year-old cat, and was caught by surprise that your cat giggles. HEE.
I rarely comment although I’ve been a regular reader for years. I know how you like it when your readers dream about you, so here goes…… While I didn’t dream about you or Fred specifically, I did spend my slumber hours chasing four little orange stripey kittens all over the place. My friend and I were trying to get the four kittens somewhere (the details are fuzzy) and they were all over the place. As soon as we would get one corralled, another one would be off in another direction. There’s no doubt where the inspiration for that dream came from 🙂 Keep up the good work with the kitties – if they are half as much fun in real life as they were in my dream, that’s a good way to spend your days!
I love it! You know, this sounds a LOT like a scene that happened here the other night. I was trying to get the Taters into the guest bedroom for the night, and the ‘Maters were POSITIVE that I was giving the other kittens canned food, and they were desperate to get in there. Fred was picking them up and shoving them out the door and they were flooding back in – it was quite a sight, let me tell you. When you’ve got a flood of kittens who are sure there’s food on the other side of the door, it’s complete mayhem.
Anyway, as has been vaguely banging around my head this past week:
And Robyn said, “Brandy, you’re a fine girl. What a good pet you will be! But I’m sorry, we’re out of room on the cat tree.”
HA. Also, I love that song so much!
Aw, poor black and white chicken, whose breed I cannot recall at the moment, showing signs of too many suitors, rooster or duckboy, with that bare back. Why does it look like she’s the only one? Is she the hussy of the group? lol
Oh, I so hate seeing chickens with bare backs, and it makes me tell Fred that we have TOO MANY roosters (he says we only have three. I’m not sure I believe him.) The truth is that for some reason, roosters will take a liking to a particular hen, and she ends up with a bare back because they grab onto the feathers on her back while they’re, y’know. BEING ANIMALS. I never know why they focus on one hen, but I hate it. The male ducks really like the white hens and can often be seen chasing them around, and I’m not too fond of that, either, though the male ducks usually give up once the hens run under the coop.
I can’t remember the name of the breed of that chicken – we usually just call them “The Specks.”
Edited to add: Fred tells me they’re called Barred Rocks. Which I knew – I just couldn’t remember!
Kennebec is what a friend of mine refers to as a Felis altitudinus – a cat who likes high places. (Lots of them do.)
Jackson Galaxy says that some cats are bush dwellers and some are tree dwellers. Until recently, Miz Poo has always been a bush dweller, but she’s suddenly started hanging out on the platforms in the front room (which are up high). I don’t know if she’s changed her stance on the best place to hang out, or she’s changing her ways in her old age, or even if she just never noticed the platforms ’til recently, but she certainly loves laying up there and looking down on us all!
How did Miz Poo react to Caspian’s mighty floof suit? I assume there was some hissing involved, or maybe she just hoped he’d magically disappear?
Miz Poo was not impressed by Caspian’s floof suit. She didn’t hiss or smack – she just gave him a look of disdain and pretended he didn’t exist.
I should add here that despite the fact that Miz Poo pretends to haaaaaaaate kittens and is all “Kittens? Yuck! Ptooie! Ptooie!” every time we discuss them, she seems to always position herself so that there’s a kitten close by, and she always looks very entertained by their antics. So she’s not fooling me!
I got an update from Kristyn about Stompers! She said:
He just finished up his medicine and was a real trooper about that. He seems happy as can be. He follows me everywhere, which of course just made me fall even more in love with him. But he’s been pretty confident about branching out and exploring on his own as well. He and other kitty, Wisp, are tolerating one another. She’s still not thrilled about him, but has played with some of his toys instead of hers, actually slept near where he was, and has dialed back the hissing tremendously. So it seems to be going well! He is quite delighted that my sons play with legos. Lego heads are apparently the best thing to bat around (Wisp tends to build up collections of them next to her food bowl. No idea what that’s about, but its a blend of adorable and slightly creepy). Stompers has successfully charmed every person who has met him so far and demands kisses from every one of them! You did a great job with him. He’s an absolute angel!
Awwww, Stompies. I knew he was going to do great in his new home! (Also, would it be weird if I went out and bought Lego people for the cats to play with? Probably, right?)
I’ll be leaving in a bit to take Kennebec, Agata, and Fianna to Petsmart and get them settled in. They’ve been particularly sweet the last few days, making sure that I would miss them that much more. Argh! This is the worst part – in a perfect world, they’d all get adopted tonight. I’ll settle for one or two going tonight and the rest tomorrow, though. Wouldn’t that be awesome?
Kennebec was actually laying on his back, half in and half out of this little bin (which I put toys in), but woke when I ran to get my camera.
Brandywine’s checking to see if the coast is clear so she can run away from the little monsters.
Sungold would like to know where his mama is, please.
Fianna, coming to see what’s going on.
“YOU ARE A STRANGER TO ME. I AM CONSIDERING PUTTING ON MY STRANGER DANGER FLOOF.”
Responds Fianna, “Dude. I don’t know about this floof you’re talking about, but this looks JUST like a room I used to live in! I had a blue cat tree JUST like that one! This is trippy, man!”
Kennebec, keeping an eye on things.
I was totally NOT tapping on the wall so they’d look up. Caspian’s face (blue collar) is cracking me up.
This is what Agata thinks about those ‘Mater kittens.
Oh, look. Miz Poo in the middle of a crowd of kittens. Yeah, you hate kittens, Miz Poo. Sure. Tell us another story.
Fianna guarding the ball from Mr. Stripey.
Nap time.
Sweet Fianna.
I have, of course, a bunch more pictures of the Taters. I’ll either post them this weekend or Monday, depending on how my weekend goes.
Also, I had intended to do profiles of the ‘Maters starting today with Brandywine, but instead I’ll do that starting on Monday. Maybe I’ll double up the kittens one day so they’ll all fit in one week.
I just adore Corbie’s fantastic caramel-colored belly. Also, he is SO SO SO PRETTY. You probably didn’t know that.
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Previously
2011: But she IS working on her anger management…
2010: Poor long-suffering Moxie.
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.