Wet kitten food was great until it wasn't. Toby started spurning it in midafternoon yesterday, returning to the bottle for the remaining feedings of the day.
This morning I pulled out a custard cup, mixed up an egg in it, and microwaved it well past the point of food safety. It was no longer soft. It was 188 degrees. Apparently the directions were for a microwave less powerful than mine. I let it cool and offered a bit to Toby.
He sniffed. He took a tiny bite. His eyes got huge. Why have you been holding out on me all these days? he seemed to say, lunging at my hand. This is the real stuff! Give me more! He ate bits as quickly as I could pull them off until the chunk I was holding was gone. I grabbed a bigger chunk and started pulling bits off it for him. He ignored the bits and attacked the chunk. He ended up eating a third of the extra-large egg.
There you have it, folks: leathery scrambled egg is the food of the gods. At least for today.
Thursday, August 31, 2017
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Toby day 47: oh, NOW it's working
Am I sick? Yes.
Am I writing? Yes. I'll sleep again when this is done, for the rest of the day; the plan is to go back to bed when Matt gets up at 7. A couple of new things happened, and I want to document them.
After hardly seeing Toby at all since I started feeling sick in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, I saw Matt to bed at 2, which was the end of the 1 a.m. feeding, and napped on the couch till 4 a.m., when the alarm on my phone went off. I can sleep right through its little beeping noise, but when it's on vibrate and sitting on my Manhasset music stand, it sounds like the drums of doom, so that's what I do. I opened the carrier door. Toby walked out, stretching and yawning. I scooped him up and took him to the couch. We followed our usual schedule: the initial cuddle, the ritual spurning of the wet food, and the first drink from the bottle.
He hopped down onto the floor and scratched at the carpet. I bundled him into his cage, where a fresh paper bag was waiting. He walked into it and pooped at the back left-hand corner. I tried putting a paper towel over the poop so he could reuse the bag. He ran around and played with toys for several minutes, then started scratching at the carpet again. I bundled him back into the cage. He trotted into the bag, came out backward with the clean end of the paper towel clutched in his teeth with the poop stuck to the bottom, dropped it at the cage door, and gave me a stern look. Then he went to the old pee spot at the back of the cage (which I have disinfected over and over) and started scratching. I grabbed him with one hand and the unacceptably soiled bag with the other, put the bag aside, shook a fresh paper bag open with one hand (something I didn't know I could do), and stuck him into it. He peed as I was getting the failed experiment into the trash.
We played for half an hour. It doesn't matter how tired or sick I am: he has to play, and he has to be supervised, because often the other cats are around (having resisted all attempts to whisk them away into other rooms and hidden behind the furniture) and he has no sense of self-preservation. He chased toys and jumped on them and worried them; he leapt into the air after toys on strings and brought them down. He hid behind the hall curtain. He attacked my feet, gently, with soft bites and soft paws. When he started to flag a bit, I picked him up and he drank from the bottle again. He drank a lot.
On a whim, I grabbed a morsel of the previously spurned wet food. I stroked his cheek, counting on the old nursing reflex, and coaxed it into his open mouth when the reflex worked. He ate it, thought about it, and looked up at me. On impulse, I swept the food off the tongue depressor and presented it to him on my fingers. He ate it and licked my fingers clean. I ran to the fridge and got more. He ate that. He ate more than a teaspoonful by the time we were done, in four little chunks, and we stopped not because he felt done but because I was afraid he'd explode after all that food on top of that goat milk.
We have struggled and struggled with getting wet food into Toby. He would eat it nuked for three seconds to take the chill off, and then he wouldn't. He would eat off the edge of a plate held at 45 degrees, so I ran out and scoured the thrift shop for more discarded saucers, and then he wouldn't. He would eat it cold off a tongue depressor at the vet's, so she gave us a baggie of tongue depressors, and then he spurned food offered on a tongue depressor. We can't take him to Dr. Colleen every three hours. We were out of ideas. Now he was eating it out of my hand.
Did I mention we just ordered a hundred tongue depressors online? They just shipped. I thought about that while he slurped food off my fingers, but hey, he was eating. As the pilots say, any landing you walk away from is a good landing.
I put him back in the cage for a minute while I disinfected his snuggle disk, wrapped it up in a clean rag, and put it in the microwave, then back into his carrier.
After that, all that remained was to cuddle him for another few minutes. till his eyes started to close, then put him into his carrier and pulled a towel over the door. He went right to sleep.
It was 5 a.m., the time I've gotten up for years, so I couldn't sleep anyhow. I'll have a nap now--there are 45 minutes till the next feeding.
Am I writing? Yes. I'll sleep again when this is done, for the rest of the day; the plan is to go back to bed when Matt gets up at 7. A couple of new things happened, and I want to document them.
After hardly seeing Toby at all since I started feeling sick in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, I saw Matt to bed at 2, which was the end of the 1 a.m. feeding, and napped on the couch till 4 a.m., when the alarm on my phone went off. I can sleep right through its little beeping noise, but when it's on vibrate and sitting on my Manhasset music stand, it sounds like the drums of doom, so that's what I do. I opened the carrier door. Toby walked out, stretching and yawning. I scooped him up and took him to the couch. We followed our usual schedule: the initial cuddle, the ritual spurning of the wet food, and the first drink from the bottle.
He hopped down onto the floor and scratched at the carpet. I bundled him into his cage, where a fresh paper bag was waiting. He walked into it and pooped at the back left-hand corner. I tried putting a paper towel over the poop so he could reuse the bag. He ran around and played with toys for several minutes, then started scratching at the carpet again. I bundled him back into the cage. He trotted into the bag, came out backward with the clean end of the paper towel clutched in his teeth with the poop stuck to the bottom, dropped it at the cage door, and gave me a stern look. Then he went to the old pee spot at the back of the cage (which I have disinfected over and over) and started scratching. I grabbed him with one hand and the unacceptably soiled bag with the other, put the bag aside, shook a fresh paper bag open with one hand (something I didn't know I could do), and stuck him into it. He peed as I was getting the failed experiment into the trash.
We played for half an hour. It doesn't matter how tired or sick I am: he has to play, and he has to be supervised, because often the other cats are around (having resisted all attempts to whisk them away into other rooms and hidden behind the furniture) and he has no sense of self-preservation. He chased toys and jumped on them and worried them; he leapt into the air after toys on strings and brought them down. He hid behind the hall curtain. He attacked my feet, gently, with soft bites and soft paws. When he started to flag a bit, I picked him up and he drank from the bottle again. He drank a lot.
On a whim, I grabbed a morsel of the previously spurned wet food. I stroked his cheek, counting on the old nursing reflex, and coaxed it into his open mouth when the reflex worked. He ate it, thought about it, and looked up at me. On impulse, I swept the food off the tongue depressor and presented it to him on my fingers. He ate it and licked my fingers clean. I ran to the fridge and got more. He ate that. He ate more than a teaspoonful by the time we were done, in four little chunks, and we stopped not because he felt done but because I was afraid he'd explode after all that food on top of that goat milk.
We have struggled and struggled with getting wet food into Toby. He would eat it nuked for three seconds to take the chill off, and then he wouldn't. He would eat off the edge of a plate held at 45 degrees, so I ran out and scoured the thrift shop for more discarded saucers, and then he wouldn't. He would eat it cold off a tongue depressor at the vet's, so she gave us a baggie of tongue depressors, and then he spurned food offered on a tongue depressor. We can't take him to Dr. Colleen every three hours. We were out of ideas. Now he was eating it out of my hand.
Did I mention we just ordered a hundred tongue depressors online? They just shipped. I thought about that while he slurped food off my fingers, but hey, he was eating. As the pilots say, any landing you walk away from is a good landing.
I put him back in the cage for a minute while I disinfected his snuggle disk, wrapped it up in a clean rag, and put it in the microwave, then back into his carrier.
After that, all that remained was to cuddle him for another few minutes. till his eyes started to close, then put him into his carrier and pulled a towel over the door. He went right to sleep.
It was 5 a.m., the time I've gotten up for years, so I couldn't sleep anyhow. I'll have a nap now--there are 45 minutes till the next feeding.
Monday, August 28, 2017
Toby day 45: Vet visit
Toby went to see Dr. Colleen this morning. She was thrilled with his weight gain, appetite, energy, and developmental progress. She now gives him a 60% chance of survival, maybe a bit higher. It's amazing how good that sounds after last week's 5%. He had another antibiotic shot and is to continue on the oral antibiotics until next week, when he will probably have another x-ray. His heart and lungs sound great.
It's not all good news. He's tiny, and my scale reads higher than the vet's, so I thought he was over a pound and he's only 12 ounces, very small for his age. Most kittens his age are eating 4-5 hours apart; he needs to eat every 3 hours, and he still needs to live in a pretty narrow temperature range.
He's still too small to vaccinate and too sick to worm again.
We'll hope.
We've reached a compromise on the elimination issue, led by Toby. I gave him a paper grocery bag to play in, and he decided it would be a lovely, peaceful place to do his potty duties. That was a lot better, by our standards, than his previous choices, which were his carrier (where he sleeps), his cage (the dog crate where we try to litter-train him), or a secluded corner of the carpet. So we went and bought a package of paper grocery bags from our understanding grocer. I put one in his cage every time he goes in. He uses them every time and has stopped going anywhere else, praise be. I can start introducing litter into the bag one piece at a time; eventually, I can put a bag in a litterbox, and with any luck I can, eventually, remove the bag.
She gave us some dry kitten food. I admitted that last week I bought a bag as an act of faith. She says to keep doing what we're doing, so we will.
Sunday, August 27, 2017
Learning to use the camera for Toby photos
I've found out how to do the "continuous shooting" setting. Forgive the blurriness of some of these--I'll get better (and the little dude is really that fast!)
Bellyflop!
Full gallop!
Cartoon kitty!
Would you look at the size of that paw?
You can almost see the butt-wiggle.
DRAGON KITTY
Look how long his fur is getting.
Yes, those eyes are green--at least for now.
Toby, day 44
Toby is over 500 grams and growing bigger paws and longer legs. He's chasing toys, plotting complicated attacks on them (hiding behind his carrier and showing up on first one side, then the other, to ambush a hapless plushie or an empty plastic water bottle), and can run the length of the hallway with dazzling speed. His jumps are getting higher. He empties his bottle of goat milk with celerity and a certain verve.
What he won't do is:
1. drink water, He still sticks his face in the bowl and sneezes, then stomps off in a huff.
2. eat wet cat food more than once a day; the rest of the time, he snubs it and, if it is placed in his cage, tries to bury it.
3. use his litterbox. We watch him, rush him to a box when he starts going, and clean up a lot. Because he had terrible diarrhea for so long, he didn't get the chance to learn proper box manners.
1. drink water, He still sticks his face in the bowl and sneezes, then stomps off in a huff.
2. eat wet cat food more than once a day; the rest of the time, he snubs it and, if it is placed in his cage, tries to bury it.
3. use his litterbox. We watch him, rush him to a box when he starts going, and clean up a lot. Because he had terrible diarrhea for so long, he didn't get the chance to learn proper box manners.
We've all got our work cut out for us.
Will try to get more pictures today.
Thursday, August 24, 2017
Toby, days 40 and 41
Wow, this fast from uninterrupted sleep has gone on as long as Lent!
Here he is last night, showing what a stretch kitty he's becoming:
Here he is last night, showing what a stretch kitty he's becoming:
I tried for a "sit beside the lion to show how big you are" picture.
Nope!
Remember when the elephant was about his size and the lion was too big for him to play with?
Not anymore! Look at that headlock!
This tabby was Arwen's friend when she was little.
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
Other Toby milestones
Arwen tried to take his toy away. He hissed, made himself large, and chased her away. He weighs one pound. She weighs twelve.
Today I told him no about something. He ran away, gave me a dirty look, turned his back, and revenge-peed on a pillow cover.
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