cat update, final edition
Well, after her surgery last week, the vet kept Rascal for a few days, and he called me every morning to let me know how she was doing. She was doing well, but she wouldn't eat, so they were having to force feed her. Finally, on Friday he decided to let me take her home, because she might eat better here where she was comfortable. So I picked her up and stayed in the basement with her most of the night, periodically offering her any kind of food I could think of. I tried her normal dry food, some moist cat treats, tuna, a bowl full of tuna-water, and even some grass from the yard, because Josh said that some cats liked grass when their stomachs were upset just like dogs do. She didn't eat any of it.
The next day I took her back to the vet, and he gave me some high-calorie gel and showed me how to force feed her myself. I mixed the gel with some water and throughout Saturday and Sunday I went to the basement every two hours to feed her. I filled a needleless syringe with the liquid and held her head still with one hand while I worked the point of the syringe into her mouth with the other, a little bit at a time. It was messy, especially the first couple of times before I got the hang of it, and her fur became very matted and sticky all over her mouth and chest. I also gave her a dropper full of one antibiotic twice a day and a pill of another antibiotic in the mornings. The pill I couldn't make her take. Mom and I both tried to get her to open her mouth and swallow it without success, and after each try she fought us that much harder. She didn't scratch, but she struggled to get away and she held her mouth tightly shut. I finally dissolved the pill in water and gave it to her with the syringe.
It didn't work. I took her to the vet again on Monday. She lost over half a pound that weekend, on top of the pound she'd already lost. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but it's over 20% of her body weight. She had so much fur (where it wasn't shaved) that she looked okay, but when you touched her you could feel that she was just skin and bones. Worse, her jaudice had gotten WORSE, not better, and her skin was very, very yellow. The vet told me that we could try a bypass surgery for her gall bladder or we could try keeping her at the vet with different antibiodics, but that neither one was likely to help. Rascal had gotten too weak to survive the surgery, and she probably wouldn't live long enough for the antibiodics to work. On Monday I made an appointment to have her put down at 11:00 today, and I took her home for the last time.
I cried almost all last night and this morning. I stayed in the basement with the cats except for dinner, laying on the futon and petting Rascal. She looked very pitiful, and she didn't move around much. I took lots of pictures. It was really hard to accept that she wasn't going to get to come to North Carolina with me, or sit with me anymore while I played games or watched TV. I really thought that she was going to get better. I didn't force feed her last night--she doesn't like it, and what would be the point? I did give her a lot of water. I slept on the futon with the cat, and she was still curled up with me when I woke up. Dad went with me to the vet today, and I cried the whole time. I'm really going to miss her.