Feline Faith

Progress over the weekend has seen Magic eating a little more with no tube feeds only her drugs going in. Her insulin continues at 3units twice daily. Tube wound dressing every second day and bandage changes as often as she manages to unravel them.

 Presently, she only owns half a fur coat as she is missing her undercarriage, her neck and thigh fur as well as a half a dozen cubes at strategic points where she was being scanned. If you look closely you can see she also has some clipper rash too. The feel of skin on a cat is strange but boiling hot which you never notice on a furry cat! She seems very ashamed of her coat but each time I lift her she gets a belly kiss and lots of cuddles.

 Somewhere along the line there was an 'incident' with her left set of whiskers which I didn't even notice when I got her home. She's not bothered tho' which is not surprising with everything else she has going on.

Foodwise, I am not really sure where we are going with this but it might just be early days. After they both rejected the healthy diabetic diet(!) 'I' decided that they would both be changed onto Applaws as it is very high protein and is clearly of good quality. I know this as it looks like the ingredient it is meant to be and doesn't make me heave when I open the sachet like normal cat food does. Sadly, Magic only deigned to eat the broth surrounding the meal and her blood sugars were utterly hellish 20.1 and 24.9mmol. So, rather than let her remain in a grossly hyperglycaemic state I gave her some Sheba and even with the little she is eating her sugars are around the 8-12mmol level.

All being well, the tube will be removed and we can discuss her management plan. I would dearly love her to achieve remission if humanly, or felinely, possible. However, there is a fine balance in making sure she is safe, comfortable and happy. Currently, she is remarkably compliant I would hate to try to force her to do something she is unhappy with, to destroy her routine, let her become hypoglycaemic when no-one is around or to damage her trust in me as she comes to me to fix things. Tonight she sat watching as I prepared the syringes and drugs. When I asked her to follow me through she trotted in and sat waiting on the towel on the sofa that I use to denote the treatment area for carrying out her care.

I've been doing her blood sugars at least three times a day. This is for her to make sure I am not giving insulin when she is near to a hypoglycaemic state but also so that I can monitor what food is working for her, in what amount, how the insulin affects her and it will give me confidence that I am getting her care right. Getting blood out of her ears is becoming problematic no matter how much I warm or stroke them and I am having to prick her three or four times to get her to bleed. Aside from a wee squeal and a scowl she remains sitting with me and lets me got on with it. Last night I was having no joy with either a handheld lancet or the pricker device. Wondering if it was the depth setting that was the issue I increased it. Stupidly I forgot to wrap a tissue round my finger and when I pressed the trigger the lancet went straight through her ear and right into my finger. Her ear remained resolutely blood-free but my finger bled like stink. This was a low point but I can only imagine how much worse it would be trying to wrangle a resisting cat which is why I am keen to do this by consent.

Red is being a little star too. I try to give him as much attention as I do for Magic but her care has been quite intensive and he has probably not had his fair share.

Last night as I was using the sewing machine he took things into his own paws and brought me a mousie mousie to play fetch with him. He was so sweet that I couldn't do anything but agree to join in the game.

He is enjoying the cuisine and thinks Heston Blumenthal has moved in as the menu has improved to include chicken with pumpkin, wild rice or asparagus, sea bream, tuna, pacific prawns, cream and a wide selection of dry foods. He's been enjoying EIGHT meals a day and frequent treats.....or at least he was! When I was trying to tempt Magic to eat I was laying out wet and dry food for both of them in the spirit of fairness. However, as she wasn't eating he was hoovering up all the delicious foods she was rejecting. Normally he is a lean, mean cuddling machine weighing as much as a puff of air but he was beginning to turn into a little butterball.

Sadly Heston has left the building and it's back to good old Sheba.