Diary of the Red Queen, Mama & Lunatic
Diary of the Red Queen, Mama & Lunatic
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2004-01-28 - 9:39 a.m. I think it's time for another Cinnamon update. She has been to the vet several more times, most recently to get her liver numbers run again yesterday. They were all down but still very high and scary. What we are doing now is force-feeding her. We have a syringe and have begin force-feeding her Science Diet a/d, which is their formula for animals that have been severely injured and/or are cannibalizing their own muscle tissue and organs for nutrition. Poor Cinnamon weighs only about seven pounds now, which is about what she weighed when she was six months old. She hates being force-fed, of course. We have to grab her (never easy) and roll her completely up in a towel so that she can't get any of her legs out. She is extremely strong and can wiggle out of damn near anything, so this is a struggle. I hold her and pry her jaws apart and Will uses the syringe to squirt food onto her tongue. Because the spikes on her tongue point backwards, and cats can't spit stuff out if it's too far back, she must swallow the stuff. She gets SO ANGRY and she tries her hardest to put the food anywhere except down her throat. It gets all over Will and me, and all over the towel, and all over her face, and the floor, and just everywhere. But she's eating. Not much on her own, definitely not enough to keep her alive. But we're working on it. The ridiculous part is that we're supposed to be giving her 160 cc's of food A DAY. That is a HUGE AMOUNT. She has never eaten that much in a day in her LIFE. Just to give you some perspective, it took us half an hour to feed her 20 cc's last night. She has to get her numbers run again probably Friday. The vet is still pushing for the feeding tube option if she doesn't start gaining fast enough, but shouldn't we be working her up to 160 cc's? Should we really try to feed her that much right away? She's been starving herself. And she's really good at throwing up. Poor Cinnamon. There is still no way to tell where this will end up but at least we have found a way to get some food into her, even if it is very difficult and traumatic.
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