Friends and Kitties!
Sheebie here.
It's Saturday evening, and I'm snuggled up on the sofa with The Baby, which is both good and bad; good, because it means she's home, and bad, because she only snuggles when she's not feeling well.
Not that I blame her, what with a 4" incision on her tummy--I'd be feeling pretty low too. As soon as she got out of the carrier she had three long drinks at the fountains, pee'd, and produced a truly epic poop--she must've been saving it for days--and settled in next to me, where she's been for the past few hours. No appetite, but I'm sure the pain patch is responsible for that. I'll tempt her with tuna water if she doesn't eat by tomorrow morning.
The biopsy reports are in, and it turns out that our Olde Grizz has pretty severe Irritable Bowel Disease, but no sign of cancer, thank goodness. This means we'll have to do some radical re-thinking of what and how we feed The Horde as apparently the best way to manage this condition is with diet. Which is where I an crowd-sourcing y'all for ideas--with 13 felines it's not an inexpensive proposition to feed prescription food for IBD, and I'm not sure I really like the choices out there for "specially" formulated foods--they all sound like Frankenfood to me. Right now we feed Friskies canned and Taste of the Wild kibble. The kib will be gone as soon as I can get it to the shelter, it's no longer an option, and of course I just got two fresh bags last week...*sigh* But The Baby's gonna need a better quality wet food, and since we'll be feeding out 12-16 cans a day I'm concerned about cost.
Any ideas or suggestions?
Also, do any of you have experience with kitty IBD or good reference sites to read? I am wondering about using steroids--she's 15 so realistically there's not a whole lot of long in long-term side effects to consider, and since she had such a dramatic turn-around after the metronidazole therapy I wonder about the efficacy of continuing that. I have a call in to her regular vet to speak on Monday (she was off today but came in to read Baby's labs and do her release forms, what a great person) about these two issues but I'd love to get some feedback from the trenches.
You all have been absolute bricks for us this past week--thank you so much for your comments and emails and phone calls--they helped tremendously, and we need to hold on to the main fact that while what The Baby has a pretty awful condition, it's not fatal, and we can manage it...it's just a matter of learning how. At least we know what's wrong, now...and right this minute she's curled up, healing, in a little white ball next to me, everso gently snerring in her sleep. Where she belongs.
Happy Sunday!
XX Sheebie XX
