I received a few good reports from the shelter about Rupert so I was hopeful that he would be returning to us to put on weight. I sent a text asking if I might get him back only to find out he took a turn for the worse and things were not looking good.
I have not heard a further update, but I am assuming that he did not make it. It breaks my heart that we could not save him, but I had a chance to love him and we were both the better for it.
It was very apparent he enjoyed his last few days. He bothered the repairman that stopped by the house he was in, he pushed the resident cats out of their bowls so he could have a single bite of their food. He thundered down the stairs and he even helped himself to whatever he wanted in the fridge (shhh she doesn't know I'm sharing this photo with you). He was always a very happy loving boy.
If by some miracle he is still alive and responds to whatever treatment they might have devised for him and I hear more I will share it with you, but I am guessing that is highly unlikely.
I had a few cans of the Tiki Cat variety pack left at the house so I brought them up to the shelter to give to the foster coordinator, who is caring for Rupert. I hadn't heard from her but I was hoping for the best. I brought my camera so I could photograph the cats at the shelter so I would have something interesting to post this week.
When I stopped in the woman behind the front desk phoned the foster coordinator and she said she wanted to talk to me. I will admit I had a few moments where I was afraid he hadn't made it through the weekend, but she came out smiling and told me what a little spitfire he his. He thunders down the stairs and pushes the other cats out of their plate to have a bite.... but never more than a bite or two. She said even her grumpy cat that usually doesn't allow that puts up with him.
Rupert is always asking for food. There was a workman that came into the house and he was all up in the workman's face and getting all in his stuff. She said the workman was quite taken with him.
She mentioned that he does smell again, which I don't doubt. He doesn't spread his legs when he pees.. he sits more than squats, but he's young and small and I'm sure once he starts to grow he'll grow out of it.
She mentioned the vet put him on metro, but she wasn't sure why.. His gut was always pretty strong and his poop was always well formed when he was here so I don't know why either, but he's active and eating, so there is that.
Unfortunately, he is still not gaining weight, but... if he is eating better then that is only a good thing and hopefully.. *fingers crossed*
She said she would send me photos.. if she does I'll post them.
I received an email yesterday asking me to call in about Rupert. I knew that there must be news and it was not good. I called in and was told that Rupert had seen the vet and they were able to get enough blood to do some bloodwork. How much I do not know, I was told that the report said that his organs were shutting down. I'm left to wonder if they are shutting down or if they ever worked properly.
They are going to try another medication with him, so he is currently staying with the foster coordinator. The outlook does not look good and barring a miracle he will remain in hospice care until such time as his quality of life is an issue.
I am heartbroken by the news. I knew that the chances of him becoming a big strong healthy mancat dimmed with each day I had him and his weight did not increase, but I had hope. I always have hope. So much so I bought him a food dish..
I mean how could I not.. I miss him like crazy. I love how much he wanted attention. He was the only kitten that would run out of the kitten room to greet me and then run back in when I stepped in the room.
I do not know how much time he has.. but I know that his remaining days will be filled with love, not only in person by the woman caring for him, but from me from afar, and I'm guessing from all of you.
Rupert spent yesterday at the shelter. I didn't get an update until well past their closing so I can only assume they had a busy day. Rupert is on clavamox and he is being a 'rascal'. The foster coordinator was happy to report that he likes to take a few small bites out of multiple bowls.
She wants him to see an additional vet on Thursday so she is going to keep him for now. I will admit to thinking some not so helpful thoughts when I read that text, but it is in his best interest to be closer than the 30 minutes away he would be at my house and since I work out of the house during the week he would be unattended. (but that does not help me in that she has a kitten and I do not)
So I will probably learn more on Thursday unless something very unexpected (either good or bad) happens between now and then. I am sure your good thoughts are helpful and I fully expect to see him again Thursday evening.
Unfortunately, Rupert is not gaining weight. All of the weight I have been able to get on him he would lose within a short amount of time. Every time I found a food he would like and eat, he would stop eating it after that initial meal. He seemed to have a preference for beef and the mixed grill type of foods and was refusing to eat poultry (including duck which I tried assuming it was novel). As I mentioned on Friday, he really liked the can of Tiki Cat that Chewy had sent me through the Influencer program. Interestingly he also ate the second can. He liked the reddish "consomme" of the product.
I stopped by the shelter and picked up a wide variety of foods made plans to coerce him to eat every couple of hours this weekend hoping that the uptake in calories would make a difference. Sadly, it did not. Each time I was in there I got about an ounce in him and it raised his weight but a few hours later when I would go back in his weight had dropped again.
I was getting concerned so I texted the woman who was going to come down and see him on Sunday that things were not getting better. She was still interested in meeting him so we confirmed plans and I gave Rupert another bath and cleaned up the room and left him with food and hoped that the last feeding of the day would bring hope.
When I went down for the last feeding on Saturday night I saw that he had peed four times since his late afternoon feeding. That is a lot. I knew he was drinking a lot of water and was peeing frequently but it had never been so blatantly obvious. I texted the shelter coordinator and asked if they wanted me to bring him in and they did, so I texted his wannabe mom to tell her that he was going to the shelter and we will reschedule when he comes back.
I got him into the shelter and they wanted to keep him for the day and have him see the vet on Monday I intended to run out and get him some Tiki Cat food but once I walked out of the shelter I realized I didn't have my wallet with me. I ended up running home to get my wallet and I hit every pet food store between my house and the shelter (30 minutes away) with no luck. (I did get to scritch the neck of a kitty up for adoption at one store. I nearly laughed when they let me know it was up for adoption and tried to 'sell' her to me)
Finally, I went to their website and tried to find a store in the area that carries the food and found two. One down the street by the shelter and the other by my house - the one store I didn't go to - I called the one and they didn't have the flavor he liked and the other was closed. I was glad I had the foresight to take the three cans in the collection that had consomme. I brought those in for him and learned that while I was out they were able to get a urine sample from him and tested it and found that it was very dilute and had "quite a bit" of blood in it. I was afraid I had missed something until she mentioned that it wasn't visible until they ran the test. So they were starting him on antibiotics. He was slow to take the food but eventually started eating on his own.
It was mentioned that they would really like to do a full blood work up on him, but they need 3cc's of blood to do that and considering doing that would remove over three ounces of his 1 lb 4oz body, no one really thinks that is wise.
So I will be praying that they find something and it is treatable and I get him back quickly. Paws crossed and purrs and prayers are all welcome.
Rupert is doing okay, he eats, he poops, he sleeps.. he is still avoiding the 'putting on weight' of his todo list.. maybe I should write the list out for him so he sees it whenever he is awake so maybe he'll remember.
This boy is pretty clever. He seems to have a pretty good grasp of the English language because when I tell him to eat a little more he will quite often walk back to the food bowl even if he just walked away. Last night I brought down a can of the Tiki collection I got from Chewy. I really wasn't paying attention to which one I grabbed and when I opened it up I saw that it was mostly large chunks of fish. The chunks were bigger than Rupert's mouth so I put the plate down outside of the kitten room for my cats to eat. I hung around Rupert for a while and opened up another can but he didn't want that one, he apparently wanted the first can. When I opened the door up a few minutes later to go up and get something I forgot to bring down, Rupert ran right out of the door and straight to the food... he did not care one bit that Jack was investigating it. I'm sure Jack was quite surprised to find fish in the middle of the basement and was trying to figure out why it was there when this little whipper snapper showed up and started eating his prize. He hissed at Rupert and Rupert didn't care. He hissed again and when Rupert didn't respond he snapped at Rupert's ear - Jack's favorite trick when Skippy is in his space. Rupert still didn't care. Jack hissed again, a longer more menacing hiss and he was none too happy when I told him to stop and I took Rupert and the food back into the kitten room. Rupert went back to the food more than a dozen times - far more than any other food I've offered him. He only ate about a third of it, but it was something.
Because I think today needs more kitties, I think I'll share some random cat photos for you to enjoy.
Because I'm nervous about Rupert's weight I brought down some more baby food to syringe feed him. First thing I did was weigh him. In the morning he was 1lb 4oz last night he was 1lb 5oz! Since I was having a hard time telling exactly how much he was weighing (the scale would vacillate between half ounces) I've decided to start weighing him in Kilograms (my scale does either lbs/oz or KG) and he weighed .60 KG.
*knock wood*
He had eaten some dry food and some of the can of mixed grill pate food I had put down for him but I still wanted to make sure that he got more calories in him since I was there to assist it. He is so not a fan of it. The food coma he goes into after being fed bothers me. Fortunately he was once again interested in playing with my necklace - but still not with any of the toys.
So, not a whole heck of a lot 'new' to report.. just a holding pattern... but he is still awfully cute.
When last I spoke about the scale Rupert was weighing 1 lb 6.5 oz. He had just had a lot to eat (with a little help) and I was encouraged.
We had spent a fair amount of time cuddling and I spent some time rubbing his belly. It made a lot of not quite normal belly sounds, sounds I'm used to in kittens with diarrhea. I know rubbing his belly helps blood flow to the area and stimulates digestion, so I was happy to do it.
He's also a pretty regular pooper, about once every 36 hours.. they are normally very well formed but a little dry and segmented (like a bunch of little balls stuck together to form a log). The first two were proportional to his body, but the last one from Sunday night was huge. Almost two to three times the size he has been producing.
Which accounted for his weight drop. He was 1lb 4 oz this morning. I had a moment of panic, but I saw he was bright eyed and he had eaten over night (not enough obviously, but he is still taking in calories). I left him with the admonition that if he did not eat during the day I was going to force feed him when I got home.
He had a little, but not much. So I mixed some digestive enzymes/probiotics into a jar of baby food and set out to see how much I could get in him over the next couple of hours. At first he was all "this is great!" but after five or six cc's of food he was like "this is more than enough, thank you" and then it was "Lady, you are crazy!!" and finally "if you don't stop this I'm going to vomit it all back up on you!" which is when I reluctantly stopped. I got maybe a half a jar in him. But at least he was back up to 1lb 6.
He became so tired afterwards that all he wanted to do was sleep... think post turkey dinner. I left him to rest and hopefully consume a little more food over night and we'll reassess in the morning. If he isn't bright eyed and attention seeking or if he has vomited up the food or has a dramatic drop in weight I'll contact the shelter and see what they want to do next.
Despite all of this, I am encouraged as he does weigh more now than he did when he got here.. I just hope it is enough. (I just wish he'd hang out on Happy Bear)
Rupert is still with us, being as cute as ever. He is still not eating nearly enough to make me happy, but he is eating on a pretty consistent basis, so there is that. I am still concerned that his whiskers were inhibiting his ability to eat. When I feed him, he would often look like he was covering his food, but when you really watch him he seems to be 'digging' at the side of the bowl. Food bowls that had higher sides usually meant more food left behind, so I attempted to feed him on a paper plate.
The first meal went okay, but he still dug at the edges of the plate and moved it around quite a bit. I thought I'd try an upside-down plate. He 'dug' quite a bit less when eating this so I am considering taking down a ceramic plate and using that upside down to see if the pattern holds.
I've also noticed something very odd with Rupert's front feet. I mentioned before that they felt like they were missing a lot of muscle, but I was finally able to capture a photo of what is going on in addition to that..
Rupert was not a fan of my attempting to get photos of his feet.
This is generally how his feet look. It almost looks like a 'hang ten' hand gesture with the three middle fingers curled in and the pinky and thumb extended. If I massage his toes, which fortunately he does not mind at all, they relax and look more 'normal' but the next time he walks they curl up or contract again. It is really quite fascinating. I am assuming once he starts rebuilding muscle it will correct itself. At this point it does not seem to bother him, nor does it hinder him in any way. (a few extra toe photos because who doesn't love kitten feet)
My husband thinks he is looking better and he is slowly gaining weight. Every time he poops he loses a little ground, but that is to be expected. He could use another bath but I'm going to hold off another day or two for that. He doesn't realize yet that he needs to sit with his legs apart when he pees. I hope he figures that one out soon.
We did have a moment last night that made me very happy. I hope it makes you smile as well
I have been threatening to give this boy a bath since he showed up here, and last night was the night. My husband didn't understand why I was so insistent that Rupert need a bath because I hadn't let him get too close. Today he spent some time with him and he got a first-hand sniff of what that boy needed one and he agreed.
Not really sure what his issue is. I believe it is mostly urine and a complete lack of grooming. So far all this boy has done is eat, sleep and a little snuggling. He hasn't played with toys, he has licked his paw a couple of times, but he just doesn't seem to have it in him to do a full groom. That's okay, you save your energy for rebuilding your muscles, We'll take care of the smell.
He did really well. He didn't want to be there and that was pretty obvious, but there was no bloodshed - either mine or his - so I'm going to call it a success.
My husband is getting a little better at taking photos.. or at least keeping me out of them as much as possible ☺ I did soap him up a little on his belly where it was the worst; I tried to get the gunk off his toes too. I was feeling bad that the bath was taking 'so long' (it wasn't, I'm just concerned about him) so I didn't get everything off that I wanted, but at least now he isn't as offensive. After the bath, but before the drying I held him in my hand and he just laid there. The bath must have exhausted him.
I felt so bad. I wanted to just wave a magic wand and make him all better.
I used very little soap, that's 99% him. We went back down to the kitten room and snuggled him while he was drying.
I was getting very concerned about him Wednesday night. When I went to feed him on Thursday morning and he hadn't eaten any of his food, but had consumed most of the water and peed five times throughout the night, I wrote to the shelter to let them know. They were concerned enough to ask me to bring him back in to be observed closer to where the vet is in case they felt another visit was in order. When I checked on him on Thursday afternoon I was surprised to see my husband home (he got home a little early from work) and in the kitten room. Rupert was happy he was there but was confused as to why he was not getting all the love and attention he's used to when people show up. He went back and forth between the food bowls having a bite or two and then to my husband to ask for attention. I was so tickled to see him eating that I had hoped that things were getting better.
When I got home he weighed more than he did when I went to work, so I texted the foster coordinator to report and see if she still wanted him back. She said if I was comfortable keeping him then so was she. So, he is still with me, thankfully.
Then this happened.
He is still nibbling his food, having just a bite or two and wandering off, but he will go back several times. He's still drinking a little too much water in my opinion and he is peeing far more often than any cat I've seen in a while, but I'm hoping with the more regular consumption of food that abates.
He's such a cheeky little boy. His whiskers are still ridiculous. I hated, hated, trimming his 'bangs' but I'm glad I did it for his sake. Hopefully, by the time they grow back he'll be eating on a more consistent basis. I also trimmed his claws. He is so underweight that his feet really lack that muscular feeling and have more the consistency of Muffin's arthritic feet. Nothing a good number of calories won't fix I'm sure.
I am not willing to say we are out of the woods. I'm not even sure I'm ready to say we see a light at the end of the tunnel, but I'm crossing my fingers that we are 'on the path out of the woods' and it gives me hope.
