Inching Forward

There is good news and there is bad news but, fortunately, the former outweighs the latter. The good news is that Cammie ate on her own yesterday.

I came home from work and found that someone had regurgitated hard-food in two spots. I suspected it was Cammie. She has been trying to eat hard-food but has been unable to keep it down. Even though that suggests she has been hungry, she has not wanted any soft-food. On my way home, I purchased several tins of food of varieties that we have not yet tried in our household. I opened two at dinner-time and served them, in turn, to the princess.

She ate the portion of Blue Healthy Gourmet flaked salmon entrée. This surprised and delighted me. I wanted to give her more but decided to wait. She had eaten soft-food recently and simply brought it up again subsequently. But this time, after a couple of hours, she had not thrown up. So she received another small portion.

This was the pattern for the evening. At snack-time, about eight-thirty, Cammie was hungry enough for a third portion, though she did not finish all of it, as she had the first two. But I provided a last dish of food before bed-time and that she ate hungrily.

This is, as you may imagine, a great relief to me. I suspect that Cammie was relieved that she was not force-fed last night. Why did she choose to eat this variety and not her usual favourite (of which I had recently purchased one hundred and thirty-two tins)? Perhaps she associates that with vomiting. Perhaps the smell of the new is more enticing. Perhaps it’s just new. I am not naive enough to believe that she will continue to eat Blue Healthy Gourmet just because she ate it one day. Cammie is, after all, a cat. But with sick animals, my attitude is 'one day at a time'.

Now, the bad news is that the princess is suffering from - a cold! She must have developed it yesterday. She is sneezing and sniffling and looks, well, like someone who has a cold. Since her smell is affected, her taste - and therefore her eating - is also affected. I noted that this morning, when she declined another portion of the Blue Healthy Gourmet. I do have another flavour of it ready but I thought that a snotty nose might smell something a bit more pungent, so I garnished her breakfast with some Almo chicken, the taste of which I know she favours. This helped, and she ate all in her dish. She did not want more, but she tucked away as much as she usually does at one meal when healthy.

I will watch her progress over the next few days, of course, as her cold could develop into something worse. A friend told me that Cammie’s earlier symptoms sounded similar to what goes through her cat population periodically, though her beasts usually have respiratory problems with it. Well, now Cammie is suffering that, too.

But she ate on her own. Why she cannot stomach hard-food, I don’t know. If a basic problem is an upset stomach, the hard-food may simply be more difficult for the belly to handle. But even individual kernels are regurgitated. I may try different hard-food in her case. In the meantime, I will offer her more soft-food than she would normally receive.

So, with Josie untroubled by her health and Cammie inching her way forward, I am cautiously pleased. I want to thank all those who have given sympathy and advice. Please know that none of it is wasted, even if I don’t use the suggestions given. All the information is stored and, in the past, I have referred to help received through the Blogosphere in overcoming troubling situations. Like food and medicine, the more information one has, the more one is prepared for adversity.