I'm trying to be optomistic

[cornerofmadness]

But it's not easy. I did get Kanda to drink the broth on one of the soupy foods but he wouldn't touch a lick of the meat in it. I didn't get the baby food in him either. If I can't by morning I'll have to put it in the feeding tube. He wouldn't eat it when offered. And also do we no longer feed meat to babies? It was insanely hard to find ANY meat. He DID eat some of the treats. I got the pills into him. God I hope he didn't spit them out when I wasn't looking at him.

I did manage to finish my nano. I'm not happy with how I did mind you. Almost all of it was fanfic and very little original. I never intended that but let's be honest, I don't have the spoons to do my original fic. It's been a horrible year. I can barely concentrate. I'm working until 10-11 at night if not longer. I can't keep all the balls in the air. I still hope to finish this by January. I still hope to get a beta reader for it.

Comments

[ysilme]

Oh my, poor little furrybutt. I highly recommend cooking the food yourself, as it's going to have much more flavour and might be more interesting this way, and also create more scent. None of my various patients ever cared for any of he usual vet suggestions, and any kind of baby food I tried I could either throw away or give the healthy ones. (I don't know if you've been around my journal when we still had Skrållan; she was a rescue cat with severe food allergies and chronic gingivitis and bowel inflammation, among other things, and I've tried all the variations of (force)feeding a nauseated cat or having too much pain, I suppose.)

My usual to-go-recipe is to cook 2 chicken drumsticks whoe, just covered with water, with 1 teaspoon of salt and a carrot chopped up, for about 45min or until it's done. Perfect would be a proper chicken or beef broth cooked from scratch but only with carrots, but that'd be likely too time-consuming at your actual situation.
For fish lovers stewing some white fish filet might also work, if not a can of tuna in water has already worked.

When the chicken is cooked, try a bit of the broth first, defatted if possible as the fat might cause him more nausea due to the liver condition. If he eats that, you can try to purree small amounts of the meat with a lot of broth and serve that - but prepare only the smallest amount possible of that to not waste too much if it doesn't work.
Before you use the feeding tube, you can also try what has often worked for me: picking him up in a cuddling hold, taking up a fingertip of food pulp or tiny pieces of the cooked chicken, and putting that in his mouth while comforting and encouraging by voice and with pets. He might eat it just for your sake, that happens sometimes. Sometimes it also helps dotting a bit of broth or food pulp on the nose, although that's more for cats which have their sense of smell affected.

What can help to make him eat, too, is sprinkling some nutritional yeast flakes over the food, a pinch over about a teaspoon of food, or a bit more; yeast works like a massive appetizer for most cats. Other options are a dash of freshly grated parmesan or a dash of finely ground kibble if he's eating that in general.

Other options to try to get him to eat a bit are a teaspoon of ful-fat natural yoghurt, tiny bits of cheese or even bread (as in, crumb- or lentil-sized) fed by hand, or warm scrambled eggs made only with a bit of salt, a teaspoon of liquid cream, butter, or animal lard of any kind - the latter are more general options, though, as the fat might not appeal to him at all, and not be good for him, but if he licks a coating of any animal fat off your finger it might induce his appetite.

I'm partly raw feeding mine, so I'm always having something in the fridge that I can unthaw on short notion, and finely cut up or minced raw meat also mostly does the trick, but I don't know how well that works with cats who're not raw fed. I don't know if you're familiar with raw feeding, but if not, absolutely no uncooked pork, and only fresh meat or any you've either bought fresh and frozen yourself, or is sold as frozen raw food for cats (not dogs!). And for poultry, not from precut and -packaged meat for a sick cat (although it'd be ok for healthy cats; their digestive systems are more efficient that way than ours).

Continued tightly crossed fingers and best wishes from us! ***hugs*** And also congratulations on finishing NaNo! ***\O/*** With everything going on for you this year, and particularly now, it's a huge achievement, and I hope having done it after all will give you some boost and help you with your writing projects. *hugs*

[cornerofmadness]

thank you so much. I'm going to try all of this. I really appreciate the suggestions

[sylvanwitch]

I hope the meds start to have some positive effect for Kanda.

I also hope that something gives for the new year and that it's not YOU. You deserve a break.

[cornerofmadness]

Thank you. It's not looking good for Kanda to be honest