Feeding Fiascos

It has been a rough few days since the last post. Ollie's condition has deteriorated more everyday. There were two trips back to the vet, before today, to get fluid injections, different meds, special food, etc. Nothing seemed to work to ease his vertigo-like condition or to encourage him to eat. We have been force feeding him baby rice cereal through a syringe twice a day and it is an all out fight every time. He just refuses to swallow and he is so strong that Matt has to wrestle him in place and pry his mouth open while I hold his front legs and and try to get the syringe far enough in his mouth to get the food in. When we took him back to the vet yesterday, we found out that his lack of eating had taken its toll on his liver. They gave us several feeding options to try and told us that if he still refused to eat, he would have to come back today for a feeding tube. They also found out that he had a bowel blockage and that even his kidneys were be effected by this situation. Nothing worked last night except that the medicine they gave him for the blockage took effect and we had quite a mess to deal with. (When I say "we", I mostly mean Matt. I have too weak of a stomach for most of the messy stuff.) Anyway, the phone rang at 9:30 tonight and when I saw it was Acredale Animal Hospital, I just knew it was bad news. But it was actually good news. The feeding tube procedure went well, he is on all kinds of drip meds, he seems to be less dizzy and has some fight back (which means he is being a pill but that is a good sign for a cat who is being messed with so much.) That is a very simple summation of the 20 minute phone conversation that Matt had with the vet. There are four vets at the animal hospital and three of them are working tirelessly to figure this all out. In fact, Dr. Evans, the one who did the surgery on Wednesday, told Matt tonight that he was losing sleep over this and that he could assure Matt that his concern for Ollie was only slightly less than ours. They are going to keep him until at least Thursday, probably longer, and they are not going to return him until the liver is in good shape, his ear problem seems to be improving and he is eating on his own. They also cleaned him up which we are so thankful for! I don't think I need to describe why, you can just assume the smelliest scenario.

I know this post is long already, but there is more news involving rice cereal and forced-feedings. Callie had her first adventure with semi-solids the other night. It didn't go very well either, but we aren't too worried about it. I tried feeding her two nights before bed but she doesn't seem ready to swallow it yet. She didn't cry or even get cranky, but she didn't enjoy it very much and I don't think anything made it to her belly. It is still early yet to be feeding her solids anyway, so we will try again in a few weeks. I was just hoping that it would help her to sleep longer at night and not be so hungry all the time. But she is a growing girl and I won't have this time back so I am going to try and enjoy all those middle of the night feedings and neck-kinking naps in the rocker. I am getting very good at sleeping sitting up. Here are some pictures of Callie's eating adventure and of her in her jumper. Unfortunately, I don't have any Michael Jordan type action shots of her jumping in it. When the camera comes out, she prefers to pose and look pretty.

She started out optimistic!

This picture sums it up--"no more, mommy, PLEASE!"