Basement cat is weighin ur sole

Right now, at this moment, Mungo is improving. But over the last couple of days it has been quite a seesaw and I'm just trying to enjoy this for what it is. He wasn't eating well last night so I gave him a saucer of milk with digestive enzymes sprinkled in right before I went to bed--I figured it was better than another force feeding and might provide a little nutrition, but this morning he looked wretched and smelled worse than the worst container of milk I ever found in a boyfriend's refrigerator in my college days... and that is  s a y i n g s o m e t h i n g   my friends. He was unable to digest it and really didn't want to eat, again... which would be fine but he's averaging 6.5 lbs these days when he used to be 10+ and he just doesn't have any wiggle room to be skipping all these meals. I've been giving him baby food on saucers and also with supplements crushed in via feeding syringe. He doesn't like that but he's been fairly well behaved unless it contains something he doesn't want.

Yesterday I realized that the infection, of which the most notable symptoms were loss of voice and Eye Goo, may have been related to the recent disastrous leak of the a/c drain line in our house. For a little while after the leak was fixed the basement and kitchen smelled of mold (also the upstairs bathroom but that's really nothing new), and Mungo's Eye Goo resembled descriptions I read online of Florida Spots, which are a fungal eye condition people get in funky damp tropical places like our basement. I did clean the area (the basement, not Mungo' eyes) with hot soapy water and a liberal spraydown of high-test hydrogen peroxide, but maybe not quickly enough. Whether it's Florida Spots or something else, it needed a local treatment.

The Convenia administered ten days ago did not really much help this condition, but yesterday I began an eye cleaning regime with artificial tears (the kind in tiny one-use tubes, which had the fewest additives) and colloidal silver drops. Colloidal silver was an antibiotic/antifungal up until penicillin entered regular use in 1938. He has had three such cleanings and his eyes look considerably better. Nobody likes having drops put into their eyes by someone else but he seems to realize it's helping, so he cooperates. The problem is he's become so thin his eyes are sunken and so a lot of fluid has to be run into his eyes in order to really flush things out. It's a bit sad and disturbing, and reminds me of what we are really dealing with. Because with kidney failure, there really isn't a prospect for recuperation. There is only Managing Things until they become unmanageable, by which time you have poured your soul into trying to help this little creature that was your friend to begin with but has become, at least for a time, an important mission and sacred responsibility in your life. And it becomes a test of who you really are and what, and who, you care about.

Aaaaaanyway... I really believed today I would end up calling Dr. M to make the visit for last rites, but in the course of the day Mungo accepted eye cleanings and a little subcutaneous fluid (with serious complaints) and a syringe feeding and at the end of the night did respectable duty to some Before Grain beef and Gerber's ham baby food. It was the most he has eaten at once voluntarily in two days, perhaps two whole ounces. I hope his stomach is able to handle it, and I'm not going to think about the calcium or phosphorus because starving to death is a more immediate concern for this poor scrawny fellow. His legs went wobbly again almost as soon as I wrote about them resuming strength, and I cringe when he gets out of my grasp on the "procedure table". Until recently I welcomed his escapes as much-needed exercise in his sedentary little basement life but now I am lowering him gently to the floor like the delicate flower he has become.

In other news, yesterday the Manwich got a big tub of powdered egg whites to support his bodybuilding regimen, and today his personal size blender arrived. Actually I just wanted one for the basement but his recent need for soft foods was a perfect excuse. It's not that he has lost all his teeth, far from it. His choppers may be khaki in color but they are impressively complete for a man his age. It's his stomach that has required all this mush suppage, and I hope that soon he will be able to handle something more substantial, as the baby food doesn't have the kind of nutrition he really needs.

BREAKING NEWS!!!!! A RACCOON has just breached the cat flap!!! I repeat, a full-sized ADULT RACCOON has just breached the cat flap!

I was just sitting here working on this blog and saw something come in through the cat flap, which I fashioned into the window sash a few years ago using a standard flap and a sturdy piece of plexiglas. The window is [obviously] higher up from the ground than a door flap would be, which I assumed would make it less likely--I guess I thought it a LOT less likely!--to be vulnerable to Woodland Creatures of the squirrel, possum and raccoon variety which are so very common in our river-area neighborhood. The window (in our "dining" room) has a table butted up to it that is mostly used as a kitty highway, since we always eat on the couch (excepting special occasions).

I saw and heard something shadowy come through the window flap, right next to which is a sherpa bed lately occupied by our 15-ish mostly-blind kitty, Bumper.

I saw that Bumper was in the sherpa bed.

I saw that Zoe was on the other end of the couch from me.

I saw that Cosmo was in the chair across from me.

I knew that Mungo was in the basement and hadn't used that flap in months.

That's our entire roster of cats.

Then I saw the mask, and realized what I was looking at, and realized it was INCHES AWAY from our mostly-blind kitty.

When I screamed ("OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!") , the racoon had an internal, yet visible, debate on jumping down off the table and into the room (!!!), which makes me think it's done this before (!!!!!!!). But THANK GOODNESS it instead went back out through the flap. Cosmo (who hates noise, particularly loud humans) disappeared and I still don't know where to. Zoe got curious and ran around trying to find the source of the panic (she is usually the center of attention, especially when she brings in pets of her own through the flap). Bumper wandered around on the table sniffing the air, realizing something was up but having no idea what. My husband almost had a heart attack and ran downstairs to see what I was yelling about. I'm still freaked because I locked the flap but Zoe will be able to unlock it whenever she feels like it (she learned that trick on the very first day). And who knows what will happen when both of the primates are in bed and the flap is open once again??

It's time to replace this with one of those flaps that opens with magnetic key collars, even though we might end up having to replace lost keys a lot.

That experience was just RIGHT OUT. I think I hurt my pipes.

Good luck sleeping...