Update, kitteh edition
Nov. 5th, 2012 06:44 pmThank you all of you for your support and sympathy and well-wishings re Suri. <3 I am a lot less flaily about it now than I was on Friday/Saturday.
Went to the vet again today for supplies and demo. Have acquired:
* fluid (to be administered subcutaneously, daily for at least the first bag's worth and then they will let me know) and needles, and instructions (and a demonstration) how to do subq fluids;
* food what is good for kitties with kidney issues (there is wet food, one can each of a couple different brands, and also a dry food, which is a 3lb bag but returnable/refundable for whatever portion she chooses not to eat, because she is more used to dry foods and may prefer that), but the advice that it's better she eats *something* even if it's not the special stuff. (Which I had picked up on my readings about this; on the one hand, starving your kitty is never good, especially one that's dramatically underweight, but on the other hand it would be kind of easy to get into a mindset of "the vet said that she must eat this so I can't let her have anything else", so yeah.);
* medicine to bump up the potassium level, which was low in the bloodwork; it's a powder rather than a pill, so can be mixed in with food, especially wet food;
* a printout of the bloodwork, most of which means nothing to me because I have no context for it, but I like having a record. Also some of the numbers were impressively high -- BUN was around 94, compared to normal range of 14-36, and creatinine was 6.3, where the average is 0.6-2.4 -- yikes. Poor kitteh :(
Brought her home, and she immediately went over and started chowing down (it was still the old food, because I hadn't swapped it out yet, but still a good sign) and then a bit later came up on my chest and kind of settled down, licking my hands like crazy and purring up a storm. (Which made me realize how much she *hasn't* been purring lately.) Poor baby, she was probably feeling like utter crap for a while there. I do hope this helps.
For picture reference, this was a photo I took the other day:

Her skinniness isn't quite as obvious visually (especially in static image) as it is when you feel her, but. Yeah.
Went to the vet again today for supplies and demo. Have acquired:
* fluid (to be administered subcutaneously, daily for at least the first bag's worth and then they will let me know) and needles, and instructions (and a demonstration) how to do subq fluids;
* food what is good for kitties with kidney issues (there is wet food, one can each of a couple different brands, and also a dry food, which is a 3lb bag but returnable/refundable for whatever portion she chooses not to eat, because she is more used to dry foods and may prefer that), but the advice that it's better she eats *something* even if it's not the special stuff. (Which I had picked up on my readings about this; on the one hand, starving your kitty is never good, especially one that's dramatically underweight, but on the other hand it would be kind of easy to get into a mindset of "the vet said that she must eat this so I can't let her have anything else", so yeah.);
* medicine to bump up the potassium level, which was low in the bloodwork; it's a powder rather than a pill, so can be mixed in with food, especially wet food;
* a printout of the bloodwork, most of which means nothing to me because I have no context for it, but I like having a record. Also some of the numbers were impressively high -- BUN was around 94, compared to normal range of 14-36, and creatinine was 6.3, where the average is 0.6-2.4 -- yikes. Poor kitteh :(
Brought her home, and she immediately went over and started chowing down (it was still the old food, because I hadn't swapped it out yet, but still a good sign) and then a bit later came up on my chest and kind of settled down, licking my hands like crazy and purring up a storm. (Which made me realize how much she *hasn't* been purring lately.) Poor baby, she was probably feeling like utter crap for a while there. I do hope this helps.
For picture reference, this was a photo I took the other day:

Her skinniness isn't quite as obvious visually (especially in static image) as it is when you feel her, but. Yeah.