That Darn Cat

Well, Loki’s sick. Again.

This time, it seems to have been low blood sugar, combined with diarrhea from his latest food. Yesterday he stopped eating, and being diabetic, this dropped his blood sugar down to his toes and left him lethargic and gloomy. This morning he still wasn’t eating, and had black, sticky stool of the why-yes-this-IS-blood variety. Enter panic mode–took him to the vet. It was an emergency, so ungodly expensive to begin with. Oy, vey.

Turns out that it wasn’t renal failure or a ruptured intestine(apparently) which is of course what I thought of with the bloody stool and was doing the oh-god-please-don’t-let-this-be-the-end fret. The vet at least didn’t scream and throw him on dialysis or anything, but after the blood tests says it appeared to be just really low blood sugar, gave him some fluids just so we don’t need to worry about that, and told me to get him to eat.

Generally with Loki getting him to eat is not the problem. You can’t stop him. He’s like a black hole. So we’ve never quite figured out how to tempt him–his appetite kicks in the minute food enters the house. And it’s so out of character for him not to eat that this is worrisome. His big thing is that he’s finicky these days and will turn up his nose at his special food after a few weeks–I dunno if it’s an extension of this or what.

So I picked up some canned food. He displayed interest, ate a bit, and is now ignoring the rest–sniffs it occasionally, then grumps off and flops down. I dunno if I should get a dozen cans and attempt to induce him to sample them, or what. *sigh*

The bloody stool can be fixed by medication, but the medication tastes vile. So we’re holding off on that until he eats again, because we don’t want to put him off his food. All in all, it’s mostly just one of those low-level fret things that are so draining and obnoxious.

After Loki finally passes this mortal coil, I swear to god, I’m getting a pet rock. Except with my luck, I’ll get a diabetic rock that has seizures and requires extensive mortaring or something.

Update: Apropos of nothing, after ignoring the food resolutely for about two hours, Loki got up, mugged my shins, purred at me, walked over to his food dish and went through the canned food like a bulldozer.

I am wondering if this is some diabolically clever plan on his part to get better food or what.

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