I got a bad feeling about this.

Day 2, Loki still isn’t eating or drinking. I tried everything. I lined up an array of soft food of exotic flavors, from chicken to lamb and kidney. I tried nuking ’em. I tried tuna water. I tried Royal Canin, which he ignored (although Athena was on it like a shot) He was uninterested.

Then he came out to the kitchen, flopped down, yowled, and without moving, getting up, or anything, produced some of the most foul poo it has ever been my misfortune to encounter–sticky, foul smelling, and the dark purple-umber color that indicates it’s largely made of digested blood.

This was not a good sign. Back to the vet I went, the second emergency walk-in in as many days. My regular vet was out of town, so we’re getting a blood test, he’s been put on a nasty Pepto-smelling stomach binder that will help an ulcer or other stomach bleeding. He was sitting on the table at the vet, while we awaited the vet to come back, and suddenly began yowling like the damned. Vet techs came running in time to see him, again without moving, still yowling in what appeared to be pain, release a flood of Biblical proportions, which immediately overflowed the table and sheeted down the sides to puddle on the floor. It was like seeing a dike burst. Finally he stopped yowling and wizzing and sat there, sulking, while we attempted to bail out the exam room, and a tech scurried in with a syringe, got a urine sample, and scurried triumphantly out again. Good thing they make those rooms easy to clean.

So I brought him home again, having gotten subcutaneous fluids since he’s still grumpy and uninclined to eat or drink. This makes him resemble a small waterbed, since his skin is loose and squishy. Shot a quantity of pink gunk down his throat–why are stomach medicines always bright, milky pink? Is it a law?–and tomorrow we will hopefully hear back what is wrong, and whether it’s small and treatable or large and…well, not so treatable. We’ve already resolved not to go to heroic measures on the cat–he’s elderly, his health is failing, and if we bankrupt ourselves fixing one thing, it’s unfortunately likely he’ll develop something awful in another month or two. But hopefully it’ll be something we can fix with a coupla pills.

To make life exciting, tomorrow, shortly after the test results are due, I get root canal #2 done. Woo! Not my week, obviously…

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