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There have been some more developments with Precious. Last week she started to make a lot of improvements. She started going to the bathroom in her litter pan. She doesn’t cover it up, but that’s not too big of a deal. She started walking better and is not so wobbly. She’s also becoming more coordinated in general, and has started to clean herself in a more proper way, that is she brings her paws to her face instead of bringing her face down to her paws. We also saw her attempt to clean her stomach, which she wouldn’t do before. We are very happy with these improvements, and thought the only other necessary improvement she needed to make was to learn to drink on her own. Actually, she’s getting worse at the drinking part. Of course, she won’t drink out of a dish, and she is getting stronger, so she can put up quite a fight when we try to squirt water in her mouth. It’s getting nearly impossible to do it, and when we do get some in her mouth, it’s only a little amount. We were giving her water with a glass eyedropper, but she bit through that the other day. My mother had to pry her mouth open to get the glass out while I held her. It was scary. As it is, we’re hoping we got all the glass out and she didn’t swallow any. Now we have to use a plastic medicine syringe, which makes it even harder to get water in her mouth because it’s bigger. And of course, we’re hoping she’ll get her eyesight back. My mom is more hopeful about this than I am I think. I think that if it hasn’t come back by now, it’s not going to, though I really hope it does. I was really ecstatic about these improvements she was making, but all of a sudden this past Saturday, something in her brain seemed to just switch, and not in a good way. We have barely been able to get her to eat anything since Saturday. She did eat very little on Saturday, a little on Sunday, and as of yet today (Monday), I haven’t been able to get her to eat anything. This is really scary because she’s never had a problem with eating. She’s had a bigger appetite since she’s been brain damaged than before. It’s very hard to force water into her, so I don’t see how we’d be able to force feed her if we needed to. Plus, she gets some hydration from her moist food, so if she’s not eating much, paired with the little amounts of water we do get her to take, her hydration level is going to plummet. If she’s not eating though, her low blood sugar might get her again before dehydration does. She’s also having more accidents outside her litter, which makes me wonder if they are indeed accidents, or if she’s not trying to use the litter again. Her feces is becoming more and more runny too. This really isn’t good. The diarrhea is what caused her to get dehydrated and get in this state the first time. Once again, what’s causing the diarrhea?! We had been giving her milk to try to soften her stool, since it was quite hard due to lack of water in her system, but we haven’t gave her milk for a couple of days now because her stool was getting softer, and we didn’t want to give her full blown diarrhea. So I don’t think it’s any milk in her system that’s giving her the diarrhea. That’s another thing about her drinking habits: she was drinking milk better than water, but even lately she fights getting milk. It’s like she wants nothing to do with liquids. Something else that “switched” in her brain on Saturday is that she now craves affection. She’ll purr when you pet her, knit bread, and just meow and meow to be petted. While I was happy she’s become affectionate, it’s turning out to be not all that great. She wants petted constantly. She’ll sit there and keep meowing until someone pets her. I can sit there and pet her for over an hour straight, and as soon as I stop she’ll still start meowing. She’s even gotten to the point where even if she hears a noise in the room, she’ll start meowing because she knows you’re there and wants attention. Don’t get me wrong, I love affectionate cats, but this is just annoying. I can’t pet her 24/7 of course, but her pathetic meowing makes me feel really bad that I can’t pet her all the time. Whenever I need to go in the bathroom now (where she’s kept), if she’s sleeping I try to be really quiet and tiptoe around so that I don’t wake her up and she doesn’t start whining for attention. Another strange thing that’s developed is that she’s losing fur. We started noticing chunks of fur around her cage, but just thought it was from grooming, but became alarmed when we kept finding them. Then a few days ago I noticed that she has a significant bald patch on her right paw. We don’t know what the hell’s up with that. Is she pulling her fur out on purpose? Is she just grooming too hard? Does she have some kind of mange to mite? WTF? Another thing is that even though she’s been eating well since we brought her home, she still doesn’t seem to be putting on much, if any, weight, or growing. I mean, she does seem to be getting stronger, but she just won’t thrive. This is such a mess, and this whole situation is ******** up. Nothing makes sense, especially since she was getting better, but now seems to be regressing. I’m both physically and mentally exhausted. I’m physically exhausted because I have to get up often to check on her and try to give her water, especially this weekend with her not eating, so I’m not getting as much sleep. I’m mentally exhausted because I’m so stressed out about all this, and I just don’t know what’s wrong with her or what to do. I feel hollow inside, just totally void of any good feelings. Of course, I haven’t felt good about this since it happened (really, I haven’t felt good for 99% of the summer), but the fact that she still won’t drink, and now these new negative developments are making me feel hopeless, throwing me deeper into a pit of despair. Despite our best efforts, she’s not getting that much better, and it’s killing me. I just wish I had some answers, wish I knew how to fix this.
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