Introducing Betty White

[tarasgirl06]

I didn’t have a printer for ages since college. Then when the pandemic hit and I had to fill out all these forms for the job I was leaving and the one I was starting and some of them needed to be soft copy and some hard copy and nearly all of them needed a signature, it just made sense to get a scanner-copier-printer all-in-one. It’s a little temperamental. But mostly it’s the PC rather than the printer that needs to be rebooted. But that’s usually when the PC fails to recognize the scanner function. The printer has been pretty solid after I got rid of that dumb HP subscription. Who the heck wants to pay HP for ink and pages on a monthly basis? Yes. I use ink and paper. But let me decide my budget and payment schedule for this. Dumb! Stay out of my printer, HP! Once that was sorted and cancelled, this has been a pretty good purchase. I can even print from my phone. That’s a nice touch.

Kids are pretty good at figuring this stuff out. You could probably pay a neighbor’s kid or grandkid $20 to sort out the printer for you. But if Alexa is going offline, then it’s probably a bigger problem than just the printer.

I'm not a fan of home surveillance so Alexa is not an issue for me. I can figure stuff, but HP said it no longer supports my refurb 4630 OfficeJet. Okay, HP, not gonna argue with you. If I can't scan and send, it's not gonna happen.

 

[daftcat75]

Now that she's eating better and looking less nauseated all the time, I think I will have to revisit her portion sizes. She smoked right through her 30 gram Rawz portion in one go. I remember when 20 grams seemed to be her upper limit for a single session. She finished her Rawz lunch and went down for a two hour nap. Then she followed me around giving me sad hungry eyes, licking her lips, and even crying a little because her feeder hadn't opened yet. She made it to feeder opening and proceeded to eat all of that (minus a few grams she pushed to the sides which she will come back for.) She's down for another nap but should be waking soon to make the last hour before her dinner a back-and-forth argument/guilt trip.

Looking at Krista's food diary, I see she ate as much as 55 gram servings. But there were also plenty of these weeks like Betty used to have with as many 10 to 20 gram meals that we could fit in a day to get her up to as many calories as she could get up to.

Food transition first. I'd like to start tapering her pred next week. Then if she's still eating healthy on a pred taper, we can look at increasing portion sizes.

And there she is. The argument/guilt trip begins now.

 

[tarasgirl06]

Now that she's eating better and looking less nauseated all the time, I think I will have to revisit her portion sizes. She smoked right through her 30 gram Rawz portion in one go. I remember when 20 grams seemed to be her upper limit for a single session. She finished her Rawz lunch and went down for a two hour nap. Then she followed me around giving me sad hungry eyes, licking her lips, and even crying a little because her feeder hadn't opened yet. She made it to feeder opening and proceeded to eat all of that (minus a few grams she pushed to the sides which she will come back for.) She's down for another nap but should be waking soon to make the last hour before her dinner a back-and-forth argument/guilt trip.

Looking at Krista's food diary, I see she ate as much as 55 gram servings. But there were also plenty of these weeks like Betty used to have with as many 10 to 20 gram meals that we could fit in a day to get her up to as many calories as she could get up to.

Food transition first. I'd like to start tapering her pred next week. Then if she's still eating healthy on a pred taper, we can look at increasing portion sizes.

And there she is. The argument/guilt trip begins now.

She's doing so well! One wishes IT was doing as well.

 

[daftcat75]

Second dinner rolls around and we have 30 grams left of the Rawz for the overnight feeder. So the next can to open is a Mouser. But I don’t want to waste a fresh can portion on the fridge or a feeder. So I put some Mouser on her second dinner plate. Then I put some more on. I don’t mean to fully transition this meal in one go. But I do want her to enjoy that fresh can portion. So she gets 2/3 Mouser to 1/3 I/D for second dinner. I hope she paces herself. But of course she doesn’t. We need to taper the pred next week. She’s going to start eating the text book beneath her plate. And now I regret not putting some of that Mouser into the feeder. But it’s not cold yet. So it would get really soggy sitting there for four hours before it opens. She’ll live if her overnight meal is only a snack tonight. I expect I’ll split some of her breakfast and dinner (the med meals) with Mouser tomorrow. We may even repeat Mouser for the next can just to keep the transition simpler. I also expect second dinner will be fully transitioned tomorrow. I know this seems fast. But she’s already been eating full meals of one rabbit can or the other. I want her fully transitioned by Friday so that I can observe her eating for two full days this weekend before we start the pred taper next week.

Her poops weren’t that bad to begin with. But they are getting better the more rabbit and less I/D she eats.

 

[tarasgirl06]

Second dinner rolls around and we have 30 grams left of the Rawz for the overnight feeder. So the next can to open is a Mouser. But I don’t want to waste a fresh can portion on the fridge or a feeder. So I put some Mouser on her second dinner plate. Then I put some more on. I don’t mean to fully transition this meal in one go. But I do want her to enjoy that fresh can portion. So she gets 2/3 Mouser to 1/3 I/D for second dinner. I hope she paces herself. But of course she doesn’t. We need to taper the pred next week. She’s going to start eating the text book beneath her plate. And now I regret not putting some of that Mouser into the feeder. But it’s not cold yet. So it would get really soggy sitting there for four hours before it opens. She’ll live if her overnight meal is only a snack tonight. I expect I’ll split some of her breakfast and dinner (the med meals) with Mouser tomorrow. We may even repeat Mouser for the next can just to keep the transition simpler. I also expect second dinner will be fully transitioned tomorrow. I know this seems fast. But she’s already been eating full meals of one rabbit can or the other. I want her fully transitioned by Friday so that I can observe her eating for two full days this weekend before we start the pred taper next week.

Her poops weren’t that bad to begin with. But they are getting better the more rabbit and less I/D she eats.

When you look at a lot of her earlier progress reports and then look at this one...amazing!!!

 

[daftcat75]

I woke up this morning thinking I had a dentist appointment at noon and an all hands in the office at 2:30. And a conference call at 11am. Not much time to get myself and the cat ready for an afternoon away. But, thankfully, whatever else you can say about him, Augustus Caesar was a raging egotist and would not stand for Julius Caesar having a longer month (July) than him. So February got short-changed, and I get an extra day until my dentist appointment. Still need to go into the office for the all hands. But that’s late enough in the afternoon to make certain Betty is fed and set up with a feeder.

I forgot to mix Mouser into breakfast. I’m totally on autopilot at 5am. Sometimes I’ll just stand there blanked out though trying to remember the next step in the prep and Betty meows me back to attention. “You’re right! That’s exactly what I need to do. Thanks for reminding me.” I guess Betty wanted one more all I/D meal. This will be the last. I hope. Lunch and overnight are already transitioned. Second dinner will be transitioned tonight. She ate 2/3 Mouser for 2D last night. 1D will be split 50/50 tonight. Breakfast will be 50/50 tomorrow morning. All the rest of the meals will be Mouser tomorrow. And by Friday morning we should be fully transitioned. If all goes to plan. That gives us Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday to make sure she’s doing well and eating enough with the Mouser/Rawz diet. If all goes well, we start the taper on Monday night. Doc says try two weeks of taper before attempting the ondansetron holiday again.

 

[tarasgirl06]

I woke up this morning thinking I had a dentist appointment at noon and an all hands in the office at 2:30. And a conference call at 11am. Not much time to get myself and the cat ready for an afternoon away. But, thankfully, whatever else you can say about him, Augustus Caesar was a raging egotist and would not stand for Julius Caesar having a longer month (July) than him. So February got short-changed, and I get an extra day until my dentist appointment. Still need to go into the office for the all hands. But that’s late enough in the afternoon to make certain Betty is fed and set up with a feeder.

I forgot to mix Mouser into breakfast. I’m totally on autopilot at 5am. Sometimes I’ll just stand there blanked out though trying to remember the next step in the prep and Betty meows me back to attention. “You’re right! That’s exactly what I need to do. Thanks for reminding me.” I guess Betty wanted one more all I/D meal. This will be the last. I hope. Lunch and overnight are already transitioned. Second dinner will be transitioned tonight. She ate 2/3 Mouser for 2D last night. 1D will be split 50/50 tonight. Breakfast will be 50/50 tomorrow morning. All the rest of the meals will be Mouser tomorrow. And by Friday morning we should be fully transitioned. If all goes to plan. That gives us Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday to make sure she’s doing well and eating enough with the Mouser/Rawz diet. If all goes well, we start the taper on Monday night. Doc says try two weeks of taper before attempting the ondansetron holiday again.

Go BETTY! Go BETTY! Go BETTY! YOU CAN DO IT!

 

[daftcat75]

Well this is interesting. I plated a 20 gram Mouser to 17 grams of I/D for first dinner thinking she’d demolish the Mouser first. But maybe it’s because she’s been eating Mouser all afternoon that she happily finished the I/D and left the Mouser. I believe she knows by now that I will put that back in her regular spot (we do meds in a different spot than her regular spot) and she’ll have a few more hours to come back to it.

Maybe we will switch back to Rawz when this can is done. We may only have one more meal with an I/D portion if she keeps cleaning the plates (even if it takes her a little longer with a richer, less junky food.) We have time between meals and pred on our side.

She’s enjoying after dinner fuss before I do cleanup and finish my work day.

 

[daftcat75]

She’s coming in over calories today. She can afford to skip a little. After a brief nap, she came back and ate some of the mouser. I’d say about half of the 20 grams or about 10 grams. I think I probably over-fed her at lunch time. She had a meal on the plate and 2/3 of a meal in the feeder.

Oh there we go. She took another brief nap and then woke up and finished the plate. I’m going to either let her tell me when she’s ready for 2D, or I’ll plate it before 9 (in an hour.) There is 68 grams remaining in this can. That’s a perfect amount for a meal and a feeder.

I’m not sure if I need to transition her meals individually from here. She’s already eating whole meals of the Rawz or Mouser. It seems like it might be confusing now for her to have a rabbit second dinner, a rabbit overnight, and then go back to a half and half mix before a rabbit lunch and another rabbit dinner. At this point if I give her I/D at breakfast, it may be another choice and another variety she doesn’t need. It also seems cruel to bust out the I/D one more time just to take it away again the very next meal. Let’s see how she does with 2D and overnight. If those are clean plates by morning, we can start a new Rawz can fresh can portion for her breakfast and call the transition complete.

 

[daftcat75]

She left a little remainder last night. But still came in around 187 calories.

I was worried about the sniff and pass on breakfast. We switched to the Rawz can. No more I/D. And from all the snarfing and alligator mouth with teeth hitting the plate, I think she’ll do alright on Rawz. For today anyway.

 

[tarasgirl06]

She left a little remainder last night. But still came in around 187 calories.

I was worried about the sniff and pass on breakfast. We switched to the Rawz can. No more I/D. And from all the snarfing and alligator mouth with teeth hitting the plate, I think she’ll do alright on Rawz. For today anyway.
View attachment 430659

*Full steam ahead, Betty! SNORK SNORK*

 

[daftcat75]

I could just be imagining this...

Betty has been shaking her head for awhile now. IM told me that she could see regular vet about it. But chances are beyond a cleaning that would probably require some sedation, the next diagnostic step would be some very expensive imaging. And I don't want to roll the dice on whether insurance would cover it because maybe they'd say it's an allergic reaction and it all goes back to her vomiting/IBD exclusion. She hasn't seemed terribly bothered by it. Annoying, I'm sure. But it seemed like something that could be put into the dental appointment whenever we get around to that; in other words, when all the IBD-wrangling dust has settled.

But we're only a few meals removed from her last I/D meal, her last chicken meal, and I haven't seen her shaking her head. Scritching her ears and sometimes taking a bunt to the face (it's a rough job but someone has to do it ) also seemed to set off a head shake before. But I've been ear scritching her this morning and I haven't seen head shaking yet.

Cautiously optimistic... This is something I will be watching for over the next few days and weeks.

I removed the Greenie and doubled up on the Hare Kitty for her mid-morning treats. If she has a chicken sensitivity, I want to keep her intake as close to zero as we can. There's still the A/D. The IM said I can probably leave that small amount in her diet since it's facilitating all the other meds-taking that's necessary to keep her well. I know from Krista that even the tiniest amount of a trigger can cause breakthrough symptoms. So . Betty is not Krista and her case is not nearly as acute or severe as Krista's was. If it seems like her healing has hit a wall, we can look to an alternative for pilling her. At this point, she may even take her pills with her regular food now that she understands the assignment. We haven't had a lick and flick or a missed pill in a long time. Okay. We had one. And I think it was just that I put too much food on the pill. She took up the food and left the pill behind. I re-did it in a smaller coating and you could see it click in her head, "oh there it is!" *swallow* "Dinner now?"

I also sent in her latest poop sample to Animal Biome. I kinda wanted to do a before and after of the food change. But we're already well into the food change anyway. Still. It's been two months since the last test and a few things have happened between now and then that I'm curious to see where we're at now.

 

[tarasgirl06]

I could just be imagining this...

Betty has been shaking her head for awhile now. IM told me that she could see regular vet about it. But chances are beyond a cleaning that would probably require some sedation, the next diagnostic step would be some very expensive imaging. And I don't want to roll the dice on whether insurance would cover it because maybe they'd say it's an allergic reaction and it all goes back to her vomiting/IBD exclusion. She hasn't seemed terribly bothered by it. Annoying, I'm sure. But it seemed like something that could be put into the dental appointment whenever we get around to that; in other words, when all the IBD-wrangling dust has settled.

But we're only a few meals removed from her last I/D meal, her last chicken meal, and I haven't seen her shaking her head. Scritching her ears and sometimes taking a bunt to the face (it's a rough job but someone has to do it ) also seemed to set off a head shake before. But I've been ear scritching her this morning and I haven't seen head shaking yet.

Cautiously optimistic... This is something I will be watching for over the next few days and weeks.

I removed the Greenie and doubled up on the Hare Kitty for her mid-morning treats. If she has a chicken sensitivity, I want to keep her intake as close to zero as we can. There's still the A/D. The IM said I can probably leave that small amount in her diet since it's facilitating all the other meds-taking that's necessary to keep her well. I know from Krista that even the tiniest amount of a trigger can cause breakthrough symptoms. So . Betty is not Krista and her case is not nearly as acute or severe as Krista's was. If it seems like her healing has hit a wall, we can look to an alternative for pilling her. At this point, she may even take her pills with her regular food now that she understands the assignment. We haven't had a lick and flick or a missed pill in a long time. Okay. We had one. And I think it was just that I put too much food on the pill. She took up the food and left the pill behind. I re-did it in a smaller coating and you could see it click in her head, "oh there it is!" *swallow* "Dinner now?"

I also sent in her latest poop sample to Animal Biome. I kinda wanted to do a before and after of the food change. But we're already well into the food change anyway. Still. It's been two months since the last test and a few things have happened between now and then that I'm curious to see where we're at now.

I know you haven't been wanting to do this before, but a little all-purpose feline ear cleaner would not hurt Betty at all. Just sayin'
Looking forward to that report!

 

[daftcat75]

I know you haven't been wanting to do this before, but a little all-purpose feline ear cleaner would not hurt Betty at all. Just sayin'
Looking forward to that report!

So when she was getting the nightly wet willies, I used a homemade solution of chamomile tea and vinegar. But then I got super-paranoid that maybe I caused her ear trouble with that homemade solution. So I decided that I wanted to hold off any more DIY ear care until I could get her into her regular vet.

So for now, I remain cautiously optimistic that it was diet related and the 99.9% removal of chicken from her diet (a couple pill smudges twice a day is all that's left) is actually giving her relief.

 

[tarasgirl06]

So when she was getting the nightly wet willies, I used a homemade solution of chamomile tea and vinegar. But then I got super-paranoid that maybe I caused her ear trouble with that homemade solution. So I decided that I wanted to hold off any more DIY ear care until I could get her into her regular vet.

So for now, I remain cautiously optimistic that it was diet related and the 99.9% removal of chicken from her diet (a couple pill smudges twice a day is all that's left) is actually giving her relief.

Hoping the cause can be ascertained and Betty can have healthy ears!!!

 

[daftcat75]

Uh oh! I picked up some new cans of Rawz rabbit. I opened them and they look more firm. Different. More uniform. Hockey puck. I plated a fresh can portion for Betty and she did a sniff, lick, and no thank you. Thankfully I still have some cans from a previous batch. But I hope this is just a batch difference and not a recipe change. I will have to go out tomorrow to see if I can find more cans from a different batch. Gah! Just when I thought we were on a good path. Found another store locally that sells Mouser. We can fallback on that if we must. Though I think Betty likes Rawz more than Mouser.

 

[Jaxson’s momma]

Betty shows up in the office at 2pm licking her lips telling me lunch is done and she’s still hungry. You know what, Betty? So am I. But if you have to wait for your feeder, I’ll wait too. At 2:30, she gives up—but not after I gave her a lot of requested fuss—and goes off to the bed for a nap. Ten minutes later, I hear her feeder open open from the office. I don’t know if Betty heard that, but I did. I get up headed for the kitchen to fix a snack and I see Betty making biscuits and ignoring the feeder that just popped. I’m sure she’ll get to it. But c’mon. This is what you were chirping at me for the last hour or so. I fake ate from her feeder to show that it was open. She was not moved. Okay fine. I’m still fixing myself a snack.

 

[tarasgirl06]

Uh oh! I picked up some new cans of Rawz rabbit. I opened them and they look more firm. Different. More uniform. Hockey puck. I plated a fresh can portion for Betty and she did a sniff, lick, and no thank you. Thankfully I still have some cans from a previous batch. But I hope this is just a batch difference and not a recipe change. I will have to go out tomorrow to see if I can find more cans from a different batch. Gah! Just when I thought we were on a good path. Found another store locally that sells Mouser. We can fallback on that if we must. Though I think Betty likes Rawz more than Mouser.

Everything is so sketchy these days.
Hope you do find some acceptable Rawz.

 

[Margot Lane]

Everything is so sketchy these days.
Hope you do find some acceptable Rawz.

No kidding! When I order Farmina from the site, it takes forever and is dense. Amazon’s “trusted” version is soupy. Good luck w/ Rawz!

 

[daftcat75]

Cat overboard! 🛟



Dang Xfinity! Knocked offline again.