Krista's Care

[tarasgirl06]

Right now her plate and feeders are all set up next to each other like a buffet line. I’m concerned that if she doesn’t see the food, she may not go looking for it. But if she’s already going up to the stove looking for food, then why not put one up there? I know. It’s rewarding a behavior I don’t want to reward. But she’s not going to unlearn it now. I take away the harm already by keeping it clean up there. And her life gets enriched with hunting. Then maybe I’ll move that 3rd feeder around the apartment so it’s not always the same.

Excellent idea! Keep her hunting!

 

[daftcat75]

I weighed her again this afternoon before I left her. 7.2 lbs. I’m starting to think I’ve been weighing food and poop every time she’s shown a weight gain. But she does feel fuller. So I maintain that this is a punk week and the scale might be more honest next week.

 

[daftcat75]

Just watched her on the camera.

Jumped up to counter. Walked to the end. Oh look food! Nope. That’s my food. I’m looking for his food!

 

[daftcat75]

Impressive pumpkin

Then a smaller one that she actually went back to the box for rather than bombing the carpet.

And now she's on poopwatch. It looks like she wants to carpet bomb but sees me watching her....

She may also be in for a poop puke. Tense times right now.

 

[daftcat75]

Shoot! There was a third pudding poop. I got her to put it in a box. No poop pukes. So far.

Now she's under the bookcase.

Fair enough. Helicopter cat dad will return to the landing pad (bed.) She can join me when she feels up to it.

 

[daftcat75]

7 oz for 225 calories

A couple pudding poops and a couple of spit ups. Seems about par for a Monday.

Another dosing day. Had to chase her into the home office before I could catch up to her and give her the wet willy.

First breakfast is 80% cleared on first pass. Bookcase Digestion Time and then she’ll be back for the rest before the 8:30-9am breakfast.

 

[daftcat75]

So ladylike crossing her legs at the ankles.

Same cat earlier this summer.

 

[tarasgirl06]

So ladylike crossing her legs at the ankles.
View attachment 315429
Same cat earlier this summer.
View attachment 315430

Well, a lady IS allowed to change her mind

 

[Furballsmom]

Hoping for a good 2020 for you!!

 

[daftcat75]

Final score: 7.18 oz for 230 calories

A pumpkin perfect And then a paint-peeling puddle followed that . But no poop pukes.

I am shifting the balance to more rabbit pate and less rabbit and pumpkin pate. I don't think she needs that much pumpkin. But also, this is how I will get the calories back up without feeding more food or more turkey. She doesn't seem to be complaining on the intake. It may take a few days to see a difference on the output.

Since she's down to 1/4 of her Mirtaz dose (0.75 inch every other day rather than 1.5 inch every day), I've added three drops of full spectrum hemp oil. The hope (and that's all it is at this point) is that it might help with inflammation in her gut. The way she avoids those three drops until she doesn't have a choice says we probably won't be able to get the dose up anyway. I'll give this a chance as long as things don't become meaningfully worse.

 

[tarasgirl06]

Final score: 7.18 oz for 230 calories

A pumpkin perfect And then a paint-peeling puddle followed that . But no poop pukes.

I am shifting the balance to more rabbit pate and less rabbit and pumpkin pate. I don't think she needs that much pumpkin. But also, this is how I will get the calories back up without feeding more food or more turkey. She doesn't seem to be complaining on the intake. It may take a few days to see a difference on the output.

Since she's down to 1/4 of her Mirtaz dose (0.75 inch every other day rather than 1.5 inch every day), I've added three drops of full spectrum hemp oil. The hope (and that's all it is at this point) is that it might help with inflammation in her gut. The way she avoids those three drops until she doesn't have a choice says we probably won't be able to get the dose up anyway. I'll give this a chance as long as things don't become meaningfully worse.

That sounds like a good regimen for now. Happy New Year to you both and may 2020 bring good weight and health, few (or no) returns of the foods, and happiness and prosPURRity!

 

[daftcat75]

I know it’s going to take a few days for the shift in pumpkin to have an effect. But hurry up already!

She just had another monster poop. Three maybe four batteries plus a soft serve. And a puke. That much poop shouldn’t come out of a cat at any given time. It confuses the heck out of me because the first poop or the first part in this case is always good. It’s like she’s sorting the digestible from the indigestible (here’s the rabbit and here’s everything else!).

But for all that, she beat the heck out of the Cat Dancer on her own for a minute or two. I guess that’s the closest she gets to poop zooms these days. But still an encouraging sign.

If I suspect the turkey, maybe I cut her homemade portion a bit. She’s not going to like that. I’m not going to like that. It has 33% more calories than her canned. But they aren’t useful calories if she’s blowing them out both ends. Let’s scale it back a few grams on each portion.

Another possibility is that this batch is a little (or possibly a lot!) low on the liver because that hitched a ride on the auger and spun about with very little cutting through. This batch has psyllium but not enough liver. Perhaps we make a new batch with the correct amount of liver and half or no psyllium. It’s not like she doesn’t already have more than enough pumpkin fiber in her diet.

Another option...I have a mystery batch of homemade that she was eating before her dental surgery. It was all she was eating back then. I could try her on that for a few days. It is likely adequate in liver and possibly freeze dried heart. I hope I talked about it here. It’s labeled 10/28. I’ll look for it later.

I have a 3:15 movie and another 30 or so minutes on my laundry.

 

[daftcat75]

“I suspect the 12/23 batch is giving you the bonus poops and the squirts. I don’t remember the 10/28 batch. But I don’t remember us having poop problems when you were eating only this. So...let’s give it a try. Can’t be much worse than now.”

She’s having a rough moment or three figuring out if this is going to stay down. I mixed a little old batch with a little new batch. But the difference is enough that if I see her before two hours, it’s probably going to be messy.

At least she doesn’t get homemade for second dinner.

Sleep it off, little one.

 

[daftcat75]

...
Spent three hours making a new batch of cat food. That’s start to finish. She’s eating the new batch though. I even mixed it with Rad Cat just now and she ate both. Hopefully this holds and I can phase out the very last of the Rad Cat while switching her to the new batch.
...

This doesn't help me. Unfortunately, I haven't settled on a final recipe yet. Each new batch is a little closer to complete and final as Krista Test Kitchen continues. Unless I wrote down what that batch recipe was, I don't know anything about it. I'd be better off starting fresh with a new batch.

I cleaned up my freezer earlier today. It was kind of sad but also liberating. I threw out several bags of mystery meat that I didn't label. Sensing a theme here? I found another bag of turkey livers I haven't even weighed yet. They are tightly packaged against freezer burn and I still have more than enough of what I did weigh and portion. I also found a bag of turkey hearts that I did water thaw enough to separate, weigh, portion, and label! I'm good for another three to four batches before I need more hearts (or need to resort to freeze-dried.)

 

[daftcat75]

Struggling with the 10/28 batch? We don’t have to feed that again. I’ll stick with the 12/23 until we can make a new one this weekend.
It’s time for second dinner. But I’m not sure she’ll be coming out for it. Maybe I plate something conservative and make up the difference in the feeders.

 

[daftcat75]

Final score: 7.25 oz for 234 calories

Aha moment!

The calcium balance of the batch is wrong. The heart was added to a 1 lbs of meat instead of subtracting the heart amount of thigh meat. A little extra calcium would firm up that last bit of stool. But it's so easy to take this in the other direction with calcium. New batch it is! I'll buy the thighs today and get them ready for a grind and new batch tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'm defrosting some stock. I will offer her some of that instead of second breakfast raw portion.

 

[daftcat75]

Ooof! She had what looked like a C-cell battery poop. But she walked out relaxed like she was "one and done."

Except she wasn't.

A little while later, she went back to the box, on her own, bless her heart!, and blew it all out the back wall. So gross having to stick my head and shoulders into her litterbox enclosure (more like a dog house, less like a covered litterbox) to clean pudding poop off the back wall. Then kind of blindly but obsessively wipe underneath in case anything seeped through the cracks of the enclosure. And finally spraying inside and underneath with the scent-less, odor-eating enzyme cleaner.

We skipped her second breakfast raw portion.

 

[tarasgirl06]

Ooof! She had what looked like a C-cell battery poop. But she walked out relaxed like she was "one and done."

Except she wasn't.

A little while later, she went back to the box, on her own, bless her heart!, and blew it all out the back wall. So gross having to stick my head and shoulders into her litterbox enclosure (more like a dog house, less like a covered litterbox) to clean pudding poop off the back wall. Then kind of blindly but obsessively wipe underneath in case anything seeped through the cracks of the enclosure. And finally spraying inside and underneath with the scent-less, odor-eating enzyme cleaner.

We skipped her second breakfast raw portion.

Some say that liver can produce looseness. Personally, IDK since I stopped feeding any formula with liver quite some time back. I've also read that psyllium is pretty harsh on the digestive tract. But again, IDK since I've never fed that to anyone including myself.

Hoping for success! You can do it, Krista!

 

[daftcat75]

Some say that liver can produce looseness. Personally, IDK since I stopped feeding any formula with liver quite some time back. I've also read that psyllium is pretty harsh on the digestive tract. But again, IDK since I've never fed that to anyone including myself.

Hoping for success! You can do it, Krista!

Liver can produce looseness. But this batch, most of the liver got stuck winding around the auger instead of cutting through. Calcium can dry up looseness. I was actually reading a raw feeders faq on some other site this morning that recommended increasing the bone content if raw is giving diarrhea. Essentially the same calcium supplement I use to balance her food is what I’ve used before to dry up her diarrhea. But that’s not what this is. And also it usually swings her in the other direction.

In any case, if there is a bright spot in all of this, she didn’t poop puke.

Rad Cat had psyllium. But she’s getting enough fiber from the pumpkin. If I was feeding her only the raw, the psyllium might be more helpful. With the pumpkin, it seems excessive.

 

[daftcat75]

I distracted her from her evening raw portion with a spoonful of turkey meat stock instead. There was a little bit of the fat included too. Some say that’s healing fat. To help calm her bombs. But I’m not so sure. I’m sure we’ll know by morning whether that spoonful of stock was a bad idea.

I picked up turkey thighs for her food. I’ll cut them up tomorrow morning and get those chunks into the freezer. We will have a Friday night food making party. All the liver (most of the liver) and enough calcium this time.

28 g rabbit to 7 g rabbit with pumpkin. Want to be sure some pumpkin is escorting the stock. Just in case.