Married to the Empire

Monday, August 17, 2009

This Won't Be Difficult, Will It?

This little guy saw the vet on Friday for his annual checkup:



I've been saying for a while now that he's chunked up on the renal diet food, which he really likes. But it turns out, that he's lost nearly 2 pounds since last year's vet visit. I guess he just feels like a chunk because Calvin is skin-and-bones these days.

My heart sank when I learned how much weight Doogie has lost. For a cat, 2 pounds is a lot. And weight loss like that typically signals disease. I started praying as they took him off to another room to take a blood sample. We've already got one sick kitty; I'm not ready to deal with another. I'm just not.

Remarkably, his test results were in by that same afternoon. Doogie is totally healthy! Woo-hoo!

But here's the hard part: We're supposed to give him snacks now. The vet recommended a high-calorie cat food to help him regain some weight. We know he likes and can keep down (he has puking and food issues) Eukanuba, so that's what we bought for him. But we haven't had a chance to give him any yet because Calvin is always hanging around.

What's worse is that Calvin discovered the new bag of regular cat food. He circled it, sniffed it, stared pointedly at me, sniffed it some more, stared again... You see, Calvin cares about food. He likes it. A lot. He just isn't crazy about this renal diet he's on. Doogie, on the other hand, couldn't care less about food. He eats when he gets hungry, and he's pretty content with whatever happens to be in his bowl. Getting snacks really won't matter much to him.

So, it won't be so hard to feed high-calorie snacks to a cat who doesn't care a whit about eating whilst keeping away the cat who loves to eat but can't have it. Right? Right?

Life can never be simple, I'm learning.

2 comments:

becky s. said...

I *love* your picture of Doogie. And I'm so glad he's healthy. Our 9-year-old Silver got a clean bill of health a couple of months ago, so that was a relief for us...

ashley said...

Aww that is such a cute picture of him!

I don't envy you. :-/ We are running into a similar problem, though not quite as drastic. We have one cat who's too heavy and another cat who has decided to stop eating for some unknown reason. So, how to make sure they're both healthy...???