KfH Update

When I brough Kitten from Hell home from the vet last weekend, the first thing I did was offer her some food. It would have been over a full day since she’d had anything to eat, and I figured she might be a tad hungry. She ran to her bowl, but didn’t eat anything. Her failure to eat didn’t bother me. She’d been through a traumatic experience, and if it were me I’m sure my tummy would have been upset too.

Sunday morning she again ran to her food bowl, but this time she chowed down. She’s a greedy eater (which may have something to do with living with two much bigger cats who are overweight and therefore on perpetual diets, making them perpetually hungry and perpetual thieves). She ate a bit more than usual, which made me feel better about the whole ordeal I’d subjected her to.

I got to feel better for a whole five minutes. At that point she urped up her entire breakfast. (No, franny, I have no kitten vomitus pictures to insert at this point. Guess I wasn’t awake enough to think of grabbing the camera.)

I still wasn’t concerned. It was my own fault – I’d let her overeat, and this was the result. I cleaned up and offered her a SMALL amount of food. This time she refused the food. Can’t say I blamed her.

She continued to refuse food the rest of Sunday and Monday, except for a few kibbles that I conned her into eating by making her fetch them, and then threatening to take them away from her. (Have I mentioned that KfH plays fetch? She does, like a dog. Throw an object she can get her mouth around, and she’ll charge off, retrieve it, and drop it at your feet. I never taught her this, she just does it.)

Tuesday morning (yesterday) she’d still not really eaten more than a dozen kibbles since she got home, and I was getting concerned. So I was gratified to see her wolf her food down again and then keep it down. I thought she was finally getting back on track.

Until the Professor informed me, three minutes before I was set to leave for work, that my kitten had barfed all over the hallway, and I might want to clean it up before I left.

I got my vet to squeeze me in last night. KfH has lost weight over the past four days, had a fever (which I’m ashamed to say I never picked up on), and was slightly dehydrated (which at least I had figured out for myself, although she really didn’t show any signs of that until yesterday).

She’s now in the hospital and may well be until after Thanksgiving. Initial bloodwork indicates that she may have a mild pancreatitis (lipase levels slightly elevated). But they still have to run some tests, do some radiographs, and they want one of their senior clinicians to look her over.

I understand that she’s still feisty though. I tried to warn them what this kitten was capable of, even when not feeling in top form. I’m not entirely sure what she’s done at the hospital yet, but the doctor I spoke with last night told me that the nurses said she was “bad”. I did warn them that she was likely to chew through her venusets. I’ll have to wait until later this morning to see if they listened to me.