When you have to be honest with yourself and see things as they are.
I don’t think DeeJay will be with us much longer. I’ve felt like this before and been wrong, it’s possible this will happen again. But he’s just not doing well.
Tuesday, he was walking all over and pooping. He was working really hard to push it out. And there’d be just a little bit. And sometimes, he didn’t get it all out, but it just kind of hung around his butt. Then he’d climb up on a piece of furniture, say the coffeetable, sit on it and get crap smeared all over it.
This is so hard for me. I was getting incredibly frustrated because I knew he wasn’t doing it on purpose. I was in tears. But I just was having a hard time with it. So, I set him up in my bathroom. I put a blanket in there for him to poop and piddle on, just like we’ve got in the laundry room. I gave him fresh water and a couple of different types of food. I put a carrier in there, took the door off and put in fresh blankets.
And then I put him in there and shut the door behind him. He did okay. I gave him fluids around three in the afternoon and in the early evening, he hadn’t peed, which concerned me. Maybe he was blocking on top of everything else. Bobby did. And I almost caught that too late. An hour or so later I checked in on him and he had gone, so that was a big relief, to both of us, I’m sure.
Yesterday I let him out and checked his stool. It was firming up even more. There was one decent turd the size of the tip of my little finger. Well formed, the consistency what you’d expect normal feces to look like. But this wasn’t consistent with him. I ended up putting him back in the bathroom with a fresh can of Hill’s A/D. He ate over half of it. I like this, it looks like something positive. As the day progressed he seemed a little more with it, so I let him out late yesterday afternoon. He slept deeply on the bed, then when Brian got home, DeeJay came out to be with us. He fell asleep on the sofa, right in the middle.
I’d told Brian yesterday that I’ll do the same thing with DeeJay that I did with Lola. If DeeJay is on my pillow or on my side of the bed at night, he can stay there, I’ll sleep on the couch. Last night, DeeJay slept on the sofa, and I slept on the loveseat with the fan aimed in my direction because the bedroom is incredibly warm at night.
When I got up to let the cats out this morning, I went back to bed. Sometime before I got up for good, DeeJay had gone into Brian’s bathroom and pooped on the floor. I found this when I put my heel in it. I closed the bathroom door, wiped up the poop, cleaned the floor and cleaned my foot. Then I went back to bed. When I got up this morning, I checked the kitchen and laundry room. There was stool in both rooms.
This wasn’t firm. It wasn’t really runny, but it wasn’t normal. More like pudding that’s not quite set.
I figured I wasn’t going to have another day of following DeeJay so I decided to set up the bathroom again (I’d taken everything out yesterday because the cats had peed on much of the stuff the day before when they were able to get in). I’d cleaned the carrier yesterday and this morning put down a clean towel and clean bedding. I put DeeJay in the bathroom again.
Brian went to the grocery store last night to get meat for his lunch today and he got roast beef, something DeeJay has always loved. I thought “maybe I’ll give him some and see if he is interested”. He was interested, but he had a very hard time chewing it and he gave up. I tried some Wellness turkey and salmon food and he wasn’t very interested in that, either.
Bad sign. Very bad sign. Not eating. I’ve always said when he quits eating, I’ll know.
I tried one other thing. A jar of beef baby food. It took him forty minutes on his own, but he ate the whole damned thing. And he’s polished off close to another jar of turkey since he ate the beef. Then he cleaned his face.
So what do I do? What do I think? If he’s willing to eat, that’s a good sign. And if he’s willing to wash his face after he’s done eating, well, that’s a good thing, too. He hasn’t pooped since before eight this morning. It’s been over three and a half hours. He’s out in the house right now. His eyes look weird.
*sigh*
There is one load off of my shoulders. October. If we don’t hear from Becky, if she blows us off, my mom will take care of the cats. She’ll come over twice a day to check on them. Her big fear was one getting out, but I told her that since there are no dogs to take care of, there’s no reason to go into the back yard.
And my good friend Allyson, who lives about five minutes away from the Disneyland resort, has agreed to let us, if he’s still alive, bring DeeJay over to her house. That way, we’ll be able to visit with him and give him his fluids.
I’m still hoping to hear from Becky, but if I don’t, at least we’ve got a plan.
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