shitty kitty

Rose - our intense little needy kitty - has pretty dramatic and predictable food sensitivities, it appears. She is very lactose intolerant. And did you know that most non-toxic dry cat foods contain dairy and/or natural flavors of undisclosed origin? We really have to fix up kitty's gut so she can be healthy and get spayed; her red blood cell count is low, although not quite anemic. The theory is that this is from chronic diahrrea from worms [which have been treated], food changes, and eating foods that make her sick. Bummer is that we were feeding her a food that had dried yogurt in it, which of course made her sick. And she chews plant bits from plants that will definitely make her sick, i.e. the spider plant and the pencil cactus. We are working on making the sickness-inducing plants inaccessible to her, and we've begun feeding her easy-to-digest food from the vet, but she will take a lick of the raw milk-containing coffee sludge in a mug on the kitchen table when we are out of the room and then have runny poo for 12 hours. Which has really sucked, because her poop was just normal cat poo from the time she returned from the vet's office for observation on Friday night until this morning.

I'm learning a lot with this one. And I also learned that after a cat has been wormed, you may not ever see dead worms in her poop. Turns out the dead worms often become food, and are digested before eliminated. Like the Onion said, "Like boxes of shit in your house? Get a cat!" [slinks off to find the link or at least a reference...thanks to my neighbor for pointing me to such a delightful quote]