Mea Culpa for the Cranky

Sorry if I was a bit cranky in my last post.

My kids are in the only school district in the nation - nay, the entire universe - that hasn't started the school year yet. And the parts for my non-functional washing machine have been "in the process of shipping" for two weeks now.

Anyway...

Yesterday I realized the Leo was really looking better. More like himself than he has in at least a month.

(This would be a good place for a photo, but I haven't gotten anything uploaded recently. Maybe tomorrow.)

Looking better aside, his sticky drool still has him smelling like a dank, damp, used handkerchief (if any of you reading this are old enough to remember when people used handkerchiefs instead of tissues and how bad they smelled.) His nickname's now "Mr. Stinky," although I mean it in the most affectionate way.

Smelly or not, Leo's been wolfing down meat varieties of baby food like...well...a really, really hungry baby that looks like a cat with a jaw tumor.

I've been offering a bit of the Hills a/d food watered down too - trying to get at least a little of the cat-specific nutrients into him every day.

So he's put on enough weight that he's more than just fur and bones.

And I can just plop the food in a bowl and he can eat without any assistance from me whatsoever and very little mess. So much easier than the Fancy Feast assisted-feeding routine that used to take hours every day.

And after two weeks since the addition of the pain med, he's getting used to the five times a day I have to insert stuff into his mouth -- he's been much less scared of me as far as the pilling (Pred and Torbutrol) and liquid meds (Clindamycin) are concerned. He knows he will get some sort of food afterwards, so that is his motivation for not fighting me as much.

Not that he still doesn't try and hide pills in his mouth and spit them out when he thinks I'm not looking...!

I also decided to wean him off his prednisone - down to 5 mg every other day. Started yesterday, and so far so good.

Whether the pred has been controlling the tumor growth in the past 7+ months - who knows? But I do know it's been making him a bit jumpy all along, and at this point I'm more interested in seeing if reducing the steroid in his system will make his last days/weeks/months? more comfortable.

We've had a good couple days anyway. Although most of the time I've got the Lisa Kudrow/Friends song "Smelly Cat" going through my head. Continuously.