Updating Miss Gracie

This is the latest Gracie picture, taken only yesterday, and in it, you can see the striking changes since she came home in November after her second operation (and three weeks without eating). She has regained most of the weight she lost. She is happy and energetic. The fur is starting to grow in nicely (you can see especially on her front paw, which was shaved halfway down for the IV). Her white tummy fur is growing in as well, though slowly. Strangely, the fur around the scar is growing in the fastest. Perhaps she knows how much I hated looking at it.

With the exception of the limp, she’s close to fully recovered. Of course, she still has IBD. I feed her a diet of wet and dry food. She tolerates the wet food completely, but the dry food sometimes irritates her stomach, particularly first thing in the morning. She often throws up on an empty stomach if I don’t feed her within a certain number of hours. I spoke with the vet yesterday (the new vet; I haven’t so much as glanced at the old vet since they botched Gracie’s case so badly). He suggested raising Gracie’s nightly dose of Prednisone to prevent her from vomiting in the morning if I don’t feed her in time. I got up late today, and Gracie did not throw up before breakfast. The man’s a genius.

Have I mentioned how much I like my new vet?

We had a double bellyrub a few nights ago, the first once since before she got sick in October. And Gracie is in bellyrub mode more and more often. She still hates being dosed with pills, but I’ve gotten it down to a science. I grab her, pull her head up and open her jaws and just drop the pill down her throat. It usually works, and is fast enough that she doesn’t get too upset about it.

Meantime, our routine is getting back to normal. Tig has been playing cavekitty because it’s wintertime. A few weeks ago, I started searching around for him frantically, unable to find him anywhere, and started to panic. Then I realized that I’d forgotten all about the covers. He likes to crawl under them in the wintertime. Sure enough, there was a Tig-sized lump at the foot of the bed. I poked it, and it mrowed. Now, when I can’t find him, I check the bed. This morning, I was treated to the sight of Gracie deciding whether or not to walk on the Tig-lump under the cover. She tested it with her paw and was clearly thinking about it, and then stopped and walked around him. I suspect it had nothing to do with pissing him off and everything to do with Gracie not wanting to walk on an unsolid surface. But I was much amused.

She runs up the stairs again, two front paws first, then two back paws, faster than I could possibly run up the stairs. (Tig walks up them slowly, like an old man, looking up at me the entire time.) She leaps effortlessly on anything she cares to jump on, and we’re back to the deep, throaty purring that I missed so terribly while she was ill and recovering. And best of all, no more bony butt. The limp remains, though. Her left hind leg now curves inward, so when she walks around my bed for an evening visit, I hear tick-tick-tick thump instead of tick-tick-tick-tick. It saddens me, but I won’t take her to the vet until he says he needs to see her. And I suspect there’s nothing can be done. Chalk up another reason to hate the old vet.

Since I’ve been home while on the job hunt, she mostly stays downstairs and sleeps on the sofa. And she visits me periodically while I’m writing, jumping from chair to chair and meowing for attention, or food.

One of the few positive side-effects of her long illness and the many trips to the vet is that I can pick her up from time to time, and hold her for a few seconds. She never really liked being held, except when she’s frightened in the vet’s exam room. Tig, of course, is a huggy bear. Most Maine Coons are. If I ask him, “Do you want a snug?” he will meow to be picked up. As I write this, he is on the chair next to me, falling asleep. Gracie is on the sofa, doing the same.

The cat life in the Yourish household is returning to normal. Purring will commence at once.