Seeing Improvements - Days 49 to 51

It's been three days, and I have some updates for you. In general, I'm less worried than I was last week. Things are looking good overall. I thought about saving this cover photo for later in this post, but honestly, this was just too fantastic not to put here. This happened as I was writing this post, and it was just too wonderful not to make the cover photo.

Vet Appointment

I woke up Monday not feeling well at all. So I ended up calling in sick for work to give me a day to feel better. I suppose it worked out - I called the vet right after they opened (8:30am) to figure out what I should do. We decided to try to schedule an appointment, but the earliest one was on Wednesday. Right after getting off the phone, I received a phone call back. An appointment had opened up at 9am, and that gave me 13 minutes to get there.

So off Phoenix and I went to the vet since Nguyen wasn't able to take him. Thankfully it's only 3 minutes there, and then you just sit in the car the whole time. I wasn't able to get a stool sample for Phoenix on such short notice 😂, but it was what it was. After he was taken in, the vet gave me a call to explain what she found. She explained how she always thought of two types of diarrhea in cats. The "sick cat" diarrhea and the "happy cat" diarrhea. Basically, while Phoenix was pooping liquid, he was still happy and healthy!

So we decided on a few things:

Let's take him off the dry food (I had already started tapering this off anyway, but decided to fully take him off).
Continue to add the probiotic. Pumpkin is fine, too, but pedialyte is likely not necessary. He wasn't dehydrated.
Start giving him metronidazole 2 times a day for a week.
Bring in a stool sample when able.

He ended up pooping later on in the day, and it was part soft, part formed! Either the tapering off of the dry food helped, or going to the vet was a cure in and of itself. We hadn't given him the metronidazole yet, since I wanted to start it in the morning when I could watch for any potential side effects. I also heard back on Tuesday with confirmation that his fecal sample tested negative for giardia. Yay!

It wasn't all good news though. The vet found flea dirt on Phoenix. No live fleas, but flea dirt. Phoenix is still too young to get any flea medication. We have purchased one medication that works when he is above 8 weeks and over 1.8 pounds. So in about 2 weeks we should be able to give him some. We have given Asher some, and we cleaned a lot of the blankets, floor, and other items that evening. It is possible if Phoenix got something that caused the diarrhea, it could be caused by something transmitted by a flea.

Hyperactive

Phoenix is very energetic. He's been hopping around more and having moments of craziness. We're still working on making sure he doesn't bite us, but he often gets excited by our fingers and our feet.ttttttttttttttttttttttogftftl That was Phoenix. I figure if it's his blog, he should have a say. I suppose this was an appropriate paragraph for that to happen in anyway. He's currently lying down next to me attacking anything nearby. Here's the video I just took:

It's not unusual for him to do something like the above while I'm in Zoom meetings. He likes to jump into my lap and then he'll play around there. I keep toys nearby to help keep him entertained. When he doesn't want to stop jumping in my face or biting, then I put him away in his pen. Here's a video where he's going crazy with the cactus until he got distracted by a new ball that came today.

I also only share cute photos of the little monster, so I figured I should share this one:

Scary, right? But then there was also this:

All in all, this little guy loves to play, just as a kitten should. I feel bad that he doesn't have another playmate to keep him company throughout the day. We play with him daily and he has so many toys to keep him entertained. I also buy things to keep myself entertained... like my attempt to get some Halloween costumes.

Also, here's the priceless video of my attempt to put wings on Phoenix.

Things that Make Me Happy

There were a few things that happened these last couple of days that made me insanely happy. The first one was this:

I had been looking for Asher one day, and this is where I had found him. Sleeping in Phoenix's shark! Ok, so it might warrant an explanation as to why this made me so happy. I bought the shark because I thought it was cute. I also expected the shark to be much smaller. So now we had this large shark, that I had developed an attachment to. I get attached to seemingly random objects, and it becomes very hard to get rid of them. So I was a bit worried that I was going to have a large shark bed that would never get any use.

So I encouraged Phoenix to sleep in there, and it eventually became his go to sleeping spot in the evenings. But I was still worried that when he got bigger, he wouldn't use his shark anymore... and I'd have a large shark bed in my home for years that I wouldn't be able to give away. And then this happened! I'm so excited that Asher loves this bed. I find him sleeping in there often now, and it always makes me happy.

The second thing that happened actually happened while I was writing this post (and it's related to the cover photo). It started with Asher coming and sleeping nearby Phoenix, shown below:

They slept like this for a good 15 minutes or more. And at some point, Phoenix laid down and then they were like the cover photo:

I was so happy when I saw this happen. I mean, I know Asher hadn't woken up, but this is so much progress. And then this happened!

My eyes teared up. I was so happy to see this happen. Asher licked him for a good minute, and Phoenix hung out for all of it. Phoenix woke up to play shortly after this as well. At one point, he tried to play with Asher. Asher "grabbed" his head (no claws), made a soft bite to Phoenix's ear, and then decided he'd lick Phoenix again. Phoenix decided to back up to go play some more.

But overall, these two things have been some highlights to my last couple of days!

Photos

Photo dump!

I was trying to get a cute photo of the one in the croc. Nguyen had just gone outside, and Phoenix decided he would sit in Nguyen's shoe. But he decided to yawn while I was taking the photo before walking away. So instead it looks like he's screaming.