The travails of Nixon the Cat.

[snarp]

Nixon the World's Worst Cat, age seventeen, has been sick for a while. In addition to her long-time hobby of urinating on every object below knee level, and many above, she's had chronic diarrhea, bad enough that she was seriously malnourished. She'd gotten so skinny you could feel her ribs, and her coat, which is the softest I've ever encountered on an adult cat, had gone patchy. She's a regular at the vet, and they've got her on thyroid pills, anti-inflammatories, and fiber, but it wasn't helping much.

Mom's initial reaction was to merely suggest that her vampiric ways - she's outlived several younger cats, according to Mom by "absorbing their life force" - were finally failing her. Mom does not like my evil cat. Nonetheless, she was the one who suggested that we start mixing Greek yogurt with Nixon's food. It's supposed to help humans with upset stomachs, so why not cats?

So every day for the past month, either Mom or I has mixed a tablespoon of yogurt and a quarter teaspoon of fiber powder into a can of food, and given her half in the morning and half in the evening.

Before we started this, she was making messes on the floor every day, usually several of them. Since then, she's only done it three or four times. And today, I picked her up and noticed that I couldn't feel her ribs anymore.

I carried her over to Mom and demonstrated.

Mom: That's great! Wow, and her coat's growing back, too.

Me: You do realize that you've prolonged the life of your archnemesis.

Mom: Yeah, I know.

Comments

[jinian]

Heh. Glad she's better, and since my cats are going to be 14 I am filing the remedy for future reference.

[loligo]

We have an evil cat, who is also dumb as a rock. We are resigned to the fact that he will probably live to the age of 25. (To be fair, if he were our only cat, we never would have discovered the depths of his evil, because he's totally sweet with us. He's just a swaggering, bullying asshole to all other cats. But the stupidity, *that* we would have noticed, regardless.)

[smurasaki]

Glad she's doing better. I've known of at least one cat who made it to 20, so she might continue her evil ways for some time.

[snarp]

I think she's planning on it.

[ajnabieh]

I'm glad your asshole cat is getting better. :)

(Towards the end of my childhood cat's life, we were told she wouldn't live long, and to feed her whatever she wanted. To get her to eat, my parents started feeding her sliced deli turkey. Motherfucker lived for eighteen months refusing to each anything else.)

[snarp]

Either fortunately or unfortunately, Nixon will still eat basically anything that's put in front of her - with the exception of Pill Pockets, because she's caught on to the fact that there's generally medicine in them. So old chicken that makes her throw up is fine, but stomach medicine is off-limits.