Second week of mini victory.

Again, no signing on to Facebook at work.  Not even during the exciting introduction of beeeeeeees.  :)

Update on the Glorious Sam.

So, I have mentioned that we have had the Sam to the vet various times.

The transdermal gel in the ears was not getting enough thyroid meds into him, so we've moved on to itty bitty pills twice a day.  We tried hiding the pills in his food.  Hahahahahaha - Sammie can careful eat all the good bits and leave the yucky bits without blinking an eyelash.  Now we are pilling him twice a day by hand.  First it went like this:pop in the pill, watch him gack and spit it out, pop in, spit out, pop in and hold mouth closed because now it is getting saturated with moisture and starting to crumble, and if you wait long enough (15 seconds) it lacks enough cohesion for a complete spit.  There's a lot of gack gack gack after that.  Then he got clever, and would let us pop in the pill, hold his mouth closed himself, and then spit it out when we weren't looking.  Found at least one worse-for-wear pill on the floor.  Now, we have a version that is a combination of the two: popping and gacking and spitting it out and getting popped back in again - and then being given a particularly tasty treat to eat immediatey, because he can't quite keep the pill hidden in a cheek while eating the treat - we can see when it falls out and we pop it in again.

We started out trying to pill him on a full tummy - but that just gives him enough time to wake up, eat and hide.  Now we just ruthlessly pill him before he's even awake.  Sometimes he swallows before gacking - not often, mind, but every now & then.

This has all been complicated by the fact that his kidneys are also not doing their job properly anymore, and so we have to give him reduced-protein food.  Which meant that, at the same time we were adapting to pop spit gack lather rinse repeat, we were also introducing him to new food.  No more crappy crunchies - no more expensive crunchies that he really liked, either - and a change in tinned food.  When we were trying to hide the pill in the tinned food, we were having two worries - one is that Mr. Orange, also known as Ratboy or Chuckie, likes to shoulder Sam out of the way (as stronger cats do to older weaker cats) and at least taste it - so that means that Mr. Fatty-Cat would get a dose of thyroid slowing meds and not need them.  And it also meant that we risked putting Sam off the only food we can feed him now, and then where would we be?  Skinny cat getting skinnier and fatty cat getting fatter.  Huh.

So.  We stopped trying to hide the meds - we weren't fooling Sam for two seconds, anyway.  Now Chuckie does get a bite or two of the low-protein, but after he does it just to prove that he is the biggest poo-head in the apartment, he leaves the rest, and then Sammie comes back to it and eats at his leisure without everybody hovering over him to see if he ate the ruddy pill.

We are still feeding him his steamed chicken occasionally because he really likes it, and some days he just won't eat anything but that.  I have tried to make a concoction of chicken and rice slurry (sort of a chicken congee) - which I really liked, but which Sam said yuck pooey.  Which is crazy-making because in the winter, when I make myself a chicken stew, which is nearly the same, he is all over me wanting some.  Maybe it's a winter thing.  I've tried a similar thing with burger and coucous - and again: I really liked it and Sam could barely be polite about how yucky he thought it was.

Anyways - he did put on some weight, and stop drinking quite so much water  but he has now lost a little bit of that, and he's quite wobbly.

So, you know: the old dude is an old dude.  I don't think we're going to lose him this summer, but I don't know how many summers he has left.

On the plus side - he *is* strong enough to put up a reasonable resistance to being pilled.  :)