Doting Cat Mother Nearly Dented by Exploding Turkey Baster

Here's Tom with his eyes sort of closed keeping Thelonious Atkins company.

Yes, syringe-feeding the cat is as unpleasant as expected, but I did learn a few things from Tuesday night’s exertions.

I went that day to Walgreens and found that they do not sell syringes (minus the needle; they probably don’t sell them with needles, either, therefore), so I stopped at Mission Pet Hospital on the way home and picked up one 3cc and one 6cc syringe.

I also bought a turkey baster, the implement recommend by Dr. Fong.

He told me to put half a clove of garlic in the food, and a bit of cinnamon. That seems like a lot of garlic. It’s half what I eat per day, but I weigh 27 times as much as she does.

But I dutifully minced the garlic and combined it with wet Eukanuba Low-Residue and a pinch of cinnamon. I spread towels on the bed and on myself and tried to administer this mixture to Thelonious using the turkey baster, but the pieces of garlic clogged up the end of the baster, and when I squeezed the bulb, instead of food coming out the small end, the tip was so thoroughly blocked that the bulb blew off!

Back to the kitchen to puree the mixture in the food processor.

I think the baster is probably too big and unwieldy for this operation, anyway, so next I tried the 6cc syringe, which is not really great, either; while the tip of it is very tiny, it soon and abruptly becomes much larger, so it doesn’t really go into her mouth smoothly.

While she liked Eukanuba Low-Residue fine a month ago, she does not like it now. She really doesn’t like it when it has garlic and cinnamon in it. There was a great splashing and flinging about of cat food, vigorous efforts to get away (on her part), a mild feeling of despair (on my part), and pronounced gulps that made me wonder if I’d gotten the food down the wrong pipe.

The extra towels I'd bought for this purpose immediately started to be pulled into shreds. That’s OK. They were really cheap. Later I can put them in a bag labeled Dying Cat Supplies, along with the stack of cheap Corelle plates, the containers for refrigerating leftover cat food, the containers for storing dry cat food, the syringes, and so forth.

It turns out the best thing to use for syringe feeding is a 3cc syringe, because its body is only slightly bigger than the tip. It’s not hard to put into her mouth, but of course it then takes about 30 squirts to get the job done.

We did this in several phases. After the first or second, she lay under the meditation chair recuperating for some time. When I’d gotten it almost all down her (and it was only two ounces of food!), needless to say, she pooped it all out and barfed for good measure.

All in all, she probably got the minimum three ounces of food that day. I have cancelled my unnecessary engagements, as I can see this is going to be the evening project for a while.

I also am having to get up an hour and a half earlier than usual each day so she can have her slippery elm early in the day, but a couple of hours after her morning Prednisone.

But of course it’s worst of all for her: being under the weather to begin with, and having to take a small pill and a big pill, then have slippery elm mixed with water squirted into her mouth, then have yucky food with garlic and cinnamon squirted into her mouth, and finally another small pill and a big pill.

If I have ever used the phrase “squirted down her throat,” please disregard. It is not good to squirt anything down a cat’s throat, as it might end up in her windpipe. Instead, introduce it into her mouth and give her a chance to swallow it, but far enough back that she doesn’t just spit it out.

(This reminds me of my mother demonstrating what it’s like to feed a baby, how the baby smiles winningly and lets all the food dribble out of its mouth. It made me laugh. My mother is extremely funny, if I haven’t mentioned it.)

I’m afraid Thelonious is going to start thinking something unpleasant is going to happen every time I come near her. She has been remarkably stoic, and I guess she forgives me, because the next morning, after I was back in bed after the 6 a.m. pills, she came and lay on my leg, and when I woke up again at 7:30, she was lying on my chest.

Last night she remembered that she has hands for pushing away the undesired. She wasn’t trying to scratch me, but inevitably there was scratching, so I ended up having to wrap her in a towel. Then she can’t swat my syringe-bearing hand away, but it is fairly painful to sit on my knees for so long.