Boston Interruptus
Sep. 10th, 2025 07:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aI had one last fear for Elmer's move: that he wasn't going to eat properly once he got to Boston. Unfortunately my fears have continued to prove true since the move, at least the reasonable ones. I thought we were likely to get screwed at the drop-off, that no one was likely to show up at 4.30. Ding-ding. And I thought Elmer was going to have troubles eating upon his arrival. Ding.
So today I woke up and it was two days since we'd sent Elmer off, and his first fresh morning in Boston was by then six hours or more past. And there was still no eating. Which put us over two days since he'd last eaten and quickly heading toward three.
Now cats can cause problems with their liver by not eating. They start burning fat, the fat gets into their liver, which doesn't work as well as ours, their liver starts failing, they start having nausea, and so they eat worse. It's apparently particularly problematic for overweight cats, and Elmer is. I saw some places that said 2-3 days is when problems can start to occur, but the number 3-5 seemed more common.
So all three of us, Kimberly, me, and Elmer's new guy were all increasingly worried about this today.
Fortunately, Elmer's new dad is super responsible and really taking the cat-dad thing seriously. So he got a car so he could take him to the vet ER today, and did. Elmer was apparently looking good, but they were of course worried over almost three days of not eating, so prescribed him some Mirataz, which is a topical appetite stimulant. You just rub it in the ear, so there's no trauma from pills or anything. That all seemed great, but we knew the appetite stimulant wasn't going to have any effect today, because the general consensus is 1-2 days to take effect.
Meanwhile, we'd decided that we'd just asked Elmer to do too much. We'd put him through a stressful trip and sent him to a new home and a new person. Cats don't do well with change, and that was too much at once. So we decided that Kimberly was going to fly out there so that she could help give Elmer someone he was familiar with, reducing the amount he had to deal with by one. If he got weaned back onto food, and then she disappeared again, that wasn't likely to cause problems. We figured worst case, she got out there and Elmer had already started eating, but with it taking almost a day to get there (we found some 16 hour flights with layover), we didn't want to put it off, especially when things could get worse by the day.
So, we OKed it with Elmer's new dad, found a flight, found a hotel, got everything booked, and at about 5 o'clock we headed out to the airport. Kimberly's flight was at 8.30pm, to arrive in Boston tomorrow at 3.15pm.
Less than a block out of the house, a message came through on my phone and I handed it to Kimberly so she could read it. Elmer's new dad had walked into the safe little closet that he'd put Elmer in after the vet and found him up and acting friendly. He'd tried churu one last time for the day, and Elmer had eaten it all. He'd purred, he'd licked his hand, and he'd eaten a few bites of wet food too! (And Elmer doesn't even particularly like wet food!)
Now that's still nothing calorie wise. Maybe 15 calories, and he should be getting 300 a day. But it sure sounded like a a big change in his attitude. I turned on the street between us and the highway rather than going out to the highway. As I drove up it, I asked Kimberly what she thought, and we agreed it sounded like a big change, and maybe she didn't need to go out to Boston. Besides the expenditure of time and money, it might actually interfere with the bonding process, and we were hopeful that the big push from her being there was no longer needed.
So another block and I turned again and took us back home, and I started cancelling stuff. Hotel was no problem. Cost of the plane flight was lost because it was same-day, and I didn't buy refundable (and it wasn't Hawaiian where I think everything is still refundable or at least changeable). But it had been a one-way trip at least. (I though "One-Way Trip to Boston" might be the name of this journal entry, went I figured I'd write it after dropping Kimberly off at the airport.)
Kimberly unpacked.
Ah well, I thought she could have an enjoyable visit in Boston after the Elmer situation resolved, as she hasn't had a real trip like that away to anywhere but Oahu in some time. Not this time. I do hope we can visit him at least once in the years ahead though. (I quite enjoyed Boston in my week there for Rebooting Web of Trust some years ago.)
Elmer clearly isn't out of the woods, but he sounds like might have calmed down a lot and be on the road to improvement, especially with the appetite stimulant cutting in sometime in the next day. (I joked that we'd scared him straight with that visit to the vet.) So we have hope that we'll be hearing better news tomorrow, and as Kimberly says, it feels generally like optimism now, not just hope.
So today I woke up and it was two days since we'd sent Elmer off, and his first fresh morning in Boston was by then six hours or more past. And there was still no eating. Which put us over two days since he'd last eaten and quickly heading toward three.
Now cats can cause problems with their liver by not eating. They start burning fat, the fat gets into their liver, which doesn't work as well as ours, their liver starts failing, they start having nausea, and so they eat worse. It's apparently particularly problematic for overweight cats, and Elmer is. I saw some places that said 2-3 days is when problems can start to occur, but the number 3-5 seemed more common.
So all three of us, Kimberly, me, and Elmer's new guy were all increasingly worried about this today.
Fortunately, Elmer's new dad is super responsible and really taking the cat-dad thing seriously. So he got a car so he could take him to the vet ER today, and did. Elmer was apparently looking good, but they were of course worried over almost three days of not eating, so prescribed him some Mirataz, which is a topical appetite stimulant. You just rub it in the ear, so there's no trauma from pills or anything. That all seemed great, but we knew the appetite stimulant wasn't going to have any effect today, because the general consensus is 1-2 days to take effect.
Meanwhile, we'd decided that we'd just asked Elmer to do too much. We'd put him through a stressful trip and sent him to a new home and a new person. Cats don't do well with change, and that was too much at once. So we decided that Kimberly was going to fly out there so that she could help give Elmer someone he was familiar with, reducing the amount he had to deal with by one. If he got weaned back onto food, and then she disappeared again, that wasn't likely to cause problems. We figured worst case, she got out there and Elmer had already started eating, but with it taking almost a day to get there (we found some 16 hour flights with layover), we didn't want to put it off, especially when things could get worse by the day.
So, we OKed it with Elmer's new dad, found a flight, found a hotel, got everything booked, and at about 5 o'clock we headed out to the airport. Kimberly's flight was at 8.30pm, to arrive in Boston tomorrow at 3.15pm.
Less than a block out of the house, a message came through on my phone and I handed it to Kimberly so she could read it. Elmer's new dad had walked into the safe little closet that he'd put Elmer in after the vet and found him up and acting friendly. He'd tried churu one last time for the day, and Elmer had eaten it all. He'd purred, he'd licked his hand, and he'd eaten a few bites of wet food too! (And Elmer doesn't even particularly like wet food!)
Now that's still nothing calorie wise. Maybe 15 calories, and he should be getting 300 a day. But it sure sounded like a a big change in his attitude. I turned on the street between us and the highway rather than going out to the highway. As I drove up it, I asked Kimberly what she thought, and we agreed it sounded like a big change, and maybe she didn't need to go out to Boston. Besides the expenditure of time and money, it might actually interfere with the bonding process, and we were hopeful that the big push from her being there was no longer needed.
So another block and I turned again and took us back home, and I started cancelling stuff. Hotel was no problem. Cost of the plane flight was lost because it was same-day, and I didn't buy refundable (and it wasn't Hawaiian where I think everything is still refundable or at least changeable). But it had been a one-way trip at least. (I though "One-Way Trip to Boston" might be the name of this journal entry, went I figured I'd write it after dropping Kimberly off at the airport.)
Kimberly unpacked.
Ah well, I thought she could have an enjoyable visit in Boston after the Elmer situation resolved, as she hasn't had a real trip like that away to anywhere but Oahu in some time. Not this time. I do hope we can visit him at least once in the years ahead though. (I quite enjoyed Boston in my week there for Rebooting Web of Trust some years ago.)
Elmer clearly isn't out of the woods, but he sounds like might have calmed down a lot and be on the road to improvement, especially with the appetite stimulant cutting in sometime in the next day. (I joked that we'd scared him straight with that visit to the vet.) So we have hope that we'll be hearing better news tomorrow, and as Kimberly says, it feels generally like optimism now, not just hope.