Shinerbock has come home!

So, still not totally certain what got my baby boy so sick this week. All of his tests came back good, so there's nothing metabolically wrong with him. So, the vet treated his as though he had a gastro-intestinal infection and gave him plenty of IV fluids. She called me yesterday afternoon to tell me that he'd been holding his food down and seemed to be feeling better (read: he was hissing at the other animals, so must have more energy), so I could come get him.

We discussed his diet, since he's lost soooo much weight (he used to be a 12 pound cat, now weighs 8.75). He's a tall cat, so as you can imagine, he looks like a bag of bones right now. We've decided to put him on a mix of kitten food for the calories and some sensitive stomach food, because he's always had a sensitive tummy. I threw out the automatic feeding thing I had for him because I think that maybe having the food in it instead of a sealed container may have contributed somehow. Maybe some sort of microbe got in there or it developed a weird mold, I just don't know. He ate a lot last night when we got home and certainly didn't leave my side until Bean got up this morning. He doesn't really like her very much! He's still on two different medicines, antibiotics and an antacid. I'm not looking forward to having to administer either one of them.

So, I'm supposed to take him back in three weeks to check his progress and find out if he's gained any weight. If he hasn't then the vet says we may need to run some additional tests on him (ie cancer screens), but she didn't want to run them right away just in case it was just a stomach bug.

Thanks again for all the warm thoughts and concern. I know he's "just a cat" but I've had him for so long that it would be really hard for me to lose him.