Prune is growing fast & has a robust appetite, always the first to show up when I am in the kitchen at meal times. Hearing the familiar sounds of her bowls, she appears standing with her tail raised expectantly. Noodle arrives more stealthlike -appearing like a ghost I find her in my peripheral vision sitting at the end of the worktop - unless she is really hungry in which case she is nose into the food tub before I have had the chance to even dish it out!
Prune is a purr box, demanding of my attention, she will alternate play with an insistence that I stop typing immediately & cuddle - just as she is doing now. She has absolutely no respect for a keyboard & will walk all over it typing such gobbledegook. She is larger, more heavily boned than Noodle is & will grow to be bigger than Noodle is by the end of her first year.
Noodle is having a hard time still. She has been unwell on & off for some weeks despite my love & care. My bank balance has taken a real bashing with vets bills for her welfare. She was in a poor condition, of course, having & her pregnancy & raising her kitten but went downhill rapidly in the new year which was perhaps caused by the shock of my bringing in Prune so soon after she had weathered the inning and outing of people over Christmas and them all wanting to see her baby. Yes, it's true that it only took 4 days for her to go from vicious sounding asp to mothering Prune by allowing her to suckle on her teats & to cuddle up with her & her kitten but it must have been a real period of upheaval for her.
Bring in Pru when I did was intended to help her to accept the loss of her kitten who I had sold & who would soon be gone. It worked in that she accepted Pru as being her kitten too & not yearning for her kitten when she had gone, but at what cost to her health?
She got an infection that took 2 weeks to sort out, with anti-inflammatory medicines, antibiotic injections and tablets. Having got better from that & back to more normal, she then began to be sick after eating. Another new period of vets visits with medicine this time to calm her tummy.
Happily, her weight is almost back to where it was pre-pregnancy so she is regaining her condition and now she is back to eating well.
Raw feeding is also going well & so I have purchased a meat and bone grinder so that I can make up my own foods in batches & freeze them down. This is going to be my next project - once I have sourced good fresh meat & the supplements that will be needed! I will let you know soon how that goes!
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| Just a patch of sunlight! |