Phenobarbital Adjusted to Help Cat Eat

Katharine is finally eating on her own. Not much but it is a start. She ate 1 tb of tuna and 1 tb of Hill's Venison for about 20 calories. And I had given her about 5ml of AD earlier. So, she's had 25 cals. this a.m. We will hand feed as necessary to get her up to 160-180 calories a day. But we will offer food every hour and a half to try to get her to eat on her own.

What might be helping-aside from finally getting up to about 165 calories yesterday which made her feel better-is that I shaved a corner off of Katharine's phenobarbital this a.m. And we decreased it a touch last night.

How did we know she wanted to eat on her own? After I had prepared breakfast for all of the cats, Katharine and the rest came into the kitchen, crying for food. Katharine has only sniffed the food for the last couple of days and acted as if she wanted to eat but never ate, and never cried for food. But today, when she cried for the food, we hoped that she would actually eat and she did. She took almost 15 minutes to eat but she ate almost all of it.

We weighed her last night and she weighs as much as she did Tuesday-10.3. So, no weight loss since Tuesday despite hand feeding, and despite not getting more into her than maybe 50 or so calories per day the first couple of days.

I will try to take photos of my feeding technique and post. She originally kept moving her head and refusing to take the food. And as it was liquid (AD with water), it flew everywhere. I tried draping a hand towel over her front like a bib but she was too difficult to hold that way. Finally, I wrapped her up in the kitchen hand towel and held the towel securely, tightly (but not too tightly) at the neck. This seemed to calm her. Maybe it felt as if I had grabbed her at the scruff of the neck as if she were a kitten. And the towel contained her body. She stopped shaking the food off and with minimal head movement, took in the food. This allowed us to feed her 18 or more mls (of 3ml syringe) at a time and allowed us to get 99% of it in instead of 40%.

I think I'll have the phenobarbital compounded so that I can better regulate how much she actually receives. The pills are not scored so are hard to accurately cut. Shaving off the corner of one dose, and the corner of another only helps if the halves are the same size but they are not. The pills cut unevenly. And maybe we'll add Kepra. I'll have to talk to the vet on Monday.