laurierobey

We got the results of Buddha's allergy tests back. He's most allergic to:

grasses
sheep wool
dust mites
molds

He's not as allergic to foods, but he's somewhat allergic to:

egg
beef
chicken
milk
soybean

Foods that are okay to give him are:

lamb
turkey
pork
rice
wheat
corn
catfish

So now we get to try to find food that he's not allergic to and to remove as many allergens from the environment as we can.

It's no wonder he's been having allergic reactions. Every cat food we've been giving him has chicken as one of the primary ingredients. Anyway, they're going to get a serum ordered so we can get weekly injections to try to build up his resistance to some of these allergens.

Buddha has taken to going medieval on this hanging scratching post we've got for him, especially when we take the stick part of this other toy and run it up and down the sisal very fast so it makes a scraping noise. Here are some pics! I'm still trying to get one of him when he hangs off the bottom of the thing.

http://pics.livejournal.com/lythandra/pic/000ksaqh/g51

Two pictures of a sleepy Buddha with his baseball toy.

http://pics.livejournal.com/lythandra/pic/000kcr52/g51

New pics starting here: http://pics.livejournal.com/lythandra/pic/000hd51t/g51.

Get 'em while they're fresh!

We fought through the traffic snarled by the storm to get home so we could take Buddha back to the vet. The eye gunk (terrmyacin) hadn't been making any visible progress, so we wanted to see if there was anything else we could do. We saw a different vet at the same place this time. We have to stick with antibiotics and just be patient because NSAIDS or steroids would suppress his immune system even more than it already is by the FIV. So they gave us a tube of different antibiotics to start using for 10 days to see how that would do. She said he's probably got feline herpes, which just like human herpes, is dormant for a while, then flares up, then goes dormant, etc.

We also mentioned that he still periodically has diahrrhea. The vet recommended that we feed him only rotisserie chicken for a week. She said that's bland enough that it should help his digestive system calm down. So, we'll be off to the store to get some rotisserie chicken to use for a while.

What looks like the feline acne on his face seems a bit better now, though.

EDIT: Also, the skin scrape they took the last time we were there turned out negative, so he doesn't have skin mites.

Pictures starting here: http://pics.livejournal.com/lythandra/pic/000gy8b5/g51

He used his scratch ramp this morning and played with the little butterfly that hangs from the top. He's asleep on my lap right now.

Pictures of Buddha being treated as a cat should be starting here: http://pics.livejournal.com/lythandra/pic/000gceek/g51.

I'll have to figure out how to capture video with sound because he was purring like a motorboat while the_gneech was scratching/massaging him.

Also, later I carried him on a tour through the rest of the house, just to spice up his life a bit. I'm sure he's bored with being in the garage. He was quite interested. When he's curious, he rears up a bit and looks around and sniffs the air. Makes him extra cute.

Buddha is definitely making progress at getting used to us. Tonight, I took some lunchmeat turkey (at the suggestion of pocket_entropy and mamallamadevil) into the garage after dinner. Buddha had already eaten most of his dinner, so he wasn't starving. But he was very interested in the turkey. I held it out to him, and he sniffed it and started to eat it. He pulled it out of my hand, then dropped it onto the garage floor. It was where he couldn't reach it, so I gave him some more. In order to get the turkey up from the floor, I was forced to move out the shelf Buddha likes to hide behind. I took a couple of pictures of him while it was out (starting here: http://pics.livejournal.com/lythandra/pic/000g7gff/g51). My camera has difficulty focusing in low light.

But, the really exciting part was that he only hissed when he saw something like a purr pad coming close to him at a rate he considered to be too fast. But then he would immediately follow it up with a perfectly normal meow. It's almost like a reflex action or a habit (the hissing, I mean). And then, because he didn't look like he would object, I was able to pet him a few times. This is the first time I've been able to touch him except for when I had the big, thick leather gloves on when I was trying to move him off the dirty newspaper in the trap that first night. I stroked his head and back very gently just a few times because I didn't want to push it, but he looked like he didn't object and possibly even enjoyed it. He meowed a few times while I was doing it and didn't hiss or growl once.

The turkey trick is a definite keeper. Thanks Candy and Kerry!

EDIT:

Just a few minutes ago, not too long after Buddha let me feed him turkey and let me pet him, I heard him meowing in the garage. I turned on the light and opened the door, and he just stood there, meowing at me some more. He also started looking into the house like he wanted to come in. So, John got the turkey and we went into the garage. Once we came in, he went back to his corner, but he kept meowing. I got down on my knees, wedged my top half in between the bottom shelves and hand fed him turkey and pet him a little more. After a while of that, he seemed to calm down and start to get sleepy again, so we left, closed the door, and turned out the garage light. Then we heard him again. I turned on the light. This time, he immediately retreated to his hiding corner. He didn't seem interested in more turkey, so we put the pressboard in front of the door again, like we did when it was really cold, and left the garage door open. He seems content now, sitting on his purr pad. It's like the turkey was a breakthrough.

Apparently, he likes it up in the rafters of the garage.

I just got a call from the cat lady, and she's on her way home with Buddha. She said he's fine, which is a great load off our minds! So she's taking him home with her along with the other cats she brought in so she can watch them for 24 hours to make sure they're healing okay and not suffering any negative consequences from their shots or operations. She'll also feed him for the first time since Saturday morning and give him his antibiotics. Assuming she doesn't need to keep him longer or need to take him back to the vet for any reason, she'll bring him back to us so we can put him back in the garage tomorrow (Monday) night. Then we'll continue the medicine and regular feeding and see how he does. We hope he doesn't absolutely hate our guts now for trapping him twice. We hope to never have to trap him again. Hopefully by the next time we need to take him somewhere, he'll be okay to get in a carrier, but we'll have to see.