cat's mouth

i took leland in this afternoon for his 2-week post-op checkup. no charge! that was nice, after spending something like $750 on vet bills in the past month.

we saw a different doctor, dr rieter (sp?). she took a gander at his mouth and determined that it was healing fine. and she snipped off his suture, so he no longer looks like he has one lip hair that's longer than all the others (not that there's anything wrong with that; i have one eyebrow hair that won't stop growing, either).

this left us with a discussion of diet. the aftercare instructions stated that he should only eat canned food or water-softened "dry" food. (virago calls dry food "kibble", though i've never heard anyone else use that term to refer to cat food. dog food, maybe [kibbles 'n' bits], but not cat food. maybe it's a regional thing.)

as i mentioned in a post the day after his procedure, leland has only ever liked dry food. he has never really cared for canned, and soaking his kibble until it got soft wasn't really doing it for him either. sure, he'd eat a few bites, enough not to starve, but he was clearly not satisfied and would ask me for better food at every opportunity. i tried the nicer canned good made of meatlike cutlets in gravy (as opposed to the paté type that retains its can-shape after you dump it), and he would eat all the gravy but not much of the cutlets, leaving behind a bunch of little meat cubes that had been licked clean, much in the way that our dog when i was a kid would scarf down our tablescraps but eat around all the peas. i gave him some tender vittles, and that seemed to be better, but he still wanted the real thing: the iams dry food he's been eating for years.

the doctor asked if i'd given him any of this, and i expressed my fear that he couldn't eat it because he only has three teeth. but she said "you'd be surprised. we have dogs & cats with no teeth who only eat dry. they just gum it."

so on her recommendation, i busted out the bag of dry food and gave him some when we got home. sure enough, he ate a decent amount, possibly the most he's eaten in one sitting since the operation. i guess he just really likes that stuff. and it doesn't really seem that weird, since his teeth probably hurt too much to use even before they were pulled.

the growth (according a phone message i received third-hand) was not malignant. the actual medical term for what kind of growth it was got lost before it reached me, so i really don't know. but i'm told there's a significant chance (25-50%?) that it could grow back. still, if it's not malignant then that's not so bad.

stay tuned for friday cat bending, which should be up by 9am est tomorrow. (yes, i did manage to keep myself away from civ4 long enough to do some cat bending this week. it will even be the biggest cat databending post yet!) ¶