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cimoreneThe Crazy has diabetes, so she needs special food. The initial special diet kibbles purchased for her - the Science Diet ones - were approved by all the cats, because cats apparently like anything that is expensive as fuck automatically. When Wax bought a bag of slightly less over-priced diabetes diet food everybody except Snookums (aka Russel Crowe) started eating as little as possible. (The BB, aka Arwen, never eats all that much. Her mind is on higher things, like kitty acrobatics and kitty ballet and being utterly flawless.)
It turns out that diabetes diet food is also efficacious for Snookums, who is simply inclined to weigh 5 kg when he should weigh 4, according to the vet. This is because it's the equivalent of a low-carb diet, according to Wax.
Then the Crazy entered a hypoglycemic phase, and the vet prescribed that we should feed her whenever she asks to be fed, as much as her crazy little heart desires. So we've started purchasing really a lot of canned tuna and sardines for the cats, and that's what the Crazy gets when she begs 4 - 15 times per day for food: a chunk of fish, and then somewhere in the 1-2 teaspoon range for each of the other cats. As far as I can tell, the additional fish doesn't have a negative effect on them, except in that it causes them to beg, sometimes quite early in the morning.
(Snookums is still the same size and so is the BB, but it's quite gratifying to see her displaying more interest in food. You still do get the impression that she's condescending to consume the fish, but she's not totally indifferent to it. And she always comes when Fish Time is announced.)
The Crazy, on the other hand, is looking healthier than she has done, it is estimated, since sometime in 2001. She's always had a skin condition that's meant she spent most of her time partially or completely bald on her back and sides and tail - a skin condition that appeared when she was very young. The diabetes thing is very recently diagnosed, and who knows whether it's connected or relevant or whatever: I mean the vet might, but she hasn't said as much to us. Presumably not, in which case maybe it's just all the fish oil or whatever. The Crazy's fur has grown in enough that she looks like a normal Cornish rex! Not only is it there, and thick enough to obscure the color of her skin, but it's also looking glossy and lovely and you can actually detect the ripples of the little curls in it. Her skin isn't completely better - she's still got problems along her tail - but even there, she's furrier and gingerer than ever. She's a new Crazy! A new Crazy who sleeps even more than ever and frequently looks like she's swallowed an entire grapefruit because her belly is so distended with fish, but it doesn't seem to make her uncomfortable. Even her digestion is healthy.
The downside of this new fish-intensive lifestyle is... the fish. Anybody who hasn't had occasion to smell a lot of canned sardines and tuna in an unairconditioned summer flat is heartily recommended to continue refraining from doing so. The smell is pungent, fishy, rather nauseating, and lingering.
Also Cornish rexes are known for barfing, some more than others. It ranges from a hobby to a lifestyle with them. The BB and the Crazy are both pretty mild practicers of this rexish art, who mostly manage to digest just fine but sometimes eat too much or too fast and then barf it back up immediately, completely undigested; and only very occasionally barf otherwise. This is never pleasant, even when it was accidentally easy to clean up, but of course cats always prefer to barf in your bed under the covers. (The BB did, in winter anyway.) The tuna adds a whole new element of horror to this because tuna cat barf is black. It's not that this barf is grosser than dry kibble barf, although it is. It's that it looks like they've barfed up blood, so every time I find some I practically have a heart attack before I remember that it's just tuna. And then it's rather harder to clean up as well.
They've also made a good attempt at ruining all the throw rugs that we'd just laid back out after we had to launder them all when the Crazy had her hypoglycemic episode and peed on them.
It turns out that diabetes diet food is also efficacious for Snookums, who is simply inclined to weigh 5 kg when he should weigh 4, according to the vet. This is because it's the equivalent of a low-carb diet, according to Wax.
Then the Crazy entered a hypoglycemic phase, and the vet prescribed that we should feed her whenever she asks to be fed, as much as her crazy little heart desires. So we've started purchasing really a lot of canned tuna and sardines for the cats, and that's what the Crazy gets when she begs 4 - 15 times per day for food: a chunk of fish, and then somewhere in the 1-2 teaspoon range for each of the other cats. As far as I can tell, the additional fish doesn't have a negative effect on them, except in that it causes them to beg, sometimes quite early in the morning.
(Snookums is still the same size and so is the BB, but it's quite gratifying to see her displaying more interest in food. You still do get the impression that she's condescending to consume the fish, but she's not totally indifferent to it. And she always comes when Fish Time is announced.)
The Crazy, on the other hand, is looking healthier than she has done, it is estimated, since sometime in 2001. She's always had a skin condition that's meant she spent most of her time partially or completely bald on her back and sides and tail - a skin condition that appeared when she was very young. The diabetes thing is very recently diagnosed, and who knows whether it's connected or relevant or whatever: I mean the vet might, but she hasn't said as much to us. Presumably not, in which case maybe it's just all the fish oil or whatever. The Crazy's fur has grown in enough that she looks like a normal Cornish rex! Not only is it there, and thick enough to obscure the color of her skin, but it's also looking glossy and lovely and you can actually detect the ripples of the little curls in it. Her skin isn't completely better - she's still got problems along her tail - but even there, she's furrier and gingerer than ever. She's a new Crazy! A new Crazy who sleeps even more than ever and frequently looks like she's swallowed an entire grapefruit because her belly is so distended with fish, but it doesn't seem to make her uncomfortable. Even her digestion is healthy.
The downside of this new fish-intensive lifestyle is... the fish. Anybody who hasn't had occasion to smell a lot of canned sardines and tuna in an unairconditioned summer flat is heartily recommended to continue refraining from doing so. The smell is pungent, fishy, rather nauseating, and lingering.
Also Cornish rexes are known for barfing, some more than others. It ranges from a hobby to a lifestyle with them. The BB and the Crazy are both pretty mild practicers of this rexish art, who mostly manage to digest just fine but sometimes eat too much or too fast and then barf it back up immediately, completely undigested; and only very occasionally barf otherwise. This is never pleasant, even when it was accidentally easy to clean up, but of course cats always prefer to barf in your bed under the covers. (The BB did, in winter anyway.) The tuna adds a whole new element of horror to this because tuna cat barf is black. It's not that this barf is grosser than dry kibble barf, although it is. It's that it looks like they've barfed up blood, so every time I find some I practically have a heart attack before I remember that it's just tuna. And then it's rather harder to clean up as well.
They've also made a good attempt at ruining all the throw rugs that we'd just laid back out after we had to launder them all when the Crazy had her hypoglycemic episode and peed on them.
