Eddie Update

He’s so much better!

Doesn’t he look good? His energy is back and he’s eating on his own a bit. In fact, last night Dr. Carter and I decided to transition him back to feeding himself. Since he’s gained weight on a combination of a high-calorie prescription diet and an appetite stimulant, I’m going to give him fewer tube feedings throughout the day in hopes that this will become the secondary source of nutrition. We’ve got an appointment on Friday to see how it’s going, and if he hasn’t lost weight, we’ll just use the tube feedings as a medication delivery system with a few extra calories tossed in.

Speaking of medication, Eddie is taking mitrazapine (which I often see online as mirtazapine, too) as his appetite stimulant, which is a common veterinary use for it. However, this drug is used primarily for people as an anti-depressant, and one of the common side effects is wild dreams. I have found stories of mitrazapine-induced dreams all over the Internet, and some of these seem borderline hallucinogenic. For example, one man dreamt of airplanes on streets and another person compared the dreams to being on a recreational drug. So what does this do to Eddie’s dreams? All I know is that he is only supposed to get this drug every 72 hours, and the night after he gets it, he’ll wake me up and want to “talk” to me. I think he’s having some vivid dreams that he wants to share somehow, but I’ll never know for sure.

Finally, I sent these Dancing Deer brownies to the vets and staff, and they loved them. As Dr. Carter said last night, “we like flowers, we like fruit, and we love chocolate.” So next time you need to send a gift for a special occasion, consider the Dancing Deer brownies to have an informal endorsement from my cats’ veterinary practice.