Small bits of good news

Our fluffy darling is still chugging along. I was away for a week and during that time, we got some good news: Kaesea's pancreas levels are finally on the decline. As of his last visit (June 17), the levels were down from 7.4 to 4.2. Anything under 3.5 is good, so he's heading in the right direction. Yay!

He has also been slowly, slowly eating more and gained a slight bit of weight last week. At that weigh-in, he was 9.56. Barely a blip, but it's still better than losing weight. He is due for another checkup on Wednesday of this week and we have our fingers crossed that his weight will have gone up a bit more. He still has ups and downs with eating (he barely ate anything yesterday, but then he chowed down a half a bowl of kibble this morning) but he is, generally, eating a bit better.

His attitude has been overall good, although I have been messing around with his pain med dosage lately and that gets him down from time to time. I would like to reduce the amount we are giving him, but he is clearly in need of a continuous dosage, so we will keep on doing that until the pancreas is under control.

Yesterday, he played with a feather toy for two solid 10 minutes sessions. It was so great! He was diving under blankets and jumping up on his back legs while batting at the toy. Very kitten-ish. At times like these, it is hard for me to think about how very sick he has been (and, really, still is).

After work today, he curled up with me, purring and making biscuits with his paws. Overall, he seems to be a happy kitty, which is just what we want.

So what next? Well, once we get the pancreatitis under control, we are planning to keep him off of all medications and try to get his weight up before we try again to fight the cancer. He is obviously not ready to deal with the cancer medications right now. He will need to gain at least a couple of pounds and retain normal levels in other regards before we re-investigate treatment.

Unfortunately, we have never really figured out a definitive answer to the initial question: What caused the lakes of vomit? The only thing that we know has been consistently "wrong" with Kaesea this entire time is the cancer. So as long as that is allowed to go unchecked, we assume the periodic vomiting will continue, resulting in continued trips to the vet for fluids and re-checks. Sigh. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

In the meantime, fingers and paws crossed for an increased appetite, weight gain, and normal pancreas levels.