Melissa's Place

Frankie the Un-FC

I am feeling a bit ashamed. Mark and I, and the rest of the world along with our encouragement, have been calling Frankie fat since the beginning of time. Well, nearly since the beginning of Frankie. FC became a very common abbreviation for Fat Cat. It was said with love and only a titch of ridicule. Also, Mark has been known to wander around the house going, "Hey Fatso!" (Being pregnant and a bit self-conscious, I'd sometimes whip my head around with angry eyebrows only to realize he was talking to the cat).

Well, we went away for the weekend and we left her LOTS of food and water. And when we returned, she hadn't really touched any food and she'd hardly touched the water. Over the past few days since we got back, she's still hunger-striking. Well, she's not eating her million dollar kibble. Instead, she will eat salmony treats when they are hand-fed to her. And she will drink water if I present it immediately in front of her (or, strangely, if it is dirty rainwater collecting in a puddle or a vacant dish). The vet also discovered that she will eat this special wet cat food called A/D, which stands for Anorexic Diet and which contains catnip. This vet, you can tell, is not in this profession for the glory. She couldn't find a spoon, so she dipped her fingers into the pureed mush and fed it to my sweet FC like that until she'd had her fill.

Speaking of FC, that's no longer technically true. The cat whom we teased for years is now slightly BELOW an ideal weight for her body type, I have been informed. She lost 4 pounds in about six months and that, apparently, is somewhat of a "drastic" weight loss. I guess it equates to losing about a third of your body weight in a half a year. The vet was very nice, but I began to feel so ashamed, like maybe I'd been starving my poor cat. When I told the vet I'd been feeding her dry Medical Reducing Formula, she asked, "And does the cat have free access to as much as she likes?" Is she CRAZY? I thought. When Frankie (well, the OLD FC anyway) had access to as much food as she wanted, she ate until she vomited and then she ate some more. She was, in every technical sense, bulemic! And now, with all the teasing, apparently we've made her anorexic!

Well, we bought some AD cans of food and I feed them to her.... on a spoon. And I carry her to her water dish. She doesn't really meow at me like she used to. I kind of miss that lusty demand for attention or food or to be let outside. She lies around listlessly (more listlessly than usual) and when I look at her sunken cheeks and forlorn glossy eyes, she tells me sad stories that I don't want to hear.

I fear Frankie may not live forever and it's very hard to say good-bye after fifteen years.