Last week when Yolanda the vet told me I’d have to start force-feeding Azar I cringed, remembering the ordeal of having to wrap Sunny in a towel and struggle to get him to take his liquid meds. But with Azar it turned out to be a piece of cake! As you can see in the pics, Nog holds him without a towel or any kind of restraint, and although Azar squirms a little, he doesn’t clamp his mouth shut tight like Sunny did, and he is quite okay about getting everything down the hatch – believe me, this is a cat who immediately turns into the Tasmanian Devil when he doesn’t want to be held. And okay, there is a bit of “food spray” resulting in much washing of Nog’s sweaters, but since I’ve been perfecting my technique (including plenty of kisses on the head between squirts of food), I think Azar has actually come to enjoy eating this way…

Then last Tuesday when Agustín was here for a class Azar went over to his bowl and asked for some bikkys! I almost died of happiness. And since then he’s been trying to eat a bit here and there, but he won’t properly chow down, so I still have to resort to the “not-so-forced feeding” method a couple times a day. And yesterday I went – duh! – ASPARAGUS! Why hadn’t I thought of that sooner? So last night I bought some fresh asparagus, steamed it up so it was just slightly al dente … and Azar went nuts. He’s also been keen on eating his cat grass out on the balcony. And his BMs seem to be normalising too. So in terms of his previous mystery illness, he appears to be almost okay again.

But then I noticed a couple of days ago that his hockey-stick leg was hanging more weirdly than usual and when I gently massaged it I could tell it felt very different.  Like there was an extra poky-outy bit near his shoulder. At first I thought it was because he’s lost weight, but then he seemed to be favouring it a bit (though it hasn’t stopped him from chasing Loki all around the house). And so yesterday I called Yolanda and told her I thought Azar might have dislocated his shoulder.

She found it odd that he was running around and wanting to play with a dislocated shoulder, so instead of hauling him in for x-rays and another examination today we decided to see how he does over the weekend. It might just be a pulled muscle, which could heal on its own. He doesn’t seem to be in constant pain or anything, but certain postures or position make him wince (and hiss). So let’s hope it’s nothing serious.

Oh, and it turns out that Loki loves asparagus too!