Jerkface is Trying to be a Vegan

[phenyx]

We're still plugging along here and there's good news and bad news. The good news is that he hasn't regurged again. The bad news is that he has lost all feeding response. After regurg #4 I started over with pinkies. When I offered him the first, NutriBACdf dusted pinky he completely ignored it so I ended up force feeding it to him just to get the NutriBACdf into his system. He likewise ignored the second pinky; this time, however he only required an assist before he swallowed it on his own.

Then he went into shed and lost 3 grams during his shed cycle. I know that in a healthy animal that's negligible, but he was only 31 grams when he started his cycle so 3 grams is almost 10% of his body weight. That was also when I noticed the loose skin on his belly, the slightly concave shape of his underside and realized that he wasn't supposed to have a prominent, inverted v-shaped ridge running down his back. I'm not sure I've ever seen him in good body condition.

As of now, he still has zero feeding response and continues to try to be a vegan. His last two feeds since the shed have been assist feeds. Once I get it in his mouth, he's happy to swallow it. I put the fuzzy in with him and let him ignore it for about an hour but he just doesn't seem to recognize them as food until I manually put their heads in his mouth. (I've tried braining. It didn't work and it made it very difficult to do the assist.) When I weighed him before his last feed, he was up to 30 grams again.

I estimate his age to be 10-12 months based on the 2-4 month age I was given when I bought him. He's about 20-22 inches long. He was 27 grams when I brought him home and now he's 30. He's getting 5 gram fuzzies every 10 days and he's keeping them down.

I didn't make the decision to force/assist feed lightly. He simply does not have the reserves to skip meals anymore. Now that I've replenished his gut biome, and now that I'm strictly controlling his meal size, I'm cautiously optimistic that he's past his regurgitation problem. My goal right now is to get him up to 40 grams and then start trying to get him to feed on his own.

He's my special needs boy and I love him just the way he is. He's a very sweet little guy who tolerates being held very well. He doesn't hiss and has never tagged me. I think maybe he's just meant to be little.