Hi - well, the good news is that Toby is still with us.
He has been a very poorly cat. Having had one long lasting anti-biotic, he was improving so they then gave him a one week course of daily injections and then he has had another long lasting one. He didn't eat/drink at all for days and I was syringing electrolyte fluids into him. The vet nurse started to think that he maybe had kidney damage from hs week in hiding
But, he suddenly turned a corner. In dsperation one morning, after offering him just about every kind of mashed food imaginable (I even made him a liver milkshake LOL) I gave up one morning and just gave him a portion of what Blackie the house cat has for breakfast. Tinned food with go-cat mixed into it. He ate the GO-CAT!!!!!! The hours I have spent making "eat through a straw" meals for him and the first thing he eats is BISCUIT - I was NOT impressed!!
Anyway - he is here at home still and most of th etim eis out of his cage. We still put him in it if we want the doors and windows open as, if he were to disappear off then he would probably die at the moment - he is still so thin. He saw the vet againlast week, and he reckons it will take him a couple of months to recover completely and that he needs to stay here at home until then. But he is acting like a normal cat - eaing, drinking,sleeping on the bed/has made good friends with Blackie and still adores the dog. He is like a puppy - wherever I go in the flat, he follows me gazing at me. I'm not veyr good at cat language, but I think he has got quite fond of me
It was quite funny - when he started to improve, I couldn't figure out how h ewasn't losing any more weight with the tiny amounts he was eating. We were letting him out of his cage at night at that point. I got up in the middle of the night and found him up to his shoulders in the bag of dog food
So all in all, he is well. I don't know if he is going to be happy living here now and we now have another house cat - or whether we will take him back to the barn when he is well enough. Part of me thinks that he is settling in here and will probably be happiest staying here by the time mhe has been here another 2 months. But he has always been such an outdoor cat that maybe he will be happier outdoors. Only time will tell on that one I think.
Anyway - thank you all
Eumaeus