It all began with a burning passion within me—a desire to conquer the art of udon preparation like no one ever had before. The mere thought of those silky noodles swimming in a flavorful broth ignited a fire within my soul. I was determined to surpass all expectations and become one with the very essence of udon. I delved into the world of udon with unmatched fervor. Every waking moment was dedicated to studying its history, exploring its flavors, and mastering the techniques required to achieve udon perfection. But my ambition knew no bounds. I yearned to go beyond just mastering the recipe—I wanted to become udon itself, from the bowl to the soup and even the noodles that graced it. And so, my grand transformation began. I found myself sculpting a vessel, a udon bowl, from a humble lump of clay. With my hands trembling in anticipation, I carefully shaped it, pouring my heart and soul into every curve and contour. As the bowl took form, it became an extension of my being, a vessel that held not only udon but also my unwavering determination. With the bowl complete, I turned my attention to the soul of udon—the soup. Hours upon hours were spent simmering broth, balancing flavors, and infusing it with my boundless passion. Every ingredient I added carried a piece of my essence, a taste of my relentless pursuit of success. And when that broth cascaded into the clay bowl, a symphony of flavors unfolded, a blend that mingled my very spirit with the essence of udon. Yet, my transformation had only just begun. I embarked on the most audacious part of my journey—I would become the noodles themselves. Kneading and rolling the dough with unwavering focus, I marveled at the transformation taking place. As the dough embraced me, I could feel my very being intertwining with the strands of udon. With every delicate cut and slice, I became one with the long, luscious noodles that would carry my essence to the very depths of udon lovers' palates. But my transformation wasn't complete until I had experienced udon from the kitchen to the customer's mouth. I built a bustling udon restaurant from the ground up, meticulously crafting an environment that mirrored my dedication and authenticity. As patrons entered, they were greeted by the warmth of my smile, unaware of the fantastical journey they were about to embark upon. And so, I stood before a customer, a true embodiment of udon. With a heart pounding in my chest, I took a leap of faith. As they savored each mouthful, little did they know that they were ingesting not only the physical udon but a part of my soul. The flavors danced on their taste buds, and I reveled in the knowledge that I had achieved the impossible—I had become udon itself. Dear readers, this is my story—the tale of the Class E Human. Let it serve as a reminder that with unyielding determination and a touch of culinary magic, we can surpass the ordinary and achieve greatness in the most extraordinary ways. May my journey inspire you to immerse yourselves fully in your passions, to embrace the fantastical, and to transform the world around you with the sheer force of your unwavering dedication.
tl;dr: Becoming an employee isn't enough, I must become the udon itself.

Hello all. I found a recipe I want to make and the ingredient calls for Sake. (It's the Parmesan-Sake Grilled Chicken in Dynamite Chicken by Food52.) I need to find a super dry Sake that's inexpensive and available in Georgia. Can anyone make any recommendations? I saw there's a Sasanokawa Ultra Dry that has an Umami flavor. The SMV is 22.7 unfortunately this Sake doesn't appear to be available in the US. Thank you for your help.

I (35F, 155lb, 5'5") am currently dealing with post op ileus and dysuria following a laparoscopic cholecystectomy and I'm just trying to understand why this happened. The surgery went as planned outpatient, but I do vaguely remember waking up in extreme pain and nausea following surgery and was given diuladid and phenergan in addition to hydrocodone and Zofran. I was discharged as planned two hours after surgery. I went home and went straight to bed taking the hydrocodone and Zofran as prescribed throughout the day on schedule. I was able to drink Gatorade and an Ensure, but vomited when I tried to eat some crackers and chicken noodle soup in the evening. I took Zofran and my hydrocodone as prescribed and tried to sleep.
I had to return to the ER 24hrs after my surgery due to severe abdominal pain that was not responding to hydrocodone. I had a CT scan which revealed "Mildly dilated fluid distended loops of small bowel without transition point, which may be due to ileus versus developing bowel obstruction." When I complained of trouble urinating, they did a bladder scan and I was retaining over 450ml. I was admitted overnight and put on clear liquid diet only and given IV fluids, torodol, Tamulosin, and Zofran in addition to Miralax. The Tamulosin has helped the dysuria but I was still retaining 150ml at discharge. No signs of a UTI thankfully. The constipation finally broke this morning and I had severe watery diarrhea for several hours. I was discharged once I was able to eat a turkey sandwich without vomiting with Zofran. I am now home and haven't had a BM since I left hospital. They told me to walk as much as I'm able, so I did that. I've been drinking lots of water and eating frequent small meals despite no appetite. They told me not to take more Miralax at home due to the diarrhea, but I'm worried about the ileus coming back. Can it come back?
Why did this happen? Did I so something wrong? I had laparoscopic appendectomy last year, and didn't experience anywhere near this amount of pain. Since then, however, I have had a flare of ulcerative colitis (currently experiencing a mild flare of proctitis), CDiff, and gastritis. I also had post polypectomy syndrome several years ago after the removal of a couple large sessile serrated adenoma polyps. Is my gut just very sensitive and easily inflammed? Could this have been prevented somehow? Was I high risk for ileus and dysuria and didn't know it?

https://imgur.com/a/wEcSia0
It's getting hot and I already don't want to cook, so here's my Tzatziki Chicken Salad "recipe"
6 servings, 600 Cal, 68.3g protein, 5.4g net carbs, 29.1g fat
Ingredients * 2 Costco rotisserie chickens (breasts only) * 1 tub Costco Hannah Tzatziki Greek Style Yogurt Dip
Let the chickens cool. Pull off the breast meat and skin, separating out the legs and thighs for another meal. Put the breast meat in a bowl and scissor until bite sized. Pour in the tzatziki and stir. Portion out and you're done

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/ReddXReads/comments/13lfqkw/vulturebeard_the_legbeard_that_ruined_roomies_fo Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/ReddXReads/comments/13u79ht/vulturebeard_bad_roomies_part_2/
^{Hi again, it’s the bunny. I’ve just barely stepped into Reddx’s discord, but Ezekial is still posting this saga for me so thank you, Z.}
Trigger warning: This will deal with a lot of aspects relating to child neglect (and possible abuse) and Kid being ignored or taking the brunt of Vulture’s anger. Sorry for the spoiler as well, but I think we saw this coming, too (especially if you’ve seen Z talk in the discord). Don’t push yourself to read if you’re not okay with these concepts.
The Cast List
Bunny (author): 33, female. Recovering lifelong doormat slowly building a spine. Neuro spicy gym rat with major depressive disorder, general anxiety disorder, and most recently diagnosed with ADHD. Unfortunately, very familiar with surviving trauma.
Z (poster): My partner. 31, nonbinary (they/them), also neuro spicy with depression, anxiety, OCD, BPD, autism, and also familiar with lifelong trauma.
One Liner Beard (OLB): 33, male, neuro spicy with ADHD and depression. His nickname here comes from the fact that in messenger, he usually has one-word replies like “oof” or “mmm” as an acknowledgement he had seen the message but has nothing further to contribute.
VultureBeard (Vulture): 30, female, neuro spicy and disabled with multiple conditions. She has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, POTs (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), autism, depression, anxiety, chronic migraines, but also possibly a list of things that may or may not be real. The star of this unfortunate circus. Her name comes from how she always pops up when I’m cooking food, complaining about how hungry is and how she’s unable to cook.
Kid: 3. Female. OLB and Vulture’s child. Likely neuro spicy like we all are, but she’s also only 3 years old. Slightly speech delayed and not potty trained yet.
Take a deep breath. Now take another one. This chapter will likely make you mad.
​
Chapter Three: “Do You Want Bologna?” Or, Vulture as a Parent
Imagine this: it’s eight in the morning and you’re cozy in bed. The blankets are warm, and you hit snooze on your early alarm so you can sleep in before you have to get up.
Your peace is shattered by a toddler crying, followed by the screech of, “WHAT!” or “GET DOWN FROM THERE!”
Yeah, welcome to The Life.
Vulture has a messed-up sleep schedule. It’s partially because Kid doesn’t sleep soundly through the night, but it’s also because Vulture’s sleep schedule is essentially flipped backwards to where she stays up all night and wants to sleep during the day. Vulture says it’s “insomnia” but sometimes she’s up late gaming with Discord friends or watching anime. I couldn’t tell you which issue it was day by day. Sometimes if I go to sleep late, I hear Kid crying from her room because she had night terrors or had potty troubles. Sometimes I hear OLB and Vulture awake shuffling between rooms in the hallway.
Because of this, Vulture and mornings don’t mesh well. Kid is usually put in her room for bedtime around 7 PM, usually with her tablet to keep her company and either give her something to watch, or to play white noises for sleeping. Kid does not have a real sleep routine as well. She’s just kind of shut in her room. Sometimes there’s a bit of a routine like winding her down with chocolate milk and giving her a countdown of “okay, ten more minutes and then bedtime,” but for the most part she just does not want to go to bed. Bedtimes are met with a lot of crying, and the beardy parents telling us that she will be upset for a bit.
Kid has an attempted daily schedule, if Vulture is awake enough. Theoretically:

• 9 AM: Awake and watching TV while Vulture is on her computer in the same room
• 1 PM: In the room for naptime (but it’s usually play time)
• 4 PM: Free to run around while dad is home
• 7 PM: Bedtime (but she’s usually playing then too)

But a lot of times, that schedule gets thrown out of whack depending on if Vulture gets up on time. When she sleeps in, Kid is in her room from 7 PM to 1 PM. Sometimes Kid will make a fuss to make Vulture get up earlier than 1 PM, and Vulture will be grouchy because she “went to bed at four in the morning” because she either had “insomnia” (read: gaming or watching anime) or because Kid wouldn’t sleep. Or Vulture will be up to take care of Kid and make sure she is in a clean pull up and has eaten. Then she shuts her into her room and goes back to sleep. Sometimes if Kid is too much of a handful, Vulture will say, “It’s 12:45. That’s close enough to 1.” And put Kid in the room because that’s close enough to nap time.
Sometimes because Kid won’t go to sleep, she’ll still be up at 9 PM and that breaks her schedule too. A lot of times, it works out that OLB is the “fun” parent while he’s home, because he’s up at 4 AM to leave for work by 6 and doesn’t come home until between 4 or 5 PM. Then she spends time with him while he’s home.
There’s also a child lock on the inside of Kid’s bedroom door, those doorknob covers that you have to push and turn, so she can’t open the door and wander around unsupervised. I was originally the one who suggested the child lock, back when she was younger, and they didn’t have the secondary child gate they currently do now that’s stored in the garage. Since then, with her potty training and Vulture’s likewise awful sleep schedule, I’ve suggested more than once that they take the door handle blocker off and put up the second kiddy gate they have to block the living room and kitchen off, so she can get up if she needs to, but the child lock still remains. At most, she would have access to their room, since it doesn’t have a kiddy lock on it. Me and Z’s bedroom has a child lock on it, as well as the bathroom door. She could freely wander between her room and her parents’ room that way.
I hear Kid playing in her room by herself a lot, squealing and having fun and playing pretend. Or moving her furniture around. And no, the furniture is not secured to the wall, so she can move her bed around the room. I’ve also told OLB and Vulture they needed to make sure she can’t topple it and chain it to the wall but, yeah, that hasn’t been dealt with.
When Kid really needs attention, she will cry and wail. And I mean wail. The two beardy parents don’t have baby monitors or anything that can hear into her bedroom, so she has to wail loudly enough to be heard through the walls. Luckily, the house has thin walls. Because of her early bedtime, she’s often awake early in the morning. Sometimes Vulture will respond, sometimes Vulture won’t wake up until around noon.
Yes, that means Kid is by herself a lot.
Kid is a bubbly three-year-old. She loves it when Z and I give her attention, which admittingly isn’t as often as I would like to give her. With my own Depression™, I spend so much time fighting to just gather enough mental energy to be a productive human. Despite me wandering in a mental fog, Kid remains a bright spot in my day. I met her when she was a fresh baby bean just barely out of the hospital, and I immediately fell in love. Since then, I’ve seen her grow almost her whole life, except for when they were all in north Texas. She has blue eyes and brown hair that will curl on its own. She loves dinosaurs, Baby Shark, Octonauts, and occasionally whatever anime the parents are watching. Don’t ask me how many times I’ve heard the Baby Shark song. I don’t want it stuck in my head for another solid week.
She used to watch a lot of Ms. Rachel’s Songs For Little videos, because originally Vulture wanted Kid to learn sign language to help communicate. I’ve rarely seen Vulture attempt to upkeep the sign language lessons. She did at one point. I think after Kid started becoming more vocal, the idea was dropped. I have heard some of the familiar videos so often that even I learned the kid’s songs, but I guess that’s also part of the collateral when dealing with kid’s media.
Kid usually exists in a half-dressed state, usually just wearing a pull up and that’s it. Unfortunately, because Vulture is so hard on her tangles when she tries to brush her hair, Kid doesn’t like hair care and will fight being brushed. Her hair used to exist in a perpetual state of being matted with at least one major knot, until Vulture’s mom ended up giving her a bath and getting her to stay still enough to endure the brushing, even with the wailing of a protesting Kid going strong. Her hair was then cut to make it more manageable, and strangely, that fixed a lot of the matting problems.
Kid is let out of her room when Vulture wakes up, usually needing a diaper change. At three years old, Kid is not potty trained yet. Just from what I’ve heard from my bedroom, it sounds like OLB and Vulture are finally starting to step up on potty training, but it’s been an uphill fight. I know a few of my other parent friends have had an extremely hard time potty training their kid. I’m not a parent, so I don’t actually know how challenging it can be. I do know though that it shouldn’t sound like the toilet is some kind of punishment for peeing in her cloth panties that they’re trying to switch her to. Or, that they try to get her to sit on the toilet when she has no interest in it and she ends up throwing a tantrum. Unfortunately, without much context, that’s how some bathroom trips sound.
Kid wears pull-ups to bed and the cloth underwear during the day, or sometimes just pull-ups. They’re trying to teach her how to recognize when her body has the potty urge, which she still doesn’t quite get right now. She has literally peed on the tile floor through her cloth undies. Vulture messaged the house chat once saying, “Kid just lifted her leg while in the rolling chair and peed all over the floor.”
You know. Like a dog.
With the potty-training trouble and Kid only sometimes in pull-ups that can contain her mess, Z and I don’t let her into our room as often as we’d like to, because she doesn’t recognize when she has to go. It sucks, because Kid adores spending time with us and our room has cool animals, like my retired psychiatric service dog and our three ferrets. She loves the ferrets. But if we spend time out in the living room with everyone, Z’s patience tends to have a shorter fuse because they can’t stand Vulture (that’s also another tale I have). We’re also stuck out in the general mess of the living room if we are out there with her. It’s either the general mess that toddlers make, spilled food, and general filth. The best times we’ve had spending time with Kid is just chilling in our room as she ooh’s and ahh’s over the ferrets or watches TV with us. Z and I quote SpongeBob line by line daily, and she has watched some of the show with us.
I feel awful about shutting Kid out so much, when I see the way Vulture interacts with her. On Vulture’s bad days (if you read the previous post, that’s almost every day), she acts like Kid is a chore. She will snap at Kid, act like Kid is choosing to act out of maliciousness and make “tired mom” jokes that sound like she just flat out doesn’t like Kid. When I had liquor in the fridge, Vulture would ask if she could take a shot because, “I need it. She’s trying me today.”
Some choice quotes talking down about the kid:
“I’m being hard on her because she’s not using her words. Like I know she can. She just doesn’t want to.” This was what Vulture said to me after Kid kept trying to get her attention and wouldn’t explain what she wanted. Kid was just making noises at her and getting frustrated. Vulture full on shouted, “WHAT!” at her, then turned to me to try and explain why she shouted.
“This is the bad part about being a mom. She’s not letting me do anything right now.” This was said after Vulture cleaned her desk and was attempting to watch YouTube videos and play her Switch.
On her good days, Vulture will be that kind of smiling parent that does some art activities and engages with Kid in a way that’s more than just screaming. They color together. She offers Kid choices so Kid can have some control over what happens in her day, like, “Do you want bologna or fruit?” It has helped Kid become more vocal and even though she’s still speech delayed, she talks more and has a bigger vocabulary.
The house has a different atmosphere when OLB is home, compared to when Vulture is just watching Kid by herself. I’ve told OLB that I think Vulture is burned out. Her entire life is her disabilities and being a mom. She only has friends on Discord really, and OLB had to push her to start talking to them again just so she had someone to socialize with.
Old Doormat me pitied her at the beginning of our friendship. I tried being her friend. I tried to include her and Kid in a lot of things. My own mental health, my daily obligations, my gym schedule, and just me changing rapidly since 2020 altered my life, exhausted me, and left me unable to deal with Vulture talking a million miles a minute, info dumping about whatever she’s currently doing every single time I run into her. And as I shed my doormat self, I started seeing her clearly.
I told OLB once that if Vulture is truly burned out or if her health problems are causing that much trouble, Kid might need daycare or another caregiver to help. OLB is aware but can’t afford other care. He’s working for bottom of the barrel pay at a full-time job. Most days after work, he just wants to zone out to his own games in front of his computer but has to step in and parent both Vulture and Kid, because Vulture often needs help organizing through executive dysfunction to do something. Or, because she will call for his help.
There was one time where Kid climbed on top of her, and Vulture called for OLB – who was in the same room – to pull Kid off her. There are quite a few times where Vulture calls for OLB for help with Kid, and I’ve heard him say that he’s also busy too. One time he asked, “Why are you asking for my help when you’re closer?”
Z has offered to look after Kid at times because they don’t mind Kid being in our room or just hanging out. She has hung out with us when I also have the mental energy and the room is clean enough to accommodate a toddler crawling on everything. The problem that we both see is that our stepping in isn’t a full solution. She can spend a few hours with us, but ultimately after, she goes right back to Vulture and OLB. Vulture is the one who acts like being a parent is a chore.
There are times that OLB has snapped at Vulture for the way she gets on to Kid, emphasizing, “She’s just a child.” Their parenting styles are like looking at two entirely different planets and trying to find similarities. OLB is very much into the gentle parenting side of Tik Tok. He talks about breaking generational trauma. He’s usually gentle with Kid, explaining why she’s not allowed to do things like stand on top of her highchair or why I’m too busy to play with her as I’m zooming around the house in and out repeatedly some days. He has talked her down from meltdowns and keeps his voice even to where she can’t bounce off him to amplify her tantrums. He spanks her, but as a last resort, and then also talks to her about why the punishment happened. She will wail through everything and likely isn’t fully listening, but ultimately, I see him trying to work with her. He very rarely loses his actual temper with her.
Vulture is the total opposite. She yells at Kid, spanks with no hesitation and doesn’t explain why. One of Kid’s favorite games to play is “Block the door” when I’m trying to get through the house. She will block my bedroom door, cling to me, then circle around me as Vulture or OLB tries to distract her or lure her away by asking “do you want chocolate” or some other treat. Sometimes Kid just likes to play ring-around-the-rosie around my legs, as her parents try to grab her. I try to make it fun and seem like I’m not mad at her, because I’m never actually mad at her for blocking my way. Usually, I’m just in the middle of some arbitrary task or running an errand or coming back from the gym with my one remaining brain cell barely hanging on for dear life. I try to engage with her and play it off as a game because she’s not actually doing anything wrong.
Vulture has lured her away with chocolate and treats, with offers of food, with trying to get her to pick a show to watch. If that fails, she will come and fetch Kid by hand. One time involved yanking her physically off me and spanking her on the bare bottom because Kid was happy playing a game instead of listening.
The bare bottom is a thing, too. Because Kid used to live in soiled diapers for much longer than she was supposed to, she had constant diaper rash that she had to see the doctor for sometimes. She also didn’t want OLB or Vulture to change her diapers and would scream when it was diaper change time. I don’t blame her. The diaper rash hurt, and Vulture wasn’t exactly gentle with changing. Kid bled sometimes with the changings. So now, sometimes Kid will be dressed like Donald Duck in only a top to air out her bottom. Or because now, with the cloth undies, she will pee straight through them, and they just let her air out after.
Kid always smells a bit like pee. So does her room. And her bedding. After I pointed out that her bedding straight out of the dryer smelled like urine, OLB went about cleaning the washing machine with a machine cleaner, and bought scent beads to help cut the smell, after I told him that a little vinegar in the wash load will cut the smells down. Now her bedding doesn’t smell so much like urine, but it’s still there.
Her bedroom frequently smells like a public bathroom. It always looks like her bedroom has been turned upside down, with toys everywhere, her bed pushed to the middle of the room, the mattress on the floor. Books she was given were shredded, even the cardboard ones. There was straight up garbage left in her room because she was given food to eat there that had wrappers. It usually takes Vulture a full day of cleaning to get the room organized when she had the energy to do it, but she usually sanitizes with just a baby wipe, if she does at all. Maybe a pet cleaner sometimes.
There was one time where I was letting the dogs outside and I stepped in a puddle on the tile floor. That was when I realized that it was a pee puddle and Kid’s cloth underwear was dripping. I asked Vulture to clean the puddle up. When she asked to use my steam mop, she didn’t clean the cloth pad after, so when I turned the mop on next, it smelled like hot, steamed urine. I had to clean the mop pad off myself and rinse the pee out of it. When Kid again peed in front of the TV in her cloth undies, I told OLB that if they’re going to use my steam mop to make sure that the mop pad is rinsed off or it will smell like pee the next time it’s used, but he said he was just going to use his mop and bucket. Thankfully.
Because of the diet that OLB and Vulture has, Kid also eats like them. She gets a lot of macaroni, a lot of random odds and ends like pieces of bread, baggies of cheerios, sometimes fruit and vegetables. Lots of chicken nuggets and frozen instant food. Occasionally, Kid will have an interest in vegetables she sees us cook with or that she’s never had. Like once she insisted that she wanted to eat canned peas, until she tasted them. She chewed on a lettuce leaf and put it down, then asked for another one because she wanted to eat something, and it looked tasty to her.
The two halves of the household make separate foods now and keep out of each other’s food, but sometimes Vulture will give Kid some of the food I cooked because Kid saw my spaghetti noodles in a bowl and insisted on having them by way of tantrum. Instead of asking me if it’s okay (which obviously, I’d say yes, Kid can have some), Vulture just gave her my food and then told me after. Maybe I’m just projecting my own frustration, but it feels like Vulture uses Kid as a shield sometimes, to get food. Unless I have a specific purpose for food like what I put in my meal prep containers, I wouldn’t say no to Kid.
Kid’s diet makes me worried for her as she grows up. OLB is big and tall, over 6 feet tall and over 300lbs. They aren’t an active family at all. Kid drinks soda when they get fast food. She eats as much processed food as Vulture. Right now, she’s growing like a weed and is tall and actually has some power in her tiny limbs, which is most noticeable when she climbs you like a ladder, but her parents are gamers that just sit around. Her own screen time is almost as lengthy as theirs is.
I worry about Kid, constantly. Z does too. We have theorized calling CPS, or trying to adopt her, or just getting her away from Vulture. We have thrown around ideas about talking to OLB and convincing him that Vulture isn’t a good person for Kid. A lot of it has stayed in theory because the anxious part of me is still afraid to make life-altering waves like that. I second-guess and gaslight myself into realizing how bad things are, but then telling myself, maybe I’m just blowing it out of proportion. Maybe it's just something they have to handle. Maybe it’s something a first-time parent needs to learn. Maybe Vulture just isn’t feeling good that day. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
It’s a leftover of the doormat I used to be, and I know that. The tiny fragment of anxiety that tells me I’m blowing things up into too big a deal. The tiny fragment that escaped a toxic marriage and just wants peace after arguing every single day. The side that hates confrontation.
Maybe I’m just a plain ol’ coward. I don’t know yet. I just know my patience is running thinner with every passing day.
I don’t think I could convince OLB to dump Vulture. From what I’ve seen on the surface, they’re not openly affectionate. Vulture complains all the time that OLB doesn’t give her any physical affection, and she (unfortunately) tells me when they’re intimate, which doesn’t sound often. They almost look like they could be friends that are co-parenting. She calls him her husband when they’re out in public, and OLB has stated that he doesn’t want anything to happen to her, because he doesn’t want a single parent. I assume at the very least that he does love her, even though he sounds exhausted all the time. Z and I wonder if maybe he feels trapped.
OLB is good at asking for help if he needs it, although he hates being a burden to others. He will speak up if Vulture needs a ride to a doctor’s office, and he forgot to leave the car seat at home. I’ve driven to his work to pick it up after he messaged me asking if I could. They ask his family to babysit Kid if they want to go out and just have a good date or see a movie together. They are clearly capable of asking for help.
This is just an acceptable standard for both, or at least that’s the way it seems to me. Sometimes, I don’t truly know if OLB is aware of what Vulture does while he’s at work. He didn’t know that she used his 11-year-old dog as a vacuum cleaner to clean up spilled table scraps until I pointed it out and then he pieced together why his dog wasn’t losing weight on a reduced kibble diet. Sometimes I have pointed out things to him that he might not notice in the house chat.
I started keeping a log in Google Docs about things I notice, and Z and I talk about it in discord, so it’s not heard by ears that are too close to our bedroom. The log started helping me see that I’m not just blowing out of proportion and that in turn helped me come here to reddit. As a former doormat in recovery, I still have to tell myself that it’s okay to realize that something is wrong, and that I may need help getting my voice to speak up.
I haven’t worked since 2017, when my mental health took a sharp nosedive. Z is currently looking for work. Both of us are home all day exposed to Vulture and how she treats Kid. With my own daily tasks, errands, struggling with mental health, there’s still a side of me that berates me that I need to be taking care of Kid. Getting her up, making sure she eats. Pestering Vulture to get up. This is also where I tangle with the former doormat that still lives in me, because one, I don’t want to enable Vulture to get even worse. With someone taking the burden off of her, that gives her more free time to just sit back and game. It isn’t my job to make sure that Vulture is a good parent, yet somehow, I feel like it’s also my fault that she’s as bad as she is while I sit by the wayside and just talk about her behind her back. There are times where I have pestered OLB through discord about Kid crying, or how Kid is trying to beat the door down, or asking if Vulture is up for the day because I haven’t seen her up at three in the afternoon.
I started speaking up when I noticed something that’s off. I call this the “cheese incident.” We had a block of cheese that was cut in the wrapper and not in anything else, so the exposed end got all hard and inedible. I cut it off and threw it away. Vulture made her way into the kitchen because Kid saw me cutting cheese and wanted some.
Vulture: Who threw away that cheese?
(SHE PICKS IT UP OUT OF THE TRASH CAN)
Me: Yeah, it’s got that hard bit
Vulture: So? I know someone who will eat it.
(She calls Kid over)
Me: But it was in the trash.
Vulture: It’s okay, I cut off the part that was touching the trash.
Me: Dude, that’s fucked up.
Vulture: (hesitating now) Should I not?
Me: That’s probably going to make her sick again.
(Kid has been sick back-to-back at this point)
Vulture: Okay, then I won’t.
(To this day, I don’t know if she threw the cheese away or ate it herself, and I’m afraid to ask)
That was the point where I started pointing out that what she’s doing is problematic. It’s a slow process, but it’s helped me put the doormat side of me away again. I’ve explained to Vulture that Kid isn’t crying to be malicious, she just can’t express what she wants. Especially with Kid’s speech delay! Kid gets frustrated fast when adults don’t understand her, and the wailing begins. There’s no maliciousness behind it, just frustration. Or how Kid doesn’t like being told “no” because she doesn’t always understand why. Strangely, every time I call something out, she doesn’t really have much of a fight against it.
But why am I having to say it in the first place?
There’s little things that just rub me the wrong way in how they interact. Sometimes Vulture will call Kid over in the same way you’d call a dog. Repeatedly. Sometimes Vulture, in a state of migraine or other illness-related grouchiness will scream at her “Leave me alone!” and OLB will have to fetch Kid. One time, Z told me that Vulture outright mocked her crying by making her own crying noise.
What’s awful to watch in person is that when Vulture’s mom or siblings are over, Vulture is suddenly a doting mom who isn’t perpetually exhausted or loudly complaining about how her “everything” hurts. She talks in an overly sweet voice to Kid. It unsettles me with how two-faced it seems. OLB, Vulture, and Kid go have dinner with OLB’s family every Sunday evening, and I can’t help but wonder how two-faced she is there, as well. Some of OLB’s family doesn’t like Vulture to begin with.
Slowly, I am losing patience at how Vulture behaves, especially with the Kid. I had to un-gaslight myself, start logging her behavior, and talk to other people to really see it for what it was. I told multiple friends about it and we all generally have the same consensus that Vulture is just an unfit parent. If her chronic illnesses are truly interfering with her life that much, she shouldn’t be the majority caregiver through the day. But it’s not like OLB would be able to work from home or be the stay-at-home parent. In a perfect world, I would be able to help more as well, but I’m barely the “fun” aunt. I’m barely equipped to help care for a three-year-old. Hell, most days I’m barely an actual person.
Kid deserves better.
Bottom line, Kid deserves better than what this house can give. I am upset with myself over my lack of action, but the logs have only been growing bigger. Every day, the doormat dies a little more.
Vulture herself though, will likely always be a side show. One thing that Z pointed out to me was that, as the doormat I used to be, I would give everything to help someone even when I was mentally exhausted. I enmeshed myself too much into the lives of my friends because I loved making them happy and making their lives easier. It’s gotten me into some awkward territory with Vulture, because some things were interpreted as more than friendship.
You ready to cringe more? Because the next part is going to deal with polyamory, the desire for open relationships, and the main reason why Z despises her – and that’s putting it mildly.
Take a moment to un-cringe yourself. It ain’t over yet.

I really despise that I can't eat noodles but here I am. Anyone have any ideas for me if I simply want to replicate the spirit of this dish without noodles? Would it be best to just add more of the other ingredients? If there is a low carb way to replace the noodles besides that I'm all ears.....(I also just can't stand the shirataki or miracle noodles, really).
Seems like I'm just up shits creek. My favorite things in the world are Dan Dan mien, Zhao Jiang mien, tomato beef chow mien, pho 😭

Throwaway account, as i don't want this connected to my other accounts.
My thoughts are erratic, forgive me for bouncing all over the point but I'm trying to include everything I've been thinking and feeling with my reasoning so please bear with me. Gonna be a long one. If you take the time to read all this and provide genuine, thoughtful feedback, know that I'm beyond appreciative.
I had my first child at 19, and his mother and I didn't stay together. He was given a hyphenated combination of our last names, and now all these years later his mother is engaged to another man with their own newborn, and my son calls said man "his other daddy". I understand that as even though i am active in my son's life, my own dad wasn't around and i ended up calling my temporary step-dad "daddy" for a period of time. My son's mom and her fiancé of course have been living together for a while so i don't see anything wrong with that, nor am i bothered by it as long as my son and Mr. Fiancé don't forget who his actual father is.
All that to say that this has led to me being unwilling to have my other children calling another man "daddy", which is one of a few reasons making me feel like i have to stay in my current relationship and eventually tie the knot with my girlfriend - even if i am currently unhappy more often than not and feel as if marriage would be dooming myself to a life of tolerance rather than contentment.
I feel like my current girlfriend is a great person, friend and mother, but many of her tendencies and thought processes tend to irk/frustrate me. I know no one is perfect and any relationship requires work and effort, but I can't help but feel as if there would be someone out there better suited for myself, or if I would just be better off alone.
Before I talk (or complain) about everything I'm unhappy about, I'd like to make it known that I've been 10 relationships before my current one, and i ended 8 of them with 2 of them ended by the girl- much to my chagrin. Those 2 had a pretty big impact on me but not as much as 2 that i ended due to being cheated on. The rest I ended i guess out of boredom? This made me feel as if I wasn't cut out for relationships and I should be alone, but then I end up lonely wanting a relationship. I ended one relationship with a cheater right before the relationship that gave me my firstborn. I never took the time to heal from that and I wasn't ready for a child at the time, so even though i love my son and have always been active in his life, i never thought his mother and I would have a longstanding relationship.
We separated and then i met and began a relationship with the second cheater. At the time I was 21 and she was 33, but i could've swore she was the best thing to ever happen to me. Thing was, she was still living with her ex and I'm sure you can imagine how that went. That whole relationship left me feeling emasculated.
I left that relationship and began a relationship with my current girlfriend not even 3 months later. Needless to say I did no healing, took no time for myself. To make things worse we moved in together within another 3 months, and she found out she was pregnant by the end of the year.
I was actually perfectly content with my only child and had no desire to sire another child at this point in time, but my girlfriend had gotten pregnant in her previous relationship and ended up losing the baby, so her baby fever was at an all time high and she would get depressed whenever we would have sex and I'd cum anywhere other than inside of her. She'd roll over and put her back to me and sulk about it until she went to sleep, sometimes even crying about it. This made me feel Tee-totally terrible so I eventually just 🤷🏾‍♂️ and started finishing inside her to give her the child she wanted. This pregnancy gave me my daughter and I love her to death, she's amazing. We were staying in an apartment complex with roommates, but after finding out she was pregnant we went to stay with her mom. I broke up with her after welcoming the baby due to feelings of discontentment, although we got together again a few months later.
We got our own place and stayed there about a year and a half before I broke up with her again because i felt like i just wasn't the man for her. I told her i didn't want to marry and i don't want anymore kids, mainly just to drive the point as these are things she wants. We separated for 3 or 4 months this time, in which period of time I had sex once with an ex and she had sex once with a coworker. Despite that, we got back together because i had "thought about it" and decided that i didn't mind marrying and having more children. Fast forward a year and we moved to a better home and welcomed our second child together, my 3rd child and 2nd son.
I've thought about and pretty much accepted the concept/fate of marrying my girlfriend. She's been insistent bordering on impatient which I understand. This last time we got back together I told her we'd be wed before our son got here, which was rash on my part. I rush a lot of things but marriage isn't one of them.
I don't know if it's because my girlfriend is the partner in question, but marriage just feels like a huge shackle to me and divorce is a hassle from what I've heard. I don't want to marry just for it to be unhappy and end up in divorce.
Back to: I feel like my current girlfriend is a great person, friend and mother, but many of her tendencies and thought processes tend to irk/frustrate me. I know no one is perfect and any relationship requires work and effort, but I can't help but feel as if there would be someone out there better suited for myself, or if I would just be better off alone.
Here comes the complaining.
I'm an introvert, through and through. I like reading books, i like quiet time, i enjoy having time to myself, I enjoy doing/accomplishing things alone.
My girlfriend has to be the antithesis. She can talk on and on and on for hours on end without nary a breath in between. This isn't as much of an issue as the subject of her conversation- most of the time, there isn't one. It's like 95% of her thoughts come out of her mouth and she expects me to reply and vividly react to it all. It's really kind of draining. I get that as the man i should be glad that I'm the one she's talking to, but sometimes I'd rather enjoy the song that's playing or just have time alone with my thoughts. So most of her dialogue has no real meaning to me, and she often talks/asks questions about things that would be clear to her with just a little observation on her end. A little thought. She's so busy spitting out that 95% thought that she can't use the remaining 5 to come to her own conclusions.
For example, we're riding in the car. It's sunny outside, yet starts to rain. She says, "The devil must be beating his wife". I just look at her like 😐 while internally doing the wtf Jackie Chan face because what kind of sense does that make? She says, "What you've never heard that?" No, because it doesn't make sense. The devil is in theory beneath us so even if he did have a wife and beat her, why would these tears be coming from the sky? Perhaps I'm just a dull rock and too analytical but i feel like we could've both saved our breath on that whole exchange.
Another example. We went to eat, i got a coke to go. It was riding in the front cup holder until i finished it, and threw the empty cup into the trash. A whole ten, fifteen minutes later she asks, "Did you finish your coke?" I just look at her like 😐 while internally doing the wtf Jackie Chan face because are you telling me you didn't see me throw it away while you're right beside me? Do you not see the empty cup holder? I say yea, to which she asks me to hand her her water bottle. I just feel as if she could've taken the time to do some looking and thinking on her own, and just ask me for her water.
We're driving with a gps, she says that she needs me to help her because she doesn't know if it's this exit or the next one. 😐 idk if i can do this for the rest of my life. The route is highlighted on the screen, instead of oh so many feet, the distance is point something miles, and the exit number is on the screen. I tell her to think about it. She takes the wrong exit and gets mad at me.
Other times she is literally just voicing her inner dialogue like "I want a coke", "I'm hot, need to turn on the air", "My head is itching" and she just looks at me waiting for me to say something when I feel like none of this really warrants a reply. I hate small talk but maybe I'm just a stick in the mud.
She asks for help ridiculously often when she doesn't really need any. She could do things on her own most of the time just by freeing up one of her hands or literally thinking about the issue more. She probably tells me "hold this" 15 to 93 times a day. Just put it down? We were eating chinese takeout one night, and with a table right in front of her, she tells me to hold her plate. You know they give you enough food to feed a small village in those flimsy ass trays so the styrofoam bends and she drops her plate on my legs and in the floor before i can get a hold of it. I can't tell you how many times she's asked me for help with something that literally has instructions on it; she just didn't take the time to read it. I point it out and she's like "Oh 😜". It's gotten to the point where other than "think about it", when she asks for help i ask "do you really" and when i feel like she doesn't i resort to a childhood saying of my mother: "USE YOUR NOODLE! And when you're done with your noodle, put it back in your soup and finish your dinner".
To sum these points up, my pride doesn't want my kids acknowledging yet another dad, my girlfriend spits faster than Eminem when I'm a quiet guy, and her problem solving skills are near nonexistent when I'm a self-dependent, figure it out type of guy. I guess these personality differences might stem from our upbringing, as she was raised in a volatile home with her brother, bouncing between her mother and grandmother who both talk just as much as she, while i was raised alone with my mother who also enjoyed quiet time and liked reading and such. BUT-
In addition to this, I don't feel like my girlfriend and I are as sexually compatible as we could be. Our preferences and things we want aren't that different, but i have a much broader taste than she does and I don't ever think I'll achieve sexual freedom with her. I know that some of my fantasies are off the table for her, and others I'm too ashamed to even open up about due to what she's made clear of her stance. She doesn't like the lights on during, she doesn't like eye contact, she isn't very vocal. I wanna see her, look her in the eye, when i talk to her she doesn't talk back and doesn't mention it till we're done. These differences probably come from our experience and lack of with porn and sexual partners. I think I'm her third or fourth relationship. The guy before me she was with for 5 years. I started watching porn at 12 or 13, was running a NSFW tumblr page before tumblr stopped being cool, regularly masturbated. I don't think my girlfriend ever really touched herself before me, and the only time i know of her masturbating was to send me a video like 2 years ago. I want more from out sex life but trying to bring it up is met with mild disgust before rejection. Ideally I want my partner to want to masturbate sometimes, for us both to have toys, for us to explore with ourselves and other people and explore our fantasies. My girlfriend doesn't even have any. This makes me reluctant to marry because I don't wanna give up on all of this without having experienced it.
On top of this is her style of living. Bathroom sink and tub full of hair. Throwing something away- KOBE! -she misses and doesn't pick it up. Preparing food and leaving the scraps and trash on the counter for roaches, rats and ants, i can't stand it. Her side of the bed looks like the empty water bottle monster threw up and she loves to eat before bed but rarely takes her dishes to the kitchen before sleeping, and just throws her trash in the general direction of the can without bothering to just lean over and place it in or at least see if she made it. I'll say something and she'll do better for 2 days and a half, then i feel like i wasted my words. 8 used wash rags left in the shower, not flushing the toilet, she just really kinda sucks at cleaning up after herself until the stars align or mercury is in retrograde or some divine intervention where she wants to do everything in a day. She's a manager at McD's now so she's working a bit more, but she used to be a server with multiple off days through the week while I've had the same job for 6 years working 6 days out the week from 7a-3p, sometimes working 3-3 or 7-7 and it's frustrating to come home with her having laid on the couch all day amidst a house that a torndado ran through. Then when I get home she wants us to clean together, nah I'm tryna sit down somewhere. I still help pickup but why could you not do this in the 10, 12 hours i was gone? At least start on it and i can come in with the assist like an alley-oop.
To top it off is her style of parenting/communication. Her dad is a loud man and he's to thank for the genes I guess, but she's quick to resort to yelling whenever things bother her or the kids don't listen, as if the louder you are the easier it is to understand. Like I said I'm a quiet guy and i consider myself rational so i like to slow down and calmly talk about things, talk to kids with a level head and tone when they're wrong and talk to her in a calm tone whenever we have any altercations. She normally beats me to the punch with child reprimands since those thoughts have been bubbling in her mouth, and i don't like the yelling at all. After she gets done yelling I'll usually come behind to tell the kids what went wrong and why it was/why they shouldn't do that. But due to my level-headedness she sees that as me not caring, and when i ask her to calm her tone she says it's just how she reacts when upset. The kids act drastically different when they're alone with me versus alone with her, going from minding to whiny/crying whenever she gets to yelling.
Besides the yelling and too high expectations for small children, i do think she's a good mom, i just wish she'd handle things differently sometimes.
To sum these points up, I'm worried about sexual fulfillment, cleanliness (having to pick up after 3 kids and an adult), and temperament/attitude once married.
I know these things take effort but I feel like she just isn't as conscious about it as I am, and when i try to explain why i think she could/should do things differently/more efficiently, she takes it as me criticizing her and belittling her. It feels like I'm in a relationship with a child sometimes as far as her tendencies go.
Is marriage really the best option? Should we spend some time apart or end things for good?
Despite all of this we don't have a bad 1 on 1 relationship, when it's good it's great but when it's bad i can't help but wonder. I get pensive. Is marriage the best course of action for my life, for her life, for our kids? Would we all be able to grow and develop better with mom and dad separated? Is there someone better for me, someone better for her out there?
I've already gotten the supplies I had in mind ready to propose to her in a way she would love and i am happy with, i just have yet to buy a ring. It's a huge commitment that i don't want to end in disaster and resentment.
Sorry for the book. Thoughts/advice greatly appreciated.

Let me paint a picture for you.
Within a dark basement room, illuminated only by the pale blue of a setting sun, dusty paper and cardboard covers the floor, some of the paper has math equations and some has notes on history, some paper talks of the current economy and the government. On the floor, faint music can be heard, it blares the distinct sound of heavy metal and rock, but where is it?
In the back left corner sit two gerbils, one beige and one grey, the top of the 50 gallon tank collects dust, they may not have much in terms of human interaction, yet they have all they need inside the cage, a perfect bedding depth that is changed weekly, a big wheel, a sand bath, and all homemade cardboard toys from safe non-toxic glues.
Near the entrance to the room a love seat presses against a blue wall, yet this couch has not been sat on in weeks, instead it is home to more paper and pencils as well as half finished crochet projects that have been tossed to the side as they have never been finished.
To the far left side of the room, a fireplace can be seen, however, this fireplace has not had any fire in a long time, inside it hosts a wide variety of cobwebs, while ashes and dust scatter the bottom of it.
To the far right side of the room an old worn down altar can be seen, upon first glance the table could be mistaken for antique, yet on closer inspection you would find it is merely in awful condition. Around the table a wide variety of candles, paper, and dusty jars containing different ingredients are found. The candles come in black, blue, red, and yellow, as well as green, pink, orange, and brown. The papers are covered in chicken-scratch writing in what appears to be another language. Yet all of them list the same things, spells, the language is a mere alphabet known as Theban. The jars contain egg shells and snail shells, charcoal and ashes, colourful stones and preserved flowers, needles and rusty nails.
The centre of the room is home to a wall-mounted television, the last time the screen changed was the early morning, beneath the television is a cedar chest, on top of the chest you will find granola bar wrappers and peels of various fruits as well as pop cans and water bottles, beside the garbage is old dishes, mugs that have old half drank coffee and plates covered in maple syrup from old waffles and pancakes, this is easily the most lived in part of the room.
A few feet away from the chest, and next to the altar is a sofa, it seems to be the reason paper covers the floor as every time the cushions move a paper falls to the floor. On the far left side of the sofa, near the entrance to the room sits a 15 year old fat boy with messy blonde hair. Caked on grease covers his face as he stares down at a math sheet, a pen in his right hand and a calculator in his left.
The boy is attempting to solve math equations, yet he is so burnt out, that despite reading the question over and over the words do not seem to make sense. The boy looks down at his wrists, pink shiny scars stare back, a reminder of what happened.
His mind flashes memories, he remembers waking to police at 5, he remembers watching his brothers fights, he remembers the time people attempted breaking into his house to kill his brother, he remembers everything.
He remembers his mother saying she wishes she never had him.
The boy feels sick now, a knot in his stomach and he looks at the calendar hung across the room, he counts 18 days left of school.
The knot tightens, for the coming summer does not mean a time of relaxation and recovery, it means fighting and stress. This homework does not symbolize a chance at passing, it symbolizes a failing future.
He reads the question again, “Solve using either elimination or substitution. Be sure to write a therefore statement. Check the solution using a LS/RS chart for both equations.
4x - 3y = - 2
2x + y = 8”
He knows what to do, all he has to do is pick up the pencil and write, but he seems to be frozen, staring at the page.
A lady walks down the stairs, “Are you doing your homework?” She asks.
“Yeah… Yeah, sorry I’ll get to it.” He starts writing but stops, the steps to solving it have gone, he’s forgotten everything.
The lady walks away, angry, the boy lifts his pencil, he swiftly lowers it to his ankle, he lifts his pant leg and slices, the burning sensation of a scratch covers his leg as it begins to form a long red line, it matches all the others, scars and scabs, scratches and cuts. Fresh and dry blood.
A sense of relief fills the boy, he lifts his pencil and goes to solve the equation, but again, he forgot it.
Instead he picks up his phone and begins to type, he describes the room he is in, he describes what he just did.
The lady comes back, it’s his mother, yet he doesn’t consider her one, she screams at him, tells him to get back to work, he heard the words, but they don’t seem to make sense, as if his brain has stopped translating the language.
And he describes it as it happens.
And then he posts the story as he feels fresh blood from the new cut trickle down his leg.

My parents said the salad was back on the deli menu at their local one and also mentioned a price hike. Still excited that is was back! I went to my local Costco and saw that the salad was back on the menu. Then I looked closer at the picture they used and became a bit worried.
The new price of $6.99 isn’t and awful price if it was the same old great salad they once had. The quality of the ingredients was just fine (no slimy lettuce, or slimy parmesan cheese, etc.) but it is now the rotisserie chicken that they sell in the vac bags with the ready to eat meals. Which I feel can be hit or miss sometimes.
To my disappointment there were no tomatoes in this $7 salad. I also feel they used less chicken than in the previous one. I forgot to ask if they had croutons so they might still offer those. And the Cesar dressing was fine but no slit in the bag to make it easy open.
It really sucks that they came back with what was once a great product that I always loved getting to a way overpriced “salad”.

Hello all! Just a forward that I worked as a vet assistant for 2 years so I have a little more knowledge on how vets treat these cases but I’m about 4 days away from my next paycheck if this is going to require a vet visit. I have a year and half old domestic shorthair neutered male cat, about 10 pounds, who has been experiencing diarrhea for about 2-3 days. NO VOMITING. No bloody stools. Was ADR day one but yesterday and today acting normally. He’s strictly indoors, vaccinated, no change in his diet, and no new or stressful situations. I have NO idea what he possibly could of ingested that would cause this, as I have no houseplants. My best guess is he might of got a lick of some pizza grease from an empty box? Day one he ate his breakfast (1.5oz wet food) but he was definitely ADR by the afternoon, didn’t want to eat his dinner which is kibble (1/4 cup) with water added because that’s how he likes it. (So he’s usually intaking quite a bit of hydration) Second day (yesterday) he was acting normally but only ate a few bites of his wet food. He refused his dry food initially and later in the night I gave him probably a 1/16th of a cup of kibble and he ate all that. This morning he ate about HALF his normal wet food. Today I was able to purchase a tub of Probios probiotics, as I know this is a common probiotic vets at my previous workplace had given owners to help with loose stools. I also found a “soupy” limited ingredient wet food that has pumpkin to give him some added fiber. For his dinner I mixed the probios according to the instructions with the new wet food and he ATE IT ALL. Yay!
Mowgli has nice pink gums and CRT is less than 2 seconds. He does not flinch or cry out in pain when I palpate his abdomen. He appears well hydrated as a “skin tent” test shows immediate return to normal. He’s otherwise playing hard with his cat siblings, being a sweet cuddling biscuit maker, and basically being normal other than the diarrhea.
Should I continue the probios and wet food diet for another 2 days and see if his diarrhea improves? Is there anything else I should be doing in the meantime? I’m not sure if he will eat a bland food diet which is why I’m trying to stick with a limited ingredient wet food but if someone thinks that necessary I’ll go thaw some chicken breast! Thank you!

Hello all! Just a forward that I worked as a vet assistant for 2 years so I have a little more knowledge on how vets treat these cases but I’m about 4 days away from my next paycheck if this is going to require a vet visit. I have a year and half old neutered male cat, about 10 pounds, who has been experiencing diarrhea for about 2-3 days. NO VOMITING. No bloody stools. Was ADR day one but yesterday and today acting normally. He’s strictly indoors, vaccinated, no change in his diet, and no new or stressful situations. I have NO idea what he possibly could of ingested that would cause this, as I have no houseplants. My best guess is he might of got a lick of some pizza grease from an empty box? Day one he ate his breakfast (1.5oz wet food) but he was definitely ADR by the afternoon, didn’t want to eat his dinner which is kibble (1/4 cup) with water added because that’s how he likes it. (So he’s usually intaking quite a bit of hydration) Second day (yesterday) he was acting normally but only ate a few bites of his wet food. He refused his dry food initially and later in the night I gave him probably a 1/16th of a cup of kibble and he ate all that. This morning he ate about HALF his normal wet food. Today I was able to purchase a tub of Probios probiotics, as I know this is a common probiotic vets at my previous workplace had given owners to help with loose stools. I also found a “soupy” wet food that has pumpkin to give him some added fiber. For his dinner I mixed the probios according to the instructions with the new wet food and he ATE IT ALL. Yay!
Mowgli has nice pink gums and CRT is less than 2 seconds. He does not flinch or cry out in pain when I palpate his abdomen. He appears well hydrated as a “skin tent” test shows immediate return to normal. He’s otherwise playing hard with his cat siblings, being a sweet cuddling biscuit maker, and basically being normal other than the diarrhea.
Should I continue the probios and wet food diet for another 2 days and see if his diarrhea improves? Is there anything else I should be doing in the meantime? I’m not sure if he will eat a bland food diet which is why I’m trying to stick with a limited ingredient wet food but if someone thinks that necessary I’ll go thaw some chicken breast! Thank you!