It is 5:30 on Saturday afternoon, and I have just given Po his 3rd meal of the day.

He gets one more tonight at around 9.

On Thursday after work, I picked Po up from the vets after he received three days of care, and during his stay, the vet determined that he had a fatty liver, common among cats that have been starved for a prolonged period. His liver doesn’t know what to do with food. As a result, he received a feeding tube from the vets as a parting gift, a second mouth which enters his body through his back, over his front left shoulder.

Because he would not eat on his own, the tube was necessary.

For me, the last few days of caretaking have been an anxious adventure, trying to follow vet instructions and administer water, food, and drugs though the little tube effectively, agilely, correctly.

I’ve had some of those anxieties I guess a parent has facing firsts with their little children- first rashes, first coughs, first barfs.

I’ve worried about accidentally ripping the little rubber funnel-ended tube out of his back.

I’ve worried about giving him too little food.

I’ve worried about giving him too much food.

I’ve worried about giving drugs at the wrong time, in the wrong order, in the wrong way.

I’ve had some anxieties, because he is frail.

Poor cat.

Each time after I feed him, he collapses to the floor, like he has just survived 12 rounds in a death match with a rattlesnake.

In some ways, to me he appears in worse shape than he was before I took him to the vets.

But this makes sense. Despite the vet’s note that he was a terrific visiting patient, he has undergone so much physical and existential trauma. And now he has nutrition pumped into his stomach at random times during each day.

We’re supposed to stay on this routine of four tube-feedings a day for a week. In that time, it is the vet’s hope that Po will somehow rediscover an appetite.

That his liver will heal enough to compel him to look for snacks between feedings.

That his body will rest and be strengthened and recover some energy.

At least, that is the plan.

Po has had his moments of seeming normality, which usually involves respite from feedings after a night.

I awake in the morning laying on a cot in his quarters, and he is sitting up normal, or walking around the room, investigating items.

After recovering from a food coma midday, if I lay on my back on the floor in his room, he will often come and climb up my torso to rest on my chest. But immediately then, his eyes close and he limply lays there.

Otherwise, he most often sits like sphinx, beaten by a desert sun, striving to fade off into sleep and silence.

And it troubles me to see his thin body struggling to crouch upright.

But what he and I have right now is the best guidance we can lean on from the vet. He is pretty sick, and he needs food and drugs to help his state, and to help his liver. And this is the plan.

I am still not sure where this little cat is in his health state. I am not sure if he is getting better, or getting worse. All I can do is what I can do for him.

As my friend Larry reminded me in a subtle but poignant comment, “It’s up to him (and to Him), not you.”

Yes. This statement is very true to me, Larry. Trust, do, accept. I’ll do what I can, and the rest is out of my hands.

Seven days is the best window we have for this plan, the vet told me in the office.

After that, we probably need to make some other decisions.

One day at a time.