He had three or four days of horking out the front and diarrhea dripping out of his backside. He made quite the mess and not being able to get near him made it quite the challenge. Things seemed to escalate to him crying out when trying to poop and finding blood in his stool. We started talking about maybe taking him to emergency vet to get checked over to make sure he didn't have some sort of blockage. But, how would he catch him? Every time I've gotten him in the past, it involved trapping him on the back porch.
So, when he crawled into a soft covered cat bed thing, I grabbed the large carrier from the closet. Usually at the sound of a human getting near he would disappear and hide but in this case he was obviously not feeling well because he didn't move. So, I slowly picked up his bed with him in it and placed the entire thing in the carrier and again he didn't move. His lack of putting up a fight concerned me.
The vet had to sedate him to be able to examine him. They did some x-rays and we learned he didn't have a blockage, so that was good, instead he had some sort of GI bug. The vet wanted us to give him oral metronidazole for treatment - how do you pill a semi-feral cat?! That drug is very bitter, so hiding it in food doesn't work the well.
When I got him home, I locked him in the wire crate to have better chance of medicating him and to contain the messy poop situation. We were able to sneak some of the med into some of his food and so he got a few doses of it and it didn't take long for his GI tract to settle. Then his non-stop cries from being locked away from his kitty friends became too much and he regained his freedom. When he got free the first cat he came across was Nahum, so he rubbed all up against him like he does Oliver - Nahum wasn't quite sure what to do, but he allowed it. I hope Pierre and Nahum become friends, they are both very playful and silly and could really enjoy one another.
So far he's still doing good - so paws crossed the bug has passed and peace has returned.