In a panic, I threw together a batch of the flour-water starter food. It felt like I ought to drip it in slowly, just a bit at a time, as if I were bottle-feeding an ailing kitten. (I have never bottle-fed an ailing kitten.) (I did once coax Kubrick back to life with a spray bottle.) (You have to work pretty hard to push a cactus to the brink of death.)