Cat owners may know that sometimes cats just get sick. Many times when cats are hospitalized, the cause is unknown, but they can be treated and get on with life. One of the feline mysteries that can be very frustrating for these patients. Because they are better, and really what the owner really wants, in the case is not always a reason to look for.
But often when the answer is given, and when it happens, there is a sense of closure that cannot be explained to those who have not experienced it. I will take you on a journey through one of my personal experiences with my personal puppy. I will accept you from my own side, the cat owner, but also with the familiarity of field veterinarians is my first area of work.
Our cat, Levi, was our first breed as a yoke and was ten years old. It began to show signs of decline near Christmas. and for two days the vomiting began. Vomiting is a normal thing for this cat as the stomach is very sensitive and can’t handle the other foods it is used to. It is typically improved with anti-vomiting medication. But even as he gave his medication, he continued to get worse. For three days, my husband and I were very worried. A phone call The vet was placed at my work and told me that he had given Levi a history of vomiting. Episode, I’ll get him in, give him some rehydrating fluids, and some injections to settle his stomach.
And in the evening, after the medicine had been prescribed for him, we were greatly encouraged. Levi was perkier, drank a little water and was able to rest comfortably. The uproar, however, did not last. But in the morning Levi was nowhere to be found. Now let me tell you that with Levi we have other cats, one of which is an olf and very protective of all other cats. These cats, Diablo, I am anxious to notice when I am a light game. It was Diablo who found him. And he ran around sticking his nose in every corner until Levi was found. Levi was found sleeping in a pet carrier, which is an odd place for this cat to sleep. Diablo was obviously proud of himself for finding the lost puppy, but he was also walking and had an anxious walk about it. On closer inspection I noticed that Levi did not want to go out at night. He was too weak to either hold his Diablo head or acknowledge me. There were obvious signs of vomiting around the pet carrier and his bowl was still full he had not eaten food. the night before
My husband and I packed Levi and headed to the hostel. We drove through back roads to avoid excess traffic as it was the day after Christmas. The roads went up several hills and through curves and corners. Levi never moved from his place in his carrier during our ride. he did not even raise his head.
We got to the hospital quickly and were instructed to take x-rays of his abdomen to make sure he hadn’t ingested anything he shouldn’t have. These were obvious, but when the vet examined him, he showed visible signs of a very painful and dehydrated stomach. You need to stay in the hospital and put on intravenous fluids and medication. It is agreed that we should depart from him; This is our cat after all he had to deal with. Vermont said to give him 24 hours on fluids to treat for pancreatitis and see how he did. We knew deep down that he was probably not doing it, but we knew he was in good hands, and we still had hope for the test. He ran blood work on Levi and kept us in the loop, which mostly showed that he had some kind of bad infection.
They went 24 hours and turned into another 24 hours. He wasn’t vomiting lightly but he still wasn’t eating and he was still having a lot of trouble in his stomach. We visited Levi in the hospital two or three times a day. His mood improved and he acted like he felt a little better but there were no other changes. The blood work was repeated to compare the results and some of the symptoms improved but it didn’t show much. After five days in the hospital, however, we knew there was nothing else Levi could do, and we needed to get him to the hospital. We were going to have an ultrasound done and have a feeding tube placed. His stomach is no longer upset, but cats can’t go on a fast for so long.
My husband and I were slightly horrified at the thought of the tubes sticking out of our cat. We have decided that when his attitude has improved, then we can give him a chance to eat at home or in a normal environment before we can carry him. We were not against taking him, we just wanted to give him a chance, one night, to see how he would do at home.
that night he ate Some were not real. The vet would call our house to get regular checkups on him and he said he was encouraged, but having worked with him for several years, I could tell he still had some anxiety in his voice. He told us to keep the house and see if he continues to eat, and if not, we would force feed him over the weekend.
At one point we received a call with some blood test results that were sent to the laboratory. Ours however boiled it down to us saying the lab thinks it could all be due to bone marrow diseases. . Because my husband had a history of marrow disease, our hearts sank. They recommended the same tests, because our cats were the same ones my husband had to go with the invalid. We weren’t going to put Levi through that. We were commanded to continue feeding Levi, and to bring him back to the work of having a rerun of his blood. If it changes for the better, then the bone marrow disease will be released. We are pushing for it.
On the last night of the weekend, Levi’s petting husband encouraged him to eat. He found a mat in his hair that he wanted me to look at. On closer investigation I realized that it is not a mat. It was a wound. I began to think that maybe a cat bites had gone away and could have been the cause of the whole thing. However, he got more hair removed than I did, and then I thought maybe Levi had hit our dog. When all the hair was removed, I realized that there was something I had never seen before. There was a large pink fleshy lesion on its side surrounded by a red ring. I used to see heavy stuff at work, I wanted to chop it up a bit more and prod. My husband, on the other hand, was not so moved. When we spoke to Levi the vet that evening, he was confused. We took pictures from it and emailed them to the vet, as it was New Eve and the clinic was not open at the time . We waited and waited for a reply by e-mail but got none. On the one hand we thought it might be good; that is nothing. On the other hand, we probably thought it was bad. We thought he probably wouldn’t answer here because he doesn’t want to tell us what it is.
The morning after, I showed up early to work to talk to the vet. His face was blank and he didn’t say anything. He told me that what we see is a poisonous bite of a Brown Recluse spider and the body is dead and necrotic. Levi said that surgery was needed to remove the lesion. Because of the size, from the pictures we sent him, he was quite worried about the incision left to close the skin. Levi was also worried about the anesthetic risk of being sick for so long. He made another examination of Levi and determined that this could be the cause of the whole weakness. When he said that, he did not trust me too much about himself, but what I hoped for was that he did not want to achieve my hope. Either way, it’s hurtful to defer. A bite like that from a Brown Recluse spider was not something that was left alone. After a quick call to my husband to tell him the news about poisonous spiders biting and needing his cat. to have surgery, the cat was anesthetized and the vet removed the tissue. Now, Levi is not a slim Jim and has quite a bit of girth and skin to spare so the closure was quite easy. The surgery went well, and Levi recovered quickly. When he awoke, he immediately began to groom himself, which he had not done for weeks.
Levi came home with me in the afternoon. We were hoping that we would be better now that the lesion was removed. We thought it was just the reason for everything. Explains green changes in the blood, painful stomach, and vomiting. We waited to give him a few days and see how he felt about the surgery. We never expected him to be better than when he first arrived home. Most cats would still be groggy after having the anesthetic. And Levi beckoned the little boy at his door to go out and get stuck in his food bowl. He improved greatly in the following days and we were ecstatic that our little boy was back.
However, it does not stop there. Three days after his surgery, a new lesion was discovered on the other side. This disease is meant to be another sitter’s bite. She was treated appropriately and continues to improve slightly.
What is our trigger, Levi? The answer is simple. If we had not done it when we did not want to, we would certainly have lost the end and the happy end of the story; Levi, our most beloved pet, a cat who has always been with us and traveled everywhere with us and traveled many miles with us. Our family members will write and greet us as “Chad, Faith and Levi. Our home feels so empty without Him here. as we never see spiders in our house, but now we know they are there, we can see where they might be and what they could do about them.
Since not all cases of sick cats can be completely resolved and treated, I wanted to share the story of our kitten, who was traveling with one of these cases of unresolved illness, but in the end, the cause was discovered and. is being done Some cats may need more treatment than others, but we knew our cat was in good hands and we wanted to do what we had to so that our boy was going to be OK.
