Eating Habits

I'm so sorry to hear about Joanie. They say asthmatic cats are among the
most delicate patients. I'm really fortunate Pearl's seems to be as moderate
as it is because I know a lot of people that have their cats on both inhaled
meds and prednisone and can barely keep their cats in decent health. It's
very heartbreaking.


"Ben Goren" wrote in message
...


I know for a fact that 2.5 ml of cephalexin given three times a
day, after a few days, caused a certain 10-pound cat to lose
her appetite and eventually start vomiting less than an hour
after a dosage. Cut back, and her appetite came back with a
vengeance...only to go away again as we ramped the dosage back up
to what it took to clear out her lungs.

It seemed to help if I spent an awful lot of time distracting her,
before and afterwards, with lots and lots and lots of playing and
petting and what-not. If nothing else, it helped her forgive me,
even though she really hated the medicine. It meant that a
``simple'' two-minute procedure took at least ten times as long,
often longer...but what choice did we have?

And it did wonders to clear out the bacterial infection in
her lungs, too! It's just that...well, it was an opportunistic
infection....

Anyway, neither amoxicillin nor enroflaxin upset her stomach nor
her appetite, at least not noticeably. They also didn't knock out
the pneumonia, though they /did/ help at first. Or, at least, they
sure seemed to.

I'm sure different cats have different reactions to different
drugs, but an upset stomach isn't any more surprising in a cat on
antibiotics than in a person on antibiotics.

What I had to start doing with Joanie was to syringe-feed her
a/d. She didn't care much for that, either, but she only put up
token resistance to it, too. And, believe me, she knew the
difference! She could be asleep in the other room while I was
making dinner. If I even picked up the bottle of antibiotics to
reach behind for something else, she'd vanish underneath the
bed. On the other hand, she could be sitting on a chair in the
kitchen, I'd get the a/d out of the refrigerator, stuff the
syringe full while she watched, and she'd only get off the chair
to head in the other direction when I started to approach her.

All-too-soon after we finally got the pneumonia almost all cleared
up, she had another asthmatic attack that we finally recognized as
such. The prednisone injection brought her breathing back to
normal reasonably quickly, but it took lasix to clear out her
lungs...she probably had some heart failure from the beating her
lungs had taken by this point.

She was doing really well for several days, when she caught a
cold. (Classic feline herpes, a textbook case.) She even did well
enough through that; her appetite vanished, as one would expect in
a cat who can't smell her food, but she did just fine with the
syringe feeding, even put on a few ounces.

And then, a few Fridays ago, she had another asthma attack, a
couple weeks before the prednisone injection should have worn
off. The attack wasn't as severe as the previous two, but it
really, really wiped her out...and she didn't really respond to
medication. I'd open up the oxygen cage to pet her. She'd perk up
a bit, but not much and not for long. When her breathing started
to get worse, I'd close the cage and just sit in front until they
kicked me out. Did that a lot that weekend....

We thought the various drugs (steriods, oral and inhaled, some
injected antibiotics...I don't remember what all) might have
actually started to do some good by that Monday afternoon. She had
been off oxygen since the morning and, though she was rather
weak, her breathing was not-horrible and she wasn't overly
depressed. And it was the decision day, too...Dr. Hummel was ready
to let Joanie come home, provided she showed signs of improvement,
though she didn't think we had much more than a month left. If
not...we had both agreed on Sunday that Monday would still be her
last day at the hospital. We had crossed the line from treatment
to torture sometime that weekend, and neither she nor I could
countenance continuing that without cause.

I spent...oh, I don't know...a couple hours? More? Less?...with
Joanie while the doctor finished up surgery on a dog and saw to
some other patients. Joanie put on such an amazing act...she was
obviously tired, but seemed most ready and eager to come home with
me. She demanded a near non-stop face massage, and climbed in my
lap to see around the edge of the cage. She even wanted to go
exploring, too, which wasn't so much her thing.

And then...the asthmatic breathing kicked back in, and even
lifting her head was hard work....

Ah, my sweetheart....

b&

--
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
``All but God can prove this sentence true.''

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Karen wrote:

I'm so sorry to hear about Joanie. They say asthmatic cats are
among the most delicate patients. I'm really fortunate Pearl's
seems to be as moderate as it is because I know a lot of people
that have their cats on both inhaled meds and prednisone
and can barely keep their cats in decent health. It's very
heartbreaking.

Thank you.

Although she would get chronic bronchitis from time to time --
almost always the same times I tended to get clogged up, myself,
which also almost always corresponded with high pollution days --
she never had a true asthmatic attack until this summer, when I
first rushed her to the doctor. And we didn't really know that
that's what it was until she had that second sudden attack, not
long after we thought we had conquered the pneumonia.

And...from the very first X-ray, Dr. Hummel thought she might
maybe have seen something cancerous in there. A visiting
radiologist who got a chance to look at her X-rays closer to the
end thought that was a likely chance, too.

My own best-guess reconstruction is that her asthma was never
anything more than a very minor problem that nobody ever would
have noticed...if it weren't for an opportunistic bacterial
infection that took advantage of a cancerous lesion in her
lungs...at which point so much of everything started piling on her
that it was all she could do just to put on a brave face.

Dr. Hummel and I are both convinced that, for quite some time, she
was in much, much worse shape than either of us could have
realized...and Dr. Hummel thinks Joanie hid it for me. I really,
really hope that's not true...but, if so...it's a gift she gave
me, far more than I could possibly deserve....

b&

--
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
``All but God can prove this sentence true.''

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Ben Goren wrote:
wrote:

Jeanne wrote:

I didn't realize there was a connection between antibiotics and
appetite, though. It's something I'll keep in mind.

I think they can sometimes upset a cat's stomach a bit. Maybe
not enough to throw up, but enough to put them off eating for a
while.

Depends on the antibiotic in question as well as the dosage. And
the cat, of course.

I know for a fact that 2.5 ml of cephalexin given three times a
day, after a few days, caused a certain 10-pound cat to lose
her appetite and eventually start vomiting less than an hour
after a dosage. Cut back, and her appetite came back with a
vengeance...only to go away again as we ramped the dosage back up
to what it took to clear out her lungs.

Natasha's on 5mg of Clavamox, twice a day, until it runs out, which
should be Friday. I've done some research, and found out that one of
the known side-effects of Clavamox is loss of appetite, so hopefully
she'll be eating again this time next week.

Thank you for sharing Joanie's story.


Jeanne Hedge, as directed by Natasha

Christina Websell wrote:
Get the vet to check out how her kidneys are working.

Hi Tweed,

That's definitely been checked, given her history of being borderline
CRF. The idiot ER vet and the regular vet both said her test results
were very good, no kidney problems at all (other than a couple items
being borderline high). This is pretty much where her values have been
all along.


Jeanne Hedge, as directed by Natasha
(who was busy making a mess of the kitchen floor by sloshing water out
of her bowl all over it this morning)

Jeanne wrote:

Ben Goren wrote:
wrote:
Jeanne wrote:

I didn't realize there was a connection between antibiotics
and appetite, though. It's something I'll keep in mind.

I think they can sometimes upset a cat's stomach a bit. Maybe
not enough to throw up, but enough to put them off eating for
a while.

Depends on the antibiotic in question as well as the
dosage. And the cat, of course.

I know for a fact that 2.5 ml of cephalexin given three times a
day, after a few days, caused a certain 10-pound cat to lose
her appetite and eventually start vomiting less than an hour
after a dosage. Cut back, and her appetite came back with a
vengeance...only to go away again as we ramped the dosage back
up to what it took to clear out her lungs.

Natasha's on 5mg of Clavamox, twice a day, until it runs out,
which should be Friday. I've done some research, and found out
that one of the known side-effects of Clavamox is loss of
appetite, so hopefully she'll be eating again this time next
week.

Here's hoping you're right -- but please make sure that she's at
least eating /something./ Too many days without food may well be
fatal. Syringe feeding isn't pleasant for either cat or slave, but
it's doable...and neither of you might have much choice.

If it helps, it took less than a day after reducing or stopping
antibiotics for Joanie to get her appetite back, and in a really
big way. If she hasn't eaten anything since you wrote, make sure
to get some food into her a couple times tonight and throughout
the day tomorrow until she gets her appetite back.

Thank you for sharing Joanie's story.

You're welcome. It's not easy...but, then again, Joanie never was
one for making things easy....

Cheers,

b&

--
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
``All but God can prove this sentence true.''

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How is Natasha doing now?
I hope she is feeling better.
Elisabet



Jeanne skrev i meddelandet
. com...

Christina Websell wrote:
Get the vet to check out how her kidneys are working.

Hi Tweed,

That's definitely been checked, given her history of being borderline
CRF. The idiot ER vet and the regular vet both said her test results
were very good, no kidney problems at all (other than a couple items
being borderline high). This is pretty much where her values have been
all along.


Jeanne Hedge, as directed by Natasha
(who was busy making a mess of the kitchen floor by sloshing water out
of her bowl all over it this morning)

On Sat, 18 Nov 2006 18:00:56 +0100, "Lisa Katt"
wrote:

How is Natasha doing now?
I hope she is feeling better.
Elisabet

Thanks for asking.

I took her back to her vet on Friday. I've been leaving her normal
food (dry) for her to eat, and then trying to tempt her with various
kinds of moist food in the evenings. She licks the surface of the
food, getting all the liquid I guess, but won't eat it, and she's
still barely nibbling her dry food. She *is* drinking her water, and
is not lethargic (or what passes for lethargic for her, who's never
been all that active to begin with). She still gives me grief for not
going to bed when she thinks I should go to bed. If it weren't for the
not eating, I'd think she was fine (she lost nearly 1/2 pound over the
last week)

The vet drew blood for tests, and did another physical exam of her.
Pending the results of the blood test (I'm to call about that on
Monday), I'm just to keep an eye on her over the weekend to see if
things pick up now that she's finished the antibiotic she was on all
week.

Could be anything, really, including just old age.



Jeanne Hedge, as directed by Natasha

============
http://www.jhedge.com

Jeanne Hedge wrote:

I don't know if I'm being ultra paranoid because of her recent
illness, or if there's still a problem.

Natasha isn't really eating again. Last week, a few days after I
brought her home from the emergency vet's she'd finally started to eat
a little - as long as it was tuna people-food. She was only nibbling a
very little at her usual food, K/D.

Friday afternoon I took her to her regular vet for a second opinion,
and he took her temperature (she was actually *clenching* to keep that
thing out of her backside!). Since then she seems to be eating less.
Scarier, today was the first day since Friday that I'd noticed she'd
been drinking from her water bowls in any noticable amount.

I've been trying to tempt her with various kinds of canned cat food,
but she hasn't been "chowing down" - a few nibbles at a time, over the
entire evening is the best I can get from her. Tonight she even got a
fish flavor, but she's not going at it.

Bear in mind, she's not being lethargic, she's just not really eating.

SO.... does anyone else's kitties have this kind of eating behavior?
Or is she maybe still po'd, this time over having yet another
indignity done to her on Friday? Or maybe she's trying to hold me
hostage to a new taste treat and I just need to wait her out? Or
maybe she's just getting tired of it all?

Thoughts?



Jeanne Hedge, as directed by Natasha

============
http://www.jhedge.com

How is she doing?
We are purring and sending lots of best wishes for Natasha to be eating
well by now,
Polonca and Soncek

On Sun, 19 Nov 2006 13:13:04 +0100, polonca12000
wrote:

How is she doing?
We are purring and sending lots of best wishes for Natasha to be eating
well by now,
Polonca and Soncek

Thanks for asking

I took her back to her vet on Friday. I've been leaving her normal
food (dry) for her to eat all day while I'm at work, and then trying
to tempt her with various kinds of moist food in the evenings. She
licks the surface of the food, getting all the liquid I guess, but
won't eat it, and she's still barely nibbling her dry food.

She *is* drinking her water, and is not lethargic (or what passes for
lethargic for her, who's never been all that active to begin with).
She still gives me grief for not going to bed when she thinks I should
go to bed. If it weren't for the not eating, I'd think she was fine
(she lost nearly 1/2 pound over the last week)

The vet drew blood for tests, and did another physical exam of her.
Xrays don't show anything, the vet says there's nothing wrong with her
teeth or her mouth.

Pending the results of the blood test (I'm to call about that on
Monday), I'm just to keep an eye on her over the weekend to see if
things pick up now that she's finished the antibiotic she was on all
week.

Could be anything, really, including just old age.



Jeanne Hedge, as directed by Natasha

============
http://www.jhedge.com

Jeanne Hedge wrote:
snip
The vet drew blood for tests, and did another physical exam of her.
Xrays don't show anything, the vet says there's nothing wrong with her
teeth or her mouth.

Pending the results of the blood test (I'm to call about that on
Monday), I'm just to keep an eye on her over the weekend to see if
things pick up now that she's finished the antibiotic she was on all
week.

Could be anything, really, including just old age.



Jeanne Hedge, as directed by Natasha

============
http://www.jhedge.com

We are sending lots of purrs and best wishes that the blood test comes
back negative and for Natasha's appetite to improve now that she's
finished the antibiotic. Hugs for you for taking such good care of her,
Jeanne,
Polonca and Soncek