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Magic the beautiful guy
This will be a rather long post, so please bear with me since I want
to describe everything. In November 2008, I found a neutered male long-haired Himalayan wandering around my front yard. He was friendly and had a green flea collar on. It was raining, so I took him in and gave him some food and water. Three days later, it stopped raining, and I posted his picture around the neighborhood and in the newspaper and at a nearby veterinary clinic. Three weeks later, I thought that he had been abandoned, so I planned to keep him since I had lost my cat, aged 16, a few years earlier. We had bonded, and he’s a wonderful, wonderful cat. Just then, I received a call from a home about two blocks away, and they described him to a “T” and asked that I bring him back, which I did, rather tearfully. They told me that they had been given the cat by her mother, and had kept him for only about 9 months. They knew nothing about his history, but they said he liked to drink from the toilet and preferred the bathtub if the lone litterbox was dirty. They also let him outside, which in this neighborhood, is asking for a quick death due to reckless traffic and roaming strays. Well, an hour later, they called and said that he wasn’t happy and asked if I would like to keep him. Yes! I covered the two blocks in 60 seconds, and he’s been with me ever since. The small home that gave him to me housed three large dogs and four other cats, and my cat, who I’ve named Magic, had a nasty flea infestation and also an intolerance for other cats and dogs. I took him to my veterinarian for a checkup and flea treatment, and the fleas were gone. He also passed his physical, (the vet approximated his age at around 4, and he weighs 11 pounds) tested negative for everything, and Christmas of 2008 found us both happy. I kept him inside my small one-bedroom house and coaxed him out of his bad elimination and drinking habits. In May, 2009, he started vomiting continuously one night, and just when I thought he wouldn’t stop, he did, and I noticed what looked like a piece of a rubber band in the last residue. Aha, I thought, he swallowed a rubber band and it played havoc on his digestive tract. I thought I was correct, since he thrived throughout the summer and fall of 2009, but then the wheels came off in October 2009. He started vomiting so badly one night that he wouldn’t stop and I called the emergency vet at 5 AM and took him in. The doctor said that he could see nothing serious, said it was probably acute gastritis, and gave him an anti-nausea shot and I took him home. Two days later, he started again and I let it go on for a day, then rushed him to another emergency vet, where they did extensive tests, X-rays, blood tests, everything. He was jaundiced, and the doctor said it was either hepatic lipidosis or cholangeal hepatitis. She was leaning towards the hepatitis. She gave him an injection of Baytril and subcutaneous hydration. I then took him to my regular vet, who said his liver values had returned to normal. He prescribed 5 mg prednisolone to control any inflammation, and five days of Baytril to eliminate any bacteria. Magic was then OK until the last week of February, when history repeated. Same treatment, same Baytril and prednisolone, and some famotadine to control any nausea. The prednisolone dosage was gradually lessened over time to 2.5 mg every three days. The vet also noticed a piece of tapeworm (could this have been the “rubber band” I saw a year earlier?) and gave him a worming treatment. He also mentioned that Magic had mild nystagmus and that might cause some nausea. Magic was good until early June, when he again flared up. The treatments were the same, and this time the doctor prescribed a diet of Hill’s I/D and Fortiflora. He likes the I/D but the Fortiflora is a hit-and-miss affair. Now it is the end of August, and I’m bracing for another bout, which seems to occur every three months, and he’s been sleeping an awful lot during the day. A friend of mine checked with a holistic vet in Ithaca and he said that I should get Paws’n’Claws natural cat litter…! Well, I read that ammonia can aggravate a cat’s liver, so I installed that litter. I’ll try anything. Magic eats with his paws, flips out each kernel of food onto the floor before he eats it. He also paws his water dish until it splashes, and then he drinks. This gets pieces of litter and dirt into his water, so I change that 4 times a day. He loves to eat grass, but the vet suggested that I shouldn’t allow him to do that, so I grow oat grass indoors and let him nibble a very small amount every few days. He constantly begs to be let outdoors, and I let him out while I walk beside him to make sure he doesn’t eat grass. Currently, he’s on a 5mg capsule of prednisolone every three days, and 2.5 mg of famotadine every day. So there you have the story of Magic. I took an outdoor cat and kept him indoors and he’s bored. He loves people. Where he could have picked up hepatitis is beyond me. Maybe he had it all the while, but I doubt it. Maybe he just has hairballs, but I brush him twice a day, use a Furminator every few days, and I have never seen hairballs in his stool or vomit. Maybe he does have gastritis and the vomiting just makes his liver act up. On his current course, he will either bankrupt me or reach a manageable plateau of maintenance. I live alone on Social Security, so my resources aren’t inexhaustible. But I refuse to give up on him, so I thought I’d post this story and ask if anyone had any suggestions. Maybe there’s something I haven’t tried, something simple. We need help. |
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