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#1
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Facial Twitching in elderly cat
Hello,
I have a 15 year old cat. A year ago her bloodwork came back with mildly elevated urea, creatinine, and T4 levels. The doctor said she was indicative of chronic renal failure. Since then, the urea and creatinine have been controlled with a special diet (Medical Reduced Protein canned and dry) (In December all values came back normal). We are not treating her hyperthyroidism because the doc said it would aggravate her kidneys and that the elevated T4 was probably helping the filtering in her kidneys. In the past couple months I have noticed that sometimes when I'm petting her and she is relaxed, her face, ears, and whiskers will twitch very noticibly. This is not just your regular twitch, it looks really weird. She has also begun to "miss" the bed when she jumps up. She will jump enough so that her front feet grab on, but then she just slides back down! I attributed this to her just being older and weaker, but I thought I should mention it just in case because this has also just started in the past couple months. Any ideas as to what is causing the twitching? Thanks, Kelly |
#2
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"Kelly" wrote in message
... Hello, I have a 15 year old cat. A year ago her bloodwork came back with mildly elevated urea, creatinine, and T4 levels. The doctor said she was indicative of chronic renal failure. Since then, the urea and creatinine have been controlled with a special diet (Medical Reduced Protein canned and dry) (In December all values came back normal). We are not treating her hyperthyroidism because the doc said it would aggravate her kidneys and that the elevated T4 was probably helping the filtering in her kidneys. In the past couple months I have noticed that sometimes when I'm petting her and she is relaxed, her face, ears, and whiskers will twitch very noticibly. This is not just your regular twitch, it looks really weird. She has also begun to "miss" the bed when she jumps up. She will jump enough so that her front feet grab on, but then she just slides back down! I attributed this to her just being older and weaker, but I thought I should mention it just in case because this has also just started in the past couple months. http://www.felinecrf.org/symptoms_tr...ts_index.htm#B Any ideas as to what is causing the twitching? http://www.felinecrf.org/symptoms_tr...ts_index.htm#T HTH Helen |
#3
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"Helen" wrote in message ... http://www.felinecrf.org/symptoms_tr...ts_index.htm#B Any ideas as to what is causing the twitching? http://www.felinecrf.org/symptoms_tr...ts_index.htm#T Wow thank you, that website is great. So do you think we should get her on a potassium supplement? Kelly |
#4
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"Kelly" wrote in message
... "Helen" wrote in message ... http://www.felinecrf.org/symptoms_tr...ts_index.htm#B Any ideas as to what is causing the twitching? http://www.felinecrf.org/symptoms_tr...ts_index.htm#T Wow thank you, that website is great. So do you think we should get her on a potassium supplement? Only if she has low potassium. After all, there may be other causes, and giving potassium when it's not needed can be very dangerous. I'd ask the vet to check her potassium levels and consider a supplement if her potassium is below 4. HTH Helen |
#5
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"Helen" wrote in message ... Wow thank you, that website is great. So do you think we should get her on a potassium supplement? Only if she has low potassium. After all, there may be other causes, and giving potassium when it's not needed can be very dangerous. I'd ask the vet to check her potassium levels and consider a supplement if her potassium is below 4. Thanks. Her K levels were 5.0 a year ago. In December I guess the blood panel we did wasn't as in depth, so the K levels weren't checked. Is there a cheap test they can do just to check K levels? Blood panels aren't cheap at my clinic, they're always over 100 dollars Canadian, so I'm just wondering if there's something similar to a repeat T4 for about 35 bucks but will just check sodium/potassium levels. |
#6
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"Kelly" wrote in message
... Thanks. Her K levels were 5.0 a year ago. In December I guess the blood panel we did wasn't as in depth, so the K levels weren't checked. Is there a cheap test they can do just to check K levels? Blood panels aren't cheap at my clinic, they're always over 100 dollars Canadian, so I'm just wondering if there's something similar to a repeat T4 for about 35 bucks but will just check sodium/potassium levels. I don't know of a cheap test just to check potassium, no. But I know some vets can do mini panels for things like BUN and creatinine so maybe they could do some kind of mini panel that included potassium, and ideally phosphorus too - very important to monitor phosphorus in a CRF cat. HTH Helen |
#7
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We have an electrolyte machine in my clinic that just runs Sodium, Potassium
and Chloride. You can also sent a sample to their external lab for how much and how little you want and exactly what you want. Just ask your vet. "Helen" wrote in message ... "Kelly" wrote in message ... Thanks. Her K levels were 5.0 a year ago. In December I guess the blood panel we did wasn't as in depth, so the K levels weren't checked. Is there a cheap test they can do just to check K levels? Blood panels aren't cheap at my clinic, they're always over 100 dollars Canadian, so I'm just wondering if there's something similar to a repeat T4 for about 35 bucks but will just check sodium/potassium levels. I don't know of a cheap test just to check potassium, no. But I know some vets can do mini panels for things like BUN and creatinine so maybe they could do some kind of mini panel that included potassium, and ideally phosphorus too - very important to monitor phosphorus in a CRF cat. HTH Helen |
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