TLDR: Cat has high white blood cells, ALT and bilirubin. Vomiting nonstop/hospitalized.
Hey everyone, I just wanted to start a thread on here about my baby and his new medical journey in hopes to get more information. As a quick back story, he is between 6-7 and has had stomach issues for the past 3 years. He has a fish allergy and an intolerance for any dry food. He both regurgitates and vomits, but the vomit is more common. He also can be spotted occasionally breathing with his mouth open and I have heard recently a few instances of asthma attacks. I've recently replaced his litter with the Dr. Elsey's respiratory relief and tried to move any air fresheners and candles away from areas he's in. He's also gotten into fish a couple times so I've thought that maybe the asthma was related to that. (I don't have a lot of money so I've been giving any leftover fish cat food to our kitten who sleeps in a cage at night. Long story short Morty realized I would feed him by the microwave and a few pieces went underneath. He never jumps on the counter but after some puking I paid more attention I caught him sticking his feet under there one day grabbing the small dropped pieces...)
Anyway, I had gotten him down to throwing up maybe once a week and was transitioning him to raw. He had no problems with this, except he really just wanted poultry and pork, not rabbit or venison. I've been using Homeopet nose drops, digestive, and cough intermittently because I've heard they're really safe so even if the don't work he probably won't have a bad reaction. The nose/cough ones did seem to be working well for his breathing. The digestive ones not so much (and the vet assistant really chewed me out for using it). I just started incorporating digestive Enzymes from Jackson Galaxy but it's a bit too early to tell.
I had previously purchased some dehydrated turkey strips from hare-today. They can be a bit sharp when broken but they're basically like a jerky. The first couple times Morty had some he was sick for about 12-16 hours. Probably three episodes with three vomits each episode. I wasn't entirely sure that this was causing anything as we had been doing a lot of diet changes and he doesn't have a turkey allergy (yet). So 2 days ago I gave him some around 2pm. This is kinda where the story starts. He started throwing up everything he ate as well as bile in between. Probably 8 episodes in about 28 hours. He wouldn't eat anything for 4ish hours, then get hungry, and then throw up again. He seemed a bit more tired than usual but he was still rolling around and appeared happy to me. He would still purr when I pet him and meow at me when he started to get hungry. By the 28 hour mark I became worried though. I was reluctant to take him to the emergency vet because I'm a broke college student and in addition to this, I never seem to get any real answers from vets, but I took him in anyway because this just isn't normal for him.
In the initial documentation I did not say he was on any raw food, I just don't want to go down that route where everything is assumed to be caused by it and other conditions may not be taken seriously. He eats 75% raw and 25% tiki cat right now. I wrote on the paper just canned food of various brands and hare-today treats. I explained the homeopath drops (to the response of "Why are you giving this to him?! Did a vet prescribe it?!) ugh and brought the treats in (to response of "I can't see the brand! What is Hare-today?! Are these actually what he had?!") She was terrible and thank god she wasn't the vet. Anyway, they initially found nothing wrong but he was a tad dehydrated. As mentioned on here by other people, they wanted to do an x-ray of his chest as well as his organs, blood work (even though he had it done last August for his teeth), and nausea/hydration shots. Running total was 1,100...
Okay apologies that this is so long, but this is where it gets bad. The vet called me from the parking lot (covid) and said he had nothing stuck in his throat but that his liver was showing failure symptoms. He had increased white blood cell production. His bilirubin was high as well as his ALT I believe. One of them was supposed to be in the range of .1 to .6 and it was at 2. He told me if I took Morty home he could very well die. This shocked me a lot because he really didn't seem super sick other than the vomiting. And with that the new running total became 3,700-4,200. He told me they needed to do an ultrasound, give him antibiotics, follow up liver testing and he needs to stay 1-2 days. He said it's possible that this could all be connected to IBD (something I've suspected for a while) but we won't know. I've now maxed out my credit card and I'm terrified for him. The vet didn't really translate his diagnosis into non-medical jargon, so what I got from that was a type of bacterial hepatitis potentially caused from his intestines, but they won't officially know until the ultrasound. He said it was rare for this to happen with an indoor cat only.
After this my mind immediately went to the raw food. Everything I've researched online says the opposite of this and that raw food should help a cat with IBD and liver issues so I'm trying not to blame myself. Anyway, I'm waiting for a call right now so I'll give an update when I can. I'm so scared for him. I have another credit card I can put a few more thousand on, and I will if that's what it takes, but I am an unemployed college student living with my boyfriend so it's going to be tough. In addition to this, I know they'll be feeding him something like Science Diet in there, and tell me to change his food permanently to that, which also stresses me out a lot because I'm not comfortable with the carb count. Plus everything I've researched says extra carbs=worse IBD.
Here of some pictures of my sweet boy. He's really intelligent and very loving. He acts more like a human than a cat.
Hey everyone, I just wanted to start a thread on here about my baby and his new medical journey in hopes to get more information. As a quick back story, he is between 6-7 and has had stomach issues for the past 3 years. He has a fish allergy and an intolerance for any dry food. He both regurgitates and vomits, but the vomit is more common. He also can be spotted occasionally breathing with his mouth open and I have heard recently a few instances of asthma attacks. I've recently replaced his litter with the Dr. Elsey's respiratory relief and tried to move any air fresheners and candles away from areas he's in. He's also gotten into fish a couple times so I've thought that maybe the asthma was related to that. (I don't have a lot of money so I've been giving any leftover fish cat food to our kitten who sleeps in a cage at night. Long story short Morty realized I would feed him by the microwave and a few pieces went underneath. He never jumps on the counter but after some puking I paid more attention I caught him sticking his feet under there one day grabbing the small dropped pieces...)
Anyway, I had gotten him down to throwing up maybe once a week and was transitioning him to raw. He had no problems with this, except he really just wanted poultry and pork, not rabbit or venison. I've been using Homeopet nose drops, digestive, and cough intermittently because I've heard they're really safe so even if the don't work he probably won't have a bad reaction. The nose/cough ones did seem to be working well for his breathing. The digestive ones not so much (and the vet assistant really chewed me out for using it). I just started incorporating digestive Enzymes from Jackson Galaxy but it's a bit too early to tell.
I had previously purchased some dehydrated turkey strips from hare-today. They can be a bit sharp when broken but they're basically like a jerky. The first couple times Morty had some he was sick for about 12-16 hours. Probably three episodes with three vomits each episode. I wasn't entirely sure that this was causing anything as we had been doing a lot of diet changes and he doesn't have a turkey allergy (yet). So 2 days ago I gave him some around 2pm. This is kinda where the story starts. He started throwing up everything he ate as well as bile in between. Probably 8 episodes in about 28 hours. He wouldn't eat anything for 4ish hours, then get hungry, and then throw up again. He seemed a bit more tired than usual but he was still rolling around and appeared happy to me. He would still purr when I pet him and meow at me when he started to get hungry. By the 28 hour mark I became worried though. I was reluctant to take him to the emergency vet because I'm a broke college student and in addition to this, I never seem to get any real answers from vets, but I took him in anyway because this just isn't normal for him.
In the initial documentation I did not say he was on any raw food, I just don't want to go down that route where everything is assumed to be caused by it and other conditions may not be taken seriously. He eats 75% raw and 25% tiki cat right now. I wrote on the paper just canned food of various brands and hare-today treats. I explained the homeopath drops (to the response of "Why are you giving this to him?! Did a vet prescribe it?!) ugh and brought the treats in (to response of "I can't see the brand! What is Hare-today?! Are these actually what he had?!") She was terrible and thank god she wasn't the vet. Anyway, they initially found nothing wrong but he was a tad dehydrated. As mentioned on here by other people, they wanted to do an x-ray of his chest as well as his organs, blood work (even though he had it done last August for his teeth), and nausea/hydration shots. Running total was 1,100...
Okay apologies that this is so long, but this is where it gets bad. The vet called me from the parking lot (covid) and said he had nothing stuck in his throat but that his liver was showing failure symptoms. He had increased white blood cell production. His bilirubin was high as well as his ALT I believe. One of them was supposed to be in the range of .1 to .6 and it was at 2. He told me if I took Morty home he could very well die. This shocked me a lot because he really didn't seem super sick other than the vomiting. And with that the new running total became 3,700-4,200. He told me they needed to do an ultrasound, give him antibiotics, follow up liver testing and he needs to stay 1-2 days. He said it's possible that this could all be connected to IBD (something I've suspected for a while) but we won't know. I've now maxed out my credit card and I'm terrified for him. The vet didn't really translate his diagnosis into non-medical jargon, so what I got from that was a type of bacterial hepatitis potentially caused from his intestines, but they won't officially know until the ultrasound. He said it was rare for this to happen with an indoor cat only.
After this my mind immediately went to the raw food. Everything I've researched online says the opposite of this and that raw food should help a cat with IBD and liver issues so I'm trying not to blame myself. Anyway, I'm waiting for a call right now so I'll give an update when I can. I'm so scared for him. I have another credit card I can put a few more thousand on, and I will if that's what it takes, but I am an unemployed college student living with my boyfriend so it's going to be tough. In addition to this, I know they'll be feeding him something like Science Diet in there, and tell me to change his food permanently to that, which also stresses me out a lot because I'm not comfortable with the carb count. Plus everything I've researched says extra carbs=worse IBD.
Here of some pictures of my sweet boy. He's really intelligent and very loving. He acts more like a human than a cat.