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- Nov 16, 2017
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Hi, everyone. Long time reader, first time poster. I hope to contribute more to the forum from here on.
For today, I am curious if anyone has seen a situation like my Sam. He is an overweight but otherwise generally healthy 6 year old domestic shorthair with two brothers. They all go outside, but only in a large dog kennel in our backyard, so no access to neighborhood cats, cars, etc.
Sam started having diarrhea at the beginning of November. When I finally pinpointed it was him (everyone was acting normal and only pooping overnight), I decided to take him in to get him checked out before we left on a 4-day vacation. After the vet checked him out on November 9, he couldn't find anything serious and recommended FortiFlora and a mild antibiotic to help his gut. Because of the difficulty of having our daily cat-checkers administer the antibiotic, we decided to just have them give him the FortiFlora and we'd reassess after we returned. I still don't know if the diarrhea was directly related to what came next.
While we were gone, November 10-13, we noticed via camera and also in conjunction with speaking to the cat sitters that Sam was limping on his right hind leg (I had thought he might be on Nov 9, but it was so mild I wasn't sure and thought it could just be that his anus was sore or raw from the diarrhea and he was walking funny because of that). We returned home early from our trip to take care of Sam, who had a pronounced limp by that point and was spending most of his time sleeping. However, he continued to eat/drink/pee/poop normally (the diarrhea resolved with FortiFlora treatment) so rather than an emergency vet, we took the soonest appointment and took him in yesterday morning, Nov. 15.
The vet checked him out and said he was only a 2/5 on the lameness scale and that nothing appeared to be broken. He couldn't even tell from palpitating where exactly on the leg he was hurting (Sam is very mild cat and very stoic, even for a cat) but thought it could be his knee. He prescribed 3 days of robenacoxib and told us if there's no real improvement, then we should call back and arrange for x-rays. So far, so good. Sam was actually more normal yesterday even before the pills, and definitely after. He has been more interested in initiating play (necessitating me coming up with good non-chasing games to rest his knee).
But now here's the new development I'm wondering about. Last night, I noticed that Sam has started to hold his tail funny/bent, with the first couple of inches straight out and then the rest almost straight down, dragging. He's never done this before. There were no lumps that I could find and as far as I can tell, he can feel the whole thing (again, he's so mild that he never tries to pull away even when you touch his tail). He has certainly not been injured by any tail pulling, door slams, being stepped on, etc. I'm not panicked about this yet since it hasn't even been 24 hours. I watched him successfully defecate today and I expect he'll pee after he has his afternoon feeding so I can make sure that goes okay.
I'm *hoping* that he's just got some exhausted muscles from the limping on one side and how that means he's had to use his other leg more. Does anyone know what other signs I should be aware of as far as the possibility of this being nerve damage? Has anyone had a cat with a temporarily bent tail like this and have a guess at what this could be?
*Note for the photo - the archy back is the photo is not a concern. He was just stretching as I took the photo.
For today, I am curious if anyone has seen a situation like my Sam. He is an overweight but otherwise generally healthy 6 year old domestic shorthair with two brothers. They all go outside, but only in a large dog kennel in our backyard, so no access to neighborhood cats, cars, etc.
Sam started having diarrhea at the beginning of November. When I finally pinpointed it was him (everyone was acting normal and only pooping overnight), I decided to take him in to get him checked out before we left on a 4-day vacation. After the vet checked him out on November 9, he couldn't find anything serious and recommended FortiFlora and a mild antibiotic to help his gut. Because of the difficulty of having our daily cat-checkers administer the antibiotic, we decided to just have them give him the FortiFlora and we'd reassess after we returned. I still don't know if the diarrhea was directly related to what came next.
While we were gone, November 10-13, we noticed via camera and also in conjunction with speaking to the cat sitters that Sam was limping on his right hind leg (I had thought he might be on Nov 9, but it was so mild I wasn't sure and thought it could just be that his anus was sore or raw from the diarrhea and he was walking funny because of that). We returned home early from our trip to take care of Sam, who had a pronounced limp by that point and was spending most of his time sleeping. However, he continued to eat/drink/pee/poop normally (the diarrhea resolved with FortiFlora treatment) so rather than an emergency vet, we took the soonest appointment and took him in yesterday morning, Nov. 15.
The vet checked him out and said he was only a 2/5 on the lameness scale and that nothing appeared to be broken. He couldn't even tell from palpitating where exactly on the leg he was hurting (Sam is very mild cat and very stoic, even for a cat) but thought it could be his knee. He prescribed 3 days of robenacoxib and told us if there's no real improvement, then we should call back and arrange for x-rays. So far, so good. Sam was actually more normal yesterday even before the pills, and definitely after. He has been more interested in initiating play (necessitating me coming up with good non-chasing games to rest his knee).
But now here's the new development I'm wondering about. Last night, I noticed that Sam has started to hold his tail funny/bent, with the first couple of inches straight out and then the rest almost straight down, dragging. He's never done this before. There were no lumps that I could find and as far as I can tell, he can feel the whole thing (again, he's so mild that he never tries to pull away even when you touch his tail). He has certainly not been injured by any tail pulling, door slams, being stepped on, etc. I'm not panicked about this yet since it hasn't even been 24 hours. I watched him successfully defecate today and I expect he'll pee after he has his afternoon feeding so I can make sure that goes okay.
I'm *hoping* that he's just got some exhausted muscles from the limping on one side and how that means he's had to use his other leg more. Does anyone know what other signs I should be aware of as far as the possibility of this being nerve damage? Has anyone had a cat with a temporarily bent tail like this and have a guess at what this could be?
*Note for the photo - the archy back is the photo is not a concern. He was just stretching as I took the photo.
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