Back in mid November (11/13), we took one of our older cats, Kori (14+ y/o), to the vet for what seemed like a kitty cold. The vet prescribed antibiotics and treated him for an ear infection and sent him home. About 10 days later (11/23), our other cat, Tanuki (7 y/o), stopped eating, He always had a wonderful appetite so if he missed one meal, we knew something was wrong. Prior to that, he was bounding around and playing. When I tried to feed him his breakfast, he was upstairs facing our closet in the "meatloaf" position. We took him to the vet and she said he was dehydrated and wanted to check his blood and get him started on fluids (sub-q) so we should leave him there. The next day, she called back and said his glucose level was at 300 but that could be due to stress from being there. She suggested leaving him there for observation and to continue hydration. He also received an ennema because he was a little blocked, and a bath. The next day his glucose shot up to 500 and she was hesitant but decided to give him insulin. (I don't know when she tested his glucose but maybe the 500 was due to the enema and bath?!) She thought he might have Diabetes or Pancreatitis. He was a big cat (Maine Coon mix and overweight) but was tested for Diabetes earlier and didn't have it. He did have Megacolon though and had been treated numerous times for it until we had it pretty much under control with Miralax, CatLax and tuna in oil.. His back legs were cow hocked (possibly causing the megacolon) either from a birth defect, accident or abuse. He also had Arthritis in his back. She asked if we wanted to visit him, which we gladly did. We were horrified to see his condition! He looked like he was at death's door. We were told his glucose level was coming down a bit and to call the next day which we did. The vet said she didn't see much improvement and asked what we wanted to do...keep treating him or euthenasia. It was my husband's decision as Tanuki was more bonded with him and I would support him with whatever he decided. We went there to put him down but when we were saying our goodbyes, the vet came in and said she would still treat him if that was what we wanted. After visiting with him for a while he started to rally. We decided to give him another 24 hours to see if he would improve. She called at 10:00 that night and said he had passed. We were absolutely crushed!! We decided to have him cremated and went to pick up his ashes and pay the final bill. The vet wrote "Complicated Diabetic" on it and that his glucose went down to 39 without Insulin for 24 hours and on a Dextrose drip. He always drank a good amount of water which the vet encouraged because of his constipation issues but maybe we missed something? We got him from a shelter when he was a year old (they estimated). Whoever had him before he arrived at the shelter, moved and left him behind. He was a big ol' teddy bear of a cat. He was quite "talkative"- always asking questions in a high pitched "meow?" It was hard losing the big guy and everything seemed surreal after that.
Ten days later (12/11), we took another one of our cats (Kasai) in because he seemed to have lost his vision. He is 12+ years old. She checked him over and said that yes, he is mostly blind and has a detached retina. (However, his pupils still constrict) The vet's blood pressure monitor wasn't working so she asked if we could leave him there until the afternoon when she could get a better reading on him with a different machine, which we did. His blood pressure was high which probably caused the vision loss and she prescribed blood pressure medication. She gave him his distemper and rabies shots and also tested him for hyperthyroidism which took 5 days of me calling to get the results! He didn't have it.
Tuesday (1/5) around 5:30 am, my sweet 7 year old Siberian cat, Mika (mee ka), woke me up making strange gurgling noises, She came closer by my head and I turned the light on and immediately knew something was very wrong. Her eyes were completely dilated, she was panting and crying. I took a flashlight and looked in her mouth to see if she had something in there. There wasn't (that I could see) but her tongue was turning blue (like a tint of blue). My husband kept saying "she's dying". We were both frantic. I called my vet's emergency number and it took what seemed like forever and the dispatcher finally answered the phone. I explained the situation and said she would have the vet call me. My husband was trying to get Mika calmed down. She decided she wanted to go in one of our laundry baskets and jumped in. My husband went down to the basement to get the crate and I kept an eye on her while getting dressed so she wouldn't go under the bed or somewhere to hide. She jumped out of the basket and back onto the bed. I picked her up which she seemed to enjoy. She was calming down and the panting stopped. My husband brought the crate upstairs to our bedroom and she was happy to go in it. Although she stopped panting she was still "gurgly". The vet called and I explained everything to her and said we had her in a crate to which she replied "oh, you're planning on bringing her in? Or do you want to wait and see how she does?" I said I didn't know and asked her for advice. She said it was up to me and she would meet us at the clinic if we wanted. I thought it would be a good idea since she was still "gurgly". We got her to the vet and she checked her breathing/heart with the stethoscope and took her temperature (which was fine). She was going to take her in back to put her in an oxygen tent and told us she would call us later. She called close to 10:00 pm that night (which scared me half to death thinking it was bad news) and said she gave her Dexamethasone and would do a chest x-ray later. For the time being she just wanted to keep her in the oxygen tent overnight and gradually, the next day, take her out to see how she would do. She also said Mika wasn't walking and wondered if that was just something she did when she was scared. I said no, she was running around playing the night before this happened. She seemed to have her stabilized but didn't know the cause. She thought it was maybe an asthma attack, feline pneumonitis, or some type of fungal infection. We went to see her Thursday afternoon. The vet said her lungs were clearing up really well but still didn't know what the cause was - she didn't have a fever and the blood results came back fine. She asked if we brought anything new into the house like cleaners, or a new cat food, anything. We couldn't think of anything. I remembered what the vet said about Mika not walking and I was ready to put Mika on the floor to observe her but then I noticed her back left foot was limp. The vet said we brought her in that way but I know when she was examining her, her foot was not limp at all! The vet checked her out and said it was just her foot and not her whole leg. She thought she felt a swollen lymph node on her thigh and was pushing on it which caused her a great deal of pain (she cried, hissed and started panting again). At first she couldn't remember if she had given Mika an injection in that area but then confirmed that it was a lymph node. We got Mika purring again and I held her for a long while and put her back in her box. The vet told me to call the next day (Friday). I called the next day around 10 am and the vet tech said she was doing really good and that Mika was looking right at her. Also, the feeling in her foot was coming back. I was so relieved!! At 5:00 pm that same day, the vet called me and said she had some terrible news....Mika had died!!! What?!?! How could this have happened?! She was improving!! The vet said she wasn't sure and she was so sorry. She asked if we wanted to see her that night while she was still "soft" and a bunch of other questions but I was on the verge of hysterics and asked if I could call her back. She said yes and that she would be there all night, I managed to calm down a bit and called back to say we were on our way. We literally stopped everything we were doing. We were getting our coats on when the vet's office called and asked us if we could come tomorrow instead because the vet had an emergency surgery (which the vet apologized for the next day).
All that weekend I felt like someone ripped out my heart and guts, stomped on them, poured gas on them, lit them on fire and put them back in. She was like my kid...but furry. Last year I lost my brother in law, step mother, aunt (all had terminal diseases) and my other cat, Tanuki. This was by far the worst! Saturday we went to say goodbye to her (super hard) and the vet pleaded with us for her to do a necropsy (autopsy) which we approved in case it was some virus or ?? The vet was stumped on what could have caused it and said she was originally planning on sending her home on Saturday. Mika was always healthy and happy, she was playing the night before all this happened and never showed any signs of anything. The only thing I noticed was she didn't eat her dinner the night before but she had always been finicky. However, she did eat treats that night. I keep searching the house for clues, any kind of clue that could have caused this. I can't find anything out of the ordinary.
In my mind I'm questioning everything. Did we miss something? Did the vet make a mistake? Both times? All four times? She was my mom's vet for over 30 years and mine for the last 7 years. She's always been an excellent vet and she's been doing this for 35+ years but she is always so incredibly busy and I believe she spreads herself too thin. She also takes care of dogs, horses, pigs, etc, She does emergency surgeries and she works like 7 days a week. Maybe it's just part of my grieving?! Or maybe not?! Maybe it was a virus? Something unfamiliar to properly diagnose?
This has been so unbelievably heartbreaking!! When I got Mika at the shelter she was just a kitten (8 weeks old) and used to follow me around like a little ball of fur with a tail smaller than my pinky finger. At the shelter she was so tiny she would walk right through the fencing of the kennels to follow me. That never stopped as she got older (although her tail was a big, beautiful floof of fur). If I left the house she would come to the door and then go sit in the window to watch me when I left. When I came home, I could hear her running down the stairs to greet me. She slept with me every night and would sit with me when I worked (I started working from home 3 years ago). She would "talk" and trill and shake her booty (rattle her tail) when she was happy. We had all kinds of nicknames for her. When she ran real fast, we would call her "streek-a-Mika. If she was being crafty we called her "sneak-a-Mika". There was also "Mika-ball", "Mika-loaf" but always she was "sweet-a-Mika"! She was a little lady, always crossing her front paws and just so very "girly". She let the boys know when she had enough of their shenanigans though! All cats are unique in their own way but she was truly one of a kind to me....she was my baby and I miss her so terribly bad!! I loved her so much!! My heart is absolutely shattered!!
And now a third one!! Kori passed on 3/17. I am just numb. I can't believe we lost 3 cats in less than 4 months!! His "kitty cold" or URI got worse and he was eating less and so I called a mobile vet to come to the house. I think the antibiotic was too strong for him or just the wrong antibiotic. I posted a thread about it here... Azithromycin - URI He was our "little man" and he will be very missed!! Thankfully (not sure if that's the right word here), he went rather peacefully upstairs in our bedroom. One of the stranger things is 2 or 3 days before he passed, he came downstairs. He had been in our bedroom for over a week. He was weak but managed to come all the way downstairs and went into one of the cat beds. When the other cat got out of his favorite heated bed, he went into it and curled up like he always did. I thought it was possibly a good sign. However, my husband thought it was his way of saying goodbye. Maybe he was just depressed and wanted some sense of "normalcy"?! Our remaining cats were super stressed after he passed. I plugged in some Comfort Zone diffusers and it seems to help. And now I keep a VERY watchful eye on the rest of our cats!! Does anyone have any ideas about what type of virus could cause all of this? I do not think it was coincidence!!
Ten days later (12/11), we took another one of our cats (Kasai) in because he seemed to have lost his vision. He is 12+ years old. She checked him over and said that yes, he is mostly blind and has a detached retina. (However, his pupils still constrict) The vet's blood pressure monitor wasn't working so she asked if we could leave him there until the afternoon when she could get a better reading on him with a different machine, which we did. His blood pressure was high which probably caused the vision loss and she prescribed blood pressure medication. She gave him his distemper and rabies shots and also tested him for hyperthyroidism which took 5 days of me calling to get the results! He didn't have it.
Tuesday (1/5) around 5:30 am, my sweet 7 year old Siberian cat, Mika (mee ka), woke me up making strange gurgling noises, She came closer by my head and I turned the light on and immediately knew something was very wrong. Her eyes were completely dilated, she was panting and crying. I took a flashlight and looked in her mouth to see if she had something in there. There wasn't (that I could see) but her tongue was turning blue (like a tint of blue). My husband kept saying "she's dying". We were both frantic. I called my vet's emergency number and it took what seemed like forever and the dispatcher finally answered the phone. I explained the situation and said she would have the vet call me. My husband was trying to get Mika calmed down. She decided she wanted to go in one of our laundry baskets and jumped in. My husband went down to the basement to get the crate and I kept an eye on her while getting dressed so she wouldn't go under the bed or somewhere to hide. She jumped out of the basket and back onto the bed. I picked her up which she seemed to enjoy. She was calming down and the panting stopped. My husband brought the crate upstairs to our bedroom and she was happy to go in it. Although she stopped panting she was still "gurgly". The vet called and I explained everything to her and said we had her in a crate to which she replied "oh, you're planning on bringing her in? Or do you want to wait and see how she does?" I said I didn't know and asked her for advice. She said it was up to me and she would meet us at the clinic if we wanted. I thought it would be a good idea since she was still "gurgly". We got her to the vet and she checked her breathing/heart with the stethoscope and took her temperature (which was fine). She was going to take her in back to put her in an oxygen tent and told us she would call us later. She called close to 10:00 pm that night (which scared me half to death thinking it was bad news) and said she gave her Dexamethasone and would do a chest x-ray later. For the time being she just wanted to keep her in the oxygen tent overnight and gradually, the next day, take her out to see how she would do. She also said Mika wasn't walking and wondered if that was just something she did when she was scared. I said no, she was running around playing the night before this happened. She seemed to have her stabilized but didn't know the cause. She thought it was maybe an asthma attack, feline pneumonitis, or some type of fungal infection. We went to see her Thursday afternoon. The vet said her lungs were clearing up really well but still didn't know what the cause was - she didn't have a fever and the blood results came back fine. She asked if we brought anything new into the house like cleaners, or a new cat food, anything. We couldn't think of anything. I remembered what the vet said about Mika not walking and I was ready to put Mika on the floor to observe her but then I noticed her back left foot was limp. The vet said we brought her in that way but I know when she was examining her, her foot was not limp at all! The vet checked her out and said it was just her foot and not her whole leg. She thought she felt a swollen lymph node on her thigh and was pushing on it which caused her a great deal of pain (she cried, hissed and started panting again). At first she couldn't remember if she had given Mika an injection in that area but then confirmed that it was a lymph node. We got Mika purring again and I held her for a long while and put her back in her box. The vet told me to call the next day (Friday). I called the next day around 10 am and the vet tech said she was doing really good and that Mika was looking right at her. Also, the feeling in her foot was coming back. I was so relieved!! At 5:00 pm that same day, the vet called me and said she had some terrible news....Mika had died!!! What?!?! How could this have happened?! She was improving!! The vet said she wasn't sure and she was so sorry. She asked if we wanted to see her that night while she was still "soft" and a bunch of other questions but I was on the verge of hysterics and asked if I could call her back. She said yes and that she would be there all night, I managed to calm down a bit and called back to say we were on our way. We literally stopped everything we were doing. We were getting our coats on when the vet's office called and asked us if we could come tomorrow instead because the vet had an emergency surgery (which the vet apologized for the next day).
All that weekend I felt like someone ripped out my heart and guts, stomped on them, poured gas on them, lit them on fire and put them back in. She was like my kid...but furry. Last year I lost my brother in law, step mother, aunt (all had terminal diseases) and my other cat, Tanuki. This was by far the worst! Saturday we went to say goodbye to her (super hard) and the vet pleaded with us for her to do a necropsy (autopsy) which we approved in case it was some virus or ?? The vet was stumped on what could have caused it and said she was originally planning on sending her home on Saturday. Mika was always healthy and happy, she was playing the night before all this happened and never showed any signs of anything. The only thing I noticed was she didn't eat her dinner the night before but she had always been finicky. However, she did eat treats that night. I keep searching the house for clues, any kind of clue that could have caused this. I can't find anything out of the ordinary.
In my mind I'm questioning everything. Did we miss something? Did the vet make a mistake? Both times? All four times? She was my mom's vet for over 30 years and mine for the last 7 years. She's always been an excellent vet and she's been doing this for 35+ years but she is always so incredibly busy and I believe she spreads herself too thin. She also takes care of dogs, horses, pigs, etc, She does emergency surgeries and she works like 7 days a week. Maybe it's just part of my grieving?! Or maybe not?! Maybe it was a virus? Something unfamiliar to properly diagnose?
This has been so unbelievably heartbreaking!! When I got Mika at the shelter she was just a kitten (8 weeks old) and used to follow me around like a little ball of fur with a tail smaller than my pinky finger. At the shelter she was so tiny she would walk right through the fencing of the kennels to follow me. That never stopped as she got older (although her tail was a big, beautiful floof of fur). If I left the house she would come to the door and then go sit in the window to watch me when I left. When I came home, I could hear her running down the stairs to greet me. She slept with me every night and would sit with me when I worked (I started working from home 3 years ago). She would "talk" and trill and shake her booty (rattle her tail) when she was happy. We had all kinds of nicknames for her. When she ran real fast, we would call her "streek-a-Mika. If she was being crafty we called her "sneak-a-Mika". There was also "Mika-ball", "Mika-loaf" but always she was "sweet-a-Mika"! She was a little lady, always crossing her front paws and just so very "girly". She let the boys know when she had enough of their shenanigans though! All cats are unique in their own way but she was truly one of a kind to me....she was my baby and I miss her so terribly bad!! I loved her so much!! My heart is absolutely shattered!!
And now a third one!! Kori passed on 3/17. I am just numb. I can't believe we lost 3 cats in less than 4 months!! His "kitty cold" or URI got worse and he was eating less and so I called a mobile vet to come to the house. I think the antibiotic was too strong for him or just the wrong antibiotic. I posted a thread about it here... Azithromycin - URI He was our "little man" and he will be very missed!! Thankfully (not sure if that's the right word here), he went rather peacefully upstairs in our bedroom. One of the stranger things is 2 or 3 days before he passed, he came downstairs. He had been in our bedroom for over a week. He was weak but managed to come all the way downstairs and went into one of the cat beds. When the other cat got out of his favorite heated bed, he went into it and curled up like he always did. I thought it was possibly a good sign. However, my husband thought it was his way of saying goodbye. Maybe he was just depressed and wanted some sense of "normalcy"?! Our remaining cats were super stressed after he passed. I plugged in some Comfort Zone diffusers and it seems to help. And now I keep a VERY watchful eye on the rest of our cats!! Does anyone have any ideas about what type of virus could cause all of this? I do not think it was coincidence!!
We experienced something similar last year. Lost our male in February. Unexpectedly but not a huge shock. Then lost our female in May. Completely unexpected.
. I am trying to pallitatively manage these 2. I'd jump off a bridge with a 3rd, lol.
, & at 2.99 we eat ground beef. LOL
