How to Bath a Cat Confined with a Broken Leg? And How to Survive Post-Sedation Chaos? And Poop Chao

[book him danno]

My lovely cat was hit by a car two weeks ago and afterwards he dragged himself home with a fractured front leg.  The leg is bandaged right up to the underarm  -  as it needs to be  -  and is changed once a week at the vet's.  In the meantime he's living in a humanely-sized dog crate. But the main problem (which some of you may have encountered yourselves) is that a heavily-bandaged front leg makes it very difficult for a cat to clamber on and off his litter tray, let alone attempt to bury his poop. My poor cat's injured leg flails around out of control, with the inevitable result that the bandage gets dragged through the poop, after which the poop gets transferred to his crate-mat, his bed and worst of all to himself.

I dread getting up in the mornings because of the poop-related chaos I'm almost certain to find in his crate.  First thing this morning I spent an entire hour clearing up poop, throwing out bedding, brushing up wildly-scattered cat litter, washing down the floor of the crate etc. before I could even think about having breakfast.

My biggest dread is the aftermath of his weekly rebandaging session at the vet's, because they insist on sedating my cat before removing his old bandage and fitting a new one. This means he comes home completely out of his brain  -  hallucinating, throwing himself around in his crate and inevitably weeing and pooping wherever he feels like doing it, after which he walks through it or even lies down in it.

I'm absolutely at my wits' end after a fortnight of this, yet I'm told my cat may have to remain in his crate for two or three months altogether.

Basically I have two big concerns:

(1)  After two weeks, my cat smells absolutely terrible and is obviously covered in poop-related bacteria.  How on earth can I hope to keep him clean and sweet-smelling?  I can't attempt to give him a proper bath, because his leg is all bandaged up and even if it weren't he would flail his legs around and re-fracture the bone while I was trying to bath him.  I've tried using dry foam shampoo, but after each session he seems to smell just as bad, since it appears there's nothing antibacterial about dry shampoo.  If he smells this bad after just two weeks, where is this all going to end?

(2)  Is it actually safe for a cat to be sedated every week?  Mine comes home in such a terrible state that I worry his brain won't be able to withstand the punishment indefinitely.  He has this stoned, bug-eyed look to him and I know he sees non-existent creatures flying around him, because he swivels his head around as he watches them and he lunges at them and then jumps back from them.  He has no idea what food is or what a bed is  -  and all of this is still on-going by the time I myself turn in for the night.  I get up next morning to more excrement chaos and for the whole of the following day you can see that he's still largely out of it.  The vet says he has to give my cat a set amount of sedative, dependent on his body weight  -  but whilst some cats are back to being themselves within a few hours, mine takes the best part of two days to recover.  Is this safe?  Or can repeated heavy sedation take a toll on a cat's brain and leave him permanently damaged?

Many thanks for any help or advice you can offer.  Especially advice re. keeping the cat clean.  I'm in poop hell here, see.

 

[foxden]

book him danno

You're very dedicated to his recovery. One way to assist cleaning him would be to have him shaved.
As the vet is sedating him anyway, this would probably not add to his trauma, but should make it easier to keep him clean.

I can't offer any advice about the frequency of sedation.

Could you make video clips of his slow recovery from sedation (with time stamps) to show the vet exactly how he reacts to the anesthetic?

Your vet might have a different anesthetic available that he does not use as often. He might use it if he sees the extended recovery time.
The vet might also decrease the dose of the current sedative if he sees the longer term effect on your kitty.

 

[book him danno]

Foxden, thanks for your response.

My cat's away at the vet's now, being sedated and rebandaged.  I discussed the hallucinations etc. with the vet before handing the cat over and I'm hoping he bears this in mind when it comes to deciding how much sedative to administer today.  On the plus side,He told me this time that I should bring old furryface back again after ten days rather than a week as previously  -  and that if after the ten days he appears to be making a good recovery, he'll be allowed to be bandage-free for the rest of the recovery period as long as I continue to keep him confined to a dog crate. This is encouraging news, but for the next ten days I'll still be in poop hell, with the cat getting steadily stinkier and stinkier. I pity the cat as much as I pity myself.  His crate is in my living room and I find it challenging to try to eat a meal so close to such epic stinkiness, yet of course  I'd never consider exiling him to a spare room.

I just wish I knew of a brand of dry foam shampoo that's antibacterial rather than just 'fresh smelling.'

Roll on 16 March.  But even then, it'll probably be impossible to bath him properly due to the inevitability of wildly flailing limbs and the risk of a re-fracture.

Cats, eh?

 

[Norachan]

Hi @Book Him Danno  Welcome to TCS.

Just a few thoughts; could you use puppy pads to line the crate with and get rid of the litter box altogether? This will be much easier to clean up.

You can pet wipes to keep your cat clean.

https://earthbath.com/product/hypo-allergenic-grooming-wipes-for-cats/

You can also use a warm, damp washcloth to sponge off any poop stuck to his fur. 

 

[di and bob]

Oh my, I feel for you! My heart goes out to you, I hope you can just keep thinking..."this too will pass".  There are sedatives that aren't near as deep or hard on the patient, I hope you can ask your vet about the dangers, they would know what they are using and the side effects.I saw dog and cat 'diapers' at Walmart the other day, (while I was buying puppy pads for my incontinent one), they probably have them on Amazon too, you might want to try them out.  I hope after a while the stools won't be so runny and such a mess. I'll pray for you to keep your sanity, I KNOW you will be blessed for your efforts. Keep us posted!

 

[foxden]

re: diapering
There's a thread in the pregnant cat and kitten care
krisrath11 is using custom diapers for a kitten with sphincter issues.
He ordered them on Etsy. Maybe he can offer you help on diapering
I believe he has a kitten and not a cat, however.

When I was volunteering at a shelter, I recall cutting a u-shape opening in one side of a litterbox for a cat who had trouble walking. I think we had to keep a relatively small amount of litter in that box, so it had be cleaned a lot.

I don't know if that would help in your case

 

[krisrath11]

Hi, saw the quote and read ur post and I have some advice about ur poop situation. Like was mentioned before, the shaving I hear is a very good idea (especially if ur vet can do it while ur furry friend is sedated), and I do diaper. If u have a full grown cat (I assume he is) this will be way easier than with mine. U can go to a petsmart or petco and buy disposables, or go get some baby diapers (I hear preemie or newborn) and cut a hole out for the tail and bam, u have a perfect (and way cheaper disposable). For time sake idk if u could order them or if u can sew u can make some that r reusable. I use baby wipes that I get at the dollar stores that r alcohol and fragrance free, and I use baby shampoo to clean him. A washcloth with baby shampoo would smell great and do the trick best I would say (I have a whole litter of kittens who smell like babies sometimes lol). I do hope this helps as trust me I know how it feels to clean up poop everywhere! I also don't know how docile ur cat is, but u can actually make them pee and poop (it is what I have to do, and I read they do with paralyzed cats). It could possibly help u a lot as well of it is at all possible. Good luck!

 

[book him danno]

Norachan, Di & Bob, Foxden and krisrath11, thanks so much for your kindness, sympathy and very helpful suggestions.  Hugely appreciated.

I certainly hadn't thought of lining the crate with puppy pads or of rubbing my cat's coat with pet wipes (antibacterial?), nor had it occurred to me to lower one edge of his litter box.

As for diapering, it may come to that.  Yes, my cat is indeed a large one  -  long and lanky rather than cobby  -  so his physique may allow for a diaper to be fitted.  I'll certainly look into it.

As for shaving the cat, I live in an apartment which is directly above the basement car park of the apartment block, so at this time of year the cold does its darnedest to come up through my floor.  I have thermal underlay and thick carpets, but the cold still penetrates  -  so in order to keep the cat in the crate at all, I've had to put a two-inch-thick layer of newspapers under the base tray and make sure there's plenty of matting in the crate, plus a faux-fur rug and a warm fleecy bed.  Even with the central heating on full blast, I have to allow for the fact that hot air rises, so the floor is always going to be the coldest part of the room.  If it were summer (or if I lived in Florida), I'd probably consider the shaving option, but in early March in my home, I don't think the cat'd thank me for stripping his coat off him, poop or no poop.

Baby wipes and baby shampoo? Now there's a good quick fix, as long as the baby wipes are phenol-free, which almost certainly they are.  I've been rubbing dry foam into my cat's coat and then trying to rub it out again with a dry washcloth, but a wipe of some sort is probably less labour-intensive and more likely to be anti-bacterial too.  Mercifully my cat is indeed very docile and co-operative (a tuxedo cat, with all the intelligence that generally comes with that particular set of markings), so I'll definitely be able to experiment with your suggestions without driving him to distraction.

Thanks again and respect to y'all for caring enough to respond to my posts and for doing stuff like volunteering at cat shelters and helping paralysed cats poop and wee.

Di & Bob, I'm following your advice and doing my best to tell myself  'This too will pass....'    (I just wish it had passed already, though.)

As for sedation, I raised the issue with my vet when I put the cat in for rebandaging yesterday and he (a) appears to have reduced the sedative, so that the cat came home much less stoned than previously, and (b) fitted a rather clever bag arrangement over the bandage, made from an old Vetivex infusion bag, to reduce the chance of the bandage getting soaked in wee while the cat was stoned.   Result?  There was no poop or wee crisis when I got up this morning. But probably there'll be one later on....

My thanks again.

 

[punkysmom]

Oh,Book Em Dano, poor you! Poor kitty! My furry boy has a verrry furry tush and frequently gets poop on the area around his anus. I use non-allergenic wipes from the pet store and wear thin disposable gloves (a package is very inexpensive at the grocery) to clean him up. I also use them to wipe down his coat instead of bathing him. He actually likes it. Just another suggestion. 

 

[book him danno]

He actually likes it?  Well, that's an encouraging thought.

Big thanks for your input, Punkysmom, and for taking the time.

 

[Antonio65]

Book Him Danno,

First of all let me congratulate on your brave commitment to your cat. It's not everybody's to be so deeply devoted to a pet like you're doing, let alone having the house in a mess and living in the impossibility to invite anybody over to save them from the smell.

I know what I am talking about because I'm living a similar hell.

My cat had been pooing herself in her bed for over a week following a heavy session of radiation therapy. She had been having diarrhoea five times a day for about 8 days in a row when she came back from the clinic. She was bandaged from her bottom to half chest, so everyday I had to change the bandage four or five times a day! Also she wasn't in a crate, so soft or liquid poo was all over the place!

When she stopped pooing herself she started peeing in her bed that had been protected with training pads. I am changing pads three times a day on average since the end of October.

Because she was smelling of everything, I had the need to keep her clean. A bath was out of discussion, because she had a tube into her stomach for tube feeding (hence the need of a bandage), so I had to stick to the wipes that are absolutely useless in this issue because they do not clean properly, they are not anti-bacterial, they do not remove the smell completely. At the end I had a cat half clean and with a smell that was the sum of her bad smell and the artificial flower smell of the wipes, absolutely disgusting!

The dry foam did not solve either.

Unfortunately I had to keep her like that for four weeks, until the stomach tube came off accidentally and after a week we were able to bathe her.

She keeps peeing herself every night and sometimes in daytime as well, so at the moment I'm still using the wipes.

My cat has a mouth cancer. I'm rather sure that the cause of this cancer is the intense use of those wipes that I had to use one year ago when my cat was suffering from an undiagnosed disease which was causing her extreme weakness and she wasn't able to reach her litter tray. I let you imagine the state she was in... I had to dry bathe or clean her with those wipes. But she was able to groom herself, so I am sure that the chemicals in those wipes gave her the cancer she has in her mouth. The many doctors who visited her in the last months tend to agree with me on this, so I would be very cautious on those wipes. As I told you, I'm still using them, but because my cat had her tongue removed one month ago, she isn't able to lick herself anymore.

A very good alternative is to use a soft cloth and some warm water added with some apple vinegar. One liter of warm water, three spoons of vinegar and a soft cloth. No need to put the cat into the water, use your wet cloth to wipe the cat's coat thoroughly, then rub the cat dry with a towel and if the cat allows you, dry him with a hairdrier.

As for the sedations. Every sedation is a potential damage to a pet's kidneys so they should have been done only if strictly necessary. A serious and careful vet should run a blood test to see if a pet can withstand a sedation. Some hidden or underlying conditions can lead to the pet's death during a sedation.

How many sedations a pet can stand depends on the pet's health.

When my cat underwent the radiation therapy in October she had two sedations each day for five days in a row, ten sedations from Monday to Friday, my cat was 16 years and 6 months old at that time. She survived but the risks were very high.

I hope you and your cat can cope well this hard monet. Keep on doing the excellent work!

 

[book him danno]

Antonio65, your problems absolutely dwarf my own.  Thank you for momentarily tearing yourself away from them to focus on mine  -  and I salute you for the superhuman efforts you've been making to preserve the life of your cat, which make for frankly mind-boggling reading.  A tube into the stomach? Radiotherapy? Forty diarrhoea attacks in the space of eight days?  And heaven knows how much you must be spending on training pads, let alone vet bills.

Reading what you've written here really puts my own worries into perspective.  Yes, we share problems such as the undefeatable stench which acts as a bar to visitors (I can't even have an engineer round to fix my broadband, partly because of the stench and partly because the engineer's presence would panic my cat), but your woes go way beyond mine.  Having read your post, I'm left feeling like I'm making a fuss about nothing.  Your daily life must be almost completely destroyed  -  and as for your poor longsuffering cat, her quality of life doesn't bear thinking about.  No tongue any more?  Dear god.  I just hope she's still able to appreciate what you're doing for her and that at some point in the future there's some sort of positive outcome that leaves both of you in a better place.

I've been using white vinegar solution (one part white vinegar to four parts water) for cleaning the tray in the bottom of the crate, but it hadn't occurred to me to use any kind of vinegar solution to clean the cat himself.  I'll seriously consider the apple vinegar idea.

And as for your poor cat's ten sedations in one week.... Well, I'm hoping that she still knows herself to be your cat. The whole ordeal just doesn't bear thinking about.

Massive respect for continuing to grapple with such a huge project.  And best wishes to you both for a return to relatively normal life very soon.

 

[Antonio65]

Book Him Danno, it wasn't my intention to make your problems appear lesser than mine, and I'm sorry if I let others understand this. I am aware that each of us sees their problems huge, and each of us makes their possible to survive them.

I do understand how frustrating it must be when you wake up in the morning and have to face all that mess and spend a whole hour to clean it up. I do understand it because I have to do the same.

Probably some forum reader could misunderstand my writings because English isn't my mother tongue and my style might sound a bit unnatural.

My cat had a tube inserted into her stomach before undergoing the radiation therapy. This treatment would have made her mouth useless for some time because of the radiations burning, so she needed another way to get her food, so the doctors inserted this tube into her stomach. This tube is called a PEG. A special liquid food was passed into this tube by mean of a syringe. Water and meds had to pass through there too.

To protect the wound (a small hole in her abdomen) and the tube itself a massive bandage was necessary. This tube should have remained in position for a long time, up to one year, but one night I came back home from work and found both ends of the tube loose from the bandage and I panicked, looking for blood drops all over the house, but this didn't happen. Putting back the tube in its original position was a bit too tricky for any doctor, even in a veterinary ER, so we hoped that she could eat on her own and she did it. But one month later, on Christmas, her mouth ached more than the usual and she stopped eating, so I'm syringe feeding her since Christmas. It was a real nightmare at the beginning, but now it's a rather normal thing to me. It takes me 30 minutes each meal. I give her three or four meals a day.

The training pads are quite cheap, I buy 3 packs of 10 pads for 6 euro (I live in Italy, I'm Italian) on offer.

The vet bills are what put me down a lot. I made my cat's story short for you in my previous post, but she's been in and out the vet clinics for the past 13 months now. The undiagnosed disease I was writing about was later diagnosed. It was an extremely rare disease and could only be cured with a heavy surgery that my cat had in July last year. That WAS expensive, but I was sure that after that hell on earth we could have had a long and happy life together. Unfortunately two months later we found out the mouth cancer...

Yes, my daily life is nearly non-existing, I am devoted to my cat nearly every spare minute in the day, but I do it with my heart full of joy when I see that she still loves me, she's still happy even without her tongue, she still adores me. I don't know whether there's a better place for those who do something above the average, but a standard place where I and my cats could spend the rest of eternity would do for me.

Apart from eating she's like any other cat when she feels fine. There are days when she doesn't feel good, and she has a sad look, sleeps a lot, doesn't want to eat. Thanks God at the monet those days are few and apart. Between two bad couple of days there are two or three weeks of good days.

I know this won't be a long-time job, because the cancer is still going on, so a normal life will arrive for me only when my cat goes to the Rainbow Bridge.

We treated her with chemo and radiations, but we didn't stop the cancer, I knew this since the beginning. I was just trying to buy her some more time. Just as I did 6 years ago when she had to face another month of radiations for a different cancer. We won the battle that time, it was absolutely worth the expense and the effort.

That was a lot of sedations too. The effect of sedations are cumulative, the damages done can be serious and there's no recovery from them. So the less sedations are done, the less damage to the kidneys. That's why I was saying that they should be done only if strictly necessary and only after a blood test. Body conditions can vary from month to month, so a blood test done in January won't do for a sedation in March.

Sorry for telling you my story in your thread!

I do hope that your cat will need less and less attentions from the vets and that his broken leg will heal soon. This period will pass, your cat will forget it, you will remember it for the bravery and strength you poured into this commitment and you will feel proud of yourself. You will be then able to consider yourself a hero, because you didn't stop before all the difficulties.

I'd wish that the world was populated by people like you and other persons who would do the same. That would be Paradise!

 

[book him danno]

Antonio65, thanks for sharing the details of your cat's plight and of the ordeal which you are both facing.  I'm very glad to hear that your cat has more good days than bad days and that she isn't a bedridden invalid.  When I was worrying that months of isolation in a crate might affect my cat's personality, someone told me that nursing a cat for a long period actually builds up the bond between cat and owner, which is a great relief to hear. I'm guessing your cat's bond with you must be very, very deep by now.

By the way, when I said that the problems you have with your cat make my own problems seem less, I meant it in a good way. Sometimes, when life seems overwhelming, it can help to be made aware that life could easily be very much worse than it is.  Compared with your situation, my own situation is much simpler to cope with, and I should be grateful for that.

And no, I don't mind that you told your story on this thread.  It's helpful to compare our different experiences.

Best wishes to you and to your unfortunate cat.

 

[krisrath11]

It will all get better once u have a good routine down. I figured that out the hard way. It's now been a month since I started having to express a bladder, make laxative food, make sure there is sufficient poop and pee, and back and forth trips to the vet daily for the first week. There were enemas and just a whole gang of weird stuff. Now, I have a set routine, figured out what worked and went with it. I still get up at the same time in the morning now, squeeze, clean, feed, diaper, and am out the door on time. Just remember practice makes perfect, and though it seems totally unbearable at times, u r doing a great job and r doing a helpless animal the biggest favor ever! I worry a LOT, but once I calm down it isn't so bad. O, the shaving thing is typically only on the hind end (where the poop would stay) and is used when covered by a diaper so the cold should have much affect. If u choose that route, it can get messy, but I would assume way less than just in a cage. How is ur baby doing today? Glad to hear they left him a little more lucid this time!

 

[Kieka]

I am so glad my boy is a neat freak. He was on cage rest for a broken hind leg with a cast (that he removed in 5 days he is too hyper for his own good and has had a complicated heal and still limping) and never had a mess. He would even yell when he went and hurry into his carrier for us to clean the cage. He actually seemed to enjoy going in the carrier and movimg around with me as I did chores or watched TV. He would meow when he wanted back in the cage for food or the box. Sorry I can't be a help with the poop problem.

But with the heat. I found this when I was looking around at things.

https://www.chewy.com/kh-pet-products-self-warming-pet-pad/dp/128079

It is basically a self heating blanket. It reflects the heat back onto whatever is on top of it. I laid on top of it once not realizing it was under the blanket and it really does work. It might help with your heat problem if you put it as an insulating layer begween the floor and cage. With the cleanliness issue I wouldn't put it in the cage (plus I tried that with Link and he slipped all over it with his cast).

Best of luck and this too shall pass.

 

[book him danno]

Krisrath11 and Kieka, big thanks for your suggestions.  I'm trying hard to establish a daily routine, but sadly my cat's digestive system is proving unpredictable so I'm staying home for most of each day at present.  Not sure how long I can continue with that though.  But at least I'm spared having to grapple with an enema. Respect for grappling with one yourself, krisrath11.

Kieka, thanks for recommending the self-heating blanket.  I've now figured out where I can buy one locally.  Very sorry to hear your lad is still limping.  But he likes his cat-carrier?  Amazing.  I'm convinced my cat thinks I'm trying to stuff him into an oven every time he goes into the carrier.

As for the cat himself, things ain't so great.  He's been in more pain this week rather than less; he keeps wailing piteously and shaking his leg violently and very quickly, like cats do if they've just been stung.  Worse still, he's suffering diarrhoea after two-and-a-half weeks of Metacam, so it's back to the vets' today for a reappraisal.  Quite why his pain levels are higher is hard to guess, unless maybe he's stumbled whilst getting off his litter box and landed heavily on his fractured front leg.  And there we all were, thinking he was making progress.

It's a good job someone invented the credit card, that's all I can say.

22-02-17_235829.jpg

• book him danno
• Mar 9, 2017

 

[Antonio65]

What an amazing and cosy spot you made into that crate!

It is possible that you cat hurt himself during a jump, so a call to the vet might be an option.

For the diarrhoea there can be some solutions.

When my cat had 8 days of diarrhoea after coming back from the clinic, the vets gave me a couple of advice and meds but none of them worked, so I walked into a pharmacy (chemist) and bought some probiotics for humans and after only two days the situation improved a lot, thanks God!

 

[PushPurrCatPaws]

...

As for the cat himself, things ain't so great.  He's been in more pain this week rather than less; he keeps wailing piteously and shaking his leg violently and very quickly, like cats do if they've just been stung.  Worse still, he's suffering diarrhoea after two-and-a-half weeks of Metacam, so it's back to the vets' today for a reappraisal.  Quite why his pain levels are higher is hard to guess, unless maybe he's stumbled whilst getting off his litter box and landed heavily on his fractured front leg.  And there we all were, thinking he was making progress.

It's a good job someone invented the credit card, that's all I can say.

...

I was going to respond about a few things in this thread as it is a thread packed with information (you are really going through a lot!), but this part (see my bolded text above) really has me worried and made me want to comment right away with some urgency.



Do you mean, your cat has had repeated doses of Metacam over a 2-3 week period??! I sure hope you have talked to your vet about his diarrhea, AND talked with him/her about the fact that there are much safer pain killers for cats for longer term use, like buprenorphine.

Metacam/meloxicam is an NSAID drug, and normally only recommended for one-time use after a surgery... not continued use. If he is having severe diarrhea, please consult your vet (or another vet, for 2nd opinion!) and consider using a different pain med.

See here, please read:
https://www.metacam.com/docs/Metacam_Injectable_Dogs-Cats_PI.pdf


Some excerpts:

"When treating cats, do not administer a second dose of meloxicam.
Do not follow the single, one-time injection of meloxicam with any other NSAID.
In cats, do not administer Metacam Oral Suspension following the single, one-time injection of meloxicam.
Do not repeat the single, one-time injection of meloxicam in cats or dogs.
Owner should be advised to observe their dogs and cats for signs of potential drug toxicity.

[...]

"Information For Dog and Cat Owners:
Meloxicam, like other NSAIDs, is not free from adverse reactions. Owners should be advised of the potential for adverse reactions and be informed of the clinical signs associated with NSAID intolerance. Adverse reactions may include vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy, decreased appetite and behavioral changes. Dog and cat owners should be advised when their pet has received a meloxicam injection. Dog and cat owners should contact their veterinarian immediately if possible adverse reactions are observed, ..."

[...]

"Post-Approval Experience (Rev. 2009):
The following adverse reactions are based on post-approval adverse drug event reporting. The categories are listed in decreasing order of frequency by body system:

Gastrointestinal: vomiting, diarrhea, melena, gastrointestinal ulceration
Urinary: azotemia, elevated creatinine, renal failure
Neurological/Behavioral: lethargy, depression
Hepatic: elevated liver enzymes
Dermatologic: pruritus

"Repeated use of meloxicam in cats has been associated with acute renal failure and death. Do not administer additional injectable or oral meloxicam to cats. See Contraindications, Warnings, and Precautions for detailed information."

 

[book him danno]

PushPurrCatPaws, thanks for your concern and for posting the data you've provided.

Yes, my cat was indeed prescribed Metacam as an on-going painkiller (30 days' supply of it, to be added to his food once a day as a 0.5 ml squirt from a syringe).  Speaking as a person who himself  developed peptic ulcers after taking NSAIDs for twelve years, I tend to baulk at the very mention of 'em, but I wasn't initially too worried in this instance, because after all 30 days isn't exactly twelve years.  However, when the diarrhoea started I immediately assumed that Metacam must be the culprit.  Mercifully there was no blood in the diarrhoea though.  As for whether the vet gave my cat a Meloxicam injection when he first treated him, I don't know for certain  -  but I've a feeling the vet simply sedated him so he could be rehydrated, x-rayed and bandaged up. Unfortunately the bill wasn't an itemised one though.

I saw a different vet this time (at the same practice) and after she'd given him an injection of an alternative painkiller, she prescribed Robenacoxib tablets instead of Metacam suspension, as well as Pro-Kolin to combat the diarrhoea.  I'm glad to say that things are looking up as a result. But I note from the leaflet that accompanied the Robenacoxib that diarrhoea is the most likely side-effect of that too, so I guess I'll only find out how well my cat is really responding to the Robenacoxib after the supply of anti-diarrhoea medication runs out in two days' time.

Antonio65.... probiotics? Well, I guess it should work in theory, so I'm glad that it did work for your cat.  Thanks for the suggestion.

But you never really know with cats, do you?  They're just so darn inscrutable, including biologically.

By the way, what size spoonful of apple vinegar should I use when mixing it with water?  Tea spoon, dessert spoon or table spoon?  Thanks.