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- Dec 13, 2019
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Hi everyone, Sorry for the wall of text
I'm a first time cat parent, I adopted a Female Dilute Calico Domestic Short Hair back in March of this year estimated to be around 3 years old at the time, she turned 4 in October, and have run into several questions and she appears to have a few health issues that I'm wondering if anyone has had any experience with. I've been also working closely with her vet as well to try and help her out.
She has cat acne that comes and goes, but we seem to be getting a handle on it by making sure that any boxes that she lays on are covered with towels to lay on top of instead, keeping her chin cleaned with Vetericyn, using metal food dishes, and switching our laundry detergents and hand soaps to unscented dye free versions, and switching her litter to a totally unscented dust free version as well.
She was also somewhat constipated when I first adopted her and was regurgitating food at least 1 - 2x a week so we switched her from Earthborn holistic primitive food that she was eating at the time to Hills Science Diet Sensitive Stomach and Skin, this helped with the vomiting but the constipation remained and might have become a bit worse, she had to be treated with an enema at the vets office. At this point the vet recommended we switch her over to Royal Canin Gastrointestinal fiber response food and we transitioned her over. This resolved the constipation, but made the skin acne hard to control. The vomiting was also somewhat reduced but I would see regurgitated food probably 1x a week which I made the vet aware of as well, she didn't seem overly concerned since it was almost always just food with no real evidence of bile.
Fast forward a few months and she had an incident where she vomited up all her food and once all the food was up she started to vomit up bile, at this point I took her to the vet and they didn't see any apparent cause so they gave her Pepcid and Cerenia injections which stopped the vomiting and she went back to her normal self it seemed.
She also has had issues with ear infections she had one in August that cytology showed was yeast, and then she had one in November that was bacterial, both were treated with tresaderm. After the 2nd ear infection I had a mobile vet come out to recheck her, I used the mobile vet to try and reduce the amount of stress from car rides, They found that there was still an ear infection and they cleaned out her ears and gave her a Convenia injection, which I would never get again as apparently it can cause issues and once its in the system there is nothing that you can really do until it clears out which that vet didn't explain.
Fast forward to a week ago and she had another episode of vomiting that was worse than the first, she vomited all her food and a good bit of bile and even continued to try and vomit after. As her regular vet office was closed I decided to go into the emergency vet. The emergency vet did blood work, two sets of xrays, and supportive overnight care to make sure she was stable including IV fluids.
Her blood-work was normal, X-rays were also normal so no foreign body or anything like that. She didn't eat or drink at all on Sunday but was using the litterbox and producing good sized pee balls. Come Monday she still wasn't eating or drinking so I took her in to her normal vet and they recommended an ultrasound, they also gave her subcutaneous fluids, and mirtazipine. She then started eating her food a little bit after the mirtazipine pill, and started drinking here and there and was still producing good sized pee balls in the litter box.
I then brought her into the vets office the next day for the ultrasound and everything came back normal, all her organs looked good. She did regurgitate her Royal canin food again that morning and stopped eating it and utterly refused it, she was acting hungry and meowing for food. The vet then gave another food to try which was similar but she refused that as well. I did notice that she would eat her treats without issue and the vet suspected a possible food aversion. So on Wednsday she didn't eat her food at all as the Mirtazipine was wearing off, I called the vets office and they didn't call me back, my voicemail must have gotten lost in the shuffle, however that night the emergency vet called back to check on her and said to do whatever I needed to get her eating again. So at this point I went over to petco and picked up 4 different brands and flavors of food to see if she would eat it. I started with the Acana medowlands and she ate that on Thursday, but on Friday decided she didn't like that so I opened up the Purina pro plan Focus sensitive stomach and skin and she has been eating that, she is having some loose stools due to the sudden switch in food, but a slow transition wasn't possible as anything involving the Royal Canin food would cause her to outright refuse to eat.
I'm wondering if any of you all have had similar experiences and if I'm doing everything right as much as possible? This is my first kitty and I just want to make sure i'm doing everything I can for her.
I'm a first time cat parent, I adopted a Female Dilute Calico Domestic Short Hair back in March of this year estimated to be around 3 years old at the time, she turned 4 in October, and have run into several questions and she appears to have a few health issues that I'm wondering if anyone has had any experience with. I've been also working closely with her vet as well to try and help her out.
She has cat acne that comes and goes, but we seem to be getting a handle on it by making sure that any boxes that she lays on are covered with towels to lay on top of instead, keeping her chin cleaned with Vetericyn, using metal food dishes, and switching our laundry detergents and hand soaps to unscented dye free versions, and switching her litter to a totally unscented dust free version as well.
She was also somewhat constipated when I first adopted her and was regurgitating food at least 1 - 2x a week so we switched her from Earthborn holistic primitive food that she was eating at the time to Hills Science Diet Sensitive Stomach and Skin, this helped with the vomiting but the constipation remained and might have become a bit worse, she had to be treated with an enema at the vets office. At this point the vet recommended we switch her over to Royal Canin Gastrointestinal fiber response food and we transitioned her over. This resolved the constipation, but made the skin acne hard to control. The vomiting was also somewhat reduced but I would see regurgitated food probably 1x a week which I made the vet aware of as well, she didn't seem overly concerned since it was almost always just food with no real evidence of bile.
Fast forward a few months and she had an incident where she vomited up all her food and once all the food was up she started to vomit up bile, at this point I took her to the vet and they didn't see any apparent cause so they gave her Pepcid and Cerenia injections which stopped the vomiting and she went back to her normal self it seemed.
She also has had issues with ear infections she had one in August that cytology showed was yeast, and then she had one in November that was bacterial, both were treated with tresaderm. After the 2nd ear infection I had a mobile vet come out to recheck her, I used the mobile vet to try and reduce the amount of stress from car rides, They found that there was still an ear infection and they cleaned out her ears and gave her a Convenia injection, which I would never get again as apparently it can cause issues and once its in the system there is nothing that you can really do until it clears out which that vet didn't explain.
Fast forward to a week ago and she had another episode of vomiting that was worse than the first, she vomited all her food and a good bit of bile and even continued to try and vomit after. As her regular vet office was closed I decided to go into the emergency vet. The emergency vet did blood work, two sets of xrays, and supportive overnight care to make sure she was stable including IV fluids.
Her blood-work was normal, X-rays were also normal so no foreign body or anything like that. She didn't eat or drink at all on Sunday but was using the litterbox and producing good sized pee balls. Come Monday she still wasn't eating or drinking so I took her in to her normal vet and they recommended an ultrasound, they also gave her subcutaneous fluids, and mirtazipine. She then started eating her food a little bit after the mirtazipine pill, and started drinking here and there and was still producing good sized pee balls in the litter box.
I then brought her into the vets office the next day for the ultrasound and everything came back normal, all her organs looked good. She did regurgitate her Royal canin food again that morning and stopped eating it and utterly refused it, she was acting hungry and meowing for food. The vet then gave another food to try which was similar but she refused that as well. I did notice that she would eat her treats without issue and the vet suspected a possible food aversion. So on Wednsday she didn't eat her food at all as the Mirtazipine was wearing off, I called the vets office and they didn't call me back, my voicemail must have gotten lost in the shuffle, however that night the emergency vet called back to check on her and said to do whatever I needed to get her eating again. So at this point I went over to petco and picked up 4 different brands and flavors of food to see if she would eat it. I started with the Acana medowlands and she ate that on Thursday, but on Friday decided she didn't like that so I opened up the Purina pro plan Focus sensitive stomach and skin and she has been eating that, she is having some loose stools due to the sudden switch in food, but a slow transition wasn't possible as anything involving the Royal Canin food would cause her to outright refuse to eat.
I'm wondering if any of you all have had similar experiences and if I'm doing everything right as much as possible? This is my first kitty and I just want to make sure i'm doing everything I can for her.