I just had my 16 year old friend Frisky (domestic long hair) 'put to sleep' needlessly a week ago due to some very poor & out dated advice from the attending vet.
I am posting this to urge any of you blessed with a feline friend TO GET A SECOND OPINION if your cat becomes sick. Frisky started showing signs of sickness almost two weeks ago. We took her to our usual vet clinic (where he had always gotten good treatment before) and got a vet we hadn't seen before. By then Frisky seemed so sick that our first thoughts were to get help - any help. When the vet saw Frisky's age he immediately started talking about how he was too old to last much longer anyway.
Frisky was diagnosed with kidney failure. We were told that we would only have a couple more days with him and that intravenous fluid flushing probably wouldn't extend the time. We were told to feed him potato to get rid of the ammonia and water through an eyedropper to flush him. At this point Frisky already wasn't eating or any barely drinking. He went down hill very quickly because he wasn't getting the nutrients needed. Three days after seeing the first vet the poison from the kidney failure was doing too much damage to other organs and Frisky was in pain. Another vet at another clinic assured us that the only merciful thing to do at that point was to let him die in dignity. We buried him this week.
I apologize for being long-winded and so somber but it was heart breaking to find out a couple days after he died that Frisky could still be with me if our vet had informed us of a couple simple techniques such as using powdered arginine for the ammonia and subcutaneous injections of fluid that we could have performed at home for the creatine - instead of automatically assuming that Frisky was too old.
PLEASE don't let a precious friends life lie in the balance based on one's person's opinion of when a cat is too old to bother with.
I am posting this to urge any of you blessed with a feline friend TO GET A SECOND OPINION if your cat becomes sick. Frisky started showing signs of sickness almost two weeks ago. We took her to our usual vet clinic (where he had always gotten good treatment before) and got a vet we hadn't seen before. By then Frisky seemed so sick that our first thoughts were to get help - any help. When the vet saw Frisky's age he immediately started talking about how he was too old to last much longer anyway.
Frisky was diagnosed with kidney failure. We were told that we would only have a couple more days with him and that intravenous fluid flushing probably wouldn't extend the time. We were told to feed him potato to get rid of the ammonia and water through an eyedropper to flush him. At this point Frisky already wasn't eating or any barely drinking. He went down hill very quickly because he wasn't getting the nutrients needed. Three days after seeing the first vet the poison from the kidney failure was doing too much damage to other organs and Frisky was in pain. Another vet at another clinic assured us that the only merciful thing to do at that point was to let him die in dignity. We buried him this week.
I apologize for being long-winded and so somber but it was heart breaking to find out a couple days after he died that Frisky could still be with me if our vet had informed us of a couple simple techniques such as using powdered arginine for the ammonia and subcutaneous injections of fluid that we could have performed at home for the creatine - instead of automatically assuming that Frisky was too old.
PLEASE don't let a precious friends life lie in the balance based on one's person's opinion of when a cat is too old to bother with.