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- Sep 3, 2017
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Hi everyone! Longtime lurker, first time poster and this is going to be a doozie of an entry. I want to preface this post by saying that we've been to the vet 2 to 3 times a week over the last 6 months, so my inquiries are definitely not for lack of veterinary care. We're now at a place where we have to do what we can on our own or euthanasia. It makes our hearts hurt to even contemplate the latter. So I'll start from the beginning.
In March, we noticed our kitty was scratching a little more than normal. She had scratched a spot raw at the back of her neck, and was drawing blood, so off to the vet we went. She's indoor/outdoor, always has been. Allergy season was horrific this year on everyone and he said that it wasn't unusual for a cat or dog to develop allergies later on its' life. We discovered that she had been scratching her underbelly as well. The vet shaved the spot on her neck and and her belly and we were shocked by how red her skin was. He suggested a low dose shot of dexamethasone (now that I know more, is there even such a thing?) and a wait and see approach.
Well, a couple of days after that shot, our cat began urinating outside of the litter box and in the course of a half hour, she was squatting every 15 seconds. Of course, this happened in the evening, after hours, so we rushed her to the ER. What proceeded was a four day nightmare of trying to keep her kidneys from completely shutting down. The ER vet said her "kidneys were insulted". When I mentioned the possible correlation of the dexamethasone, I could tell that he didn't want to point fingers, but he said anything was possible.
It took her a little over a week to fully recover from that ordeal and in the meantime, the scratching and licking grew worse, the skin on her tummy began to secrete moisture, no pustules, just moisture. We went back to the vet and decided to run an allergy test so we could get to the bottom of it. We discovered her main food allergies were beef, milk, liver and lamb. At that time, ALL of her wet food contained liver. Try finding a canned cat food that doesn't contain liver, it's not impossible, but very close! She has never cared for beef or lamb, so that wasn't an issue. While we know that cats are lactose intolerant, we used to give her small amounts of cheese and vanilla ice cream, because she used beg for that. How can you say no to that face?? Well, we stopped that immediately and started researching foods that didn't contain liver.
For obvious reasons, the vet didn't want to give her any steroids to get the scratching and licking under control. We began looking into alternative solutions and read that laser therapy could help with skin issues. We did laser therapy 3 times a week for over a month and saw some minimal improvement. We had eliminated her food allergens, we have kept her in the house since she began scratching, yet we were no closer to finding out what was going on.
We asked our vet to do a skin punch biopsy, convinced that we would finally get all of the pieces of puzzle together. Guess what? The results come back as inconclusive. Even the pathologist was stumped. We've never had a pet with a yeast issue, so I ask the vet, grasping at straws at this point, could it be yeast overgrowth? Since the skin on her belly seems to secrete moisture and has a slight odor to it. The vet said the biopsy would have revealed that. So, at this point, after spending thousands of dollars with no concrete answers, what would YOU do? The vet said we've done everything we can do and believes all of this started as allergies and evolved into an auto immune disease, possibly lupus. Immunosuppressive therapy is not an option because she's now in the early stages of kidney disease. What do you do? We tried seeing another vet, but he didn't think outside the box and immediately suggested steroids.
I go back to researching. We put kitty on a dairy free, gluten free probiotic and see an improvement after 4 days and after that she goes back to frantically licking and scratching. We've slowly upped the dosage and she's been on the probiotic for 20 days now, definitely improving, but she's still not 100%. I read that miconazole or clotrimazole can help with fungus and/or yeast (again, I'm grasping at straws, I don't know if it's yeast overgrowth, fungal or bacterial, but we're also desperate and willing to try). Since her skin is secreting moisture, a cream wasn't a good idea, so we began looking for powder/dry sprays. We started spraying her belly with Lotrimin AF powder spray a week ago. The results have been dramatic! She only has a couple of wet spots on her tummy now, and she's beginning to act more like herself, it's been months!
Is it possible that this is yeast related, even fungal and they just didn't catch it?? We've had to outfit her with an e collar on and off for months now when she's not supervised so she doesn't tear herself up. We're slowly starting to see a light and the end of the tunnel. My question is, is there anything else, besides the probiotic, that I can give her to fight this internally? She's still frantically trying to lick her paws. I've read conflicting things about coconut oil. Any helpful suggestions would be welcome! I apologize for the lengthy post, but I thought I could receive some constructive suggestions here. Thanks so much for reading!
In March, we noticed our kitty was scratching a little more than normal. She had scratched a spot raw at the back of her neck, and was drawing blood, so off to the vet we went. She's indoor/outdoor, always has been. Allergy season was horrific this year on everyone and he said that it wasn't unusual for a cat or dog to develop allergies later on its' life. We discovered that she had been scratching her underbelly as well. The vet shaved the spot on her neck and and her belly and we were shocked by how red her skin was. He suggested a low dose shot of dexamethasone (now that I know more, is there even such a thing?) and a wait and see approach.
Well, a couple of days after that shot, our cat began urinating outside of the litter box and in the course of a half hour, she was squatting every 15 seconds. Of course, this happened in the evening, after hours, so we rushed her to the ER. What proceeded was a four day nightmare of trying to keep her kidneys from completely shutting down. The ER vet said her "kidneys were insulted". When I mentioned the possible correlation of the dexamethasone, I could tell that he didn't want to point fingers, but he said anything was possible.
It took her a little over a week to fully recover from that ordeal and in the meantime, the scratching and licking grew worse, the skin on her tummy began to secrete moisture, no pustules, just moisture. We went back to the vet and decided to run an allergy test so we could get to the bottom of it. We discovered her main food allergies were beef, milk, liver and lamb. At that time, ALL of her wet food contained liver. Try finding a canned cat food that doesn't contain liver, it's not impossible, but very close! She has never cared for beef or lamb, so that wasn't an issue. While we know that cats are lactose intolerant, we used to give her small amounts of cheese and vanilla ice cream, because she used beg for that. How can you say no to that face?? Well, we stopped that immediately and started researching foods that didn't contain liver.
For obvious reasons, the vet didn't want to give her any steroids to get the scratching and licking under control. We began looking into alternative solutions and read that laser therapy could help with skin issues. We did laser therapy 3 times a week for over a month and saw some minimal improvement. We had eliminated her food allergens, we have kept her in the house since she began scratching, yet we were no closer to finding out what was going on.
We asked our vet to do a skin punch biopsy, convinced that we would finally get all of the pieces of puzzle together. Guess what? The results come back as inconclusive. Even the pathologist was stumped. We've never had a pet with a yeast issue, so I ask the vet, grasping at straws at this point, could it be yeast overgrowth? Since the skin on her belly seems to secrete moisture and has a slight odor to it. The vet said the biopsy would have revealed that. So, at this point, after spending thousands of dollars with no concrete answers, what would YOU do? The vet said we've done everything we can do and believes all of this started as allergies and evolved into an auto immune disease, possibly lupus. Immunosuppressive therapy is not an option because she's now in the early stages of kidney disease. What do you do? We tried seeing another vet, but he didn't think outside the box and immediately suggested steroids.
I go back to researching. We put kitty on a dairy free, gluten free probiotic and see an improvement after 4 days and after that she goes back to frantically licking and scratching. We've slowly upped the dosage and she's been on the probiotic for 20 days now, definitely improving, but she's still not 100%. I read that miconazole or clotrimazole can help with fungus and/or yeast (again, I'm grasping at straws, I don't know if it's yeast overgrowth, fungal or bacterial, but we're also desperate and willing to try). Since her skin is secreting moisture, a cream wasn't a good idea, so we began looking for powder/dry sprays. We started spraying her belly with Lotrimin AF powder spray a week ago. The results have been dramatic! She only has a couple of wet spots on her tummy now, and she's beginning to act more like herself, it's been months!
Is it possible that this is yeast related, even fungal and they just didn't catch it?? We've had to outfit her with an e collar on and off for months now when she's not supervised so she doesn't tear herself up. We're slowly starting to see a light and the end of the tunnel. My question is, is there anything else, besides the probiotic, that I can give her to fight this internally? She's still frantically trying to lick her paws. I've read conflicting things about coconut oil. Any helpful suggestions would be welcome! I apologize for the lengthy post, but I thought I could receive some constructive suggestions here. Thanks so much for reading!
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for the chamomile to do the trick, or at least give her some relief! I very rarely make up an herbal remedy of any sort that doesn't contain chamomile, simply because EVERYTHING works better when the subject is calmer. Tension doesn't aid healing, not one little bit. No, not a professional herbalist, just a sorta herb-woman that's been at it for years.
