I'm back at it, trying to figure out what's still going on with our little man Monty before our next vet visit tomorrow. I last left off with
1. Still sneezing clear. Over 10days he did have one sneeze that (excuse the graphic) produced a sticky, greenish booger. And one more sneeze that produced a sticky, red-tinged booger.
But now .. we have
2. Itchy Skin
4. Gassy .. quite stinky little toots
5. Licking & nibbling at those little scabby spots. While some very small tufts of hair have come off, he has not licked down completely to the skin or any redness, nor bleeding. Just overly grooming IMO.
6. One bowel movement produced a normal amount of poo but one turd was solid black fur. (both boys groom each other also) .
We have been feeding (both boys) Fancy Feast and Friskies canned. As a catch all, pates and sometimes the gravy varieties, it is primarily chicken and turkey and once a week I may give them the salmon pate.
For a kibble snack, I ran out of my EVO chicken/turkey and fed Fancy Feast chicken/turkey (which both go crazy for like it's kitty crack). However, we have successfully (with much protest from our older boy) weaned them back to a 1/3cup serving 2x per day now. This is way down from the 1/2cup serving each per day.
Monty has been supplemented with 250mg Lysine powder both AM and PM for 2wks now, and although, his sneezing frequency has lessened a lot, we are still sneezing. I "think" I understand from all the info here that if he had herpes the lysine would bring the sneezing to a halt at some point. Other than his original URI diagnosis he has never exhibited any of the classic additional signs of a form of herpes virus. I even tried bumping his dosage up to 500mg AM/PM over 5 days with no change in the sneezing. What I find the most curious -- Si did not care for Instinct lamb -- so I continued to feed it solely to Monty and am racking my brain to connect the dots on that versus going back to the FF/Friskies poultry wet foods. I plan to journal daily the 2wk grain free diet we're about to embark on.
We are headed to the local PetsMart tomorrow to pick up a 2wk supply of various totally grain free canned food for Monty alone to see if this changes anything and I know I'll be discussing with the vet another antihistamine to try out and/or what OTC brands and what dosages for his weight.
Are there any specific things I can try to ease his itchy little skin? He is totally behaving like a 5mo kitten in all other aspects .. appetite, litterbox, play levels, but I sure want this little guy to be as issue free as we can get him.
ALL thoughts & contributions welcome!
We stopped the Clamavox and waited. We still have, including new stuff, that I believe may finally be pointing us the right direction - airborne/food allergy.1. Test results were negative & she was shocked since on Wednesday he had yellow'ish mucus coming out when sneezing at her office.
2. Based on the results, she recruited a friend of hers who is a cat specialist to discuss.
3. We're going to stop the Clamavox (all antibiotics is what the specialist told her) and that's the only one we're on.
4. See what happens over the next 7 days ie., if the snots come back with any color.
5. At that point the specialist recommends a PCR test for herpes. Even though he hasn't exhibited all of the signs I've read about here that may or may not manifest (goopy eyes, loss of appetite, etc.) He's had none of those symptoms. He had a few eye boogers when we first all thought it was a URI but those went away on the first round of Clamavox.
6. I had already discussed Lysine powder in both their foods. At the 250mg/day for Monty and 250mg/day for Si. She informed me at that time that, of course, that was generally used to treat cats with Herpes, but we didn't think "we" might be in that category as everything appeared to be your standard URI.
Monty does continue to sneeze, but it's clear. And as I mentioned above, the frequency of his sneezes is practically non-existent in comparison. Including today, he's probably sneezed 10x over a 5.5 days span, and as we've been trying to sort this out, he was sneezing up to 10-15x per day with an audibly stuffy head when you listened up close.
So although we're happy the results were negative, that just points to something else, or so it seems.
1. Still sneezing clear. Over 10days he did have one sneeze that (excuse the graphic) produced a sticky, greenish booger. And one more sneeze that produced a sticky, red-tinged booger.
But now .. we have
2. Itchy Skin
- First they were beneath both ears
- Then around hind quarters
- Then around the front leg/armpit area
4. Gassy .. quite stinky little toots
5. Licking & nibbling at those little scabby spots. While some very small tufts of hair have come off, he has not licked down completely to the skin or any redness, nor bleeding. Just overly grooming IMO.
6. One bowel movement produced a normal amount of poo but one turd was solid black fur. (both boys groom each other also) .
We have been feeding (both boys) Fancy Feast and Friskies canned. As a catch all, pates and sometimes the gravy varieties, it is primarily chicken and turkey and once a week I may give them the salmon pate.
For a kibble snack, I ran out of my EVO chicken/turkey and fed Fancy Feast chicken/turkey (which both go crazy for like it's kitty crack). However, we have successfully (with much protest from our older boy) weaned them back to a 1/3cup serving 2x per day now. This is way down from the 1/2cup serving each per day.
Monty has been supplemented with 250mg Lysine powder both AM and PM for 2wks now, and although, his sneezing frequency has lessened a lot, we are still sneezing. I "think" I understand from all the info here that if he had herpes the lysine would bring the sneezing to a halt at some point. Other than his original URI diagnosis he has never exhibited any of the classic additional signs of a form of herpes virus. I even tried bumping his dosage up to 500mg AM/PM over 5 days with no change in the sneezing. What I find the most curious -- Si did not care for Instinct lamb -- so I continued to feed it solely to Monty and am racking my brain to connect the dots on that versus going back to the FF/Friskies poultry wet foods. I plan to journal daily the 2wk grain free diet we're about to embark on.
We are headed to the local PetsMart tomorrow to pick up a 2wk supply of various totally grain free canned food for Monty alone to see if this changes anything and I know I'll be discussing with the vet another antihistamine to try out and/or what OTC brands and what dosages for his weight.
Are there any specific things I can try to ease his itchy little skin? He is totally behaving like a 5mo kitten in all other aspects .. appetite, litterbox, play levels, but I sure want this little guy to be as issue free as we can get him.
ALL thoughts & contributions welcome!
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