She is just beautiful. I have a boy kitty that looks about like your boy kitty. I am so hoping for the best. Keep trying to get her to eat the best you can. My vet wouldn't give the nausea shot, but was ok with giving me the pills.
That's not weird at all. Makes perfect sense to us. It is essentially what we did too. Amber had kidney disease going as well, and it was after 3+ years of treatment for hyperthyroid (during that time she was fine, it didn't really show as symptoms until she took a downturn and we started the kidney treatment with sub-q fluid and such). What I would say is that if you get into a few weeks or so of doing this syringe feeding with little, you may want to think about other choices. If there's reason to believe she would otherwise have good quality of life for a while except for the eating, you can maybe think about a feeding tube. If there are other issues which are dragging down her quality of life, you may want to make a different choice.
Thank you @2bcat . We have an appointment with the Vet to do blood work on Friday. Hopefully she won't need it by then, but they will see if she needs fluid injections or a feeding tube too. Is it weird, me and my partner both are prepared to let her go if we know for sure that there's nothing we can do for her, but we refuse to lose her to complications from starvation.
More awake and talking back is a good sign She is so pretty! Hoping for good results on Friday
My partner is staying home today, so he will be able to keep an eye on Princess. He took that picture a little bit ago, she was in front of our couch.
Well Princess isn't getting worse, and she seems a little but more awake now. She has also been mewling a little and looking around, so it's not the greatest news but it's encouraging that she's still with us. She still doesn't have an appetite. This morning, I syringe fed her more of that Nutri-cal soup, some water and her Pred pill.
She's shiny in the picture because I just gave her a warm washcloth bath before heading out to work.
I also just heard back from the vet while I was typing this post. He'd like to see her again to do blood work and if necessary get fluids in her. Right now, because she is getting something in her and she seems stable, we're going to keep going on, and we'll bring her to the vet Friday or Saturday.
I'm so sorry to hear @2bcat . I do know what that's like.. trying so hard only to lose them. But you loved her, and she knew that. Thank you for sharing, it means a lot. I know if it is a heart condition, we have to be ready to let her go any time.
We probably went through a few weeks of syringe feeding. I don't know how long. It was interspersed with periods of her maybe eating a little out of bowls but not much. Really the problem was balancing sub-q fluid treatment with the fact that adding fluid was not good for the heart issue and affecting her breathing. I was expecting to turn a corner though, with the kidney issue and getting her appetite back. Instead she left us on her own, somewhat suddenly at home, before we got there. We believe that was a complication from the heart issue. The kidney values were not that advanced, and she was getting enough nutrition to not be starving. She had energy enough to fight the feeding all the time, poor thing. That is why it seemed like she would be ok, but a heart condition can be an any time sort of thing, a detail that I remember the vet telling me when he diagnosed it but didn't exactly remember in the middle of everything else we were trying to keep up. It was not at all what I expected; I expected to have to make a decision some months later.
Princess was asleep on the bathroom floor when I came home, and didn't have the energy to look up and say hello (or rather "where's dinner?!") like she always does. It was so heartbreaking seeing her like that. It turns out the doctor prescribed prednisone to deal with inflammation in her lungs. He took a second look at the X-rays and thinks that the problem might be more in her lungs and not her heart. Her heart is a bit irregular, but there is no murmur. I'm not sure what to think at this point, as my partner is telling me all this over the phone. The doctor also gave her
an injection of some painkiller.
She was foaming at the mouth when she got to the vet's apparently, something she had never done before. After we had dinner, I went to check on her and offered her cold water in a little dipping bowl, which she likes. She had a couple of laps and then rested again. I also bought the Nutri-cal gel supplement that shadowsrescue mentioned. There's a malt-flavoured hairball remedy gel that she liked, so I figured she would really like this too. I put a fingertip-dab on her nose and she began foaming at the mouth again while licking it up. I tried a few more fingertips and she seemed to be getting used to it. It amounted to about a teaspoon, and then gave that a rest as I saw she was getting really distressed about the whole thing. I will try it again in a little while, but I think this might be the least stress method of getting her to eat something.
She is getting better about taking her pill... Either that, or I'm getting better at administering it. I'm sad for her condition, but I am also optimistic that she will get better, especially if she eats.
Thanks again for reading. This human at least got some food into her (I haven't had much of an appetite lately) to calm the ulcer down, ibuprofen for the headache, and neck pain, and hopefully will be able to get some sleep and not wake up at 3am with worry.
Hope things have been going well, or as well as can be expected, the last couple days. I remember feeding being a struggle and attempting to get maybe 30cc in one session but that was tough we did a few sessions per day. And yes you will be constantly smelling cat food probably from your cat and other places. And you'll likely be really drained. It's hard to know just how much food you need to get in per day (depends upon how much it is watered, if any) but just keep at it and remember to offer food in bowls in case she decides she would be interested in that. Not entirely sure of the thinking but potentially you might want the food in bowls to be a different kind in case she associates the smell of the a/d with the (probably) negative experience of the syringe feeding. Some cats take better to the syringe than others though.
Today, we started her on the A/D. I took about a spoonful of the stuff, mixed it in with a teaspoon of Nutri-cal and just a bit of warm water to loosen it up. The first feeding with this went about as expected... with food all over her face. She doesn't seem to have an appetite at all, just zero interest in eating. I just hope that I'm not stressing her out too much. She didn't seem so bad, but when she got tired of it, then she started scratching and trying to get away.
First feeding, I managed about 15cc. That was about 8pm. The second feeding was 11pm, and managed 20cc this time. I've given her water pretty much the same way.
I really hope that this is helping. Right now, she's just flopped over, as if she's drained from the whole ordeal. She's about 10lbs (4.7kg last time she was weighed). I've only started feeding her a couple of days ago, and I know I'm supposed to start slow, but how will I know that this is enough? Did you have to start off with smaller portions, and if so, how long to start giving her more?
Thanks in advance for any advice.
P.S. I feel like I'm going to smell like cat food forever.