Poor vomiting kitty

I had to bring Snickers to the emergency vet yesterday! She had been vomiting for almost three days about 7 times each day. I withheld food on the advice of the vet, but she continued to vomit, only since she didn't have any food in her stomach, she was just vomiting white foamy liquid. And then yesterday morning the white liquid had a reddish tint, so I brought her to the emergency room. Poor baby! The vet at the emergency room told us we should admit her into the hospital so she wouldn't get dehydrated, so that's what we did. (It was so people-like at the emergency room!)

The good news is that when the vet called with an update yesterday afternoon, she said that the x-rays didn't show any obstructions and the bloodwork seemed normal. I guess the bad news is that we don't know and may not know what caused this.

Even though Snickers has just been gone for a day, it's been so weird without her. I'm so use to having her around that I'm doing things out of habit. For example, she usually is waiting by the door when I come home, so I always open the door really slowly so as not to hit her. So, of course yesterday when I got home from the emergency room, I opened the door slowly, not even thinking, and my fiancee made fun of me since, of course, Snickers wasn't there. And then she always likes to follow me to the bathroom and wait outside the bathroom. So this morning after I went to the bathroom, I opened the bathroom door and was expecting to see her waiting outside of it, and for a split second when she wasn't there almost called her, saying, "where's kitty?" But then I remembered, "oh yeah, she's at the vet." It's funny how ingrained our pets become in our lives.

Anyway, I'm rambling, but I just really miss her and am worried about her, so I probably just needed to vent. Hopefully, I'll be able to bring her home today and everything will turn out fine.

Anyone else have similar experiences like this where everything turned out fine?

Poor baby! 3 days of repeated vomiting is very serious since it causes severe dehydration. I'm surprised your vet didn't advise you to bring Snickers in before 3 days went by. The reddish tint you saw was from small broken blood vessels (capillaries) in the stomach caused by all the vomiting.

It doesn't sound like you let Snickers go outside, so try to think of anything in your house she may have eaten that could have caused the vomiting. Do you have house plants ?(many of those are toxic, some are poisonous). Was food left out on the table that she could have eaten? Are there jars or boxes of household cleaners she could have gotten into?

The only other possibility I can imagine is a stomach virus. My youngest cat had that when he was about 2. He went to 4 vets before the last one figured that a virus must be the cause. Like your cat, blood work was good, and there was no sign of obstruction. He was on interferon for 30 days (oral meds) and we had to tube feed him (a nasal tube). The tube feeding lasted only 1 1/2 days before I clogged the tube and it had to be removed. Fortunately, that was all my little guy needed to jump start his ability to eat food on his own and keep it down.

I understand completely how strange it feels not to have your baby around. They get us so trained to do things for them, that we're on autopilot, which explains why you're still carefully opening doors, etc.

Hope Snickers continues to improve - I'm sure she'll feel much better after getting fluids to re-hydrate her. Please let us know how she's doing.

Best wishes to the poor kitty, I hope all will be well soon.

Rob & sport

Thanks for all the well wishes! We got to visit Snickers in the hospital today (yes, they have visiting hours!). Poor baby had her leg all wrapped up with an IV in it, and was clearly very unhappy about that. But otherwise she seemed to be doing well, and the vet said we can probably take her home tonight if she doesn't vomit in the next couple of hours! I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Still no word on what could have caused it. I don't have any houseplants, and I keep the cleaning materials in a cupboard so she can't get into that kind of stuff. The vet didn't really know either. But hopefully it has passed and she'll come home healthy and hydrated.

Thanks again for all the support!

Any chance it could be an allergic reaction to something? One of my cats got very sick after receiving her feline leukemia shot and she almost died. She had had the shot twice before with no issues, but this time she had a reaction. The bad thing is I didn't realize it for a couple of hours because she went under the bed after we came home from the vet like she usually does to sulk and when I went to look for her later, I found she had been vomiting repeatedly - and some of it was bloody. I rushed her to the emergency vet and she had to stay overnight. It was touch and go, but she pulled through. Last time she was due for her shots we kept her at the vets' for observation and she immediately started to have another reaction, but this time he was able to stop it with steroids right away. We won't be giving her any more shots - not worth the risk. My point is that if it was a reaction to something, it would be worth trying to figure out what it was because the reaction may be worse after another exposure. I definitely wouldn't wait so long next time to see the vet if it happens again, just based on her history. I hope you figure it out and that she is ok - I know how scary it is when they have something like that happen.