Reaction to Antibiotics

I just wanted to share my experience, in case anyone sees the same symptoms with their cat. I took my 18 year old seemingly healthy cat into the vet for a checkup. He seemed completely fine, but it had been two years since his last checkup, so I figured it was time. I was taking him to a new vet. After looking at him, she said he looked great, and looked "5 years younger".
A few days later she got his test results back and said he had a urinary tract infection and would need to start antibiotics. He also showed some kidney failure but the numbers were moderate, and could be maintained with a change in diet.
So I began giving my cat liquid amoxicillin for the UTI. He would immediately throw it up and act very ill for the rest of the day. I tried again the next day, same thing. And he stopped eating and got lethargic. I called the vet, she said wait a few days and try again. I stopped the antibiotic, and he returned to normal. Eating, urinating and defecating all normally for a few days. I started the liquid amoxi again after a few days, and he got very ill. Lethargic. Wouldn't eat. Stopped peeing in the littler box. I told the vet the antibiotics were making him very ill, she said "Oh he just doesn't like them. Let's try it in another form." I tried to tell her it wasn't a matter of "liking" that he looked really ill when he was on them. She thought it was a normal reaction.
So I stopped the liquid amoxi for a few days. Again he returned to normal. The lethargy stopped. He started eating again, and used the litter box normally. The vet said to try giving him the antibiotic in pill form, so I tried that and he got VERY ill. Almost lifeless, would urinate wherever he was laying, and looked very very bad.
I called the vet again, extremely concerned, saying the antibiotic seemed to be making him very very sick. She said "No, that shouldn't happen, it must be the infection getting worse." This seemed very unlikely to me since a few days before when he was off the amoxi, he seemed normal.
So after two days of the amoxi pill, I rushed him into the vet because he looked so ill. There she gave him fluids and sub-q antibiotics, still trying to convince me it wasn't the antibiotics.
He got even worse...looking almost dead. The next day I brought him in thinking he would pass away, and she gave him IV antibiotics (without forewarning me) and more fluids. When I picked up the cat the vet told me she gave him more antibiotics. I asked if she had even tested to see if he still had an infection. She said no. So she tested him, and initial results showed no infection!! She said his kidney values were improved as well.
That night he almost looked like a goner. I rushed him to an emergency vet hospital, they said he had anemia and his hematocrit (i think?) was dangerously low at 9. It had been 20 the day before so the vet was very concerned. She said it could be GI bleeding, or a cytotoxic reaction to the antibiotics. I am completely convinced it was the latter. She asked if his stool looked black. His stool from four days before was normal. (He hadn't had one since). She gave him two transfusions. his number went up to 20, but she said he didn't respond as well as she'd like. That was a Saturday morning. She said bring him in to see the specialist on Monday morning.
Saturday he seemed better. He ate. Walked a little bit. Used the litter pan, and this time his stool was black.
Sunday he got worse again. Was not moving. Wouldn't eat. Wouldn't lift his head. I thought I would get him into the specialist the next morning and he could help me.
Sunday morning at 4 am, I found my cat on his side, with his tongue sticking out. I rushed him to the hospital and they said it was too late, they couldn't help him and had to put him down.
I am absolutely convinced that he had a toxic reaction to these antibiotics and due to the vet's lack of experience, and complete dismissal of everything I was telling her, he died. He didn't even NEED the antibiotics, the infection was cleared!
My lesson from this is do not take everything your vet tells you at face value. You have to do research and get informed. And if your vet doesn't listen to you, find a new vet pronto.
I wish I had not trusted the vet, and had stopped the antibiotics sooner. Instead I paid thousands of dollars within one week and lost my beloved sweet cat who suffered terribly in the end.
Maybe this post can prevent the same thing from happening to another cat.

So sorry about your cat.
My Coco gets very sick from clavamox,cefa drops, and a bunch of others.
She throws them up in less thn 5 minutes and se has asthma and crf.
She gets alot of urine infections.
Giving him the antibiotics in the iv I bet made im worse.
I was told because coco get so sick from most antibiotics not to get them in a iv or shot.
She is ok on baytril and orbax but that is it.

So sorry for your loss, it is hard when you trust someone and it goes wrong then something like this happens. My cats have all had similar reactions to various antibiotics and my vet won't give them to them again. People have allergic reactions to drugs and it can be considered life threatening, so can animals. If you get any more animals IMO you need to change to a new Vet who is willing to listen.

These are the days when it is really, really hard for me to be a member of this site. I am simply crushed by your story. My thoughts are with you, and I am sure you have probably helped save some animal lives by telling this.

I am so sorry for your loss. Thank you for sharing your story so perhaps someone else and their cat won't share the same fate.

I am wondering if you can take any action against the vet? Don't know what the regulations are where you live.

I am so very sorry for your loss. My thoughts and prayers are with you.
I know it is very hard to suffer a loss like yours - when modern medicine actually does more harm than good... my 3 yr old cat died from a reaction to a rabies vaccine.
Thank you for sharing your story - hopefully this will bring more awareness to the risks associated with antibiotics - it has helped me be more aware.

How tragic. I am so sorry for your loss.

Wow I am so sorry for your loss. I am going threw what you where right now. Its 2am and my older female cat she is about 10 and I gave her same med like u did and she threw it up right away. She has been walking around and sleeping looking very unhealthy. Should I take her to vet?

A very sad story.  Unfortunately some cats (like some people) will have a bad reaction to antibiotics regardless of if they need them or not, and if a cat does need them it usually needs them right now.

@sfg22, yes, ring your vet who prescribed the antibiotics as soon as they are open.  Don't give her any more, and check to see if she is dehydrated.  If she is try to trickle a couple of teaspoons full of oral rehydration fluid into the side of her mouth.

I had a similar experience.....my result was different as I am very aggressive when it comes to my animals. My vet put my cat on an antibiotic after having an abcess lanced (he was feral, I found him as a 4-6 week old kitten and quickly "tamed" him). He was well the night I brought him home and the morning after I began the first dose of antibiotic, hours later he was lethargic, I rushed him back. The vet gave him a saline solution IV, pronounced him dehydrated and told me to bring him home and continue the antibiotics...over the next three weeks, we had a roller coaster of the same above mentioned behavior. He spent three  weekends in a row at the vet...after bringing him home after the third weekend, I kept him crated when I wasn't with him (the vet had alluded to the fact that the cat might be getting into something at my home), and he was great...until I gave him his dose of antibiotic. I rushed him back, told the vet I wasn't giving him any more of that damn antibiotic, he hydrated him, and right now he is resting and trying to get that crap out of his system.....a new vet is indeed in the works. You are right, listen to yourself and your cat and never forget that your vet is "practicing" medicine.....a good vet will listen. 

Right away.

My cat was 10 and we recently had to have her put down she looked like she was getting sick just a general blue feeling about her and then she stopped eating which is when we took her to the vet prior to that she had been drinking alot of water and i unfortunately didnt realize ths could be a sign of kidney failure so they did tests and said she was in 75 percent kidney failure so we were devastated thinking she wasnt going to make it until the vet said her cat who is 16 was in kidney failure and she is treating her at home with the iv saline solution and she is doing fine so then we had hope she said she didnt feel any blockages so she said she wnted to give her an antibiotic as it is probably some type of infection that is causing the kidney failure or a by product of it and an iv of saline solution so we not knowing any better were like oh ok we figured shes the vet she must know better than us so we figured tht would help make her better she wanted her to sty overnight which i was hesitant about because she was very scared with other people and all the noise and activity she wasnt used to she was a very mellow cat liked it nice and quiet etc and also she had never been away feom us before she was very attached to us which i think she may have been stressed out about too which isnt good for cats either but again i figured i was jut being an over protective cat mom so i was like ok if thats whats needed to get her better so she said as long as she was eating we could come pick her up the next day but if not she hould ty another day so we were like ok so the next day im at work a d they were telling people they could leave early as there wasnt enough work that day so i was talking to my coworkers and i was like oh ok well now i can go pick up my cat so we were in the break room and the girl came in and said i have an emergency at home so i called my husband e told me the main vet just called and he figured hewas just gonna tell him her status and you can come pick her up but he to,d him she wasnt going to make it through the next hour her breathing was laboured and she was basically in a coma statehe said she had either a stroke or a bood clot so i was reading up on it and they can get blood clots from the kidney failure and stuff but reading all of this i wonder if it had anything to do with the antibiotic which was my first reaction anyway. Also he said he gave her a sedative to make her more comfortable at the end when he said she was having seizures i dont know if maybe she had a reaction to the sedative either but he said she wouldnt come out of it like some cats come out of a stroke and eventually get better because te stroke had affected the part of her brain that controls breathing so she wouldnt be able to breath on her own so after making absolutely sure there was nothing more he could do fir her we finally had to put her down i couldnt watch her suffer she was too good of a cat for that it was the absolute worst day of my life i lost my best friend that day she died as i hed her in my arms cuddling her as we always did and crying my eyes out that was april 9 of 2014 so still not that long ago even though it seems so long thats been gone from me i miss her every single day a piece of y heart was ripped out when i lost her she was a rescue cat when we got her as a baby and she was sickly from the beginning with an upper respirtory infection and i had to feed her with an eye dropper and the bond that the 2 of us had was incredible and im so glad that i got to have that experience with her even though it was only for 10 short wonderful years i love you baby girl rip that is a pic of her on the bed at home in happier days thats our shadow or as i used to call her all the time my little monkey

So sorry about your cat. It is interesting that your cat went through this My sons cat had fatty liver disease was given the denamarin and was getting betting eating and so forth vet gave her the antibiotic and she started to get worse loose bowel movement not using the litter box very weak. she looked so weak we took her to the emergency vet so we can have a feeding tube to force her to eat she would eat only like a half a teaspoon a day. took her the vet called stating she has not eaten for 24 hours really? could not tell me after 4 or 6 hours suggest we take her to emergency cause they are not euipped for feeding tubes!! That is why we bought her there and now you tell me this! the cat hospital stated she was too weak for that and died the next day!  I also feel that the antibiotics made her sick to the point of death. Her companion is looking for her and she comes on my lap to comfort me and being very clingy trying to find her  

I am so sorry about your cat.  My cat (who has other illnesses)  was diagnosed with a bad unusual pneumonia  and was given 2 antibiotics  for a month but then the doctor read a paper and changed the antibiotics to  2 different ones and 1 of the former ones.  

It was the second day of the new antibiotics.  At his  dinner time I administered the new antibiotics to my perfectly fine cat and within an hour I heard him cry out 2 times with a terrifying cry and I rushed over and  found him flat out and seeming like he was dying.  I rushed him to the hospital and in 25 minutes they had him in an oxygen box and gave him fluids and told me to prepare for the worse that he was extremely sick and likely a clot.  I kept asking if it could be the new antibiotics and the answer was unlikely.  they could not get a read on his blood pressure it was so low but within an hour it went to  25 (it should be 100) and within 3 hours it was 55 and the dr called me at 6:00 a.m. and said it was normal and because he recovered so well it likely was anaphylactic shock from antibiotic.  I was very lucky I was home and have such a good animal hospital 20 minutes from my home.  I thank God and the capable and caring doctors because I will be taking him home today.  They are puzzled what to do now about the bad pneumonia but after much discussion decided we should stop all antibiotics for two weeks.  They fell they may know which is the one that caused the reaction but are not sure.  I write this to say if your cat seems to have a bad reaction to an antibiotic it is possible there is an allergy and it could be fatal if not addressed immediately. 

I am so sorry. Your warning really will help others.

So sorry for your loss.

I went through a similar thing with my vet 2 years ago... my cat's hind legs were limp I took her to the vet wanting a blood test done and they REFUSED! saying it "cost too much" (***?! I Don't care!) said it was just arthritis and gave me steroids. She improved for a couple months then crashed so badly that she should have been dead. I rushed her to the vet, everyone had off except this "substitute" vet. He wanted to run every test in the book on her, I insisted on just a blood test so he gave me a nasty look and grabbed her... never came back! We were sitting in the office for a while after a VET TECH brought her back, then after like 45 min another tech came in and was like "why are you still here?" no treatment options, no "we'll call you with the results" nothing. Well, turns out she had kidney failure and her blood levels were off the charts in just about everything. They wanted to bring her in and run all these tests/IVs/etc fand have her stay there for about a week. I said no and they said to "make her comfortable then she;s going to die I give her less than a week" I never went back to that vet and instead did my research online and treated her without vet help. She lived another 7 months, gained all her weight back and was a happy cat until she died in her sleep. 

I have a hard time trusting vets now because so many of them HATE CATS! Also have no idea how to treat cats! Always trust what you think. There was times that I did a simple google search and went in with more knowledge on the subject than the vet had! 

I'm very sorry to hear what happened to you. It seems that a lot of vets nowadays do not know that they are doing with cats. I had a similar issue with my cat Ralphie when he had his tooth extracted, but the vet DIDN'T give him any antibiotics. He contracted an infection and we had to run him to an emergency clinic and spend another 300 dollars and put him through more stress that could have been prevented. We're following up with a different vet at the same practice and as soon as he is given a clean bill of health we are switching vets. I find it very hard to put my trust in a vet that will not accept fault and simply do what it takes to make it right. Most vets only care about dogs anymore. Who cares about dogs? 

What kind of antibiotics were they, by chance? We have our kitty on Clinamycin right now.

I am going through something similar to the OP so I wanted to add my experience as well.  I have a 7 year old male cat who has had a PU surgery about 3 years ago.  He has been in and out of UTIs since then (maybe one per year) but in the past 4 months, things have turned really bad for him and it is hard to say if antibiotics were the cause of if his UTI has just taken over. 

In Dec 2014 my cat was leaving brown stains where he had been laying so we figured he had a UTI.  The vet put him on an antibiotic that I don't recall the name of.  After two weeks and finishing up his antibiotics, he started dripping bloody urine directly out of his underside so I took him back in to follow up.  Overall, he took the antibiotics just fine.  The vet wanted to extend his antibiotics but never cultured his urine so I said…woa woa…lets not just throw stuff at him without knowing what is happening.  He got a urine analysis and it turns out that his UTI was gone but he had some crystals in his urine, his pH was high and it was prob was the the cause of the bleeding.  

He started the SO diet to reduce his urine pH but I switched vets because I didn't like how they were shooting from the hip and making decisions without looking at the tests first.  The second vet found that his bladder seemed inflamed and prescribed venlaxafine (antidepressant) which apparently reduces bladder inflammation.  That somewhat worked and everything seemed fine for a few weeks but he started leaving spots behind where he was laying and seemed to have a UTI again.  I took him back in and he had a full urine analysis…his crystals were gone, his pH was lowered but he did culture bacteria so he went on Clavamox (pills).  He was supposed to be on it for 4 weeks just in case he was never completely clearing his infections.  

He was fine for the first two weeks with the typical mild diarrhea but by week three he started acting just like the OP describes;  vomiting, not eating, and seeming to be in a lot of pain where he didn't even attempt to stand up.  I would pick him up and set him somewhere and he didn't try to shift his weight or even put his feet down to stand up.  He would moan a bit when I touched him.  I thought he was dying.  Since he wasn't eating, I didn't shove any antibiotics down his throat so he would miss his morning and evening doses.  The next day after being off antibiotics, he was probably about 80% better…he was a little slow but up and moving and eating without vomiting.  I would continue with his antibiotic that night but then he would crash the following day with the same behavior…vomiting, not eating, not wanting to move at all…not even his head.  He went through this cycle a total of three time and then I said…ok, he is having trouble with the antibiotic and he is hardly on them anymore so I need to get him checked again.

For this urine analysis, he cultured E.Coli in his urine and the vet felt he might be having a reaction to Clavamox so they prescribed him Zeniquin.  It took a while for the urine analysis to come back and for the vet to figure out the next antibiotic so wasn't able to get the prescription before we left for our family vacation.   I was really worried about him reacting to new antibiotics while I was gone so I decided to keep him off for the week while we were gone.  Our parents watched the cats for a week and when we got back, they said he seemed completely normal…he was up on their laps and visiting with them every day.  We got back on a Sat night and he was completely normal but the next day (Sunday) he crashed into this state again where he was unresponsive, didn't want to move, didn't eat all day, and couldn't seem to even stand or move his head.  LIke the OP described…I thought he was dying and wouldn't make it through the night.  Since he was off antibiotics for a week, I though that it must be the UTI going crazy so I gave hime a Clavamox pill Sunday night and then I rushed out Monday morning to get the Zeniquin and got him started on it Monday night.  He seemed to bounce back a little…maybe 70% normal…so he was a little slow moving around but he was at least walking around and eating without vomiting.   

He was on Zeniquin for three days (Monday-Wed) and then on Thursday he crashed again into this paralyzed-like state.  No eating, no moving, no standing, would moan when I picked him up, and wouldn't move his head.  I took him into the Vet Friday morning and he was a little better but still not moving…I would say he was 25% normal…I think that the stress of the vet got him up and moving.  The vet kept him for blood testing and by time the tests were done in the afternoon, he was walking around the room…he had wobbly legs and seemed a little week but he was probably back to 70% normal.  They were like…oh he bounced back really well…everything is fine….lets get him on an injectable antibiotic to bypass his GI track but lets wait a bit over the weekend to make sure he is eating well and seems to be stable.  His blood work came back perfect….the vet said "not a single number was off" meaning there are no sings of toxins, blood count oddities, or organ failures.  

Over the weekend, he ate well but stayed in one spot for Friday night, all of Sat, and all of Sun.  He moved his head around and ate but he stayed in one spot int he "Sphinx" position for the entire weekend.  This is still odd for him because he is usually a cat who lays on his back with his legs spread out.  This morning (Monday) I find him crashed again in the same state as the OP described.  He was on the floor with his feet tucked under him and just staring straight ahead.  His head is never upright, it is more so half way up like he is stretching his neck strait out.  

At this point we have absolutely no clue what is going on and why he crashes like this.  The blood work doesn't indicate any organ failure.  Given his pattern of crashing, it seems independent from the antibiotics.  For two of his crashes, he was off antibiotics for a little over a week after Clavamox and the one today would be 4 days off Zeniquin.  I am very stressed out about this because I want to treat his condition but I don't want to push drugs through him that makes him ill.  The plan forward is to try pain medication to see if this behavior changes and then start on injected antibiotics to bypass the GI track.  I am really nervous about this because the injection is a 1 week dose so if he ends up having a reaction, that could be a very rough week.