Fatty Liver - Need Help

Hi everyone. I am hoping that some of you all can give me a little help on my poor Kitty. He is a male 10 year old cat. This may be a long post but please read if you have the time.

I took him to the vet around the end of June. He had threw up twice the night before and would not eat, drink, pee, or poo. He was walking the floor and hunkering down. Two weeks before he took on aggressive behavior. He bite me and was just not acting like himself.

I took him to the vet the next day and he kept him for 3 days. He thought it was kidney failure but blood tests showed it was not. After my asking he did an xray and found Kitty was very constipated blocked up. They gave him an enema which worked. Also gave him cyproheptadine shot, fluids, and had been force feeding him with syringe. Vet told me to get him home and see if he would eat for me. He had digestive trouble and had mild dehydration. I asked why he thought he had stopped eating and he said he did not know something must have stressed him out.

When I got him home Saturday he ate and threw up twice. He eventually would eat but probably only 4 ozs of dry food and then stopped after the cyproheptadine wore off. He was sneezing the following Wednesday so I think that is when it started wearing off. He then stopped drinking water. Called Vet and he said Kitty was not eating enough. To bring him back in.

Well I did and Vet kept him for a 8 days. Fluids, force feeding, cyproheptadine, urdisol, and amoxitab. He started eating about 5 days later on his own. Vet told me I could get him on day 8. Vet said he was optimistic he would recover. I asked him what was wrong again. He did not say he had fatty liver disease but he did said he thought there was some fat on his liver. When I brought Kitty in he was not jaundice yet. Vet told me to give him the cyproheptadine and urdisol. Plus to feed him 6ozs of dry food a day 3 times a day.

Kitty did well Saturday through Thursday. He was eating good. He would not eat canned food although the vet said he was with them. He will only eat Iams ProHealth dry food. I ran into problems giving him his medicine. I tried to hide it in treats. I tried using the pill popper. I just can not get his medicine into him. I talked to Vet Wednesday and he said that if he was eating to stop giving him the meds.

Now come to yesterday and today. He has slowed down on his eating. Only ate 4.5 ozs yesterday and so far only 3 ozs today. Yesterday he started sneezing so the cyproheptadine is wearing off again. He is still sneezing today. Strong sneezes. He has also been sleeping alot. But since Thursday he has been much more. He sleeps all the time except to pee or eat a little.

I am really worried he is going to stop eating again. I don't know what to do. The Vet helped him to start eating again but I feel like he could have gave me more instructions. I asked alot of questions. I told him I was having problems giving the pills to him and asked for an alternative. Not trying to blame the vet but I have just worried myself to death about Kitty.

Should I take him to another Vet?

Should I start force feeding him? I do have some science diet a/d.

How long does it take a cat to recover from fatty liver disease?

I've spent nearly $1,000 and that was hard for me to come up with. I don't want to put a price on Kitty's health but I just really don't know what to do.

Thank you for any advice and I appreciate any that read the above.
DAny

Hi Dany, I am so sorry your kitty is going through fatty liver...
Should you force feed him - ABSOLUTELY! Food is his medicine - he will not get better, and will only get worst if he doesn't eat. It is a great sign he is eating on his own though, a lot of FL kitties don't eat at all...
IMHO your best bet is getting a feeding tube if worst comes to worst.
Are you checking his blood frequently? How are his numbers now and how often are his liver enzymes being checked?
It can take quite a while for them to recover, but they do recover... Again, please, do not let him eat one day less than what he needs - please force feed him so he always gets his daily ratio.
A/D is excellent for that!

I had a cat that it was hard to give pills to. The vet office suggested rubbing butter on them as pill can be hard to swallow. That worked only a couple of times. She did like cheese spread one puts on crackers though so we gave her a little bit 2-3 times them rubbed it on the pill and popped it in her mouth and she never protested.

I have a kitten who is not eating at all currently and force feeding him. Its messy but I know the importance of getting him enough food.

I wish you the best of luck.

My cat went through a bout of liver disease the end of last year. The vet put in a feeding tube which I think was easier to deal with then force feeding would've been. He went through several episodes like your cat is going through now starting when he was 18 months old. I took him to three different vets before taking him to the one he goes to now. She did more in the way of diagnostics and is treating him for IBD. I believe the others didn't treat him for this because he has constipation with these flareups rather than the loose stools which are more common with IBD. She has him on a maintenance dose of Prednisolone to control the inflammation.
You do have to get an adequate amount of food into him for him to recover from this. It was really easy to feed him with the tube. She gave him a high calorie nutrient dense canned food which I mixed half and half with water so it was really thin like water. When he had the fatty liver disease she also had him on Flagyl along with the Prednisolone. Flagyl is extremly bitter which makes it hard to give to any cat even one that is easy to pill. With the feeding tube I could just crush it up to a powder and put it through the tube with the food.

Welcome to TCS, Danygirl! I'm so sorry it's under these circumstances!!

As the previous posters have said, you definitely need to get your boy eating again. I would try every canned food in the store, and even some (a little) canned tuna or cooked, fresh, unseasoned chicken or turkey. Since your kitty is dehydrated, I'd concentrate on canned foods. Try adding a teaspoon of warm water to the food - this will make it more smelly (and enticing) as well as get even more water into his system. The more he hydrates, the better he'll feel and the more inclined he'll be to eat.

There are several tricks you can use to get a cat to eat something. Catinfo.org has a great article on transitioning cats that you might find helpful (Cat Info Transitioning Article), as does Rawfedcats.org (Raw Fed Cats Transitioning Article). The Feline Nutrition Education Society also has a couple of potentially helpful articles on their website (feline-nutrition.org).

All of these are transition articles, but you can ignore the transition information and just read them for their getting-a-cat-to-eat-something tips and tricks.

All my thoughts and many, many vibes are with you!! I sure hope you're able to get him to eat regularly ASAP!!!! <<<Hugs>>> for what you're having to go through.

AC

Thank you all for replying. You have been so helpful.

Actually I don't know if the doctor was monitoring his liver enzymes or not. He did a blood test on the first visit and charged me for that. But this second time there was no charge for a blood test. Although he did mention something like his bile was up a little?? I really did not think of getting a copy of the blood test I should have.

I will have to get to the store tomorrow and get a syringe to see if I can force feed him. He is currently drinking water. But he just stares at his food bowl. Strange thing is he will eat treats but not his food.

I bought several canned foods yesterday. He will only eat a little beef. Basically licking up the juice. He won't touch the fish flavored ones. He seems to like beef the best.

Denice thank you for telling me what you went through with your cat. If it comes to it I would have a feeding tube put in. I am starting to feel like I need to find a new Vet. This one has been around a long time and folks here just rave about him. But I had to mention blockage for him to do a xray on day 3 of Kitty's first visit. So I don't know.

Vet could have showed me how to pill a cat. He just handed me the medicine and food with a few instructions. I talked to the local pharmacy and they do compounding. Talked like they could mix something up for me.

Right now Kitty is hiding from me. I picked him up and put him in his room to see if he would eat. He is hiding under the table and won't come out. Boy this is hard.

Thank you all again
Dany

Was your cat actually diagnosed with Fatty Liver Disease? Because what his vet said about "his bile being up a little" doesn't really necessarily mean he has fatty liver.
IMHO you really need to have the blood test, ALL the liver enzymes, and these need to be monitored closely. Not having blood tests will make it very hard, if not impossible for you to manage this disease. With that said:
MY syringes are 1/2 oz, bought on Petsmart - they are on the small animal session or on the puppy session, and look like this:

Buy several sets - I feed 3 syringes per meal, 4 meals a day = 6oz. Remember: the more you dilute, the more you need to feed. For fatty liver, the most important factor in recovery is nutrition - you HAVE to get the kitty to eat those calories. Water, while will keep him hydrated, will not help with fatty liver. Feeding him a calorie/nutrition dense wet food (which has plenty of moisture) is your best bet. A/D is excellent.
I do not dilute A/D - it is the perfect consistency for syringe feeding.

Here is a thread I did with a video of me syringe feeding: http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=227858

Also, there is a lot of usual information on this link: http://www.assistfeed.com/FeedingTechniques.htm

You say he will eat treats - great. Buy a package of Pill Pockets and wrap his pills in those and he'll probably gobble them right up. They sure worked for me with Bijou and Mika. I actually cut the pill into quarters to make the pieces smaller and they got more "treats". You can get Pill Pockets at any pet food store.

There are two cats with fatty liver in the hospital where I work. We had to syringe feed them every two hours. The first day, we fed 10 mls every 2 hours then the next day we syringe fed them 10 ml one feeding then 20 ml the next but still every two hours. Then 20 ml every 4 hours. They both are on iv and on ampicillin and ranitidine, orbax and ursodiol. Depending on how well this goes, they may have a feeding tube put in.

I would strongly suggest having a feeding tube in. You can get his meds in him then. Fatty liver has a long recovery time and is expensive to treat. for the time being, get a syringe and sine hills a/d and syringe feed him 10 mls every two hours or 20 ml every 4 hours. It is important that he gets food in him as Carolina said. You can crush the pills into the food and then sringe feed him.

Please get the bloodwork done. It will give you a better idea of how his organs are doing. But feed him!

Just wanted to thank everyone again for posting. I know it has been awhile but I was so busy taking care of Kitty.

Soon after my last post Kitty got a URI. I've never seen a cat so sick. Just like a human does with a cold. His eating about stopped. Went to eating 2 ozs to 3 ozs of food a day. I tried my best to help him eat. Think I got more on the floor than on him.

Kitty has been doing very well since the first of August. He eats from 4 to 5 ozs of dry food a day. Tried to get him to eat canned but he just won't switch. He has had a couple of vomiting episodes. Had one today. He has started gaining back weight and his backbone is not showing like it was. He got pretty bad there for awhile and I thought I would lose him.

I have question. Since he has/was sick his eating habits have changed. He eats a little bit of food every hour. Not alot but he will be laying there sleeping and it is like something wakes him to eat. Is that normal?

I believe he learned himself to eat like this because he was so nauseous. I am holding off taking him back to the Vet because he seems to be doing so well. The Vet trip will upset him I know. His energy is back and he is acting "normal". Although he is more jumpy than before.

thank you
Dany