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- Jun 18, 2014
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I apologize in advance for how long this is, but I'm nearing desperation. I have a 12 year old female shorthair named Buttercup that I’ve had since 2002. Up until now she has never experienced any health problems. Recently, we noticed that in her left eye, her ‘3rd eyelid’ was extending from her inner eye and was starting to cover her pupil. After a week we took her to the vet and after all of the necessary tests and X-ray, we were referred to a dermatologist. She determined Buttercup had a middle ear infection, and needed a myringotomy. At this point, Buttercup hadn’t displayed any altered behavioral issues. It was only her eyelid that alerted us to something abnormal. We had the procedure done about 2 weeks ago, and it’s kind of gone downhill from there. Since the procedure was done, she was put on Baytril (2.5 ml) 2x/day for her left ear for 2 weeks until follow-up, and an antibiotic, injected (10 day course). About a week after, Buttercup started to lose her appetite and has barely been eating since, although still drinking plenty of water. She had also been vomiting, but it was mostly froth (due to stomach acid) or bile (due to barely eating). We called the vet and they said it was possible that the antibiotic was making her nauseous, so they prescribed mirtazapine, hoping to stimulate her appetite. That didn’t really seem to do much, so the vet also gave her Cerenia for the nausea. Both are in pill form, which is not easy to handle with her. She’s completely turned up her nose to all wet food we’ve tried, including tuna, chicken, liver, lamb, venison, etc. We also just gave her a B-12 shot on Monday, which makes our cat with pancreatitis ravenous, but hasn’t seemed to affect Buttercup. So at this point the only way we’ve been able to get her to eat is by putting some wet food on our finger, but she’s only taking a couple of bites! She’s been more withdrawn since the myringotomy; prior to this she’d never had to take medicine and had never been through something like this, and I think she’s very stressed and upset. After her follow-up at the dermatologist on Monday, they said her ear infection had healed; since her eyelid hadn’t changed, that indicates the problem may be deeper within the ear in a place they can’t see, such as inflammation, or possibly a mass of some sort. The only way they can see this is via a MRI. I now have to give her the ear drops in both ears, twice a day for another two weeks. If at that time her eye hasn’t changed, we’ll have to do the MRI. Today I came home and when I picked her up to give her loving, I noticed she was kind of wet. Lo and behold, it seems like she “wet” herself?? She’s never done this before; she let me clean her, and I can’t understand why she’d do this. Almost immediately after I finished cleaning her, she went into the litterbox and used it like normal. I feel like most of what she’s doing is behavioral and related to how scared and stressed she’s been. She’s always been a somewhat timid cat, and now I just think she’s really upset with me for shoving pills down her throat, medicine in her ears, etc. She's definitely turning away from me specifically, in a way she's not doing with others in the house. Has anyone else experienced this? Thank you!
