Need help

My 14 yr old cat suddenly went blind last week. We took her to the vet immediately and they determined her retinas had detached. Their tests showed her kidneys and thyroid are fine, and then an ultrasound showed she doesn't have any heart disease. The walls of her heart are thicker than normal and she has a heart murmur though. Basically all they found is she has extremely high blood pressure and hypertension but no other underlying disease. They've put her on blood pressure medication twice a day, Amlodipine. Since the vet, she has not eaten or drank at all being at home. We brought her back to the vet and she spent three days there with them giving her fluids and they managed to get her to eat dry food with appetite stimulants. Now she's back home since Wednesday and is back to not eating or drinking. She has started doing a weird thing with her tongue. It's like her tongue is uncomfortable in her mouth. She's licking her lips and her tongue is almost always sticking out quite prominently. We showed the vet and she said it was weird but couldn't see any swelling or sores. We managed to entice her to eat some wet food today and it seemed like she couldn't eat properly. She licks the food but can't scoop the actual pieces into her mouth. I'm at a loss for what to do next. The vet really isn't offering any other solutions. I'm coming to this forum looking to see if anyone has had a similar experience or has any advice. She's become completely listless and just lays in a bed all day. I have to find something to help her. Any help would be very appreciated.

Oh, I'm sorry your cat is so sick. I really don't have experience with this medicine, but I looked up the side effects. One of them is low potassium levels, which signs of are lethargy and nausea. Might your vet be able to check in the off chance this is happening?

I'm concerned your cat isn't getting food. You can syringe feed her (needle less kind). Water too if necessary. Cats can die if they don't get enough food...causes fatty liver. You probably already knew this, so sorry if I'm not being helpful.

@catwoman707!!

Hope an advisor can help with your issue more. What a tough thing to deal with.

I am so sorry you're in this position. Licking of lips is usually a sign of nausea. That would explain why your cat is showing interest in food but isn't actually eating. I'm very surprised that she's presenting with a heart murmur and thickened walls and yet they're saying she doesn't have heart disease. It sounds like she may have HCM (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy) to me. One of the knock on effects of this can be a lack of appetite.

As @misterwhiskers  says, not eating is a real concern, and is putting your girl at risk of liver disease on top of everything else.

The best advice I can give you at this stage is to seek a second opinion - I find it troublesome that your vet isn't offering any more help.

Good luck with her - I really hope you're able to give her back some quality of life 

Hi - thank you both for replying. As an update, we took her to a different vet on Saturday and their examination of her found mouth ulcers which would make the most sense for why she hasn't been eating and why her tongue has been constantly out of her mouth in an uncomfortable way. She is obviously in a lot of pain in her mouth! We don't know how the first vet could have missed them... She is now at this vet being given fluids and unfortunately has to be on a nasal feeding tube which is making her very unhappy but already she looks 10 times better. This vet still cannot find any underlying condition. HCM has been ruled out. It can apparently happen that cats just have hypertension and no underlying disease but it is rare, and the fact that now she has developed mouth ulcers at the same time as her hypertension is making it more of a mystery for this new vet to figure out. Obviously some form of cancer is what the vet is warning us of but there are no other symptoms of cancer. She has been given antibiotics since Saturday night and the mouth ulcers have actually gotten better so they could just be a virus and it could just be the stress of going blind from the hypertension created a situation in her body making her prone to ulcers?? We really don't know much but at least this vet is able to give us some new progress, vs. the previous vet who was already telling us we probably needed to put her down if she wouldn't eat even though we were telling her about how odd her mouth had been. My learning from this is that I know my cat's behaviour better than a vet and get a second opinion immediately when my instinct tells me there is more to what is happening... Thank you for replying, I was feeling so desperate on Saturday but am starting to feel some hope that I'll get my happy girl back...

That's great news! I'm so glad it was 'just' mouth ulcers causing her disinterest in food. I really hope it's not a precursor to cancer though 

I can't tell you for sure, but I know in people stress can trigger mouth ulcers - stress can slightly depress the immune system in general, making one more susceptible to ulcers, bugs etc. It seems logical that the same would be true for animals, but its only a hypothesis.

I hope your girl makes a quick recovery, and is able to adjust to her blindness etc without too much more stress. You could ask this new vet if they have any tips or ideas to help her adjust with the minimum amount of stress. 

Her kidneys are ok?

http://www.vetmedclinic.com/?p=266