Mystery Illness

Hello Everyone,

My neighbor has a Siamese mix spayed female cat who is about 1 1/2 years old. She is strictly an indoor cat and has never gotten out other that to go to the vet. She has regular vet appointments and has been up until maybe 3 days ago a seemingly healthy cat.

She lives with her "sister" and new "brother" who are also indoor cats, and also well taken care of.

3 days ago Yowee just stopped eating, and seemed to have also stopped drinking. This was not an all of a sudden and in fact her owner really didn't notice that these things were happening until Sat. morning when she couldn't find her. Thank heaven's she had a vets appointment for another reason and when she found her and took her in it was discovered she had 107 degree temp. She was extremely dehydrated and listless.

The vet gave her massive doses of antibiotics and hydrated her under her skin, did blood tests, and sent her home with her "mom", Jeanne. Things like this always seem to happen on week-ends. After getting home Jeanne has kept her warm, and tried to feed her (no success except for a small bit of chicken soup broth).

It's now 8:30 Sunday evening, and Jeanne has just taken her in to the vet on an emergency visit. As I type this she's just called me, and after x-rays, emptying her full bladder and checking for crystals there was nothing wrong. Liver, Lungs, all organs normal. All bad things have been ruled out. He also gave her a steroid shot, and told Jeanne that this could be a case of FUO which I guess means fever of unknown origin.

Anyway thank you for reading this and please if anyone out there has had a similar experience I would really appreciate hearing about it.

Thank you so much,

Mupcat

A fever of that grade most certainly denotes an infection of some kind. How do her teeth look? Are her gums nice and pink or do they have redness at the toothline? Are there any wounds not readily noticable? You mentioned a new "brother" ... could he have been playing too rough with her and bitten her? Does she seem sore or combative when you run your hands over her body?

my vet calls this NDW (not doing well). Sometimes cats just get fevers and the vets cannot track down why. Sounds like she is doing everything humanly possible for this cat and about all she can hope for is answers lie in the bloodwork when it comes back from the lab.

I would suggest having her leave the cat there over at least one night on an IV if she can afford it. My cat did something very similar to this and it was also a very slow process, it looks like your friend may have noticed it earlier than I did and may be able to do very conservative treatment. My cat responded really really well to the IV and antibiotics. If she can't afford that then see if the vet will send her home with fluids that she herself will have to give her kitty. Keep us posted

OK, first of all many thanks everyone for all your help.

Follow up is, this morning before Jeanne went to work Yowee was moving around, went out to her breakfast dish, and ate 10 small pieces of kibble, but didn't drink anything. She's usually a big drinker, but the vet had really filled her full the night before. The blood work came back and there was nothing indicated. Her temp was down 3 degrees to 104 so that's a good sign. She's still sleeping quite a bit, but did take time out to climb up on her tower which is about 7 feet up in the air along with her sister and brother. Sooooo onward and upward and she's on the road to recovery. Hopefully this was just one of those unknown occurrences.

Mupcat