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Hello!
I’m so happy I found this board! I’ve kinda been going crazy these past couple months looking for answers or people with similar experiences.
I have an 11 month old kitten named Sabrina. Back in February I noticed that she was eating the litter, throughout the day she would just stop by for a quick snack and I would constantly have stop her. Not long after she started that she began scratching and licking herself constantly. It would never stop unless I was holding her or she was sleeping. It got to the point that my crazy, non stop playing kitten couldn’t concentrate on anything else except that.
I started Googling and realized some of the things she was doing pointed to anemia, so I checked her gums as well and it seemed pale to me so I called the vet and they took her in that day.
They gave me some antibiotics and flea medication and said she doesn’t look anemic. I kept saying she definitely didn’t have fleas but we used the treatment and got a flea comb and checked all over the house for signs of fleas.. there was none.
They also did bloodwork that day as well and the next day when the vet called me, she said she had to keep double checking because she couldn’t believe the results were my cats results, her RBC count was super super low. So treatment began.
The vet said that no, it in fact was not fleas. They said that her body was attacking and killing her RBC’s. We’ve done every test they are capable of and still don’t know why that’s happening.
They prescribed her prednisolone. We started off at 5mg a day and it wasn’t helping her symptoms and barely raising her RBC count as seen through bloodwork. So it was raised to 10mg a day, one in the morning and one at night.
We eventually got her RBC back to full and the vet seemed as happy as I was. Now we are in the process of weaning her off the steroid. Every two weeks we do a blood test and if the RBC count looks good then we drop the dose down. She’s currently down to one pill a day, 5mg. This happened after a blood test last week and they said everything looked good.
My big question is I guess.. is this even gonna work? Are we just treating this with a bandaid and if her test results keep showing the Rcount looks normal and the vet eventually says no more steroid at all, won’t she just go back to being anemic and sick again? Can cats just fix their self and become not anemic with just some steroid help? We still don’t know the underlying cause, is her body suddenly going to say ‘okay, don’t kill the RBC’s anymore!’
She is acting normal. Her appetite for awhile was insane but now that she’s down to just 5mg it seems to have kinda balanced itself out, she isn’t constantly crying for food anymore but still eats normally when given food.
The steroid helped treat all the symptoms but it can’t fix the problem so I’m just confused I guess. She’s a normal happy kitten again, although ever since this first started she never regained any interest in playing. She’ll play a little but not like you would expect a kitten to.
I’ve read through some posts on the boards a bit but was just hoping someone with some similar experience could give their advice.
Sorry this is so long, just wanted to make sure I got all the details out.
Thanks!
I’m so happy I found this board! I’ve kinda been going crazy these past couple months looking for answers or people with similar experiences.
I have an 11 month old kitten named Sabrina. Back in February I noticed that she was eating the litter, throughout the day she would just stop by for a quick snack and I would constantly have stop her. Not long after she started that she began scratching and licking herself constantly. It would never stop unless I was holding her or she was sleeping. It got to the point that my crazy, non stop playing kitten couldn’t concentrate on anything else except that.
I started Googling and realized some of the things she was doing pointed to anemia, so I checked her gums as well and it seemed pale to me so I called the vet and they took her in that day.
They gave me some antibiotics and flea medication and said she doesn’t look anemic. I kept saying she definitely didn’t have fleas but we used the treatment and got a flea comb and checked all over the house for signs of fleas.. there was none.
They also did bloodwork that day as well and the next day when the vet called me, she said she had to keep double checking because she couldn’t believe the results were my cats results, her RBC count was super super low. So treatment began.
The vet said that no, it in fact was not fleas. They said that her body was attacking and killing her RBC’s. We’ve done every test they are capable of and still don’t know why that’s happening.
They prescribed her prednisolone. We started off at 5mg a day and it wasn’t helping her symptoms and barely raising her RBC count as seen through bloodwork. So it was raised to 10mg a day, one in the morning and one at night.
We eventually got her RBC back to full and the vet seemed as happy as I was. Now we are in the process of weaning her off the steroid. Every two weeks we do a blood test and if the RBC count looks good then we drop the dose down. She’s currently down to one pill a day, 5mg. This happened after a blood test last week and they said everything looked good.
My big question is I guess.. is this even gonna work? Are we just treating this with a bandaid and if her test results keep showing the Rcount looks normal and the vet eventually says no more steroid at all, won’t she just go back to being anemic and sick again? Can cats just fix their self and become not anemic with just some steroid help? We still don’t know the underlying cause, is her body suddenly going to say ‘okay, don’t kill the RBC’s anymore!’
She is acting normal. Her appetite for awhile was insane but now that she’s down to just 5mg it seems to have kinda balanced itself out, she isn’t constantly crying for food anymore but still eats normally when given food.
The steroid helped treat all the symptoms but it can’t fix the problem so I’m just confused I guess. She’s a normal happy kitten again, although ever since this first started she never regained any interest in playing. She’ll play a little but not like you would expect a kitten to.
I’ve read through some posts on the boards a bit but was just hoping someone with some similar experience could give their advice.
Sorry this is so long, just wanted to make sure I got all the details out.
Thanks!