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- Jan 12, 2017
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Hello! I am here, kind of desperate for help for my latest addition to my cat family. Our vet is out of ideas and has exhausted all resources in resolving this, so I was hoping to find someone who has had a similar experience with this spirometra worm/parasite.
My little girl was living in my yard when I first moved here in April. She was so very skinny and skittish, would run away as soon as I stepped outside. I started leaving food out, and gradually she became velcro to my leg We brought her inside in August, isolated her, brought her to the vet for a physical, fecal, fiv/felv test, and a treatment of Profender for fleas and parasites(hooks).. In August she was 5.5 pounds and the vet guessed about a year old. After a week or so, she was using the litterbox fine, eating like a horse, and do she was dubbed Betty White, and she met my other two cats Sota and Bea Arthur. They get along so well, there was never even a hiss- just went straight to constant snuggling <3
Flash forward a couple of weeks (mid september) and that's when the problems started. I was sitting down watching TV and in runs Betty, with (I kid you not) a cluster of 6 or so long flat white worms that were a good ten inches long trailing behind her, coming out of her butt. It was.. gross. The worst/somewhat funny part was that my other cat Bea was chasing her, wanting to play with this new string toy her sister had >< I had literally no idea what to do, I have vet tech experience and have never seen this. I caught her and put her in the spare room, tried to clean her up, put gloves on and gently tried to get what I could to come out, and used scissors for the rest. In the process of catching and cleaning her, I noticed there was diarrhea all over the house- I'm talking the stuff of nightmares.. everywhere, with sections of worms. There were many string cheese and pasta jokes the next day.
SO off to the vet, they assumed normal tapeworms and retreated with another dose of Profender.. Things calmed down for a few weeks and then, round two This time I caught the attention of the head vet, I brought another sample in and he sent it out for identification.. It took a month to get an answer(late october), meanwhile she was off and on diarrhea, sometimes in the box, sometimes not. Finally we heard back. It turns out this is not your typical common tapeworm(from fleas), this is spirometra, a fish tapeworm, not very common in cats at all, and there are NO approved treatments for them in the US... The best plan he could come up with was a very high dose of injectable droncit/praziquantel, two days in a row.
We did that. Things calmed down. A few weeks later, guess what... Diarrhea except this time no sign of worms. yay? Back to the vet with fecals, and he put her on amoxi for spirochete bacteria(November). Things calmed down.. A month later- December.. yep. The vet gave me metronidozole, and this latest fecal showed more spirometra eggs again, even though I hadn't seen any worms. The vet reached out again to his network and has yet to come up with anything. No one in the community has a clue on how to really treat this, and he just suggested trying another round of injections, that maybe the infestation was so bad that she needs more high-dose droncit.
So the other day I saw her string cheese friends were back full force. I called the vet and he still has not heard from his peers, the university, multiple parasitologists, no one. So today(Jan 12th) we went for a second round of injections and I am crossing my fingers.
The good news is she went from 5.5lbs to 11.5lbs and is now a fat mama. The bad news is she barely trusts me now after medication after medication(she will snuggle once in a while, and run away the rest), still has intermittent diarrhea, and will not use the litterbox- only sometimes(the good news from that is I have all tile floors). This post ended up being super long..
But basically August to January and we still have not gotten this spirometra parasite under control, and I'm desperate for help or info. Google does not give me much hope. Once she is healthy I -hope- she will go back to using the litterbox full time, and if not that'll be another discussion- the poor thing is traumatized.
Please help! Any insight would be appreciated
My little girl was living in my yard when I first moved here in April. She was so very skinny and skittish, would run away as soon as I stepped outside. I started leaving food out, and gradually she became velcro to my leg We brought her inside in August, isolated her, brought her to the vet for a physical, fecal, fiv/felv test, and a treatment of Profender for fleas and parasites(hooks).. In August she was 5.5 pounds and the vet guessed about a year old. After a week or so, she was using the litterbox fine, eating like a horse, and do she was dubbed Betty White, and she met my other two cats Sota and Bea Arthur. They get along so well, there was never even a hiss- just went straight to constant snuggling <3
Flash forward a couple of weeks (mid september) and that's when the problems started. I was sitting down watching TV and in runs Betty, with (I kid you not) a cluster of 6 or so long flat white worms that were a good ten inches long trailing behind her, coming out of her butt. It was.. gross. The worst/somewhat funny part was that my other cat Bea was chasing her, wanting to play with this new string toy her sister had >< I had literally no idea what to do, I have vet tech experience and have never seen this. I caught her and put her in the spare room, tried to clean her up, put gloves on and gently tried to get what I could to come out, and used scissors for the rest. In the process of catching and cleaning her, I noticed there was diarrhea all over the house- I'm talking the stuff of nightmares.. everywhere, with sections of worms. There were many string cheese and pasta jokes the next day.
SO off to the vet, they assumed normal tapeworms and retreated with another dose of Profender.. Things calmed down for a few weeks and then, round two This time I caught the attention of the head vet, I brought another sample in and he sent it out for identification.. It took a month to get an answer(late october), meanwhile she was off and on diarrhea, sometimes in the box, sometimes not. Finally we heard back. It turns out this is not your typical common tapeworm(from fleas), this is spirometra, a fish tapeworm, not very common in cats at all, and there are NO approved treatments for them in the US... The best plan he could come up with was a very high dose of injectable droncit/praziquantel, two days in a row.
We did that. Things calmed down. A few weeks later, guess what... Diarrhea except this time no sign of worms. yay? Back to the vet with fecals, and he put her on amoxi for spirochete bacteria(November). Things calmed down.. A month later- December.. yep. The vet gave me metronidozole, and this latest fecal showed more spirometra eggs again, even though I hadn't seen any worms. The vet reached out again to his network and has yet to come up with anything. No one in the community has a clue on how to really treat this, and he just suggested trying another round of injections, that maybe the infestation was so bad that she needs more high-dose droncit.
So the other day I saw her string cheese friends were back full force. I called the vet and he still has not heard from his peers, the university, multiple parasitologists, no one. So today(Jan 12th) we went for a second round of injections and I am crossing my fingers.
The good news is she went from 5.5lbs to 11.5lbs and is now a fat mama. The bad news is she barely trusts me now after medication after medication(she will snuggle once in a while, and run away the rest), still has intermittent diarrhea, and will not use the litterbox- only sometimes(the good news from that is I have all tile floors). This post ended up being super long..
But basically August to January and we still have not gotten this spirometra parasite under control, and I'm desperate for help or info. Google does not give me much hope. Once she is healthy I -hope- she will go back to using the litterbox full time, and if not that'll be another discussion- the poor thing is traumatized.
Please help! Any insight would be appreciated