Eventually, we’re going to have experience dealing with every cat disease imaginable.
Today, Albert was diagnosed with crystals in the urine and Isaac with (a tentative diagnosis of) hepatitis.
Albert’s prognosis is good. Isaac’s prognosis is completely unclear.
If you have spare good wishes, my fuzzballs can use them.
I’m so sorry. What a drag. Does this mean specialty food, and does the vet think they can eat the same diet?
Poor kitties. Good thoughts heading your way…
Specialty food for Albert, which means we need to come up with a whole new system for the whole passel of beasts. Aside from short-term illness or end-of-life care, we’ve mostly done free feeding.
FTR, I’ve heard the Royal Canin is preferable to the Hills prescription. Is it struvite crystals? That’s what mine had. I also got mine a Drinkwell cat water fountain to increase his water intake.
Well, I got the struvite crystals cleared up-after the Science Diet prescription ran out I put him on Innova Evo which has been maintaining him just fine (though I am tempted to mix with Wysong Uretic). Unfortunately, he has since developed a tapeworm so he’s on a baseline of kibble only for a while (just got him dewormed today). I mean, wtf on the worm, I have an indoor apartment cat. That’s what you get for living in California. They can get fleas yearround.
Hmm. That I’m not sure about. She just said “crystals” and I didn’t think to ask “crystals of what?”
A few months ago, we switched from Iams Multi-Cat to BG and we were really pleased with the way everyone looked on the BG. Some of the chubsters lost some much-needed-to-be-lost weight. But this is the first occurrence of crystals, so maybe it’s related to the food. Or maybe not.
It’s also the first time I’ve ever really heard of hepatitis in cats. The vet said it was pretty common, so maybe I’ve just been lucky?
I’ve never known a cat with hepatitis, but I might not know the signs. No cats with yellow whites of their eyes, or listless, though.
Ah, kitties and their diseases. I’ve just sent my associate/friend home. She shouldn’t have come in at all. She put her very much beloved cat down last night. So I’ve spent the last half hour crying with and talking with and hugging her. He was only maybe 7-8 years old, but he apparently had (undiagnosed) cardio-vascular disease and they think he threw a clot last night. She walked in to find him paralyzed and bleeding from everywhere. She’s completely devastated. 
I hope for a much happier result for your fur babies.
Isaac stopped eating. We really didn’t notice the yellowness. It wasn’t pronounced, though when they shaved her belly to do an ultrasound, you could really see it there.
We thought she had a case of the sniffles that wouldn’t go away.
She is eating now, though, so things are looking up. And so far Albert LOVES the C/D food from Science Diet. We’ll see how long that lasts.
That’s awful. I remember we had to watch for something called “saddle thrombus” with our heart failure kitty years ago.
The little fuzzers seem so fragile.
I certainly like the looks of it better. Not a fan of Hills.
After this last incident, I’ve given up on dry food completely. I mostly stick with non-grain brands like Wellness ( or Innova et al ) supplemented very occasionally by the Royal Canin prescription stuff.
Very good idea. Hydration is key.
My previous cat got a bout around age 14 or 15. It was completely mysterious in origin. According to my vet at the time, that’s pretty common as well. It was a bit baffling and as per stoic cats manifested itself suddenly, with virtually no warning signs. Suddenly she was just obviously extremely ill.
But best of luck :). Keep on top of the crystal thing. Blocked male cats are in a life-threatening position and as I have cause to regret are insanely expensive to house catheterized at the vet’s :rolleyes:.
Oh, good. I’m shifting over to a no-wheat food to see if that helps the one cat’s digestion. The other one just ran under the Christmas tree and threw up. Oh, the pleasure.
My Cosmo has some digestive issues, which is why we decided to try a no-grain food. We tried the Dick Van Patten one and only one of the cats really liked it. Then we switched to Before Grain (BG) and everyone looks and acts much better. We spend less on the BG than on the Iams even though the BG is a more expensive food. An eleven pound bag of BG lasts as long as a twenty pound bag of Iams.
I’ve heard tales, lemme tell ya.
We called the vet with an emergency on Sunday because we noticed Albert straining. The vet said if he could pee at all it wasn’t an absolute emergency, so I spent Sunday trailing after Albert whereever he went saying, "Albert, did you pee? Did you peeeeee?"7[’/* (That last little bit was added by Bertram. He just jumped on the keyboard.)
Oh, liver diseases are not fun, either, are they? Trouble died as a result of his liver problems. I forget the name of it–not hepatitis, not hepatic lipidosis–I can’t remember. But before he went, he was on several meds that really didn’t help, and were a royal pain to administer.
I’m sorry about Trouble.
Isaac was doing well, and now isn’t. She won’t eat, but she has an obviously stuffed up, sniffly nose. When she first stopped eating, we thought it was because of her nose, not her liver.
Our vet said the next step was taking her up to OSU, but the last time we went there the bills were in the thousand dollar range and I can’t afford it. Fuck.