He had started to eat less, not make a run for the treats and was losing weight so I made an appointment at the Vet for us. The Vet said he had a dental abscess and needed two teeth pulled, so I brought him in again the next morning to have that done.
Surgery went fine. It took over a full day to recover from the anesthesia. He was eating a little and drinking a little and hiding under the bed, by the radiators or behind the couch. Occasionally he would venture out. He had always been like this so I wasn’t worried. His post-op visit went fine. Vet said everything looked great.
His appetite still hadn’t picked up and he wasn’t coming out for treats. Then he stopped coming out for breakfast, so I slid it under the bed for him. By Wednesday, I didn’t like how he was looking so I planned to take him in on Friday morning. I had an out of town funeral to go to on Thursday,
Thursday night, I came home and he was stretched out like he was sleeping in the corner only there was sort of a greenish discharge around his mouth and nose, and he was dead. He didn’t look like he struggled or like it was violent. I had brushed him and clipped his nails the night before and while he looked a bit under the weather, which was why I was taking him back to the vet, he certainly didn’t look deathly ill.
Any opinions on what possibly happened? It’s weighing heavily on me.
As for what happened, I’m certainly no expert, but here are two WAGs, for what they’re worth. #1: The surgery didn’t manage to remove all of the infection. (Did the vet give your cat a dose of antibiotic, and/or give you some to give him?) #2: Your cat had been unlucky enough to have two things wrong with him, and when the vet found and fixed the abscess, he naturally thought that had cured what was causing the original symptoms.
14 is a good run for a cat…about 72 in human years. It sounds like you took good care of him, but sometimes older cats die, despite your best efforts. There can be any number of reasons why your cat died–besides the dental issues, he could have had some other underlying illness-cancer, kidney failure, etc or perhaps even died of heart attack. It might make sense to ask the vet. I am sorry for your loss.
Thanks, I just thought that if there was a further infection there would have been some visible discharge before he died. I brushed him twice and clipped his nails once in the week before he died and there was nothing, but his little face was covered when I found him.
Our neighbor had a very similar experience with her cat. She took the cat’s body in for a postmortem exam/autopsy and they discovered cancer in the cat’s sinus/pharynx.
Same for me, except they told me my cat had a URI. A week later I came home to find her barely conscious with blood gushing out of her nose. The tumor had broken through the sinus cavity. Poor baby.
I’m really sorry. I know how losing a feline companion feels – Wednesday I lost my favorite. He was diabetic and I gave him insulin shots every 12 hours for the last 3.5 years and never missed a single dose. A few days before he seemed not to feel as good as usual and started drinking and peeing a lot, which suggests high blood sugar, and I made an appointment for Tuesday morning, but when I came home Monday evening he was semi comatose and I rushed him to the animal emergency hospital where they found his blood sugar extremely low and borderline survivable. Turns out he had kidney failure, which had probably made him nauseous, and that in turn drove his blood sugar down even as I continued giving insulin. So, one known medical problem being treated, and one unknown, which actually interfered with the known problem.
It really hurts. Medicine is a complicated subject, and your cat can only give indirect signs about what is wrong, which evolution has pretty much discouraged them from doing anyway. Bless your heart for trying to take care of him, and I’m really sorry he’s gone. But they do need us. If you can get yourself feeling ready for it again, I hope you keep adopting and caring for them.
I think there is a pretty high likelihood that your cat was suffering from co-morbidies. As has been pointed out, but bears emphasizing, cats (and dogs) are extremely adept at hiding pain and discomfort; if it gets to the point that you notice your pet is sick or injured, they’re REALLY sick or injured.
Unfortunately, cats can get sick and die with remarkable speed; I have had cats go from seeming fine to being terribly ill to dying in days, and I am a very responsible pet owner indeed. If your cat was suffering from some other malady, perhaps one the dental problem exacerbated, it is perfectly normal for you never to have noticed and for the vet to have missed it if s/he wasn’t looking for it. In all likelhood there was nothing that couold have been done.
So sorry about your cat. Condolences. I had a big fluffy white cat that had no symptoms of anything at all being wrong until I came home from work to find him dead. He was curled up in one of his favorite sleeping places, a folded blanket on a chair. The only unusual thing was that his claws were dug into the blanket. I was never sure how old he was but certainly less than ten. He was a lazy, happy, friendly fellow and I was very sad.
I know this isn’t much comfort but cats behave so similar that I suspect most of their behavior is hardwired. So I don’t feel as bad when I lose one since the amount of information making that particular cat unique was small. I would get another kitty.
