Yeah, I know there’s bigger problems in the world, but I love my cats.
But just a little while ago I noticed my cat Vladimir limping as he walked across the floor. He’s old, about eleven, but he saw the vet a little over two weeks ago and was quite fit for his age.
The vet I take my cats to is closed for the evening, but he does have an emergency number. There’s also a 24-hour vet in town, but Vlad hasn’t seen them. He doesn’t appear to be in great discomfort. When I tried stroking him down his right side(it seems to be the back right leg), he kind of shied away, but didn’t cry or make any other indication of pain.
Should I wait until Wednesday do you think? Tomorrow is a holiday, but the emergency vet would be open. Or should I take Vladimir in sooner?
Might be a sprain, might be a torn ligament, might be a cracked bone (that doesn’t take near as much as you might think), might be something stuck in his fur, might be something stuck between his toes, might be might be might be…
Might be a good idea to get him checked out as soon as you can, just in case it’s something that might get worse untreated.
If you can tempt him over to you for an examination with some tuna or something, it might be a good idea. Look his leg over and see if there are any unusual protrusions or swellings. If he’ll let you, gently feel it over, looking for the same things.
It may be just a sprain. Like people, animals get a little stiff in their elder years, and she could have twisted it when she was jumping. One of my dogs has a weak leg. Every now and again, she’ll twist it, yelp and limp for a couple of hours, but afterwards, she’s fine.
Unless you can tell the leg is injured by examining it, I wouldn’t call an emergency vet. Watch him carefully over the next 24 hours. If he’s eating and drinking as usual, doesn’t have a fever or seem weak/disoriented, you should be fine with waiting until Wednesday to get him into the vet’s office.
Thanks for the advice Dopers. I can’t feel anything wrong, but it did seem a little sensitive when I stroked him. I can’t see anything wrong. He isn’t lethargic, any more than usual, and he came to eat when I called him and Tobermory.
I have tomorrow off, so I’ll keep an eye on him. If it gets noticably worse tomorrow, then I can take him to the emergency vet.
Guess I sound like a fretting mother, but I love my cats.
Not at all. The first time my dog, Polaris, sprained her ankle, I had the same reaction. I asked on here what to do, and I’m just passing along the advice given to me.
It’s terrible to see one of your “fur babies” in pain. You feel so helpless.
In a cat that old, a limp doesn’t nessecarily mean much- could have sprained it, or accidently smacked it on something, or even just been stiff after sleeping on it. If he’s still limping a day from now, then consider taking him to the vet. For the moment, I say let him walk it off.
Not to scare you or anything, but I am going through something similar with one of my cats.
Spooky, my 4yr old short hair, started acting funny one night. He tried to jump up on the couch, but aborted the attempt half way up. He tried again, with no success. He was also waking kinda funny, his back end wobbling a little. It kinda looked like how a woman walks when she has PID. In any case, I shook it off and went to sleep.
The next day his activity level dropped out, and he seemed like he was in pain. We went to the vet and she deduced that my cat was full of shit. He was constipated. It took two colon blows to get him cleared out, and I brought him home. Yet, he still wasn’t right.
So two more days go by, and now he wont walk at all, and can barely move his hind legs or twitch his tail. He’d just lay on the floor and cry. Back to the vet we go. They again run every blood test known to catkind and x-ray him again. No stool in his colon, no explanation at all for his illness. The vet suggested that we could send him to a neurologist, and stated that it seemed like some sort of spinal injury. The bad part is a CT for a cat runs around $1800. That kind of expense is not an option.
We decided to put Spooky on steroids and hope to take any swelling down in the spinal cord. That was a week ago. Today he seems to be almost back to normal; I’ve been very lucky that he is recovering well.
I guess the moral to my story is it may be something major, it may not. I’d go to the vet.