Good news, but the mystery remains
Jun. 6th, 2014 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gerisullivanTillie just tested negative for feline leukemia and also for FIV (though I'm uncertain how accurate FIV tests are).
This is good news and even something of a surprise given that she came in off the street in Battle Creek and then spent years being out for days at a time. At Daddy's, she was more of an outdoor cat who regularly came in for a bite to eat and to cuddle up on his lap. Here at Toad Woods, she's primarily an indoor cat who goes out during nice weather to snooze in a chair on the deck or wander from the front of the house to the deck for the aforementioned snoozing. There isn't a stray population to speak of; in 10 years here, I've seen just one cat I didn't recognize and that one I saw only twice. I suspect the coyotes are quick to have at any true strays.
But the mystery of what's going on with Tillie remains. She's gone from eating regularly to eating very little for a few weeks to barely eating anything at all this past week.
She's slightly anemic and, not surprisingly, lethargic. Her white blood count is at the top of the normal range. Liver and kidney function are fine. She's high on an enzyme that the vet didn't have linked to any specific condition; everything else tested fine. No sign of parasites. When she was eating, she showed signs of being constipated, so hairballs may be to blame. She rarely hacks them up and she hasn't been shedding much. It takes a thorough brushing to get even one little bunch of hair to remove from the brush.
The vet called as I was typing this up. For the past few days, I've been annoying Tillie by putting the hairball remedy she used to happily lick straight off the tube on her paws, but only in normal size doses. On the vet's advice, for the next few days, I'm going to annoy the heck out of her and try to get about half a tube of the stuff into her. And if that doesn't do the trick, it sounds like getting some X-rays is the next step. I have several questions to ask before doing that, but I'll wait until the beginning of the week to ask them and hope I don't need to.
As the vet says, there's little that points at her being sick. But the whole not eating thing? It's a thing. And it looks like it will become more of a thing if it continues for any length of time.
So, yeah, I'm worried.
This is good news and even something of a surprise given that she came in off the street in Battle Creek and then spent years being out for days at a time. At Daddy's, she was more of an outdoor cat who regularly came in for a bite to eat and to cuddle up on his lap. Here at Toad Woods, she's primarily an indoor cat who goes out during nice weather to snooze in a chair on the deck or wander from the front of the house to the deck for the aforementioned snoozing. There isn't a stray population to speak of; in 10 years here, I've seen just one cat I didn't recognize and that one I saw only twice. I suspect the coyotes are quick to have at any true strays.
But the mystery of what's going on with Tillie remains. She's gone from eating regularly to eating very little for a few weeks to barely eating anything at all this past week.
She's slightly anemic and, not surprisingly, lethargic. Her white blood count is at the top of the normal range. Liver and kidney function are fine. She's high on an enzyme that the vet didn't have linked to any specific condition; everything else tested fine. No sign of parasites. When she was eating, she showed signs of being constipated, so hairballs may be to blame. She rarely hacks them up and she hasn't been shedding much. It takes a thorough brushing to get even one little bunch of hair to remove from the brush.
The vet called as I was typing this up. For the past few days, I've been annoying Tillie by putting the hairball remedy she used to happily lick straight off the tube on her paws, but only in normal size doses. On the vet's advice, for the next few days, I'm going to annoy the heck out of her and try to get about half a tube of the stuff into her. And if that doesn't do the trick, it sounds like getting some X-rays is the next step. I have several questions to ask before doing that, but I'll wait until the beginning of the week to ask them and hope I don't need to.
As the vet says, there's little that points at her being sick. But the whole not eating thing? It's a thing. And it looks like it will become more of a thing if it continues for any length of time.
So, yeah, I'm worried.
