kitty update

[cellio]

The vet just called (that was fast!) with results from Erik's blood test. His calcium level is still "a little" high (13.1, but I don't know the units). Everything else was solidly normal. The vet said that they usually worry about kidney damage when that calcium number times some other measurement (the name of which I didn't manage to write down) is greater than 60; that number in Erik's case is 4.5, for a product of 58.95, so close but not in the worry zone yet, she says. (I said something like "gee, that's awfully close", and she said it's not as close as it sounds. Or something to that effect.)

The blood test did not show anything that would explain his weight loss. She said that it could just be the diet change (he got put on the special diet two years ago, which is also when the weight loss started), or it could be the early stages of a kidney problem. She said that kidney problems don't actually show up in a blood test until they're pretty far gone (75% loss of function), so to know if there's actually a kidney problem, we need a different kind of test.

I've never tried to collect a urine sample from a cat before. This should be, um, an adventure.

There are two causes for concern: the higher-than-normal calcium level and the weight loss. It sounds like she is not particularly concerned about the weight loss yet (though we should monitor it better, so maybe I need a suitable scale for home). And some cats, she said, just have high calcium levels -- so maybe there's nothing wrong at all. But if there is, I want to catch it now rather than when it becomes obvious (and hard to treat) later.

Comments

Thanks!

[rectangularcat]

This is going to be my first comment in the world of livejournal. First I'd like to thank you for posting those codes a little while back. I took advantage of it and wanted to thank you earlier. I have not started working on my journal as of yet, but soon I hope to figure out what to write.. writing is never easy for this engineer!

I had a sick kittie a while back. She is fairly plump, about 18 lbs and when I came back from a 4 month absence (she just stayed home with my roommate), she was down to 10 lbs. When I brought her to the vet, they said that she looked healthy... well finally she was at her 'normal weight'! Luckily, I get her weighed every time I go buy her weight-control cat food, so they had her weight record on file. Needless to say that they kept her for a couple of days to figure out what was going on. She ended up being in liver failure. She had stopped eating and her liver was working a little too hard converting all those fat reserves. We think she stopped eating because I instructed my roommate to wean her off the expensive food. Needless to say, she got her good food when I got back and has gained all the weight back since (that was a little over a year ago).

This same kitty has a new problem now, she is completely bald on her belly. This time, the vet thought it may be a kidney infection and set me on a mission to collect a feline urine sample. First let me say, do not try to put a cup under the kitty while the kitty is using the litter! It is not very successful, trust me. I ended up locking the cat in the bathroom with a litter box filled with those plastic popcorn bits used for shipping packages that don't quite fit in the box. Second mistake, make sure that the plastic bits and the litter pan are clean and dust free and that there are no towels or absorbing materials that the cat may use in lieu of the litter pan. I had to repeat this twice until I had a suitable sample. In the end it took 48 hours in the bathroom until my cat gave a huge urine sample. Boy was she happy to come out!

After all this work, we ruled out a kidney problem. I have a new theory for the bald belly - since my cat cannot reach her bum anymore, she over-cleans her belly to compensate.

I hope that my kitty stories brought you a smile or two. My cat's name is Claudia - I'm glad to learn that I am not the only one with the strange habit of naming my animals with real names!

Re: Thanks!

[cellio]

Hi! Welcome to LiveJournal. I'm sure you'll find things to write about, either on your own or in reaction to other people's journals.

I'm sorry to hear about Claudia's problems, but glad that you have them under control now. Eight pounds in four months is an awful lot of weight loss for a cat. (What was she doing, eating the food and then finding out-of-the-way places to regurgitate it?)

First let me say, do not try to put a cup under the kitty while the kitty is using the litter!

Heh. My vet suggested this as a possibility but also told me not to be too disappointed if it doesn't work. Next steps, she said, would be to lock the cat in a room with either a regular litter box with a layer of clear plastic over the litter (apparently that fools some cats and you can collect a puddle), or a box with special plastic pellets she said the office could get for me (sounds like the pellets you used). As a last resort, she said, I could bring the cat in with a full bladder (um, ponder the logistics there) and they would remove what they need with a syringe. Ouch! I'm going to try the optimistic approach and probably end up with an unhappy prisoner and a box of plastic pellets.

I have a new theory for the bald belly - since my cat cannot reach her bum anymore, she over-cleans her belly to compensate.

:-)

I'm glad to learn that I am not the only one with the strange habit of naming my animals with real names!

It started out with Erik the Redhead (whom I assume you can now identify in the picture :-) ). Having established the Viking-ish theme, I ended up with Baldur the Fair, who morphed into Baldur the Fairly Slow. Embla is just Embla; she doesn't have a suitable descriptor yet. I hadn't had a female cat before, and Norse mythology and history are weak on names that appealed to me, so I finally settled for the name of the first female human, as this was my first female cat.

I probably won't continue this theme with future cats, though. (Hmm, I wonder what the Hebrew word for "cat" is.)

Re: Thanks!

[goljerp]

I wonder what the Hebrew word for "cat" is

Heh! Practically the only hebrew question you will have that I know the answer to! I think it's "chatool" (with the "ch" being a chet, I think.)

I shared an apartment in Jerusalem with two cats: Avigail and Avishag. Avishag was a younger cat, rescued from the street, who liked to cuddle with people. (c.f. 1 Kings 1:2-4). It was actually kind of nice that I could say avi... and then pause to figure out which cat I was talking to. (Although Avigail was older and more aloof and didn't usually have much to do with me.)