Expert: Ali - 10/18/2008

Question
Hello, I have a beautiful long haired american cat who is 9.  She is only 5 pounds. she has always been skinny and piissy (not mean, just particular). She has thrown up regularly for years. whether it be eating to fat or not eating for a while and when she starts back up she gets sick.  But that is not the mager issue.  I brought her in this past Monday to the vet to get her vaccinations and a bath.  I had noticed about a week or so earlier that her hair was thining around her spin.  I thought maybe it was stress because she is a high stress cat anyway and my boyfriend and i tried to introduce her and my other cat to his 15 pound sheba inu (sorry if spelt wrong). He is very passive so i didnt think that was the cause but wasnt sure. I asked the vet to take a look at her while she was there.  Now she NEVER had breathing problems. They did a CBC panel and saw she was anemic and had an extremely high white blood count.  They asked if they could keep her to run tests over night.  They tested for FIV, thyroid, bladder, kidney, Leukemia, diabetes..EVERYTHING.  all came back negative.  I got her home on Tuesday night with the antibiotic clavamox. I gave her half a pill 2x daily.  Well friday i got home from work and she did not look right. staring at the wall and real lethargic. I called the vet they said bring her in..Oh yeah her breathing was labored.  I brought her in she had a 104,1 fever and they kept her over night. gave her fluids brought her fever down and put her on baytol. Today Saturday her breathing sounds almost fluid. she keeps hiding in the closet or in the bathroom where it is dark. She is not eating nor drinking. She is so tired :(. I cant get in touch with the vet.  I have spent 700.00 with no answers and everytime she goes she gets worse.  My theory...she was a little sick they gave her a bath before he checked her and she got pnemonia or something.  I cant afford too much more without answers.  Do ou have any suggestions. she is a figther and she is not putting any fight up and she is 100x worse then when i brought her to the vet to begin with.  HELP!

Answer
Jessica,

I was very moved by your case and your attempt to find good treatment for your cat. I gave one of the vets on this site the history (I hope you don't mind). Please find a copy of his answer below:

Answer   Sometimes no one knows why an animal or person becomes ill. We know that we are giving cats too many vaccines and that processed foods make them weaker and more susceptible to stress. She was definitely ill when you took her in and the bath and vaccines, if they gave them, would not have been a good idea if you had mentioned she was having some skin problems. Even in an integrative practice we are not always able to cure and animal, but there are hundreds of treatments available. As a conventional veterinarian I only had a few therapies and when they worked it could really help, but often they only temporarily helped, then the animals became more ill over all and got "old".

Because you cat is so critical and because the emergency clinic can probably do no better than your local veterinarian (sounds like they did the appropriate tests), I strongly recommend finding an integrative veterinarian to work with. This is a person trained in many different approaches, including using conventional drugs only when absolutely needed. There are good ones and great ones, and a few that really are not even holistic. Go to www.VetAdviceLine.com and read the article in the library about selecting and working with a holistic veterinarian. There are other great articles there, as well.

We can often prevent crises like this one when early symptoms are treated holistically, such as always being skinny and piissy (not mean, just particular) and vomiting regularly for years. whether it be eating to fat or not eating for a while and when she starts back up she gets sick.  If she survives this crisis, be sure to keep trying different treatments until those symptoms are cleared up, too.
"I brought her in this past Monday to the vet to get her vaccinations and a bath. " I do not recommend vaccines except for the legally required rabies and then I recommend using Reiki to clear them. "I had noticed about a week or so earlier that her hair was thining around her spin.  I thought maybe it was stress because she is a high stress cat anyway "  There are many flower essences to treat stress and you can safely use them yourself - try www.spiritessence.com in the future.

FIND A HEALER
You can go to the web sites for each type of holistic practice and use their referral list to find one near to you:
Acupuncture and Chinese medicine: www.IVAS.org & www.TCVM.com
Chiropractor - www.animalchiropractic.org
Homeopath (these can often help you by phone if no other holistic practitioners are nearby that you like): www.theAVH.org
Wide range of other treatments: www.AHVMA.org, American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association

There are also lots of practitioners and approaches that are used by trained people that you can find by searching the Internet.

The drawback with the above web sites is they become outdated quickly. I think you need help selecting the very best practitioner for your cat at this time, so call the Veterinary Advice Line if you do not very quickly find one on line. (They answer the phone “Legal Advice Line or My Professional Advice”, because they do that as well as veterinary advice, because they do that, too), speak directly with a veterinarian who can help you find the best local holistic practitioner. 866-4-VETNOW

YOU BE THE HEALER
I also strongly recommend getting some training in understanding the wide range of approaches to health so you can be in charge of what you choose for treatments for your animals. This would include only vaccinating when young except for legally required Rabies and exploring feeding fresh foods, not processed. What is best for you to eat – junky processed foods, or locally grown, fresh foods? Also, you can learn Reiki (which can take the "bad" out of vaccines and any needed drugs, or even make food healthier), massage, HTA, TTouch, flower essence therapy, aromatherapy, and many more things you can do to help heal your animals. In addition to classes (see below), there are many very good list serves filled with people experienced with not vaccinating and feeding raw meat diets. Go to yahoogroups.com and look for “Just say no 2 vaccs” and “Raw Paws”. As with human nutrition, there are many different opinions, so you need to experiment and see what makes your animals more or less healthy. Keeping a journal can help you decide what is working and what is not working (www.HealthyAnimalsJournal.com).

www.ChristinaChambreau.com has a listing of courses taught by her and others that may help you. You can do searches online for the many other classes and lectures available. Go to www.theAVH.org for classes every November as part of the annual conference.

Healthy Animal Update is an emailed newsletter that is occasionally sent out – to sign up – go to www.ChristinaChambreau.com. While there check out classes and products. NuCat Vitamins are a real favorite and there is currently a sale on the liquid form.  

From the comfort of your home - 6 week Teleclass/Webinar on the 7 Keys to Healthy Pets. January 2009 -  for more information, to register and get your free gift - go to http://www.simpledogtrainingsecrets.com/7keys.html

Good Health and looking forward to seeing you/hearing you in some of my classes.
Oct 25 is in Harrisburg, PA is the next great class.
Dr. Chambreau


I really hope that you will find some help for this great kitty. I agree with Dr. Chambreau's recommendations and I hope that they will help your cat....I am very lucky to have a wonderful holistic practitioner as a vet, I know what a valuable resource a good holistic practitioner is and I wish you luck in finding someone who will actually listen to you rather than charging you exorbitant amounts of money without helping to find answers. My thoughts and prayers are with you at this time...




Please check below the original answer for the revised information that I have provided. Thanks.

Let me first start off by reiterating that I am not a vet and I don't hold a degree in veterinary medicine as yet. The one test that I don't see is one to test for liver function. With the combination of extreme anemia and high white blood cell count I would be a bit suspicious of a condition called hemolytic anemia. I rescued a cat several years ago that became quite sick within an extremely short space of time and after many trips to the vet she was finally diagnosed with hemolytic anemia. There could be other causes depending on what part of the world you are living in and whether or not your cats go outside. There is obviously something serious going on with this cat - in my experience it could be as serious as congestive heart failure, pneumonia, auto-immune conditions can sometimes cause odd symptoms that seem not to add up, at least initially for veterinarians. It's quite possible that the vets have simply used the most common tests and tried to avoid tests that look for less common health issues, especially if cost is an issue. I would suggest that you take your cat to the nearest emergency vet clinic to see if they can at least stabilize her until she can be transferred to a vet clinic of your choice on Monday morning. To be very honest, it's quite possible that this illness will be fatal if not diagnosed and treated appropriately sooner rather than later. I can tell you from personal experience that the veterinary treatment she has received so far sounds routine and in my experience nothing that your vet has done should be causing a worsening of this kitty's health. Baytril isn't typically a first line antibiotic that vets use for cats because there are risks associated with its use - my vet only prescribed Baytril for one of my resident cats when it appeared that her kidneys had become very infected. I would guess that the fact that your vet has opted to use Baytril with your cat means that he or she is well aware that something very serious and potentially life threatening is going on. I really wish that I had something more concrete to offer in this situation, but things have really become quite serious in the last 24 hours or so for this kitty. If you would prefer to see another vet to see if he/she will be able to offer anything concrete based on the tests that have already been performed and the drugs that have been prescribed then I would suggest that you do so immediately - it doesn't get much more urgent than a cat's breathing becoming labored and sounding wet. I'm sorry that I couldn't give you anything more to work with, but as I've mentioned I am not a veterinarian. Please feel free to send an update my way, I'm anxious to hear what the final diagnosis is and whether or not your cat responds to medical treatment.

I felt that I should get you thinking about whether or not this kitty could have ingested medications or toxins that could be causing her medical issues. Some medications meant for human beings are extremely toxic to cats if they are ingested. Toxins like rodenticide can cause serious health issues in cats. Poisons that are typically used to kill rodents can cause internal bleeding and breathing difficulties. She obviously has a monster fever - normal body temperature for cats is between 100.5 and 102.5. The elevated temperature would certainly be consistent with an infection of some sort which is why the vets have tried two different antibiotics at this point, although it looks as though there is very little improvement. It doesn't make much sense that the introductions to your boyfriend's dog would cause such a severe reaction in your cat, regardless of how prissy she is. Do you routinely vaccinate your cats each year? If so it might be that the cat is having a non-specific auto-immune issue. There has been good recent research performed by the University of Guelph that suggests that we have been over vaccinating our pets and this may be the reason behind the increased incidences of auto-immune or allegic type responses in pets. The research suggests that if cats are properly vaccinated in kittenhood then the pet parent has the option of cycling the vaccines or only administering the vaccines required by law...Not sure if this is the issue, but it's a thought and at this point any new ideas could help this kitty.