Chaplin, age 6, has lost 3.5 pounds in 10 months. He saw the vet 2 weeks ago, we did a full blood work up, as that is the easy thing - no anesthesia or anything needed to draw blood. He also had a fever and was slightly dehydrated. Gave him subq fluids and a Convenia shot - antibiotic - to deal with the fever.
We returned to the vet after 48 hours. Fever gone, temp was normal. He had gained half a pound, though the vet cautioned this could be from the fluids we gave him. His lab results were in, only 2 things were not normal: elevated white blood cell count, which is a sign of infection, and elevated liver enzyme, the ALT.
So we decided to wait till the end of the 2 weeks (Convenia is a 2 week antibiotic) as this did bring down his fever, I was to feed him soft wet food, and we return to the vet tomorrow, Monday. At that time, we will again check his temperature, his weight, and a smaller blood test which will check both white blood cells and ALT.
My worry is, he has NOT gained any weight that I can tell this entire time. He is still skin and bones. I've kept him in the bedroom with Cuddles and Mandy this entire time, with the door closed. I've been adding milk thistle and samE to the food to work on getting the liver enzyme down.
I guess I need to decide what we do next: our thought was that he was going to gain some weight and we could do a dental. Chaplin has poor genes for dental, he had a major dental a year back with quite a few teeth removed. We 'thought' that was going to solve everything for him. As he is still semi feral, I didn't realize he was losing weight until it was significant. (Feel awful about that). The vet was not sure he can survive anesthesia at the lower weight, which is why we went with this additional 12 days of trying to feed him and put some weight on him.
Do the dental and x rays to see what shows up? - and pray he survives?
He seems alert and bright eyed, but I fear I have to yet again 'make the decision' to prevent him from suffering.
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