This morning one of my cats had thrown up a few times. It was food that had been mostly digested because it was mush instead of bits and pieces of dry food. Later on I noticed that Sunny didn't want to get off of my bed. He just sat there curled up partially under my covers. I had to move him so that I could make the bed. He never does this. He's usually running around meowing at me to hurry up with breakfast.
When I was preparing the food, I noticed that Sunny was very quiet and he was just sitting on the bar stool. I gave him his dish of food and he didn't want anything to do with it.:( I ended up feeding it to Ziggy. Later I put some chicken baby food on my finger and Sunny did lick some of it off. When I fed them their second small feeding of the morning, I was able to entice Sunny to eat. He ate very slowly but didn't quiet finish his meal.
I went to work and was hoping that he'd snap out of it and be his normal hungry energetic self in the evening. He slept most of the evening and he refused to eat again.:( I also noticed that one of the cats had thrown up more mostly digested food. I'm still assuming that it's from Sunny. This time I decided not to force him to eat.
I called my vet's and I even talked to a vet tech about Sunny. The earliest appointment that they have is at 2:30pm tomorrow so I took it. If I brought him in tonight I would be charged an emergency fee just to be seen. If I wait until after 8am tomorrow morning I'll be charged an urgent care fee. I'm going to see how he's doing in the morning and if he's doing much worse then I'll just take him in the morning and pay a slighly higher fee to be seen.
I was trying to take his temperatue earlier and he was really fighting me so he's still quite feisty. I wasn't able to hold it until it beeped but when I took it out it was in the 101 degree range. It beeped a few seconds after that so I'm hoping that his temp is normal. I hope that he'll be feeling better tomorrow so he won't even have to go to the vet. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers.
To top it all off, Pearl's been having mushy stool issues for quiet a while now. She looks healthy and just had her annual exam but her stools aren't what they should be. I brought in a sample on Sunday evening. I had to wait all day for one which wasn't easy. My vet did a feline diarrhea panel realpcr which wasn't cheap.
I got her results and this is what my vet e-mailed me:
The feces tested positive for cryptosporidium, which is a coccidian parasite. In most cats, this organism is NOT the primary cause of diarrhea. In other words, something else is causing the diarrhea (like IBD, or stress, etc) and the organism is just there. However, I think we should treat Pearl anyway. Treatments for crypt often fail, but I think we should try. I would like to put her on a 2 week course of azithromycin and then recheck her.
Cryptosporidium can be zoonotic, meaning she can give it to you and the other cats. Washing your hands after handling her butt or cleaning the litter box is good practice. Immunocompromised people should not handle her or the litter box, as they have a greater risk of infection.
I do not think we need to treat all of your cats.
I would like to recheck Pearls feces for cryptosporidium in 2 weeks, within a few days of her last antibiotic dose.
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So now I also need to pick up this medication for her. I sure hope that it clears her up and none of my other cats will become infected. I've always been good about washing my hands after I clean out the litter boxes. I also hope that she doesn't have IBD too. This was one of my concerns because her symptoms seemed a lot like Starr's when he first started having problems. The only difference is that she always uses the litter box. Please send her some good vibes too. Thanks in advance.:)
