Paddy and I just got home from the vet clinic and he received a complete head to toe exam.
I put a litter box in his cage just before we headed out because the last 2 times he's been in the truck, as soon as the wheels start turning, he poops! This time I was prepared though. lol And sure enough, he immediately had to go. It made for a very stinky ride over but at least he wasn't stepping in it and getting it all over him.
The vet and tech really thought he was a handsome fellow but were amazed at how BIG he was. He weighed in today at 21.10 pounds. The vet first looked at his nails and said that she didn't think they were the source of his tender feet. The reddish stuff at the base of some of his nails is dirt! She said that most cats clean the base of their nails but Paddy hasn't been doing this. I will help him with it tonight.
She thought that his weight was the main reason his feet have been painful because she said it's alot for him to carry around. I talked with her about the possibility of a thyroid problem and she said that in all her years of being a vet she has yet to see a cat that is hypothyroid. She said that if a cat has had a thyroid problem they have been hyperthyroid resulting in being too skinny, definitely not Paddy's problem.
She thinks that Paddy was probably fed alot of carbohydrates with his previous family for the 10 years that he was with them and she said she's fairly sure he is a 'carb addict'!!
I told her that Paddy had been in the SPCA for 8 months and then he was placed into a foster home because he was overgrooming himself and had this big bald spot on his side. The foster family was very strict with his diet for the 3+ months he was with them and when we adopted him he was about 15 or 16 pounds! Geez, we have really let him pack on the pounds since he's been with us. It's crazy though because we don't free feed him and give him a tiny handful of kibble in the morning and a spoonful of wet food and another spoonful of wetfood at night. But, when we recently went up North, we left food out for all the cats, including Paddy and he ate himself silly. He was quite a bit larger when we got home.
The vet thinks that his carb addiction is also related to the overgrooming. She recently took an acupuncture course and learned alot and she said that the area that he overgrooms is right where the digestive tract is and it is probably irritating to him to have so many carbs on board.
So, she did some bloodwork and is going to run a geriatric panel. I asked her to include a thyroid test just in case he turns out to be the first hypothyroid cat she's ever examined. She also wants to get him on some Metacam (anti-inflammatory and pain reliever) for a few months to help with the pain in his feet while we feed him a special low carb diet. Once he loses some pounds, we can wean him off the Metacam. The blood work will let her know if he is healthy enough to be on Metacam for a few months as it can be tough on the liver and kidneys. I have some left over that was prescribed for Tiger so I'll be able to save a little money there.
Paddy also had two dime sized lumps on him that I was concerned about and she felt them and was 99% sure they were cysts. She did a fine needle aspiration on both and they were cysts. She removed one with the aspiration and part of the other. I asked her why he might be getting those and she said she didn't know but that it wasn't anything serious.
Many months ago I posted a thread about Paddy and a dark freckle spot that I noticed he had on his forehead. I asked her to look at it and she said that it is just a pigmentation and the fact that it is not raised at all shows that it is nothing to be concerned about.
So all in all, our guy Pads is doing okay for going on 11 years old. I'm so relieved because we just adore him.
Now we have to get him down to a healthy weight to ensure that he doesn't get diabetes and so he can be more comfortable walking, running and playing.
I recently started feeding our cats Taste of the Wild dry food which I learned about from one of Krazyaboutkatz threads. All our cats love it and because it is grain free and high in protein and low in carbs it is a good food for Paddy. The vet gave me 4 cans of high protein wet food (two Medi-Cal cans of Reducing and 2 cans of Walthams low cal). I also picked up some cans of Evo grain free wet food and some Wellness grain free wet food at the pet store.
Hopefully he will be able to squeeze into the harness my brother sent him for christmas soon and then I can start taking him for walkies. In the meantime, we will encourage him to go up and down the stairs and play with toys and take him out to the outdoor enclosure every day for a few hours. The combination of low carb food and Metacam to relieve his foot pain should get him on the right track!
I will post his 'before-before' picture when we got him last year and his 'before' picture that was taken recently and then in a few months I'll hopefully post his 'after' picture once he's lost some weight.
Paddy's 'before-before' picture. This is when we adopted him last September, about a week after we got him when he was in pretty good shape. You can see in the pic that he has that hanging belly skin from when he used to be fat. But in the next pic, that poochy part is filled up with fat.
This is Paddy quite recently:
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Originally Posted by jenn_librarian
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