Vinny (née Coco) the poopy cat
Jan. 16th, 2022 07:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chhotiiNote: If you know of Coco, the new cat (as of June) in our household; I'm talking about the same cat. Coco was her shelter name. We just recently came up with the forever-name "Vinny". No, the cat isn't transgender; Vinny's pronouns are still she/her.
Vinny has been constipated all along... I think, just after we got her from the shelter, she was already not very regular, only producing a non-trivial poop every 2 or 3 days, and getting so frustrated that she would poop outside the litter box. We got a second litter box, didn't really help. Complained to the vet that she was constipated, and the vet said to give her 1/4 teaspoon Miralax per day. Whenever we stopped giving her Miralax she wouldn't poop for days. The vet said, just keep giving her Miralax, then. I stopped trying to tempt her to eat some treat mixed with Miralax (this cat is not food-motivated) and started just regularly mixing in the 1/4 teaspoon of Miralax per 40 grams of dry food (her average food intake when she was eating well.) Occasionally Vinny would produce long stringy swirls of very soft poo in the litterbox, but that's been getting less and less.
Eventually, at some point in the past few or several weeks, Vinny stopped eating her dry food altogether. We said, well, let's take this as an opportunity to switch her to wet food, dry food is so dry and therefore dehydrating and constipating. Poop wasn't happening at all other than really small drops, too small to be caught with the scoop. Experiments with various wet foods got Vinny eating a bit, but not pooping. And eating less and less.
Finally I took Vinny to the vet. The vet found that she had lost a lot of weight. Bloodwork revealed that her thyroid was high. She had been on medication for hyperthyroidism for a long time, but we keep having to adjust the dosage. The vet said, this explains the weight loss, just increase the dose, and we will reassess in a month. (This sounded fishy; the typical hyperthyroid presentation is that the cat loses weight while eating a lot. But, I thought, we'll see...)
Vinny started eating again, a little; still no poop. I noticed her looking uncomfortable, and straining in the litterbox many times per day. Send a message to the vet's office, again.
They said to take the cat to a pet urgent care clinic, such as Veterinary Emergency Group. I had no idea there was urgent care clinics for pets! I like this place. I don't like having a sick pet, so I'd rather never set foot in it again. But if you do have a sick pet, it's great. Walk-in service (so, regardless of how long or short the process of getting the cat into the carrier is, you don't have to sweat getting there at a particular time). Great service, speedy attention, even when they are busy. You get to stay with your pet.
VEG took an X-ray, which showed the cat's colon as full of poop, packed for at least 6 inches. They gave Vinny an enema (oooo she hated that) and told me to expect, hopefully, a 6 inch log of cat poo in the litterbox within the next 24 hours, otherwise we would re-assess.
As of 24 hours later, Vinny had produced... a small amount of poop. Very modest amount. Nowhere near what I saw on the X-ray. So, back into the carrier, back to the clinic.
This time the vet did a rectal exam, putting an exploratory finger into the cat's butt as far as it would go (oh BOY did Vinny HATE that, you never heard such demonic growling). As she was doing this, I saw on the vet's face that expression that you never want to see on a doctor's face: the one that says "oh no, something is horribly wrong".
The vet said that Vinny's colon is constricted, there's a narrowing of the colon starting about a finger's length in from the rectum. And maybe some polyps? Not sure about that. She did not think that either more enemas, nor a manual deobstipation, would be really worthwhile. She said, the stool is soft enough from the previous day's enema; now you just need to keep the cat's stool soft enough to pass through the narrow place, with the right diet and laxatives, otherwise it's just going to back up again. And long-term? We could have an ultrasound done, or a colonoscopy, to try to understand why this has happened, and we could maybe perhaps consider surgery.
The vet said "you need to think about how far you want to go with this." In other words, how much money are we going to spend to keep this elderly cat going?
That's a good question. We love Vinny. But love means two different things: wanting to pet and cuddle and admire her as long as we can, but also not wanting her to suffer. Certainly, if she's suffering, and it can't be simply fixed without much more suffering, we consider the end-of-life decision. There seems no point in putting an animal through heroic medical procedures. An animal doesn't know enough to have an existential dread of death; it knows only that the medical procedures are uncomfortable and intrusive. But is she suffering? Vinny, as is typical of cats, doesn't betray a lot of what she's feeling.
Meanwhile, just to keep going in the short term, the vet clinic sent us home with a bottle of lactulose. I have zero experience giving cats liquid medicine orally. My clumsy attempt resulted in squirting the lactulose all over the cat. It's very sticky, and Vinny now has big clotted mats in her fur where the dried lactulose stuck her fur together. Next I tried adding the lactulose to her food. She's such a small and picky eater. I think she consumed enough of what was on her plate to get a reasonable dose of the lactulose that I put on top, but I'm not sure. They also gave me some appetite stimulant as a transdermal medication (to be rubbed onto the ear.) Cats get into a vicious cycle of not eating because constipation is making them nauseous, but then not recovering from the constipation because they're not eating and thus not getting the laxatives and the pumpkin. This is supposed to break Vinny of this cycle over the course of 5 or 6 days. Meanwhile Vinny is NOT appreciating having yet another medication rubbed on her ear.
Keeping the cat's stools soft enough, when it's such a battle to get water, laxatives, and any food that she's not exactly in the mood for into her, seems like it's going to be a long hard slog. I can't spend my life fixated on the cat's poop: this argues for the surgical intervention.
Ugh, I don't know what to do. This is so not clear-cut. She's so cute, she's part of the family. She is purring on my lap right now. But pouring money into putting this cat through medical ick, when we didn't go into this expecting very many years of cat life; crazy?
Vic is at a friend's house this weekend. Earlier we had started talking about end-of-life decisions about pets, but just in the abstract. Ugh, this discussion might get way too real way too fast. Or not, which is almost worse; she might be low-key suffering, but not complaining about it, for a long time, as we flail at trying different foods and laxatives and dither about what to do. Ugh.
Vinny has been constipated all along... I think, just after we got her from the shelter, she was already not very regular, only producing a non-trivial poop every 2 or 3 days, and getting so frustrated that she would poop outside the litter box. We got a second litter box, didn't really help. Complained to the vet that she was constipated, and the vet said to give her 1/4 teaspoon Miralax per day. Whenever we stopped giving her Miralax she wouldn't poop for days. The vet said, just keep giving her Miralax, then. I stopped trying to tempt her to eat some treat mixed with Miralax (this cat is not food-motivated) and started just regularly mixing in the 1/4 teaspoon of Miralax per 40 grams of dry food (her average food intake when she was eating well.) Occasionally Vinny would produce long stringy swirls of very soft poo in the litterbox, but that's been getting less and less.
Eventually, at some point in the past few or several weeks, Vinny stopped eating her dry food altogether. We said, well, let's take this as an opportunity to switch her to wet food, dry food is so dry and therefore dehydrating and constipating. Poop wasn't happening at all other than really small drops, too small to be caught with the scoop. Experiments with various wet foods got Vinny eating a bit, but not pooping. And eating less and less.
Finally I took Vinny to the vet. The vet found that she had lost a lot of weight. Bloodwork revealed that her thyroid was high. She had been on medication for hyperthyroidism for a long time, but we keep having to adjust the dosage. The vet said, this explains the weight loss, just increase the dose, and we will reassess in a month. (This sounded fishy; the typical hyperthyroid presentation is that the cat loses weight while eating a lot. But, I thought, we'll see...)
Vinny started eating again, a little; still no poop. I noticed her looking uncomfortable, and straining in the litterbox many times per day. Send a message to the vet's office, again.
They said to take the cat to a pet urgent care clinic, such as Veterinary Emergency Group. I had no idea there was urgent care clinics for pets! I like this place. I don't like having a sick pet, so I'd rather never set foot in it again. But if you do have a sick pet, it's great. Walk-in service (so, regardless of how long or short the process of getting the cat into the carrier is, you don't have to sweat getting there at a particular time). Great service, speedy attention, even when they are busy. You get to stay with your pet.
VEG took an X-ray, which showed the cat's colon as full of poop, packed for at least 6 inches. They gave Vinny an enema (oooo she hated that) and told me to expect, hopefully, a 6 inch log of cat poo in the litterbox within the next 24 hours, otherwise we would re-assess.
As of 24 hours later, Vinny had produced... a small amount of poop. Very modest amount. Nowhere near what I saw on the X-ray. So, back into the carrier, back to the clinic.
This time the vet did a rectal exam, putting an exploratory finger into the cat's butt as far as it would go (oh BOY did Vinny HATE that, you never heard such demonic growling). As she was doing this, I saw on the vet's face that expression that you never want to see on a doctor's face: the one that says "oh no, something is horribly wrong".
The vet said that Vinny's colon is constricted, there's a narrowing of the colon starting about a finger's length in from the rectum. And maybe some polyps? Not sure about that. She did not think that either more enemas, nor a manual deobstipation, would be really worthwhile. She said, the stool is soft enough from the previous day's enema; now you just need to keep the cat's stool soft enough to pass through the narrow place, with the right diet and laxatives, otherwise it's just going to back up again. And long-term? We could have an ultrasound done, or a colonoscopy, to try to understand why this has happened, and we could maybe perhaps consider surgery.
The vet said "you need to think about how far you want to go with this." In other words, how much money are we going to spend to keep this elderly cat going?
That's a good question. We love Vinny. But love means two different things: wanting to pet and cuddle and admire her as long as we can, but also not wanting her to suffer. Certainly, if she's suffering, and it can't be simply fixed without much more suffering, we consider the end-of-life decision. There seems no point in putting an animal through heroic medical procedures. An animal doesn't know enough to have an existential dread of death; it knows only that the medical procedures are uncomfortable and intrusive. But is she suffering? Vinny, as is typical of cats, doesn't betray a lot of what she's feeling.
Meanwhile, just to keep going in the short term, the vet clinic sent us home with a bottle of lactulose. I have zero experience giving cats liquid medicine orally. My clumsy attempt resulted in squirting the lactulose all over the cat. It's very sticky, and Vinny now has big clotted mats in her fur where the dried lactulose stuck her fur together. Next I tried adding the lactulose to her food. She's such a small and picky eater. I think she consumed enough of what was on her plate to get a reasonable dose of the lactulose that I put on top, but I'm not sure. They also gave me some appetite stimulant as a transdermal medication (to be rubbed onto the ear.) Cats get into a vicious cycle of not eating because constipation is making them nauseous, but then not recovering from the constipation because they're not eating and thus not getting the laxatives and the pumpkin. This is supposed to break Vinny of this cycle over the course of 5 or 6 days. Meanwhile Vinny is NOT appreciating having yet another medication rubbed on her ear.
Keeping the cat's stools soft enough, when it's such a battle to get water, laxatives, and any food that she's not exactly in the mood for into her, seems like it's going to be a long hard slog. I can't spend my life fixated on the cat's poop: this argues for the surgical intervention.
Ugh, I don't know what to do. This is so not clear-cut. She's so cute, she's part of the family. She is purring on my lap right now. But pouring money into putting this cat through medical ick, when we didn't go into this expecting very many years of cat life; crazy?
Vic is at a friend's house this weekend. Earlier we had started talking about end-of-life decisions about pets, but just in the abstract. Ugh, this discussion might get way too real way too fast. Or not, which is almost worse; she might be low-key suffering, but not complaining about it, for a long time, as we flail at trying different foods and laxatives and dither about what to do. Ugh.
