Update on Bada‘s condition. Which, currently, is not good 🙁
As some of you may recall, Bada is on long term medication for severe gingivitis. We changed vets recently (as our beloved Judith had retired) and have started using the one in the village.
She advised us that a long term steroid injection might be better for Bada than a pill regime, which distresses her (and us), so we tried it. Pete took her back to see the vet on Monday, as we were coming to the end of the injection’s advised period, and was told that “she was a little bit inflamed, but we don’t need another one yet”. They charged us thirty quid for this, I might add.
Last Thurday afternoon, Liessa started coughing; of course, it got worse as the evening drew in, and we resolved to en-vet her the following morning. But soon after 8.30 she started clawing at her face, and coughed up some blood, so I phoned the emergency vet on Zetland Road.
The 24 hour vet hospital is part of the group practice of the vet we used to go to; they did her dental op last year, and they have access to her notes. It’s clear the vet wasn’t impressed with the treatment she’d been having at the new vet, and says the pills are much much better, as they are a controlled dose (which makes sense). Her gums had deteriorated to the point that she had a flap of them hanging off (poor little kit), which was causing the distress and the bleeding.
She had an antibiotic shot and a short term steroid jab – none of us wanted to traumatise her further with a pill last night, so we started those on Friday evening. We also have some dental paste which we can try putting on her paws, in the hope she’ll lick it off, and an antibacterial mouth spray (I can’t wait/ to try that …)
£118 for that little lot, which I thought wasn’t actually too bad, given they had to get the vet in to see her.
She spent Thursday and Friday night, and all of Friday and Saturday, curled up at the end of our bed. She spent Saturday night curled up between us. She coughs a lot with the infection, but it’s not too bad. However, we didn’t want to leave her for too long, so we cancelled Saturday night’s outing.
She spent *last* night perched on perlmonger – I moved her off several times but she just went straight back. His sleep was therefore fairly minimal, and mine wasn’t much better.
Cost to date: £508 (to include a couple of visits I didn’t document).
Poor little chicken!
I know from personal (cat) experience how tricky chronic gingivitis is. P takes her 1/2 tablet wrapped in a piece of boiled chicken which seems to trick her sufficiently. When her mouth gets so bad she stops eating, though, there’s nothing I can do.
she’s a very picky eater at the best of times, and treats everything offered with great suspicion. We use a pill popper, but it’s a bit traumatic, really, which is why we were so pleased with the thought of this injection.
I’m really not very pleased with the vet – they asked Pete whether he thought she needed another jab, but he was guided by them; he’s not qualified to say, that’s why he *took* her to the vet. I’m quite alarmed at how fast she deteriorated, too.
Poor Bada! It’s so worrying when your cats are ill. I hope she gets better soon
I think I would query the bill if you had been asked to decide on your cat’s medication. That’s the vet’s job.
It sounds as though the first vet is probably a better bet, of course, I daresay it’s far more inconvenient to visit them, but that’s Life, isn’t it?.
My poor Phoebe had to lose a tooth owing to gum disease, but made a complete recovery. It was very worrying at the time because the poor baby had a fit after we brought her home from surgery. I don’t think I got any sleep that night, either.
It’s amazing how quickly your cat can be okay and then suddenly.. P is eating less at the moment which could be mouth related, or could just be her being picky. I wonder if we need to up the dose but I leave it for a bit just in case and then *pow* non-eating cat again.
We had to use a pill popper on Arrietty but had to stop after only a couple of uses as she would hyperventilate as soon as she would see it and she bit both me and Kevin, so I certainly understand.
As she got older, she lost her sense of smell, so putting pills in food wasn’t a problem. When she was younger she was suspicious as well.
I hope all works out. Poor kitty. It does my heart good to see good kitty parents out there.
Sound like a pretty rubbish vets! We use Avon Lodge vets on the Wells Road. Possibly a but far from you but they’ve always been very good with our cats and the rats in the past. They don’t overcharge either. When we took one cat back to have a cut her in her paw checked the vert only charged us half as we were in and out in 2 mins.
We have had two minute consults with Judith for which she didn’t charge us anything! Needless to say, we won’t be returning to the village vet.
Judith’s replacement is ok – it’s just that the village vet is walkable, and so more convenient. The cats’ welfare is far more important, however, so we’ll return to Hotwell Road.
if her gums are sore it’s going to put her off chewing, poor kit; is there nothing they can do for the underlying cause?
No – it’s an immune deficiency thing, which is why she’s on long-term steroids. Even taking out her teeth is not guaranteed to fix it, which is why we haven’t done it yet.
ack… with the pastes, I’ve found smearing along the edge of the mouth can work better than on the paw (and we won’t mention the time Simon thought Defurrum would work better on the pad of the paw)
Poor kitty!
Adam is the resident cat piller at our house. I wish I could come up with a reliable way to adminster drugs via their catnip mice.