Having owned cats for 19 years now, Rule No. 1 in our house is DO NOT ASSUME.
We have learned from experience to never assume when it comes to a change in your cat’s behavior. As cats age, we assume they become less active because they are getting older. We assume they don’t eat as well because they are being picky. I’m not saying these two things will never be the case. Every cat is different, but we have made these mistakes, and I would like to briefly elaborate.
A few year ago, when Jasmine was still with us, she would stay on the back of the couch most of the day, sleeping. We just assumed this was normal for her age. After all, she was around 15 years old at the time. When she peed outside the litter box one day, it was an immediate trip to the vet as this usually means something else is going on. In her case, it was a UTI, so antibiotics were given. Except it didn’t go away. We later found out it was a kidney infection with a bacteria that was resistant to quite a few antibiotics. We had it cultured at a lab, and Jasmine was on doxycycline for 6 months to get rid of the infection. And with the infection gone, she was more active again.
Targét, our oldest at 18 right now, will have times where he barely eats, but his BUN and creatine are high enough to be in the renal failure stage at this point. When those numbers get too high, they feel nauseated, so they do not want to eat. With him, it is somewhat age related, but cats of any age could have kidney disease. So it’s best not to assume and to get them checked with a blood work panel just to make sure all the organs are functioning properly. We’ve known about Targét’s kidney disease for a while now, and he’s taking medicine to hopefully help him feel better, but some days, he just doesn’t eat well.
Bailey, who is 15, has always been weary of me for some reason. We’ve had him and his brother since they were about 2 months old, but the boyfriend is definitely Bailey’s human. Three times in the past few years, Bailey has turned on me and bit the holy crap out of me when I went to pick him up for whatever reason at the time (once was to lift his tail to see if he had poop on his butt; another was to pick him up off the floor to give him his medication). The last time he bit me was the end of July this year, and I had to take antibiotics. And 2 weeks afterwards, he wouldn’t show up in the morning for breakfast because I feed them in the morning. But he would eat later when the Alex fed him. He was also smacking and picking through his food, taking FOREVER to eat, which is not like him. He usually inhales his food. Alex figured he was making sure there weren’t any pills in his food. I used to put pill pockets in his food for his morning meds, and it was never an issues since he inhaled his food. Then there were a few times he would chew around the pills and spit them out. And then he stopped eating the pill pockets all together. So at the end of July, I went to pick him up to give him the medication, and he bit the holy crap out of me before I could even get him picked up all the way. When Bailey started to not show for a few meals with Alex, he went to the vet. After 3 visits, and him almost not eating anything by that point, he had exploratory surgery, and they discovered he had large-cell lymphoma in his stomach.
Here in the past few months, we’ve been trying to get Pandora to eat something else besides the raw chicken we grind and use a completer to add what they need to the food. But she hasn’t really liked or wanted to eat anything else. A few times, she hasn’t ate all the chicken either. Time to go to the vet. It may sound paranoid, since, after all, we are trying to get her to eat different foods – but . . . DO NOT ASSUME! We had a full-panel blood work sent out for her since it tests a few more things than the in-house blood work – and her ALT (liver enzyme) was elevated, and her triglycerides were high. Our vet thinks it might be a persistent parasite of some type (poor girl has had some issues over the past year to make her think this), so I collected some stool Friday a week ago and sent it in a prepackaged envelope so they could test for antigens. We are still waiting on those results.
These are just a few instances in which assuming one thing turned out to be wrong. I used to think I was being paranoid, but I would rather be paranoid than not know for sure if something is going on with one of our babies. If any of our cats’ behaviors change for more than one day, they go to the vet for a check to make sure. So if you are worrying about something one of your cats is doing because it’s out of the norm, I would take him/her to the vet. If nothing obvious is wrong during the physical exam, ask for the ‘senior panel’ blood work since it tests for more things than a basic in-house CBC.
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