ed@wucs.UUCP (Ed Macke) (11/29/85)
Hi! I do not normally read this newsgroup, so forgive me if this posting is out of place. I have a 10-year old neutered male cat who has stopped eating, become very lethargic, and lost about 25% of his body weight. The one vet I've been to has diagnosed it as kidney disease, and can offer no suggestions on treatment (ie there is none). My question is: Before I give up on my cat, does anyone out in netland know of any new 'state-of-the-art' treatments for kidney disease in cats? Has anyone heard of possible dialysis or transplants being done anywhere? If you can offer any rays of hope, please e-mail me at ...!ihnp4!wucs!wuibc!ed Please don't post to the net, because, as mentioned earlier, I do not normally read this group. Sincere thanks to any or all who respond. Ed Macke Computer Systems Lab Washington University 724 S. Euclid St. Louis, MO 63110 (314) 362-3120
freeman@spar.UUCP (Jay Freeman) (12/03/85)
[] In article <1279@wucs.UUCP> ed@wucs.UUCP (Ed Macke) writes: >I have a 10-year old neutered male cat who has stopped eating, become >very lethargic, and lost about 25% of his body weight. The one vet >I've been to has diagnosed it as kidney disease, and can offer no >suggestions on treatment (ie there is none). My question is: > >Before I give up on my cat ... A cat of mine recently developed an unidentifiable viral infection (known to be a virus because of reduced temperature and reduced white blood-cell count). He stopped eating, lost much weight, developed jaundice, etc etc. Six days of intensive care at a vet -- intravenous feeding and all -- did not halt his deterioration. They sent him home with much medicine and no great hope. I fed him by hand for several weeks, poking bean-sized dabs of high-quality wet cat food down his throat in sufficient quantity to provide him with normal nutritional intake. I also dribbled water into his mouth from a plastic squeeze bottle. He responded promptly to the food -- within a few hours he went from "limp cat" state to sitting up and looking at the world around him, and within a few days he was no longer on death's door, but was instead a basically strong animal fighting a disease. Within a few weeks he had (knock on wood) recovered completely, notwithstanding a severe bout with a bacterial secondary infection that he picked up when he was weak. (Antibiotics got that one.) It was a near thing, and I wouldn't care to try it again. However, I was strongly impressed that the "stop eating" behavior pattern of cats is often counterproductive. I chatted with a veterinary technician a little about it, and the best we could come up with was that it might be evolved behavior appropriate to a small predator -- once the (wild) animal is sufficiently sick, it makes more sense to try to recover on stored resources than to expend the energy and take the risk to hunt: A weak and uncoordinated animal is unlikely to hunt successfully, and more likely than usual to end up as someone else's dinner. So perhaps the evolutionary message that results in loss of appetite is not so much "eating isn't good for you" as "hunting isn't good for you". I don't know whether this applies to your pet, but I thought I would mention it. Good luck. (Hmn, this might be of sufficient interest to post to net, too.) -- Jay Reynolds Freeman (Schlumberger Palo Alto Research)(canonical disclaimer)