It has been a somewhat busy week at the vet for the Commune. We dropped off Miss Piggy on Tuesday morning and then did a big six cat visit on Tuesday afternoon. It took up our vet’s entire afternoon. We had C3Po, Ferrell Brown, Bumble, Cadeuceus, Triton, and Grady.

Miss Piggy went in Tuesday morning after a 12 hour fast in order to have blood drawn for a special GI panel that gets sent off to Texas A&M. I will let you know in a blog post when we have results.

C3PO has been feeling much better from when we took him in last month. His eyes are brighter, his coat is brighter, and he is putting on weight. He did have a fever, which was odd. Doc ran a follow up CBC panel to check to see if his white cell count was down like everything showed it should be. It was actually UP! Now we don’t know what we are dealing with, but the first test is for a growing coronavirus titer - which could indicate the dreaded FIP when lined up with the fever and growing white cell count. We are waiting on results.

Ferrell Brown was back in again. It was his first time seeing doc in about 3 weeks. He had no fever, had lost more weight, and was dealing with some upper-respiratory symptoms like sneezing and such. Doc wanted to try to get a sample of the fluid that the other doctor saw in his abdomen a couple of weeks ago - assuming the amount of fluid would have grown. Nope! It was all gone. They did check his kidneys again (this was a better ultrasound machine) and they both said that his kidneys are diseased. Like some sort of congenital issue - not like normal kidney disease. It is not FIP, which we could have treated. It is not lymphoma, which we could have treated. It is something that we can not treat. All we can do is support his body. We are heartbroken. He is such a special cat to us.

Bumble had not been doing well. On an exam, doc decided it was just due to an upper respiratory infection and gave us some new medicine to treat him with.

Cadeuceus had just been laying about and not racing around causing trouble, so we were a bit concerned about him. doc examined him and saw nothing on the exam except a fever, otherwise just a nice young cat. He decided to draw some blood and run a test. Sure enough his white cell count was up. He was fighting some general infection. He got antibiotics, and he is already feeling better!

Triton had an eye that was winking and runny an black goopy. Doc examined him, stained the eye, saw no lesions, and prescribed some eye drops for a few days.

Grady had been having trouble breathing. Doc listened to him and wanted to take an x-ray of his chest. He said something was acting similar to pneumonia but not quite. I personally don’t understand lungs and I don’t remember what he said specifically. I am sorry. He was prescribed this new antibiotic and nebulizer treatments.

We were there from 3pm until closing. It was a LONG visit.

The Veterinary Review March 4, 2021

Copper's Cat Commune is a nonprofit cat sanctuary dedicated to the lifetime care of a limited population of ill, disabled, immune compromised, senior, or otherwise adoption challenged cats. All Commune photography by matt & Mimi Baker of the Commune unless otherwise stated.