Cat Lax
9 July 2007
I was going to write a mildly amusing anecdote Thursday evening about cat constipation, but something kept holding me back. I couldn’t adequately describe what has been happening with Harley for the past days or weeks, but something deep down inside told me constipation was just the tip of the iceberg.
As long-term readers know, Harley is the baby of The Cats of Doom. Granted, at 6 years old she isn’t much of a baby anymore, but she is the baby of my brood.
Her homecoming story is a rather bland one. Dawn had a mama cat that had kittens and I ended up with one. The story of her name is a little more interesting: A. helped me name her and we decided to call her Harley because at the time she was a hell kitten. Later, we teased that she was aptly named since she had become somewhat of a “hog.”
Rather sadly for us, Harley did not live up to her name as a hell kitten or cat. My biker kitty has the most timid personality of any cat I have ever known. I have often thought to check in the dictionary under “scaredy cat” to see if perhaps her picture is there.
I thought when I moved back to the U.S. and Harley was around my family that she might warm up to other people. Apparently there was a week or so when I was gone on vacation and Mom was feeding them that Harley let Mom pet her, but for the most part, she hides from any foot traffic going in or out of my room.
Therefore, as you can imagine, Harley definitely does not care for my seven-year old niece even though my niece is very respectful of her “cat space.” My niece doesn’t try to cuddle her and except for the occasional peek under the bed to say “hello,” my niece leaves Harley alone.
Unfortunately for Harley, my niece has been frequenting the premises regularly this summer, and as a result, Harley took to hiding in the closet or under the bed. When it was just the cats and me, Harley was still her sweet self and was happy to play with the catnip mice or have her morning cat treat.
But about a week ago, Harley became more withdrawn than normal and began hissing at me when I tried to coax her out of her hidey-hole. I started to wonder if she was developing behavioral problems as a result of my niece’s daily visits into our domain, so I all but banned my niece from my bedroom (Harley’s safe haven) and tried to encourage Harley to be more “social” when we were alone.
When I extracted her from under the bed long enough to hold her, she acted strangely. She seemed very tense and weak at the same time. Her coat looked unkept, she was lethargic, and when I petted her it seemed to me that her throat felt a tad swollen. On Thursday afternoon when she tried to walk across the room for a cat treat she seemed to be dragging her back legs. I had been concerned before, but at that point I became alarmed. I called the vet and he asked me to bring her in right away.
I told him my suspicions that it might be behavioral, but he wanted to rule out any medical problems first. Upon a physical exam, the vet concluded Harley was probably constipated! He gave me some laxatives, told me she should have a bowel movement by Monday, and sent me on my merry way. At that point it was a funny story and some blogging material, but something about Harley’s condition kept nagging at me and I never got around to writing anything.
I gave the laxatives as directed, but by Saturday Harley didn’t show any improvement. I was worried at that point, but since I wasn’t sure how long it should take the laxatives to work I decided to wait until Monday (today). After all, the vet told me we should have some results by Monday and if not to bring her back.
I held her most of the weekend while I monitored her food and water consumption (barely any) and watched her trips to the litter box (there were a couple of attempts, but nothing happened). I noticed she was dragging her back legs more and more all the time and became more and more troubled.
I called the vet at 8:00 this morning and further examination showed that not only had she not had a bowel movement; she barely had any feeling in her back legs. The vet remarked that she seemed to be displaying neurological symptoms and that they recommended an enema, followed by x-rays and blood work.
I saw the dollar signs lining up in my head, but I gave the go-ahead. The x-rays showed the bowel problems we already knew about and the in-house blood work was inconclusive. As I ticked off a few more dollar signs, I agreed to have the blood work sent to the state lab for analysis. We won’t know anything until tomorrow, but one of the worse case scenarios involves a diagnosis of Feline Infectious Peritonitis.
I know I can be a little on the melodramatic side when it comes to my cats and I always imagine the worse, but in this case I think I am justified: FIP is fatal.
