The Feline Conclusion

Ok, so I have you on the edge of your seats right? 


Well, here's what happened to our sweet cat:


This cat went home from the vet that he saw in mid-December. He was given an antibiotic injection because his owner could not pay for surgery and did not qualify for standard veterinary credit. 


The owner, after talking to some friends, decided to try peanut butter to help pass whatever was causing the problem. The cat vomited up 2 whole mice per the owner's report.


The cat continued to decline until I saw him last week. He had lost 3 lbs (major, HUGE percentage!) I found him to be very jaundiced and palpated a foreign body in his cranial abdomen. I told the owner the bottom line - the cat has a poor prognosis no matter what. Without surgery, he will die. With surgery, he  may still die. 


The owner clearly loved this cat very much and after talking to family found some funds.


We admitted kitty and did some baseline tests to make sure there were no underlying issues (feline leukemia/feline AIDS, a complete blood cell count, chemistry panel and a repeat x-ray). 


All things were pretty decent except for his liver values (not too bad) and his bilirubin (pretty darn high and indicative of gall bladder/liver issues).  The x-ray revealed his stomach to be full of something! 


So, after rehydrating him, we took him to surgery:

I spent a lot of time pulling out hundreds of wads of what I can only describe like "hair brush bristle" feeling objects. The stomach was FULL. No room for food or mice. Amazingly, the stomach lining was intact and there were NO perforations and THE rest of the intestines were NORMAL!

The bag of "goodies" that turned out to be.....part of a fake evergreen centerpiece Christmas display!

An upclose of these "barbed" plastic like things.
So after removing all these things. flushing out the stomach and checking everything out, I closed him up. He began eating well for us the next day! I will let you know how he does as I see him next week for a post-op check up!