TRIPAWDS: Home to 22974 Members and 2152 Blogs.
HOME » NEWS » BLOGS » FORUMS » CHAT » YOUR PRIVACY » RANDOM BLOG

Jill's Journey

Hopping her way towards a (hopefully) cancer free life three legs at a time

Weight Watchers – in reverse

Filed under: Uncategorized — rica55 at 9:55 pm on Sunday, August 18, 2013

This post is a little bit late.  I am currently in my “busy season” at work, so I just haven’t had the time to update.  Which also means, Jill has me freaked out at the worst possible time of year for me.

A week ago I brought Jill to her vet because she had peed outside the litter box again.  This has been happening on and off since she peed all over herself a few months ago, when we had ruled out a UTI.  I would say it would happen about once a week, maybe once every other week.  Now, I DO have another cat as we all know, so is it possible it’s Jack?  I suppose so…but since she did pee all over herself that one time, I’d say unlikely.  So I took her in last Saturday, because I was about to go on the road for work and wanted her looked at before I left.

The urinalysis came back clean for bacteria, but had some red blood cells in it, so it was sent off for a culture.  But during her physical exam, a new problem arose.  She was down to 8 pounds, 13 ounces.  She weighed in at 9 pounds 5 ounces 2 weeks earlier and 10 pounds 2 ounces 6 weeks earlier, so that’s 15% of her body weight shes lost in 6 weeks.  Not so good.

Now the vet asks me, “is she eating?”  Well…I think so?  Jack and Jill are grazers, so I fill their food bowl once a week and they eat from it throughout the week.  I see her go into the kitchen now and again, but do I know if she’s eating like usual?  Well, no….I work a lot, so I’m not home all day to watch her like a hawk.  So is the weight loss due to the fact that shes not eating or something else?  Dont know.

We decide between her regular vet and the oncologist that we’re going to first try to take her off Leukeran (which she has now been taking metronomically for 8 weeks) and see if that changes anything.  It does seem like it would be a big coincidence that the weight loss all started when she began metronomics.  She has had on and off vomiting and diarrhea since being on it, but I started giving her a pepcid with the Leukeran and that had helped.

Now I am watching her eat like a hawk when I am home and I am noticing that she isn’t really eating all that much, but again, I don’t really have anything to compare it to.  Her vet suggested I give her some fancy feast with the gravy in it.  So I got her a can of that tonight and the second I popped the can open her nose was going a mile a minute!  She ran over to it and slurped up every morsel of gravy in there – but didnt eat the meat.  Not so unusual for her, she has never liked soft food.

So, she gets weighed in one week from today.  I’m pretty much terrified.  If her weights gone down, she’ll have to go for an abdominal ultrasound and what that could mean, frightens the heck out of me.  I should also mention, they tested her blood right away and all looked perfect.  Liver function, thyroid, sugar level….like the healthiest cat in the world.

Besides the weight loss, she’s doing marvelously.  Playing, alert, happy…and no peeing accidents in over a week.  So we’ll see…here’s hoping…

Here is Jill slurping up her gravy:

and a pic of her hangin out with her brudda:

jj



6 Comments »

903

   Michelle

August 18, 2013 @ 10:11 pm   Reply

Keep eating Jill. No more freaking mom out. Hugs and love Glad all blood work came back normal.

xoxoxox

Michelle & Sassy

904

   benny55

August 18, 2013 @ 10:14 pm   Reply

Okay Erica, you have to quickly add one more picture.

Can you “prop” Jack up on the sofa with him leaning back, resting on the arm of the chair, tummy facing camera. You already have a picture like that, but ot with both of them in the photo. Now, put Jill next to him, same position, tummy showing.

Is there ANY doubt which cat is eating all the food??

That’s great that all the tests have come back showi g a reallyhealthy Jilly! So glad her attitude is happy and she’s really enjoying life!

Great photo of Brudda and Jill! Jill’s “working the camera” and Jack just looks completely indifferent.

((((((hugs)))))

Salt and Happy Hannah

905

   chris

August 18, 2013 @ 11:46 pm   Reply

Jill! Stop scaring your mom!!!!

I know this is hard, but Salt’s post made me laugh. Jack does look like he gets all the food.

My friend had 2 cats and brought the cat that was getting fat and laaaazy into the vet. They said he was overweight but fine. A few weeks later they brought the other cat in, and that cat had lost a lot of weight. They were like, you’ve been worrying about the wrong cat. Same situation with them grazing off the same food.

Jill will be ok. She has to be

906

   virginia and dixie

August 19, 2013 @ 8:38 am   Reply

hi Erica, jilly and jack – gosh how frightening – personally I get freaked when my Dixie loses weight too – which for awhile it seemed like she was. I think her and jill – having both been amped – have a cosmic connection of some sort. anyway, i know my kitties – Pixie and Dixie – love love love the wet food. nowadays the vets say that wet food is better for cats – who knew! wait a week though and that might change. maybe just try some of the wet food in a bowl each day? and see if that does the trick. i think they get bored of dry food – which i too leave out for them. anyhow – my kitties just love whiskas which i know is junk food but they do love those packs. but as i said they like all wet food even the good stuff. my (and dixies) thoughts are with you and jilly. finally – i LOVE the pic of jill with her brudda jack! how absolutely comfortable and content they look together. luv xox Virginia & dixie

907

   Christine

August 19, 2013 @ 11:24 am   Reply

Hey Erica.. I can only go from my experience from Frankie.. but.. because they burn off more energy being a tripawd.. I put him on a “higher” calorie food.. Perhaps try that with Jilly? maybe mixed with a little bit of gravy..? it’s all trial and error with food isn’t it with our pets?
good luck with it…
and LOVE the pictures…. yea.. I can tell who’s feasting like a king!!!

908

   3dogmom

August 19, 2013 @ 2:47 pm   Reply

Okay, Jill…time to eat your Friskies…Brudda is eating way too much…Sally nailed it!

Being on the dog side of things we have played with the raw diet…not sure what the cat folks do…but that may be something to check into…We don’t do raw anymore…but actually cook turkey and mix with rice…but that is a whole other conversation. (HAHAHA…had a spelling error I caught…I had typed “cook tucker” didn’t want you to think we were killling off other pets!!)

Hugs!
Ilene & Harley

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>