The boy is back!

My daughter and I brought Turmeric to the vet for a check up (driving into a wall of fog on the way!), as she was the most recovered of the cats that had gotten sick – all of which started just within the past few days. The vet checked her over, and she’s fine. It was just difficult to listen to her lungs, because of the purring! It did not take her long to settle in at the clinic at all, and she was more than happy to jump at the vet for attention. :-D

As for Keith, it was decided to try him on antibiotics for two weeks, first. He got an injection at the clinic, and we’ll be giving him half a pill, twice a day. If he gets and stays better after those two weeks, then he just got hit with what the other cats got, but harder. If he doesn’t, then it’s heartworms, and we need to take him back and figure out the next course of action. The vet does think it’s heartworms because, when she did an ultrasound of his heart, she thinks she actually saw a worm. It could have been a “heartstring”, but those should not be visible in an ultrasound.

Personally, I am leaning towards respiratory infection. Even this morning, he seemed a bit better than yesterday, and after we brought him home, he actually showed interest in food and water. Not much, but at least enough for a nibble and a lick. As for the other cats, after examining Turmeric and hearing the descriptions, it sounds like a feline herpes flare up. The clinic knows that both the inside cats and outside cats have it – we’ve brought various kitties for treatment over the past few years. What is possible is that the outside cats have a different strain than the inside cats. While treating Tuxedo Mask, as careful as we were about hand washing, etc., we could have exposed the inside cats to a new strain and, as the vet put it, the two were fighting it out, and some cats were being affected by it more than others. Which makes sense to me.

Also, if it does turn out to be heartworms, this will be the first time the vet has personally seen heartworms in a cat. She sees them in dogs fairly regularly, but it’s just so unusual for cats to get them.

So we will be monitoring Keith and medicating him for the next two weeks (unless he takes a turn for the worse and has to be taken back, of course). Thankfully, my older daughter filled all her slots for quick commissions and was able to pay for it. All those tests added up. :-(

As for the couple of other cats that seem to be having a harder time of it, it was recommended to have them in a steamy bathroom. So my younger daughter will be taking a long, hot bath tonight! With feline company :-D

I am hopeful that Keith will recover just fine.

The Re-Farmer