Kitty... in 2018

Ok… so I guess I’ll explain from the beginning so that it’s remotely understandable.

One of my cats has issues. Last August he had a stroke and I took him to the emergency vet and spent a small fortune on him. Before we could really figure out what exactly was going on with him, he had a second stroke. It was determined that he had polycythemia vera, which basically means his bone marrow was producing too many red blood cells. Typically a cat’s RBC count is around 30%, but his was around 70-80%. So his blood was super thick and he threw a clot and had a stroke. So he had to be bled every so often which includes sedating him, drawing blood and giving him iv fluid to water his blood down basically.

Around last December I made a last ditch effort and changed all his food out to grain free thinking maybe his body was having an allergic reaction to something. Well, it seemed to help, right after the change his RBC count came back to normal and he had been doing really good the last several months. Keep in mind the cat is only 4… he’s not old.

Then around a month ago he came down sick with a sinus infection. He saw the vet, got antibiotics and he got somewhat better so he got a second round of stronger antibiotics. He was better but never really got back to himself and he still wasn’t eating good. So he went to the vet on Monday because I was concerned he still wasn’t quite over the sinus infection.

Nope… not the case. He obviously isn’t feeling well but still tries to claw the vet because he’s just a fighter. Vet tries to give him a shot to just semi sedate him to draw blood but my cat is not having it so off to the little gas box he goes to be fully sedated. They draw his blood and he’s anemic… like wtf? This is the opposite end of the spectrum from where we were. My vet has never heard of an animal going between the 2 extremes before and tells me if he had more time he’d be writing a paper on my cat. He’s gone from 80% to 30% to 6%. He stains the blood to determine if the anemia is caused by the RBCs dying off too quickly, the bone marrow not producing enough RBCs, or internal bleeding. Turns out now the bone marrow is not producing enough RBCs so it’s autoimmune, so steroid shot. The steroid shot is good for a month. The vet is concerned that his count is too low to turn it back around. So we’re waiting and seeing. Then he would need the steroid shot once a month… which is complicated because you basically have to sedate him to do anything. He’s already on antiseizure meds 3x a day and it’s possible he’s having a weird reaction to one of the seizure meds. So I just don’t know. Oh, and apparently my fucking cat is also completely fucking blind and I just didn’t know…

So yeah… that’s what’s going on with my cat.