"For want of a nail
the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe
the horse was lost.
For want of a horse
the rider was lost.
For want of a rider
the battle was lost.
For want of a battle
the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want
of a horseshoe nail"
I have always fed my cats a premium foods, the kind that you get at a pet store. Well, about a month ago, I was grocery shopping and I was short on time, so I bought a big bag of cat food... It was one of the more expensive ones, but still about $10 cheaper than my regular 20lb. of premium. I THOUGHT NOTHING OF IT.
About 2 weeks later I noticed that we were having a 'piddle' problem, that one of the 4 cats was having accidents, which has NEVER happened since I have owned a cat. Well, after much investigative work, I discovered it was my 6 year old female. This cat had never been sick a day in her life, but by all observed symptoms she now had a bladder infection.
I took her to her Vet and had them withdraw some urine from the bladder. She had a whopping infection and a few small crystals. The doctor noticed that my cat also had little allergic looking bumps just above her eyes and the doctor asked if I had recently changed food. I said yes, and she told me to go back to the old brand, that the new may have a bad pH balance. But, like an idiot I totally forgot to go buy the old food (Avo-Derm). We put her on Clavamox for 7 days... 2 days after she was off, she began showing symptoms of an infection again.
I spoke with the Vet and admitted that I had stupidly forgot to change the diet. So we decided to go with another 7 days of antibiotics and to replace the food with Science Prescriptive - C/D-S... Well, all four of my cats barfed and barfed up the C/D-S and my cat with allergies chewed himself to pieces. (They were on it for a week.) I thought they would all adjust. But, this past Sunday/Monday my female cat (bladder infection kitty) began to vomit and vomit and vomit - clear, bile, food - everything.
Last night, after having observed her for about 3 hours and seeing that she wasn't holding even water down more than a couple of minutes and that I hadn't seen her urinate, I wisked her off to the emergency Vet. They couldn't see anything immediately wrong with her, she was about 6-8% dehydrated, which I guess isn't terribly dangerous, but I had them give her subcataneous fluids anyway.
However, I showed him her forehead, near the eyes and it was massed with allergic looking pustules, it had spread and spread to the outside of her ears and everything (Much, much worse than what the Vet saw on the first visit). Vet said she could be allergic to Clavamox, or maybe the new diet. The Vet told me to take her home and pull her off of food and water for 24 hrs. She is sitting in my extra bathroom alone and sulking. The only thing she has been able to keep down was a teeny tiny bit of tuna fish water.
The moral to this story? I saved $10 bucks on a bag of catfood but it cost me hundreds of dollars. Besides allergy kitty, we had never had any sick kitties in 6 years, this was the first grocery store food that they had eaten. I hope that we can get this all worked out. There will still be more money spent for allergy kitty and more tests on bladder kitty.
For the record, I think premiums are worth the extra cost!
) but they lack the muscles in their throat to vomit, so they can colic and possibly die! just something to try that may help if you are wanting to change their diet again.
