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froggy7 · May 10, 2008, 12:31 PM

First, I am seeing a vet about this. Just trying to get some other thoughts.

My Rana-cat has always been small... I think her heaviest weight was 6 pounds, 4 ounces. But she's always been in really great shape... very athletic, the kind of cat that vets love to point out as what a healthy cat should look and feel like. Back in March, when we went to the vet she weighed 5.5 pounds. Which is a large enough change that my vet was concerned. So we did blood work, which all came back in normal limits, although the red cells were on the low side. And her body condition was good, so the vet just chalked it up to something to keep an eye on.

Well, I have moved since then. And I felt something was off. So, found a vet out here, and just found out that she's lost another half pound in the last two months. Her teeth seem fine. She's eating the same as always, no bathroom problems that I can see. She's lost some muscle tone, and is being lazier than normal. We're running the blood work again and seeing if anything shows up different this time. But I won't have the results until Monday, so I'm wondering what avenues I should be considering. And she isn't acting hungry... there is food left at the end of the day, so it's not just a case of feeding her more.

She is 10 or 11, so it could just be age catching up with her. She has a heart murmur (ideopathic mitral valve regurgitation) which has been untreated, since it seems to be pretty stable. Her kidneys seem small for her size, but there has never been a problem before because of that. But it could be the start of kidney failure. Could be thyroid problems. Anything else?

morgaine300 · May 10, 2008, 01:37 PM

Well, darn, I went to look at your profile and my whole post disappeared. I hate when the back button doesn't include things I filled in!

Sigh -- so here goes again. Weight loss could be a sign of all kinds of stuff, but the things I'm familiar with are diabetes and kidney disease. If it were diabetes, I would expected you to be seeing a lot of extra drinking and peeing. What does she eat? Generally diabetes comes with the high carb dry food.

As for kidney disease, the one thing about that is that by time it shows up in blood work, the kidneys can be at 70-75% failure already. Meaning, those other lab results could look fine but still be a problem and you wouldn't know it. And clinical signs often do not show up until later.

Weight loss can be common in a cat with kidney problems, due to either inappetance and/or anemia. You didn't mention inappetance, but is it normal for her to leave food? You did mention the low RBC and muscle wasting. But... that type of thing doesn't usually happen early. That is, with nothing having shown in the blood work in March, I would not expect that to be happening at this point in time. But every cat is different and you never know. I certainly wouldn't discount it. Make sure you get a urinalysis too.

Having done a quickie search, I also found it can be leukemia and heart disease, as well as the hyperthyroidism you mentioned. (Be sure to be a T4, though they can be costly.)

I don't consider 10-11 that old. I usually see renal disease and heart disease in older cats. But with small kidneys, that can actually happen at even younger ages. I don't really like thinking of anything as "age catching up with them." Although vets can treat it that way. i.e. shrug it off as old age and not really do anything about it. Or worse, not bother to tell you because it's just old age so what's the point? Sad, but I see that a lot. Make sure you get a copy of those lab results and look at them for yourself.

You're welcome to PM the lab results when you get them. I know only a little about heart disease, and next to nothing about hyperT and leukemia, but if it's something I'm familiar with, you're welcome to PM and ask anything you want. I also know of some good resources for some of that.

dreadamico · May 10, 2008, 01:57 PM

Are you feeding her wet food? Adding some to her diet may help her keep weight on. I actually took my cat off wet food because he was getting too chubby and that helped him slim down.

morgaine300 · May 10, 2008, 02:01 PM

Originally Posted by dreadamico

I actually took my cat off wet food because he was getting too chubby and that helped him slim down.

No wet food can also be the culprit of things like diabetes and kidney disease. Cats were never made to eat dry kibble. Perhaps you were just feeding too much of the stuff. If you were going by the instructions on the can, that's generally way too much food.

froggy7 · May 10, 2008, 05:12 PM

I have two cats... the 6-pounder and one that is pushing 10-11 pounds, and, as the vet puts it, wouldn't be hurt by losing a pound or so. Their entire lives (except during the food recall), they have split a 3-oz ca of food a day (half in the morning and half in the evening) and 2/3 of a cup of California Natural dry food, put out in the evening and left out all day. If they leave a fair amount of the dry food by the next evening, I give a little less, if the plate's licked clean, I give a little more. They have always been really good about self-regulating until this last year. Up until recently the wet food was more of a treat than actual food, since they would quite often just lick off the gravy and leave the chunks. I do notice that they seem to be eating more of the wet and less of the dry than they used to do.

The vet also said that she was slightly dehydrated this morning... nothing major, just not quite fully hydrated.

And it's not exactly muscle wasting. Rana's always been a very athletic cat, and that 6 pounds was always solid muscle. She feels softer now, but that may be because she is house-bound and not exercising as much. But I do feel like I could touch my fingers in that hollow spot they get right in front of the back legs without too much effort.

froggy7 · May 13, 2008, 06:35 PM

I go the lab reports back. As the vet put it: "She wished that all her feline patients had these kinds of results." Just looking at the labs, she's the picture of health. The only slight off readings were a slight anemia, and slightly low platelets. Which showed up last time, so that may be significant. On the other hand, Rana apparently has really small veins, so it's hard to do blood draws on her, so maybe that's just an artifact. They are advising X-rays to see if there are internal problems. I am actually going to go to my old vet, who is a feline-only practice, and see what she thinks based upon all the current data.

froggy7 · May 16, 2008, 07:51 PM

Well, I just got back from the second vet, and she says that there are two possibilities. The first is the simplest: She just may not like the food that I've been feeding her. She thinks that they may have altered the formula or source of ingredients, because she is seeing several cats who have started turning up their noses at it. Since I was planning on picking up cat food this weekend, that's an easy change to make.

The second is that we did a urinalysis, which showed what looks like a few cocci. Which means that she may have a low-grade UTI. She's not showing any of the other signs, but she says it may be enough to have her under the weather a little and to be off her food. We are culturing and treating preemptively with Clavamox.

Hopefully one or the other of these will turn out to be the reason for the weight loss, and she'll get back to her proper weight.

morgaine300 · May 17, 2008, 01:30 PM

The slight anemia would concern me a bit, simply cause that can get out of hand and lead bad places.

It's possible it's the food. I had a friend who always fed the same food because she had a billion cats (never learned how to say no) and could only afford to feed them if she could get those big 20 pound bags. And once the store didn't have the same flavor. So one cat decided he didn't like this flavor and wouldn't eat. It got worse and worse, and the cat ended up with fatty liver disease. It totally amazed me that this cat would refuse to eat a flavor he wasn't fond of, to the point of getting fatty liver disease! But it happened. (I got him eating by giving him steak, which I cooked just very slightly in the microwave, and the smell and juiciness of it got to him enough that suddenly he realized how very hungry he was, and after that I started getting him to eat other stuff. Once eating again, he turned out to be quite the pig!)

Er.. anyway, you didn't say the kind of canned food. But I keep track of food quite a bit, and there are some companies that change recipes quite often. The California Natural dry only became available around here recently, so I'm not familiar enough with it to know if that changed. This is one reason I don't feed the same food all the time. If that's all the cat is used to and the recipe changes, they may not eat anything else, or they could react to it physically. Plus, every company has their own ideas of what is a good food, so I figure a variety is a better way to go. Kind of like people oughta do. (Except my cats eat way better than I do. LOL.)

I'd still keep an eye on the kidney thing. As I said before, it doesn't show up for quite a while in lab work, so it doesn't necessarily mean there isn't something going on there. Given the small kidneys and her age, I'd want to stay on top of that. I'd also be tempted to start cutting back on the dry and increase the wet food. You even mentioned possible dehydration. A lot of cats are dehydrated. Dry food has very little moisture and most cats simply don't drink enough to make up for the lack of moisture. Which isn't helping the kidneys.

froggy7 · May 17, 2008, 05:50 PM

She generally won't eat wet food. Lick the gravy off it, sure, but not actually eat the meat bits. ANd the kinds of food I can feed her are rather limited, because she tends to vomit her food back up, and that frequency goes up if I feed her food with fish or corn in it. And when you eliminate those two things from cat food, you aren't left with a lot of choices. I'm going to try Royal Canin's Skin Care food, simply because it's the only one that they had at the store that didn't have fish or corn.

And when I went through the actual blood work, I could see why the vet's like her. She is smack in the middle of 98% of the ranges. And there didn't seem to be anything about anemia in the report. Low platelets, although it had the note that the platelets were clumped so couldn't be counted, and they were judged as "adequate".

The second vet also put her weight at 5.5 pounds, which is much better than 5. Which is one reason I want to get back to an established vet... she is very wiggly and hard to weigh, and at this weight a difference of ounces matters. So I don't want to have to worry about whether a scale is in tolerance or not.

And yes, I keep an eye on the pets in general. We do 6-month visits to keep on top of things, mainly because of their ages and the fact that all of my pets have some issues. Her kidneys and heart, little Pyret has no teeth (a result of Lymphocytic-Plasmacytic Gingivitis Stomatitis), and Trink is dealing with a bulging disk. So I try to keep them all healthy and happy.

morgaine300 · May 17, 2008, 06:48 PM

She generally won't eat wet food. Lick the gravy off it, sure, but not actually eat the meat bits.

What about the pate, ground style... that doesn't have any bits to eat. My one cat is kind of like that. He'll sort of eat stuff with pieces but not nearly as well as he eats the plain ground style.

ANd the kinds of food I can feed her are rather limited, because she tends to vomit her food back up, and that frequency goes up if I feed her food with fish or corn in it. And when you eliminate those two things from cat food, you aren't left with a lot of choices. I'm going to try Royal Canin's Skin Care food, simply because it's the only one that they had at the store that didn't have fish or corn.

Allergies? Cats weren't really meant to be eating corn anyway. It's just cheap filler. (Well, not so cheap anymore.) In fact, you may be needing to avoid all grains. It's not difficult to find foods without the corn (even some cheap ones), but many foods sneak the seafood in regardless of what the flavor is. You pretty well have to go to the highest premium brands to get exactly what the can says it is. I don't know where you are so don't know how easily those can be found. Fortunately Petsmart is getting more and more of these, plus there's some local health food stores that carry some alternative brands.

Low platelets, although it had the note that the platelets were clumped so couldn't be counted, and they were judged as "adequate".

That happens a lot. They can't count them when they're clumped.

Sounds like you're dealing with some of the carp other people I know are. Just from running a group online, I see people with cats that have about 3 billion problems each. Of course, one person I know takes all the sick ones home from the shelter, so she brings that on herself. ;)

froggy7 · May 17, 2008, 07:03 PM

Originally Posted by morgaine300

What about the pate, ground style... that doesn't have any bits to eat. My one cat is kinda like that. He'll sorta eat stuff with pieces but not nearly as well as he eats the plain ground style.

That doesn't have gravy, so she'll just ignore it entirely. :)

And you have to understand.. I tend to be a hypervigilant person when it comes to my pets. I do have some background in physiology (human, though). And my vets have come out and said that because I do know what I am talking about, they pay more attention when I say "something's just not right". Most people would look at Rana-cat and say that there is nothing wrong with her.

We'll see if these changes put some meat back on her.

morgaine300 · May 18, 2008, 03:43 PM

Originally Posted by froggy7

And you have to understand.. I tend to be a hypervigilant person when it comes to my pets. I do have some background in physiology (human, though). And my vets have come out and said that because I do know what I am talking about, they pay more attention when I say "something's just not right". Most people would look at Rana-cat and say that there is nothing wrong with her.

That's the way to be. :-) From working with lots of sick cats, I've come to pay attention to the little details. It's definitely better to be this way, cause you'll more likely catch one of those things early that catch most people off guard. (Like getting blood work, which most people don't do.)