We moved across the country about a month ago. Before we left our cat larry wasn’t eating so I took him into the vet for a check up. I also noticed his stomach was bloated looking (it has been for quite some time- he’s been to the vets office numerous times and each vet has dismissed it).
Background:
Larry is a 9-11 year old male. He’s been a barn cat up until last year when he found and adopted us. Since we’ve had him he’s been treated for severe ear infections (he has polyps so we do our best to manage them) and also has an inoperable growth on the back of his tongue that will likely block his throat at some point meaning we will have to put him down.
All in all we’ve dropped thousands of dollars on this little guy, but he’s worth it. Currently, he is a happy indoor cat with a great personality. When he begins to show signs of discomfort we’ll make the decision to put him down.
Back to my original question- I took him to the vet because he wasn’t eating and his stomach has been bloated. The vet did an X-ray-then said he might have gas.
Gas?! I pulled out my copy of Larry;s medical records and started suggesting things to the vet (I have copies because I’ve taken him to a few different vets for their opinions). The vet agreed to do a blood test to determine if there was anything wrong. He then gave him a steroid shot, pumped him full of liquids, and prescribed oral antibiotics. I brought Larry home and he started eating again/was back to normal. When the lab results came back the vet called and gave my husband this long explanation about how he may or may not have liver disease. The vet then asked how Larry was doing and my husband told him he was back to normal. The vet then said, “That’s odd. I wouldn’t have expected him to get better.”
You can see where this is going. 200 dollars worth of inconclusive tests- basically we were told to keep an eye on him and nothing made sense to the vet.
We’ve been in our new state for a month and Larry has been doing well. He no longer has access to the outdoors (at the old place we couldn’t restrict him) and his ears seem to be much better. Because we suspected he may have liver disease we stopped feeding him anything with fish and have increased his wet food diet. Unfortunatley we have two other cats so eliminating dry food completely is out of the question as it’s out in the open.
I’m writing this because while he’s doing better- his stomach still looks bloated. I bought this expensive brand of drycat food that is mainly meat, unfortunatley I didn’t notice there was also fish in it. That seemed to give him a little bit of a problem but I got rid of it and he seems better.
I guess what I’m asking is if anyone has any ideas or advice as to what I should do.