Meda and I were out for lunch today when another customer walked over and asked how Toby is doing.
So just in case you’re also wondering, here’s the latest.
Beating the odds. That our vet, Ann Sakamoto at Hawaii Kai Veterinary Clinic, said about Toby after examining him Friday afternoon. We don’t have the hard, scientific results of his tests, which won’t be available until Tuesday. But he looks and acts pretty better as the days pass.
The night before we brought Toby home from the emergency vet center, we had a long talk with one of the vets. Toby seemed to be going downhill fast. When pushed, he gave Toby only a 10% chance of survival. At that point, we assumed that we would bring him home and then arrange euthanasia at home.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, sometime right after we had that conversation with the vet, Toby started eating. That’s what gave a glimmer of hope by the time we brought him home the next day.
And we’ve been able to see progress continuing since he got back home on Labor Day.
• He’s been eating canned food, a special formulation for cats with kidney disease. Yesterday I brought home a sample of the dry variety, since Toby used to prefer to graze on dry food, snacking several times a day. This turned out to be a success! Now he’s eating dry and canned food. He even wandered into the kitchen to take a taste of what I had out for Duke and Romeo.
• Toby started grooming again. We’ve seen him cleaning himself after eating the last couple of days. I’m assuming it’s a good sign, because cats stop grooming when they feel really terrible.
• He’s gotten over the labored breathing that had developed after the emergency vets tried to flush his kidneys but went beyond his system’s capacity to process the extra fluids, which then backed up and started to fill his chest cavity, putting pressure on heart and lungs. But that’s a thing of the past.
• And a real miracle. Yesterday, with some encouragement, Toby took a pill hidden in a Pill Pocket. And I’ve been successful with them for all his pills over the past two days. That’s huge!
• He’s making it easy for us to administer the subcutaneous fluids, which we’re getting into him each morning.
Thanks for all the support. Next update will be in a couple of days when we get Toby’s test results.
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Too Good! Congratulations.
Good to hear. Keeping the good cat thoughts going your way…
Best wishes for Toby and you and Meda- difficult decisions -but so far good news!
Thank you for letting us know. We wish the best for Toby.
Wonderful!
The update is much appreciated, and the news is very good! You are wonderful parents and deserve a bit of success on this challenging journey. He is such a dear little thing! Wishing all of you only the best.
Short term, to get him to eat, the Hills and the dry food are fine, but once he comes off the fluids you’re going to need to get some more water into him somehow or he’ll be back at the vets in a few months. You may need to keep him on, or put him back on, antibiotics, which isn’t the best for his kidneys. So hopefully, you either continue with the fluids indefinitely or add water to his food. Good luck Toby!
Toby’s diet and Pill Pockets reminds me so much of Tiki’s final diet. The vet had him on EVO grain-free canned food (it wasn’t cheap, but it was for poor old Tiki, so it was worth it.) Tiki liked it and I was glad that he was interested in eating. It also helped to get his bowel movements under control. I know they must’ve been painful, and the vet explained that it was most likely due to a poor cat food. Whoops! 🙁
Tiki was dying from FIV, so… it was a sad time. Once he started to show signs of aging and losing weight, that was pretty much the end. His bones started to show quickly, but he was still very much alert and very much “my” Tiki. 🙂
One thing about the Pill Pockets…I got different flavors for Tiki, but he preferred the duck flavored–the most stinky, disgusting-smelling Pill Pockets ever! Even Charley, our 70-lb dog, wouldn’t have anything to do with them. LOL!
RIP Tiki.
Toby has gone back to refusing to eat the pill pockets. So now I just use a small piece of a pill pocket to wrap the pill that I have to cut into quarters. But I then go through the manual pilling routine rather than try to get him to eat it. The pill pocket covering keeps the cut edges of the pill from tasting bad when it goes down.