With senior cats, it’s almost as if everything’s completely find until everything’s completely not fine. A few days after International Cat Day when our senior cats Sapphy, Sylvie and Topaz all tootled up to the vet for their annual check-up and vaccinations, my lovely brown and white tabby cat Sapphy started having breathing difficulties. We initially suspected it was because of a medication the vet prescribed for her anxiety spraying.
After an overnight stay at her local vet clinic on the following Sunday night, she was stabilised and the cause investigated. Her breathing apparently got up to an alarming number of breaths per minute and she was put on oxygen. Despite the x-rays showing fluid in the lungs and abdomen, Sapphy was able to come home on Monday.
Living down in the suburbs with my senior cat Miss Soph who’s also an old lady cat, I always feel a bit split between the two. Especially in this situation, being far away and hearing news via text and phone isn’t the same as being there with her. But she was in good hands, and I was able to go along with my mum to pick her up on the Monday morning.
I stayed for a week up at my parent’s place, making sure that Sapphy was stable and taking her prescribed frusemide twice a day, a diuretic designed to move the fluid out of her lungs and abdomen. This seemed to help and by Friday I thought the situation was resolved. So I tootled back home to the suburbs feeling sort of relieved that she was better.
What Happened Next With Sapphy
The next day (Saturday) I got a call from my dad saying there was nothing to worry about, but Sapphy had started to breathe faster now that she was being weaned off the frusemide. After many calls and liaising with my veterinarian aunt, it was decided that we’d see how she went with more frusemide and wean her off more gradually. If she was medication dependent (which was suspected) then further investigations at the Small Animal Specialist Hospital (SASH, where they had up to date tech and all the resources to do some diagnostic investigative processes) were needed to find out the cause.
The following Wednesday (last week at the time of writing this) Mum brought her down to SASH, picking me up on the way.
The SASH
She was admitted through emergency due to being in the category of “respiratory distress” and Mum and I waited while she was taken through to have her vitals measured and some tests done.
It was quite the wait, but we appreciated the special cat waiting section, sort of secluded from curious dogs and the Feliway was pumpin’.
When we were called into a consult room, we were told that Sapphy would be staying overnight, and maybe for a couple of additional nights because they wanted to do further tests to determine the diagnosis.
The vet person who talked to us asked some questions, and go over potential causes.
When it was time to leave, we were asked if we wanted to “say goodnight” to Sapphy or just go. I felt awful, but I didn’t think going in and seeing her in an oxygen cage would do anyone any favours. Me losing it completely wouldn’t help anything, especially not Sapphy. It felt selfish and awful, but I left her in the best of care.
It was an uneasy night, but on Thursday morning we were told we were able to pick her up that afternoon. I packed up and went with my mum to pick Sapphy up and take her back to her home at my parent’s.
You might think that Sapphy would be so happy to see us, to see me, but she was giving me serious how dare you eyes. Even in the car on the way home she gave me the cold shoulder. But when she was home, she perked up and seemed much better, purring in her loud motor-sounding purrs.
Over the weekend, if I didn’t know she was so unwell, I wouldn’t know she was unwell.
Sapphy’s Health
So what did they find and conclude from her overnighter at SASH?
Suspected pulmonary oedema (fluid within the lung space) secondary to congestive heart failure most likely due to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
It didn’t quite sink in while I was there, but I had many quiet cries about it that day and the next as the seriousness and what that actually meant about her life expectancy sunk in.
Here’s what the report said: “Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a condition in which the heart muscle becomes abnormally thick. The thickened heart muscle is stiff and does not function normally. In severe cases, it impairs the ability of the heart to relax and fill with blood, and this can ultimately lead to heart failure.” Really nice reading, especially the bit about “other possible complications of severe HCM include thromboembolism and sudden death.” But of course this is all important to know.
As for congestive heart failure (CHF), this is “the condition in which fluid begins to build up within the lungs or chest cavity secondary to severe heart disease and excessive fluid pressure within the vessels.” Medical therapy is then used.
They think she’s probably been dealing with this for months and years, but recently it’s reached the point where she’s now dependent on medications to compensate.
Because she was so stressed at SASH, they decided the best thing would be to send her home with medication so she could calm down a bit before having an echocardiogram heart ultrasound to formally diagnose her heart condition. She’s booked in at their earliest possible time next Thursday.
With all that and until the Thursday tests, they gave us frusemide to give her twice a day, and clopidogrel (Piax) to prevent the complications.
What’s Goin’ On Now
So far so good; she’s doing all her usual things, purring a great deal, sitting in the sunshine, wandering about the property, eating, drinking, peeing, pooping, and like I said, if I didn’t know there was anything wrong with her I wouldn’t know anything was wrong with her. Apart from her breathing being a bit unusual.
The prognosis at the moment is very uncertain. I take the above normal behaviours as positive signs, but obviously not drawing any conclusions until the echocardiogram on Thursday. I hope that Sapphy is the small percentage HCM patient that will “stabilise and do well on medical therapy for many years” rather than in the category of HCM patients that are expected to live “6-12 months with medications.” Although they have also written, “Some cats do not live this long, while others can live much longer.”
With these meds that we’re giving her, she takes the frusemide happily in some juice from a can of red salmon, mixed with the liquid frusemide, and a little bit of warm water to make it warm if it’s been refrigerated.
The Piax is trickier – it must taste extremely bitter and we had to resort to going to her local vet and buying a pill popper to administer this. Despite being old, she’s strong, so it typically takes a few goes to get it. My sister has had the best luck, with the makings of a vet nurse with her calm administering of medication.
We also need to keep an eye on her breathing rate, which counted in full breaths per minute, which for her is no higher than 35. We’ve been given instructions if her breathing rate gets any higher than that or if she seems to be exerting more than usual effort to breathe.
Watching her currently outside exploring the garden and prowling around as though she doesn’t have a serious illness I find promising.
Where This Blog Is Going (Exciting News!)
To end on a happy note, The Quiet and Curious is getting a revamp! After really thinking about what I want to create and who I want to serve with this blog, it’s time for an update.
What that update is is a surprise as yet, but you can expect to see more of our cats and animal-related content…
The blog website may look sort of messy, links might not work for a bit, and things might be out of whack for a few weeks as I tweak the back end to make it all nice and cohesive on the front end.
There won’t be any new posts coming out in September as I focus on revamping the blog, but stay tuned for new posts hopefully coming back in October.
To stay in the loop about Sapphy, Miss Soph, our other felines, and this blog revamp business, feel free to sign up for my email newsletter below, we’d love to have you in the loop:
That’s all from me for a while, so take care, and hug your cats/animals while they’re still lighting up your life with their shenanigans, especially our seniors.
Love,
