🚀 go-pugleaf

G'Day All,

I have a very sick 2 year old, male, desexed Manx cat called Timothy.

Tim's been through the wars lately. About 2 months ago he was in a
fight with another cat and an injury on his shoulder developed into an
abcess. I think I caught it in time and he had a drain installed after
a quick trip to the vet (Woden Animal Hospital for canb.general
readers). A week later the drain was removed and the wounds healed
soon after.

Unfortunately, it seems Tim picked up "Hemo Bartinella" (sp?, HB
hereafter) in the process. HB is a bacterial infection living in the
victim's blood causing liver damage and other problems. Tim stayed
with the vet fo a few days having a brace of tests which caused quite
a stir in the animal pathology labs. Apparently Australia's leading
animal path-lab at Sydney University had never seen such high liver
enzyme counts (100 times the norm) other than in experimantal lab
animals.

Well, things were looking up for a while after a course of strong
anti-biotics and even more love and attention than he usually gets.
The enzyme and HB counts were well down and Tim was returning to his
frisky playfull self, which has been such a joy to behold! :-) :-) :-)
(Them there are real smiles, not sarcastic ones!).

BUT TIM CAN'T HOLD DOWN ANY FOOD! :-( :-( :-(

The *heartbreaking* situation as I write to you is that since Tim
started the course of antibiotics he has gone from having trouble
swallowing whole food, to mashed up food, to pureed food, to sieved
food, to liquified food to any food at all. He regurgitates even milk
now. I say "regurgitate" rather than throws up or vomits because it
seems the food never gets to his stomach (i.e. no bile, just off-white
froth).

Tim lives with my Mum who is getting near her wits end watching him
retch for 10 minutes after every attempt at his dinner bowl. 

The vets don't know more what to do other than investigative surgery.
Needless to say, I am at a loss also :-(

*********
HELP! Any insights any of you, gentle readers, would be able to share,
or if any of this sounds familiar, please, please let me know.
*********

Now I've owned 16 cats before, and bred another 28. The time has come
for some of them to be put down when they were too sick to go on, but
I just couldn't let that happen to Timothy. Of all the cats I've owned
before Tim in the most loving, playful and intelligent. The thought of
losing him when he's only 2 years old is too aweful to contemplate.
While I've spent $700 on vet's bills so far, I'd be prepared to spend
as much again and again to make Tim well.

Thanks for listening,

Sean
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-------------- Sean Sebastian Batt | Ph: +61 62 49 3296 --------------------
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