Cleo's Progress

Cleo's story

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:33:00 +0000

This blog was originally started as a way to update friends and family on Cleo's status when she was sick with feline hepatic lipidosis, also known as fatty liver disease. However, I got so many emails and comments over the years that I kept the blog up to help other people going through the same thing with their cats.

Because I've continued to update the blog periodically, however, over the years it has gotten to be a little more difficult to navigate. This will make the 91st post, and as I add posts, it's getting increasingly more difficult to find the original posts about Cleo and my experiences with fatty liver disease.

So I've created a label just for those posts. Click on the label below this post for "Cleo's story" to read all of the posts in the same place. Then be sure to scroll all the way down, as the oldest posts will be at the bottom!

Force-feeding your cat: What to feed

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:50:00 +0000

I've said it before but it's worth repeating: Force-feeding is the most important method of treatment if you want your cat to recover from fatty liver disease. As such, the type of food you feed is pretty important.

There are a couple of things to consider when choosing a food to force-feed your cat.

1) A cat with feline hepatic lipidosis needs protein in order to get the liver going again, so the food needs to be high in protein.

2) Most likely you will be feeding via a syringe, so the food needs to be thin in consistency.

When Cleo was sick, my vet had me feed her Hills Prescription Diet a/d, which is a thin-consistency, high-protein food meant for either dogs or cats. By adding a very small amount of water, I was able to make the food soupy enough for it to pass through the syringe. The food also contains a minimum of 8.5 percent protein, which isn't super high but is high enough for curing a cat of hepatic lipidosis.

Buy Hills a/d

Because Hills a/d is a prescription food, you will need to buy it either from your vet, or online with a prescription (the retailer verifies the prescription with your vet). It does make force-feeding much easier, however, and is well worth getting the prescription.

Force-feeding your cat: The midnight snack

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:57:00 +0000

To treat feline hepatic lipidosis, or fatty liver disease, you are supposed to force-feed your cat 6 or more times a day. The reason for this is to minimize vomiting — since the liver failure causes nausea, it's important to do anything you can to make things easier on your cat's stomach.

Unfortunately, people who work full time find it hard to squeeze this many feedings into one day. Spacing feedings 2 hours apart, you can usually fit in 1 or 2 feedings before work, and 2 or 3 feedings after work. Even at the max, that is still one feeding shy. So where do you get the sixth feeding?

I highly recommend setting an alarm and getting up in the middle of the night, if you have to, to feed your cat. I know — it sucks to have to do this. But if it's the only way you can get enough food into your cat, it's worth it, right?

Another advantage of the middle-of-the-night feeding is that your cat's stomach won't be empty all night long, which can cause problems with keeping breakfast down.

Finally, the midnight feeding can be a good way to play catch-up after a difficult day. Despite your best efforts, your cat is most likely going to still vomit, possibly even every day for a while. Getting up in the middle of the night allows you to squeeze another feeding in and make up for whatever your cat threw up during the day.

The key to getting your cat over fatty liver disease is to feed frequent, small meals. The more often you can feed your cat, the less you can give them at one time, and the more likely it is that they'll keep it down!

Force-feeding your cat: Planning a feeding schedule

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:00:00 +0000

It can be hard to squeeze 6 or more feedings into one day, so it may help to plan a sort of feeding schedule. Remember, getting plenty of food into your cat is the key to them surviving fatty liver disease (feline hepatic lipidosis), but feeding too much at once will make vomiting more likely, so small but regular feedings are important.

If you work part time or work from home, planning your feeding schedule will be the easiest. However, if you have other obligations you will need to try to plan around them as best you can. You can plan feedings about 2 hours apart, a little bit less if you have to but not much less — too much in your cat's stomach will make vomiting more likely.

As an example, if you work from 8 to 5, you can feed at 5:30am when you get up (5:30 and 6:00 if you split the first meal into two feedings), 7:30 just before you leave for work, 5:30pm as soon as you get home from work, and again at 7:30, 9:30, and 11:30. You will be tired, to be sure, but you can stand a month or two of that schedule if it means the difference between life and death for your cat!

As a variation on that schedule, if you can go home on your lunch break you can feed at that time. That will leave you with only 3 feedings for the evening, instead of 4, which may make the evening schedule a little more manageable.

The actual schedule you use isn't as important as just sticking with it. The smaller and more frequent the feedings, the less likely your cat is to throw up. Also, a good feeding schedule makes it more likely that you will be successful in getting enough food into your cat!

Force-feeding your cat: Keeping breakfast down

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:04:00 +0000

In my experience with fatty liver disease and force-feeding sick cats, I've found that the hardest meal to keep down is that first meal of the day, the one that goes into an empty stomach. Vomiting is a fact of life when your cat is being treated for feline hepatic lipidosis, but when a sick cat's stomach has been empty all night long, it seems to be more likely to rebel against the incoming nourishment.

A trick I have found to be highly effective in helping a cat to keep down this first meal is to split it up into two feedings. Depending on how sick your cat is, the first feeding may need to be extremely small — perhaps only 3-6cc. Then wait for 15 or 30 minutes before giving the rest of the meal.

If your cat is on medication, this is also an excellent time to give it. Giving the meds on an empty stomach will probably cause vomiting, which is a waste of the medicine, not to mention frustrating for you. But giving them after a full meal also means a higher likelihood that the cat will throw them up. Instead, give the meds right after the first partial feeding.

While this may not completely eliminate vomiting in the mornings — remember, fatty liver disease causes nausea, and that's why your cat throws up — it will at least make it less likely that your cat's stomach will rebel upon suddenly going from empty to full.

Force-feeding your cat: The technique

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:26:00 +0000

I have force-fed three different cats at some point during their lives, and as a result I have been able to perfect a technique that makes it as easy as possible. Although some vets recommend crouching over the cat, tipping their head up, and forcing the syringe in, I think this is a pretty rough way to do it. It also means that you can't see what you are doing very well, and is probably more likely to trigger the gag reflex.

I prefer to hold cats in a cradle when I force-feed them, but since that puts my face within their reach, that means I have to bundle them up in a towel before attempting to feed them.

There are two ways to wrap the towel. One way is to set the cat down on the towel and wrap it so that it overlaps behind them. Another way is to hold the cat still with your hand under their armpits, and drape the towel over their back; then cradle the cat, and finish wrapping the towel over their paws. The second method makes it easier to tighten up the towel or tuck a paw back in if your cat gets it out during the feeding, but can also be a bit trickier if your cat fights getting wrapped up.

When you feed, sit in a chair and rest your cat's back in your lap, with their upper body resting in the crook of your left elbow. (Reverse this if you are left-handed.) I like to cross my left knee over the right, to prop the cat a little higher. This should leave both your hands relatively free for feeding — I syringe with my right hand, and support the cat's head with the left (also keeps the cat from being able to move away).

Finally, when you syringe food in, be sure to put the syringe in at the corner of the cat's mouth. If you poke it into the corner, your cat should open their mouth, and then you can see where you are putting the food. Squirt only 1 or 2 cc on the back of their tongue (NOT down their throat, you'll make them gag) and give them time to swallow between "bites."

As you do this a few times, you should start to develop a routine, which will help make it a little easier. Your cat will recognize the signs of what's to come, and will fight you more at first, but if all goes well they should learn the routine as well and stop fighting it quite so much.

Force-feeding your cat: Tips to help make it easier

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 04:08:00 +0000

I haven't updated this blog much lately, but I seem to have more visitors than ever — most with questions about force-feeding. Since this is the primary treatment method for a cat with feline hepatic lipidosis, a.k.a. fatty liver disease, it makes sense that this is what the owner of a sick cat worries about most.

So to help out these people, I am going to write a series of posts with suggestions for force-feeding your cat. These are tips and tricks that I have discovered on my own through trial and error, and the exact things that I tell everyone who emails me. Feel free to bookmark this page — I will update this post with the links to each installment in the series.

That was painless!

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:43:00 +0000

I got the Custom Domain thing figured out. Everything should now be right as rain, but if you notice something that doesn't seem to work right, please let me know!

Switching to a Custom Domain

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:48:00 +0000

Blogger will soon stop offering publishing via FTP, which I have used for years to publish my blogs on my own domain names. I am in the process of figuring out how to switch over to their Custom Domain option. The domain name and URLs of this site should not change one bit — but the site may go down for a few hours as the DNS path is getting changed. That will be sometime in the next couple of days. I'll keep you posted!

Fragile

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 06:35:00 +0000

A couple of months ago, I blogged about having to force-feed my other cat, Prince. Although he didn't get fatty liver disease from it — presumably because he was already thin to begin with, as feline hepatic lipidosis is more likely to affect an overweight cat — he stopped eating for reasons unknown in November or December.

For a little while, I had him in and out of the vet. They did a blood panel, and finally an ultrasound. The technician thought she identified resolving pancreatitis (meaning it was getting better), and a thickening of the intestine walls that meant either irritable bowel syndrome or lymphoma. Opting not to do a biopsy to find out which (I don't think he's strong enough), I got a prescription for a low dose of steroids and another round of antibiotics (this time banana flavored — just what a cat wants, right?).

For a while it seemed to have worked. Prince started eating again, and I stopped feeding him. Within a few days, however, I began to suspect he'd stopped eating again. Since then, it's been back and forth — and every time he fakes me out by making me think he's well again, he loses more weight. He's skin and bones right now, and it scares me.

So for now, I've resigned myself to force-feeding him no matter what he seems to be doing on his own. He just can't afford to lose any more weight. In fact, I'd feel much better if he gained some.

On Sunday, Prince jumped into a box marked "FRAGILE," which seemed rather appropriate. Cats are so much more fragile than we think they are. Someone posted on Craigslist the other day seeking advice because the cat they'd just adopted wasn't eating, and everyone told them to just ignore it, the cat would be fine. People assume that because they are fairly independent, they are also resilient, and that they can take care of themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth, as any of us who have dealt with fatty liver disease know!

Stimulating appetite

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 06:29:00 +0000

Tonight I was emailing with a reader about force-feeding their cat, who is sick with feline hepatic lipidosis. At the same time, I am force-feeding my skinny cat, Prince, who stopped eating recently.

I started looking online for information about kitty eating problems. The first thing I found was this page, which talks about reasons why cats stop eating. Notice that bad teeth is on this list. However, Prince had his teeth out almost 5 days ago, and he's still not eating, so that may not be the cause.

However, this list also includes antibiotics. I looked up what they've got Prince on, clindamycin, and sure enough — it causes nausea, vomiting, and upset stomach, all of which will cause a cat not to eat. There's not much left, only perhaps a day or two, so I'm going to stop giving it to him and see if he'll start eating again.

I also looked for ways to stimulate his appetite. There are a few drugs that can do that, but apparently cat nip does as well. I gave him some tonight, and he ate it quite happily (as did my other cat, who is a cat nip fiend and was not about to be left out!). Hopefully tomorrow, once the antibiotics wear off and the cat nip kicks in, he'll start eating on his own.

Obviously cat nip isn't a cure for fatty liver disease, but it sure can't hurt to give your cat a little and see what happens!

Merry Christmas!

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 08:49:00 +0000

The holidays can be such a difficult time when you have a cat sick with fatty liver disease, a.k.a. feline hepatic lipidosis. I know firsthand, as Cleo was sick with it at Thanksgiving four years ago. It was the hardest Thanksgiving of my life.

This year, we're spending Christmas with another sick cat. My other cat, Prince, hasn't been eating, so I've been having to force feed him. Luckily, he was a fairly skinny fellow to begin with, which keeps him from being at much risk for fatty liver syndrome. That also means, however, that he was a lot closer to starving to death by the time we noticed he'd dropped to a mere five pounds.

After two visits to the vet last week, he went in this Wednesday to have two bad teeth removed and the rest cleaned. He's still sore from the surgery, so we have yet to find out whether it will fix his problem and allow him to start eating again.

I know it's hard to be happy during the holidays when you are worrying about your cat, but try to be thankful that your cat is still with you at all. This means you caught it in time and, with force feeding and persistence, have a good chance at getting him or her well again!

Force-feeding another cat

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 06:27:00 +0000

Four years ago, Cleo had just recovered from her bout with feline hepatic lipidosis, or fatty liver disease. After force-feeding her for four weeks, it was such a relief when she started eating on her own.

Now my other cat, a 12 or 13-year-old neutered male named Prince, is not eating. He has never eaten much, always weighing around 7 or 8 pounds, so when he started getting skinnier we didn't notice at first. It wasn't until recently that we realized he had reached 5 pounds.

I started force feeding him, and took him into the vet. They ran a blood panel, but everything came up relatively normal — creatinine (which is related to kidney function) is slightly elevated, but only one-tenth over what it should be, so no cause for concern quite yet. His potassium levels were also low, but again, just barely.

I knew he didn't have fatty liver syndrome, because he wasn't at all jaundiced. Hepatic lipidosis seems to happen most often in overweight cats, so I guess because he was already fairly lean to begin with, it didn't happen to him. But it occurred to me that tooth problems could definitely be a cause of fatty liver disease, so be sure to have your vet check your cat's mouth when you are trying to determine what made him or her stop eating!

The first vet who saw my cat observed — though only after I insisted he double check — that his teeth were probably causing him some pain. However he wouldn't do anything about it, he said, until Prince started eating on his own. I tried to tell him I think that may be what's causing him to stop eating, but he wouldn't listen to me.

So I took him to a different vet. Prince is now scheduled for a dental cleaning and tooth extraction (one is loose and obviously sensitive) on Wednesday. In the meantime, I am force-feeding him using the Hills A/D and the potassium supplements I got from the vet. Prince is obviously weak and somewhat lethargic, which may have to do with the low potassium levels as well as lack of nutrition. I'd forgotten how hard it can be to get a full day's calories into a cat via force-feeding.

I'm going to try to make a video showing how to force-feed a cat, so stay tuned!

Fatty liver disease: The importance of a good vet

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:18:00 +0000

A couple of months ago, I received an email from a reader about the horrible experience she had been through with her cat. Her cat had fatty liver disease, but because her vet kept misdiagnosing the problem, he wasn't treated early enough and didn't make it.

Lisa wanted me to emphasize to my readers the importance of working with a vet who knows how to treat fatty liver disease (and, I would add, understands that fatty liver disease is curable — some vets don't!). I asked for her permission to print her email here, as I think her story expresses the warning better than I ever could!

I just lost my sweet boy Smokey to fatty liver disease. He was only 3 years old.

It all started about 1 1/2 months ago. I asked my husband, "Do you think Smokey is losing weight?" and he said, "You noticed it too." I took him to our local vet the next day and they kept Smokey 2 nights and released him to me on a Friday and said they thought he just had a case of the flu.

I was relieved Smokey was going to be all right. Boy was I wrong! About 1 1/2 weeks later Smokey stopped eating over the weekend so I had to force feed him by hand. I called my vet on Monday and they scheduled a test for him to see if he had a rotten tooth. He was fine, so they then called and asked to run a FelVP test on him that tested negative, which I thought it would since I have 2 other cats which are healthy.

I went to visit him on Wednesday and they didn't do a blood panel or start IV's in him. By Thursday he looked like he was going to die. I told them to start feeding him and give him water, so they put a tube through his nose and on Friday he looked a little better. Then I went to see him on Saturday and he looked bad again. On Sunday I got the results he had liver disease and they kept feeding him through the tube.

On Monday he looked better and Tuesday even better. Then on Wednesday I went to visit him and his tube was out of his mouth and they were feeding him with a syringe. I was so happy! He looked like he was getting so much better. I visited him again on Thursday and he looked even better, but when I went to visit him on Friday I was told he was having a feeding tube put through his neck and I wouldn't be able to see him until Saturday.

He still looked okay on Saturday and on Monday I picked him up and was shown how much to feed him through the feeding tube and how often. By last Sunday he started to go downhill again. On Monday I found a website about fatty liver in cats and how much they should be fed. My vet had me under feeding him so I upped the food intake to 40ml a day and on Wednesday I even upped it to more with the vets approval who contacted another vet about fatty liver.

Well, on Wednesday night his feeding tube fell out of his mouth from his vomiting, which he seemed to do about twice a day. I rushed him back to the vet and they told me he wasn't going to make it so I had to put my poor boy to sleep.

My whole point of this story is to tell other cat owners to make sure there vet knows how to treat fatty liver so they don't have to go through the pain my whole family is going through. He should be alive if he had been treated aggressively from the start over 1 1/2 months ago.

Lisa Horst

Should you euthanize for fatty liver disease?

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:30:00 +0000

So you have a cat that is sick with feline hepatic lipidosis, or fatty liver disease. Should you euthanize your cat?

(I've posted before on my feelings about euthanization, so I'll spare you the lecture this time. I figure you can go back and read it if you want to. There was also a great article in USA Today's Paw Print Post on the subject: Veterinarian debates ethics of presenting euthanasia option.)

There are many reasons why pet owners choose to euthanize their animals. I'm going to approach the question of whether you should euthanize a cat with fatty liver disease from a variety of viewpoints, in the hopes of helping someone make their decision.

If you don't agree with euthanizing animals:

There are people in this world who don't believe in euthanizing animals anymore than you would euthanize a person. To them an animal has just as much a right to live as a person and euthanization is therefore murder. Obviously if you feel that way, you probably won't be even considering euthanizing your cat because they have FLD. Actually, I'm not even sure why I included this category, except to say that I think it's a beautiful thing if you love an animal enough to care for it until then end and allow it to enjoy the time it has left with you.

If you believe in euthanization to prevent an animal's suffering:

In the scheme of things, fatty liver disease doesn't make an animal suffer as much as other diseases might. Starvation is the main issue, unless they have something else at the same time that is causing them pain. And if you are willing to force-feed your cat all the food it needs to get well again, technically its days of starvation are over. Sure, it might be a bit cranky about being force-fed or having a feeding tube, but I'm not sure that qualifies as suffering.

If your cat has feline hepatic lipidosis because they also have something else, well, you will have to decide whether the other condition is causing them enough suffering to justify euthanization. I can't help you there, since that is a variable I can't quantify in this blog post. I do, however, suggest testing to see if your cat has something else, rather than assuming it does — many cases of FLD are caused by the situation, and are completely curable.

If you believe in euthanization only if there is no (or not a very good) chance of survival:

If this is your position, most likely you will not want to euthanize a cat with fatty liver disease. Most cases of feline hepatic lipidosis can be cured with just four to eight weeks of force-feeding them. However, you should probably have some tests run before you become too committed, because it is possible that your cat may have something serious (that they won't survive) that caused the FLD in the first place.

If you don't have the time or money to spend on getting your cat well again:

Let's face it, you probably shouldn't have animals. Euthanize your poor cat if you aren't going to commit to caring for it, and don't get another. Pets do require both time and money, so if this is your reasoning for euthanizing your cat, you'd be better off with a pet rock.

(Sorry, I know I wasn't going to lecture, but I just have no sympathy for people with that attitude.)

The bottom line is, fatty liver disease is curable. Most cats survive from this condition, and the ones that don't usually have something else very serious that prevents them from getting well again. Be sure to keep this in mind when deciding whether to euthanize a cat with FLD!

Don't underestimate the role of environmental causes!

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 04:24:00 +0000

I often hear from people whose cats have been diagnosed with fatty liver disease, or feline hepatic lipidosis. One common theme is that people can't believe that a change in the household could possibly have made their cat stop eating long enough to get sick.

However, environmental causes often play a role in fatty liver disease. Cleo suffered liver failure just a month or so after we added a dog to the family. By the time we noticed, she had already lost three or four pounds.

Fear of a dog, or of another cat, or even a dislike of another cat, is plenty to keep a cat away from their food long enough for feline hepatic lipidosis to set in. For one thing, it doesn't take very long — I've read that just two weeks on a reduced diet is enough to make the cat's liver bog down and stop working. In other words, the cat doesn't even have to stop eating entirely for fatty liver syndrome to set in.

Please, please don't underestimate the role that environmental causes can play in feline hepatic lipidosis. If you have a sick cat, consider what changes in the household could have caused him or her to stop eating. And if you don't have a sick cat right now (or once they get better), please please please always keep a close eye on your cat's eating habits, particularly during times of change in the household!

Prevent feline hepatic lipidosis by putting your cat first

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 05:52:00 +0000

This post is about making difficult decisions... also known as putting your pets first even when it goes against your own desires.

But first, let's talk about how Cleo got sick. When my then-boyfriend (now-husband) moved in with me in September of 2005, he brought his dog with him. I'd never owned a dog, so my cats had been more or less spared from that until then.

Prince, my male cat, adapted pretty well. Cleo did not. Unfortunately, we didn't realize she was doing so poorly until after she'd lost 5 pounds and fatty liver disease had set in.

Environmental stress, such as a new dog or cat coming into the household, is often a cause of feline hepatic lipidosis. There are ways to introduce a dog into the family without your cat getting sick and almost dying, but of course we didn't learn this until too late.

The main rules:

1) Put your cat's food where s/he can access it and eat unmolested by the dog.
2) Keep close tabs on how much s/he is eating.
3) Make sure s/he doesn't feel rejected in favor of the dog — some cats get very upset about this.

After nursing Cleo back to health, we followed these rules. For a long time, she had her own gated-off room where she could eat, go to the bathroom, etc. without having to worry about being harassed by the dog.

Later, we even added a new dog to the family. This was after we had moved into our current home, which has a basement she can go to but the dogs can't. Down there she has food, water, and even a bed in the guest bedroom to sleep on. This helps immensely because it makes her feel safe to have someplace she can go where the dogs won't bother her.

But sometimes it doesn't work out this well, and you need to think about what is best for your cat.

My husband brought home a stray puppy yesterday morning. While trying to find a place for him in a no-kill shelter, we started to fall in love with him, and were considering keeping him for ourselves.

Everything seemed perfect. He gets along well with our dogs, is affectionate, and is quickly learning our routine.

All except one thing.

He can get into the basement.

Cleo is extremely upset about him, much more so than when we introduced the last dog. It could be because she senses he's a puppy and has a lot more energy, but I suspect it's more because he invaded her happy place.

It took two days to make our decision, but finally we decided that the joy of adding a dog to the family was simply not worth the risk — however slim — of Cleo getting sick again.

Fatty liver disease links

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:41:00 +0000

Lately I've started hearing from others who started websites or blogs to follow their cats' experiences with fatty liver disease, a.k.a. feline hepatic lipidosis. I've put a couple of those links in the sidebar, and removed the generic cat care information links I had up before. I hope the more specific links will provide better information about feline hepatic lipidosis for people who need information and support while their cats are recovering.

If you have a blog or a website with information on FLD, please email me or leave your URL in the comments, and I'll put it in the sidebar with the rest.

Feline hepatic lipidosis: Is a feeding tube right for you?

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:39:00 +0000

I've been talking to a cat owner recently who is trying to decide whether to have a feeding tube inserted in her cat's esophagus. This is a common suggestion that vets make when a cat has feline hepatic lipidosis, a.k.a. fatty liver syndrome or fatty liver disease, but in my opinion it's not always necessary. Whether you opt for a feeding tube is a personal decision that should be based on you and your cat's needs, not the vet telling you it's "standard procedure."

The absolute biggest reason to opt for a feeding tube is if you are unable to feed your cat enough via force feeding, but you would be able to with a feeding tube. For instance, if your cat is fighting you so much that you physically cannot get enough food into him or her via force feeding. A high protein diet is essentially how you jump start their liver and get them well again, so it is imperative that you feed your cat as much as possible of the recommended daily quota for their weight.

A feeding tube is not, however, a solution for vomiting food back up, or a lack of force feeding because you don't have the time. You will still have to give the cat frequent, smaller meals, even with the feeding tube, because it is nausea from the liver failure that causes them to vomit, not the force feeding itself.

Some vets claim that the force feeding is too stressful on the cat, and therefore a feeding tube should always be used. To that I have to say, "And surgery isn't?" I mean, come on, if a cat is starving to death and feeling very weak and sick, they don't exactly have the reserve of physical strength to recover from surgery.

I am not a vet, but I personally believe in going with the least invasive treatment required. If you can nurse your cat back to health via force feeding, then why would you choose to put them through the surgery to have a feeding tube inserted? If you aren't able to get enough food into them via force feeding, then of course the feeding tube may be necessary, but I guess what I'm getting at is that you shouldn't put your cat through that unless it is necessary.

Cats with fatty liver disease: Delilah's story

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:57:00 +0000

Written by Delilah's owner, Heather

Delilah in late July 2008, before fatty liver disease

Delilah is a 13 year old tabby cat. Delilah picked me when she was about a year old, when she showed up at my door step as a stray.

Delilah had not had any medical problems until the fall of 2008. Then there were many life changes for her and myself. I graduated college and began a new job. She began getting sick at the end of July in 2008.

Delilah was a portly cat, and I noticed she seemed listless and reclusive and she had lost some weight. I did not think this was a bad thing to begin with because she could stand to lose some weight. I was very wrong.

I moved to a new residence and noticed that Delilah seemed to get worse. She no longer sat with me, or slept beside me as she used to. She hid under the couch in the living room. I took her to the animal clinic, and broke down in tears because I thought I could have done something earlier.

By this time Delilah was extremely jaundiced. Her once green eyes were now yellow as well as her ears and gums. Delilah was diagnosed with fatty liver syndrome, and I was terrified since I did not know anything about it. My vet seemed very optimistic. Delilah spent a week in the hospital and I visited her every day and she still looked like the sick little cat I had brought in the week before.

One week after feeding tube placement

When she got to come home it was with an extra attachment, her freshly placed feeding tube. Feeding Delilah was stressful and seemed like a lost cause. She also took several different medicines orally for nausea and her liver.

The first week Delilah threw up daily and was only taking in about 20 cc of food through the tube in one sitting. She did not gain weight, in fact she lost more. She was also severely dehydrated when she went back to the clinic.

Two weeks after feeding tube placement

The second week I began to keep a journal of how much food she was getting, what time she would vomit, and if she had gone to the litter box. This provided me some peace of mind because it allowed me to see any progress she made.

My twin and I force fed and pilled Delilah for the next several weeks, and she got weekly trips to the clinic. I would call my vet almost daily to ask questions and often I felt stupid or that I was being over sensitive about everything Delilah did. I fed Delilah 4 times a day, and often she did not get the required amount because she would either vomit or start to push away.

The four feedings were difficult because it meant making time for them. I would get up an hour earlier than I typically did just to prepare the food for her, and try to get it into her before I had to get to work. When I came home from work it was the same routine.

Delilah also took several medications orally. This was not enjoyable for me or Delilah. She took one for nausea, one for her liver, one for acid reflux, one to boost her potassium, and one for constipation (put through the tube).

It wasn’t until Delilah changed medicine for nausea that she began to come out of hiding. She originally was on a medicine called metoclopramide, which she would take about 15 minutes prior to a tube feeding. She switched to a medicine called Zofran or Ondansetron. This medicine was extremely expensive ($50 for 2 pills), but for the difference it made in Delilah I would have paid much more. My vet told me that this drug is used in human patients that are going through chemotherapy. I had high hopes for this medicine.

Delilah also switched foods from science diet a/d to Iams max calorie. This made a difference. Once Delilah began to take Zofran she drank water from a bowl. The next evening she finally ate something on her own. Delilah is not a cat who likes treats or wet food, so I used goldfish crackers from Pepperidge farm. That evening Delilah ate 3 of them and I felt like shouting from the roof of my apartment complex. I was on cloud nine because I knew all the tears and hard work were not wasted and Delilah was going to pull through.

After removal of the feeding tube

I continued to force feed Delilah small amounts and she began eating more. Just in time for Halloween Delilah finally got her tube removed.

In the beginning it was extremely hard, and the vomiting was non-stop. Many nights I thought it was useless, and I was making her last days worse than if I had just let her alone and not tried to force feed her. I cried many nights at the thought that I was going to lose my baby. But with perseverance on my part and Delilah’s strength we made it through the difficult time. So, if you are going through the same with your cat don’t give up! Fatty liver does not have to be fatal if you are willing to put the work into it, and ride the emotional roller coaster.

Complete recovery from fatty liver disease!

When fatty liver disease is fatal

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:28:00 +0000

I state repeatedly throughout this blog that fatty liver disease is CURABLE. This is temporary liver failure and most cats make it if they are force fed and if the condition that caused them to stop eating it taken care of. Sometimes they stopped eating because of an environmental cause — in my cat's case she was afraid of the new dog. Other times it is because they are already sick with something else — cancer, for instance. It's also common for cats to hide when they are injured outside; by the time you find them (if you find them at all), fatty liver disease has already set in.

Unfortunately, not all cats recover from FLD, also called feline hepatic lipidosis. Months ago I was in communication with a young lady named Yiddle, whose cat, Jack, developed fatty liver disease. (Jack's picture is the one at the beginning of this post.) Unfortunately, Jack didn't make it, and died after a short hospitalization.

The story has an unexpected happy ending, though, as Yiddle soon fell in love again, with a tabby rescue cat named Toby. I'll put his picture and a picture of Yiddle's other cat at the end of this post.

In the meantime, though, I'd like to share the email Yiddle sent to me after Jack's death and Toby's rescue. This email really touched me, and made me feel that even though Jack didn't make it, everything happened for the best.

Hallo Katherine,

Thank you. We will always miss our Jack. I think by the time we noticed he wasn't eating much, it may have been too late. He was very overweight to begin with, but he had lost 4 lbs. already. Even though he was very sick, he fought the force feeding very hard. I would swaddle him up as tight as I could and then even wrap my legs around him and still he would struggle free. It would take several rounds of that to get through one feeding. At the end of each feeding, he and I were both exhausted and knew we had another one coming up in about an hour and a half. I tried to take care of him at home but he developed diabetic complications and a low blood count. I hated to have to take him to the animal hospital but he had several doctors and aids who fell in love with him and gave him the best care they could. They let me visit as often as I wanted for as long as I wanted, so I spent many hours just holding him and talking and singing to him each day. My son and his dad also visited him every day. I think he had more visitors than I did last time I was in the hospital! We are going to bury his ashes (and his blankie) on my grandma's farm when it is spring. He will have the company of generations of beloved family pets there.

I thought it would be a long while before my heart would be ready to love another kitty, but we were at the Humane Society this weekend with friends and we met one we knew we had to bring home. Toby was listed as "special needs" cat, so he had been at the Humane Society since October. He has "wool sucking syndrome" - he likes to "nurse" on blankets and his owners gave him up because he chewed a hole in a couple of their blankets. He was adopted a few weeks ago but his new owners found they couldn't handle the sucking behavior either so they returned him to the Humane Society. For us this was a perfect match - Jack used to do that too, since he was a tiny kitten! The moment I picked Toby up, he started to purr. Toby came home with us, we bought him his own blankie (which he adores, I haven't seen him nurse on anything else yet) and he has fit into our house wonderfully.

I will never ever forget our sweet Jack, but having Toby and his "blankie" is like having a little bit of him back.

Thank you for keeping up your website. Even though I lost my Jack, you gave me some hope during those dark days. I appreciate that more than I could tell you.

Thank you again,
yiddle

Coming up: Two new stories

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:19:00 +0000

It's been a while since I've added to this blog, but I'm always getting comments and emails from people whose cats have fatty liver disease, a.k.a. feline hepatic lipidosis. In fact, I have two new stories to share with you, which I will blog about in the coming days.

As always, I encourage anyone dealing with feline hepatic lipidosis to read this blog in its entirety, leave comments, or even contact me. I am not a vet or anything like that, but I have had personal experience with fatty liver disease and force-feeding a cat, as have most of the people whose stories and comments appear on this blog.

Of course, I always love to blog about recovered cats, so please feel free to email me if you'd like me to include yours.

Fatty liver disease: Don't lose hope

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:50:00 +0000

One recurring theme I see in readers' emails to me is that they are freaking out, sick with worry, etc.

Reader, if your cat has fatty liver disease (a.k.a. feline hepatic lipidosis), don't lose hope!

Fatty liver disease is extremely curable. The key is getting enough high-protein food into your cat every day. There is room for error, though: I think most of the time I only got three-fourths of Cleo's quota into her every day, and she still recovered just fine!

Nursing a cat back to health from feline hepatic lipidosis can be heart breaking. The liver failure causes nausea, which makes them throw up a lot. It's natural to get upset when this happens and wonder if they'll ever get better. But don't lose hope! Feed as many small meals as you can to try to avoid vomiting, but don't worry about it too much when it happens. Cleo threw up on a daily basis, and she still recovered!

As I'm trying to show with my series of success stories, this isn't just Cleo's story. Tons of cats and their owners survived fatty liver disease. Your cat can too. Just hang in there!

Cats with fatty liver disease: Tinkerbell's story

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:17:00 +0000

This post is part of a series about actual cats with fatty liver disease, or feline hepatic lipidosis. If you would like your cat's story to be featured on my blog, please contact me.

I first heard about Tinkerbell back in mid-November, when her "mom," Pam, commented here with a link to her own blog, My Tinkerbell.

Tinkerbell had been diagnosed with fatty liver disease at the end of October, and spent nine days in the hospital. When Pam brought her home, she was pretty much on her own, because the vet was so far away and wasn't that great anyway. So Pam felt pretty alone and scared — which, in my own experience and judging by what I hear from others who contact me via this blog, is how pretty much everyone feels when their cat is diagnosed with feline hepatic lipidosis.

I think it's important to note, however, that despite how overwhelmed Pam felt, she was actually doing everything right. You can see if you read her blog post and the comments below it that she had a good handle on Tink's care, despite her worries. I mention this because I think it happens frequently. Having your cat sick with fatty liver syndrome is overwhelming, and recovery can take some time. However, if you don't already know from experience how curable the condition is, you can worry endlessly about whether you are actually doing any good.

As a final testament to how curable fatty liver disease actually is, check out this comment: Tink had pancreatitis. As Pam notes, most "authorities" say that if a cat has both pancreatitis and fatty liver disease, they won't survive. Yet Tink did — Pam stopped force feeding her on November 26th, just in time for Thanksgiving!

Tips from Spot's Stew

noreply@blogger.com (Katharine Swan) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 19:14:00 +0000

Remember in my last post, when I talked about how much I love my cat's new dry food?

Well, I was poking around the Spot's Stew website, when I came across this blog post:

Holiday Dinners Make Perfect Pet Fare

The post tells you what exactly you can feed your cat at the dinner table. People who don't feed their cats people food will probably be horrified at the idea, but there are also people who cook for their cats on a regular basis, to make sure their pets don't get any of the crap many cat food manufacturers put into their food.

Even though Thanksgiving is over, frankly I think it's always a good time to give your cat wholesome good foods!