Hi we have a 6 year old male cat. He stopped eating six days ago and was very lethargic. We took him to the vets who put him on an IV drip for dehydration. They discovered he had lesions and abscess on his teeth and removed them however explained to us that the lesions/abscesses were not bad enough to warrant him not eating anything and put him on painkillers and antibiotics. He is still not eating, has had x-rays and a barrage of blood tests all of which came up negative except his folate which is 8. He has no fever. He has since started vomiting so they put him on an oesophagus tube through which we fed him 20 mls of convalescence support every two hours. He has unfortunately started vomiting quite violently on that. The vets have given him more antibiotics and anti-nausea drugs through another IV. His inflamed gums have gone down markedly but he continues to lose weight and screams when his neck or head is touched although x-rays and physical examination proves he has nothing visibly wrong in that area.

The vets have tried everything they can and may refer him to a specialist as no more can be done for him there. Has anyone else heard of these symptoms? They are going to do a further test for pancreatitis however he does not have diarrhoea normally associated with that, although as he has not kept anything down in six days he is no longer producing stools, his last one was solid although small. We are concerned as he spends many hours staring into space and at one point stopped sleeping and sat in one place all the time, not lying down. He seems to be able to sleep now. He is rapidly declining in health and the vets are as distressed as we are about his howling when touched and rapid deterioration. He has had seven different vets looking at him from two different practices, they come from all over the world and not one of them has seen a case like this.

Please if this sounds familiar to you or if you have any ideas can you let us know.

Thanks in advance.

These are quite a bizarre set of symptoms. Certainly the vomiting, anorexia and lethargy could reflect pancreatitis (diarrhoea is in fact uncommon) but this does not explain the neck/head pain. Considerations would include organophosphate or lead poisoning, rabies (in the right areas where it is present), FIV, FIP, inner ear or middle ear disease, granulomatous meningoencephalitis, dysautonomia (Key-Gaskell syndrome), infections of the brain (Toxoplasmosis, fungal infections, others), brain tumour, vaccine related encephalomyelitis. Also disc protrusions may cause neck pain and result in vomiting. Hope these are useful but this is not an exhaustive list.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2011 01:35PM by MarkRicher.