Cat of the Month - June 2023 - Milo
Milo- Winner
Milo is a five year old Maine Coon who has had a rough time lately. When his owner rescued him, he was an underweight, nervous boy who took time to come around to new people. After feeding up and giving him lots of love and everything a cat could want, he is a big, beautiful boy, still a little shy but very sweet.
At Milo’s last vaccination and health check, we sampled some urine as a routine part of his health plan, and the test showed it was very dilute. This is unusual as cats naturally have concentrated urine. We tested it again a couple of weeks later in case it was just caused by him drinking more that day, but the result was the same.
To find out what was causing this, Milo had some blood taken and sent off to the lab to check for some of the more common conditions that can cause dilute urine and the results of these tests showed that Milo has stage 3 chronic kidney disease, a condition that is more common in cats who are much older.
Because of this finding, we performed an ultrasound scan (on the kitchen table!) to check how his urinary tract was looking. The scans were very concerning, so the best course of action was to refer Milo to a specialist for advanced imaging and treatment plan.
The specialists think that Milo has a rare congenital kidney dysplasia, which means that the kidneys did not develop normally with abnormal shape and function. This is usually a genetic defect that the cat is born with.
As if that wasn’t enough, Milo was also found to have pancreatitis, a painful condition where the pancreas becomes inflamed and unhappy. This causes patients to feel sick, go off their food and generally feel a bit under the weather. Unfortunately, Milo’s pancreatitis was made worse by something called a pseudocyst in the pancreas which is really rare in cats and occurs when the pancreas has been grumbling quietly away in the background for a little while, causing a duct to break and cause a cyst.
This is really hard to spot in cats, especially cats who have always been a bit picky with their food because cats will not show outward signs of pain and most people will just assume that it’s just their cat being a cat. Totally understandable!
At first glance, Milo appeared to be a happy and healthy boy and it’s only because we checked his urine that we were able to get these diagnoses early. By starting dietary management and treatments we can ensure that he is pain free and able to continue to live his best life.
Runner up - Samson
Samson has been a long standing patient with Vet2Cat who would much rather we didn’t visit him at all. He prefers all his consultations to be performed inside his cat bed and likes to make the Vet2Cat team crawl under the bed before they do anything with him.
He also has had a few investigations done, as Samson has stage 2 chronic kidney disease with a couple of kidney stones present, and suffers from tummy issues, oh and some arthritis to boot! He occasionally goes off his food and makes his mum buy new food so she now has a big cupboard full of food that he may or may not decide to eat.
After his most recent bout of not eating, we didn’t find a clinical cause for it, so we had a look around his environment to see if there was anything causing him any stress which can also cause a cat to go off its food. We think he may be quite anxious due to other neighbouring cats coming in his garden.
We started him on a special calming food, as well as adding in a Feliway plug-in diffuser which is a synthetic version of the feline facial pheromone F3 (you know the one they like to rub over everything!).
He has to take regular medication to help treat his stomach issues which he’s not always keen to do but mum perseveres and does the best she can!
Samson is also one of our patients doing really well on the Solensia injection to treat his arthritis which again, we administer while he’s safely tucked away in his cat bed. Maybe one day he’ll let us have a cuddle!
Runner up - Squeak
Squeak is a very rare boy indeed! He is a Bengal who is chilled and loving (I’m only half joking!).
We met Squeak when he needed a repeat heart scan done and his mum preferred to have it done in her home so she could be with him and hold his paw.
Squeak has a heart condition which meant that fluid built up in his abdomen and had to be drained out to make him more comfortable.
He’s also on lots of medication which his mum has to keep in a pill organiser to make sure he gets the right ones at the right time so she is very organised!
One of the medications he takes makes him pee more often so it’s really important that we monitor his kidney function and that he has regular blood pressure checks. It’s a very delicate balance when a patient has multiple conditions especially as they get older so it’s great that he’s so chilled and friendly when we arrive!
Squeak loves to chew the plastic on the visit bag and play with the strap and is also very cuddly even without sedation. It’s always a pleasure to see him.
