Geriatric Cats

[AndrewF]

Yesterday I noticed distressing behavior in my older cat.

She seeemed to be having trouble getting up into the litterbox and so she ended up going on the floor. I got an Uber for Pets in the middle of the night and ended up going to the emergency vet. Expensive bill just to get buprenorphine and a recommendation for a low side litterbox.

I ordered the litterbox on Amazon for overnight and set it up today, started the buprenorphine every 12 hours along with her thyroid medicine she has taken for years.

Followed up with the regular vet today, talked them into doing an ultrasound as a favor and they didn't bill me for it, didn't find any kidney stones, so I presumed Feline OsteoArthritis since she's getting older. 

I had them start administering Solensia at that visit and we're going to keep her on the buprenorphine for several days as the Solensia is a monoclonal antibody treatment that could take 1-3 months to see peak results (it varies depeding on the cat and the condition).

I noticed earlier she's using the new low sided litterpan, but the opioids have her sort of tired, but that's pretty typical. 

I know how bad OA hurts because for years it felt like a burning/stabbing pain in my right shoulder until I had them scoop out the bone fragments and shave down the arthritic bone and press in a bone graft. Now I feel better, but I think that to truly feel empathy for someone else's pain you have to have a reference.

We will be actively managing this.

The regular vet has a rewards program and separate from that, Zoetis has a points system where at 100 points (each dose of Solensia is 50 points when you upload the invoice from the vet visit), they can send you (or you can reload one you already got) a $10 credit usable at your next vet visit. So that will be another help on an ongoing expense.

I told the vet that it's just like people, some 90 year olds are on a life support machine going "beep beep beep" and others are doing laps at the mall.

Same with cats. Leeloo's age matters less than what her day-to-day life looks like. If she's eating, engaged, comfortable, and still has good moments — that's quality of life worth supporting. The goal of the Solensia and buprenorphine isn't to extend her life artificially. It's to make the life she has comfortable and worth living.

While I was at the vet's office the receptionist had a litter of kittens who had lost their mother. She was feeding them kitten milk replacer out of a bottle. They were all so cute. I remember when I found Leeloo after someone dumped her in the hallway of the apartment I was living in, and she was malnourished. We got her big and strong again and it turned out she was pregnant with five kittens.

I helped her with the kittens. My ex has one of them now, and that one's name is Miso, the boy cat, and he's huge and looks like a full blooded Maine Coon. I talked to John today about Miso, and he said Miso still "talks" like Leeloo used to before she got older.

I miss having Leeloo walk into a room and go "MEWOWOW!!! MYEAH!!!!" I told the vet that lately she's mostly just purring and telling me "meh". The vet laughed and went "meh".

[AndrewF]

One day after the first Solensia injection, Leeloo is walking around again. 

She walked normally instead of her usual unsteady gait and is now more alert and gave me her first full "meow" in a few years.

She's not back to MEOWOW! MYEAH! but it's better than "meh" and then being unable to walk right.

The drug company trials showed that while it takes 2-3 monthly injections for most cats to see peak effect, some hyper-responders are out there with dramatic improvement in mobility and behavior in the first few days.

Either way, it's important to remember that this is not a cure, it's an ongoing pain control regimen. I was so happy to see Leeloo starting to act more normal today that I almost broke down and cried. I was worried just in the past few days that her behaviors meant that we were very close to the end. Hopefully she keeps improving rapidly.

[AndrewF]

I observed Leeloo go into the kitchen and use the bathroom in the litter box. The low wall one from Amazon.

I noticed she seems to be walking around a lot more today so at my discretion I skipped the buprenorphine at noon. She appears to be in no major pain. She's back up and walking around which exceeded all expectations from the Solensia drug, especially since the vet said to expect slow progress to normal activities. That stuff WORKS. Wow.

Later in the evening she was back to playing with my other cat which has not happened in years, and she appears to be resting comfortably and actively interested in the TV right now, which has not happened in a long time. She used to love watching TV and it seems she's back to that too.

I'm so happy that I went from worrying if I was going to have the cat put down to seeing her act like she did years ago as a younger cat.

Part of the decision to discontinue the buprenorphine was my mother, an LPN since 1981, told me in humans it can cause dental problems with prolonged use "and doctors continue prescribing it". As long as she doesn't show signs of serious pain I will keep that in the bottle in the cabinet.

She is very motherly, even more than a decade after having babies. She's always been a very good natured cat, and she does not attack mouse toys, she likes to groom them and hug them like she's keeping a kitten warm.

I was talking to her in the Uber the other night on the way to the ER vet telling her it was okay and that I was here. And that I wasn't going to let her suffer. I thought that not letting her suffer was going to be making peace with losing the cat, but not allowing this to go on. 

I really can't overstate my satisfaction with this new drug, it's taken a cat that would have had to be euthanized out of mercy several years ago to one that can go on indefinitely.