Stressful evening for furbaby mum

Well I have just recovered from my first stressful "my baby is sick" moment with my furbaby. He was diagnosed with a heart condition last year and is on medication to help but I have always known he could get congestive heart failure or an embolism at any time.

We have just moved house and he coped really well...much better than his little furbrother who felt the whole thinga bit scary. We let them outside last night and my big boy came back and was breathing funny, wheezing, off his food, purring loudly, wagging his tale and whimpering!!!! We rushed him off to the emergency after hours vet and he got priority treatment!!!

He had to stay overnight and I was so worried. both DF and I couldnt settle last night...I was pacing!

Good news is he was much better this morning and now has a low dose diuretic to add to his cocktail of drugs. He had fluid on his lungs. He is much more his old self and came home demanding his breakfast and gobbled it down so fast that he will prob throw it up.

I just want to cuddle and cuddle him but he is saying" oh mum, leave me alone, Im not a baby!"

I cant imagine what it is going to be like the first time we rush our baby-to- be to hospital

Heres hoping you never have to rush your soon to be born baby to hosp!!

He's all good, just sunning himself in our bay window...until he rolled over and whoops....on to the floor. Very undignified!!

NZPiper I can completely understand - our beautiful puddy cat (baby boy) is a very sick wee man. Last year he was diagnosed with congenital heart failure (after a long period of mystery symptoms!) and he has a problem with fluid accumalating on his lungs and in his chest. Last week they drained about 300ml out - which seemed to really help, he bounces back really well from that procedure!

We know that he is on 'his last legs', but whilst he still has some quality of life, we arent going to do anything drastic. Apart from his medication (he gets 7 pills a day including a diuretic - which we give to him in liquid form, as he spits out those pills!) he is still the same old cat, just a wee bit slower. He still eats, still cuddles - he doesnt play as much, but he is getting old anyway....so thats to be expected.

Its always a hard decision (and an expensive one) to keep treating him, but we love him so much, and he isnt in any pain or suffering in anyway, so we think we are doing the right thing.

On the up side - when he was diagnosed the specialist thought we might have 3 months at the most with him, and that was almost a year ago. I do tend to spoil him a lot more now though....

Fingers crossed your fur baby does as well as ours!

Awwwww, big hugs I am not a fur baby parent coz I don't cope when they get sick. We had a cat when I was growing up, we inherited her with a house Mum and Dad bought when she was about 12 and had to get her put down when she was 22 as her kidneys were failing. It was horrible, I didn't cope well at all, I was so attached to her

Heart problems in cats must be reasonably common tho? My grandparents had a Siamese that had heart troubles and was on all sorts of meds. Grandma says it's more common in purebreeds coz there is so much inbreeding? I

Hi nzpiper - Sammy (my DH named him before he met me!!!) is 14ish, so he is a good age already. We give him the Fortekor, also Spironalactor, Neomercazole and for his diuretic we give him a liquid. For some reason he used to spit out the Diurin,  so we now give his Lasix which is actually a paediatric medicine, and we just squirt it into his mouth with a dropper or a syringe.

He has got quite smart over the last few months, and we are now quite creative about giving him his pills. Variety seems to be key. Sometimes we hide them in cooked chicken, sometimes he gets raw beef, othertimes we just hide them in his jellymeat.

We take him for check ups every 6 weeks or so, depending on how he is doing. He often ends up with big shaved patches of fur, from the ultrasounds and fluid draining...poor little thing looks soooo funny!!

You are down in Palmy arent you? Are you seeing the team at Massey?

i couldn't bear to be without my furkids clyde (goldie) and kitty (black cat). i can't bear when they are sick either, it's so worrying! they just don't realise how much they mean to us eh!
i'm glad he's doing better nzpiper.....did you make that appt?