On April 28th we took Simcoe in for her quarterly checkup, the last one was on January 26th (I wrote about it here).
In general we felt she was responding well to the CRF treatment, activity level has been great and it seemed like she was even putting on weight.
Simcoe in the carrier before the vet visit
The physical exam went great. She indeed has put on a whole pound in the past 3 months, going from 7.1 to 8.1 lbs. This is up a significant amount from when she was just 6.06 lbs, but still a bit off her healthy weight of 9.1 lbs.
On Tuesday we got the blood work back:
BUN: 55 (normal range: 14-36)
CRE: 2.3 (normal range: .6-2.4)
So the BUN has increased a little (last time was 46) and CRE is down a little from 2.4. The vet suggested that we keep her on her treatment plan and check back again in 3 months.
She also again recommended that we start brushing her teeth regularly. We’ve since done it once… with marginal success. I’ll try again tonight. If anyone has some tips I’d be happy to hear them! We have been giving them treats that claim to help with dental health.
It’s also become increasingly difficult to give her pills, she is very sneaky. I’ll go through the whole pilling process, believe she’s swallowed it and then she’ll walk off and spit out the pill a minute later. On the recommendation of the petsitter we decided to try out Greenie’s Pill Pockets. It worked very well for the first few days, but now she’s trying to eat around the pills, the past two nights it took two tries.
We’re still working to handle different food for each cat. Caligula’s food sometimes makes her sick and we suspect Caligula has put on a little weight by sneaking her food. She’s also very picky about her soft food and I’ve had to sneak in the prescription food with the low-phosphorous over the counter food that she likes. On the bright side she hasn’t lost her appetite! She just walks around and meows when I don’t give her the food she wants.
I’m very happy that she’s responding so well to treatment, quite a change from the devastation we felt when she was diagnosed in December when we learned it was incurable and thought her prognosis was on the order of just a few months. From day to day she acts like normal pre-illness Simcoe!
Friday, May 4th, 2012 at 4:04
nice to hear that simcoe is doing well!
Friday, May 4th, 2012 at 18:34
Yay, Simcoe!
Saturday, May 5th, 2012 at 2:43
This is good news, about her pills, did you try to crushed to a powder and mix it with her food, that is what I had to do with Tasha.
Saturday, May 5th, 2012 at 10:45
Unfortunately Pepcid AC is a pretty bitter substance so mixing it with food wasn’t recommended (particularly since she tends to be pretty picky about her food anyway :)).