Buster is super sick, and we are super upset [Updated]

Our precious little Buster is still extremely ill. We’ve had him to the vet Friday, Saturday, all day today and he’s staying all night at a Kitty Emergency Watch thing. So anyone that prays for kitties please pray for ours. Thanks. That is all for now.

Update – Tuesday:

Okay, so he is out of surgery. His gallbladder was twice the normal size. They flushed it out. No noticeable stones, but his bile was very thick. His pancreas was inflamed and his liver was fatty/inflamed. The liver is the biggest culprit for his symptoms [], but not the cause of the problems. His liver actually had some clots and caused his tummy to bruise and seep (we all assumed the wetness around his tummy was urine—until they shaved him for surgery and saw it). Poor baby! Either his gallbladder caused the pancreas problem, or the pancreas/diabetes caused the gallbladder issue (possible infection from the diabetes?). It’s the chicken and the egg thing. Then, because of his digestive upset, his liver tried to take over nourishing him, which is why it has turned fatty.

She said the liver can be probably be fully recovered. We won’t know about the diabetes until we get his liver healed up. He has a feeding tube. We will have to take him to the emergency vet tonight and probably back over to our vet in the morning. When his jaundice gets better, we will take him home and feed him with the tube. He will have it in for at least 7 to 10 days because his incision has to heal a certain amount before they can take it back out. He can swallow food and water with it in, so if he gets better before that, he can eat and drink on his own with the tube still in place. After he gets a clean bill of health, we will be focusing on weight loss and maintaining diabetes (if he has it).

I’m thrilled he made it through the surgery, but we are not out of the woods, yet. We’ve got a rough road up ahead! But at least he’s still with us!

Update – Wednesday:

Buster’s prognosis is not good. He did lift his head up a few times and twitch his tail. The emergency overnight vet thinks that with his flesh dying on his stomach, that he probably won’t make it. He and our vet still have no clue why this is happening. They don’t know whether his organs had trouble which led to him being weak and not being able to fight infection, or whether he caught a terrible bug, which caused his organs to start failing. The emergency overnight vet even speculated whether he got MRSA, which led to all this. There’s just no way to know for now.

We talked of whether to take him up to Columbus, but even then it looks as if they would only be able to find out anything post-mortem (it takes days to grow cultures). Even if he doesn’t make it, we are discussing the cost/benefit of doing cultures on him (have them sent off), so we at least can know whether he has something contagious. I just wish I could know for sure whether Bijou might catch this. His infection could just be a common one that is so bad because of his gallbladder, liver, and pancreas. There is also a metabolic disorder sometimes seen in cats that affects these organs, but no one knows what causes it. They don’t even know if it’s something they are born with, catch, or if it’s a random occurence.

Currently, there is not very much information about MRSA in pets. I remember reading that it was thought animals were not affected by it, but there are a few reports of possible infections in animals.

I think our vet is still leaning towards his weakened condition causing the skin infection.The emergency overnight vet doesn’t have a leaning. He’s seen it a few times but has never been able to get an acceptable answer. I think he suspects that MRSA does occur in pets, but whether that’s the case with Buster, he just doesn’t know. He said if it were his cat, he’d give him 24 hours to show signs of improvement. our vet said at most, a couple days. So we are still in the waiting period.

We are obviously still praying he’ll miraculously improve over the next 24 hours.

Update – Thursday:

We called the night before to see how he was doing at the overnight vet. He was standing up. That’s was a pretty big sign of improvement, but when we arrived in the morning there were lots of signs of other issues. Adema and kicked in and the poor little guy was pretty swollen. The vet thought he was dying. We went to the other vet to see if we could take him home and they said it was a good idea.

He was soooo happy to be home. We opened the window in his room and when I opened his cage he went straight to the window like he always did. Of course, he was still really sick so he quickly needed to lay down. We got to spend the morning with him and pet him and love on him. His little tail was wagging and although he wasn’t feeling good, I could tell his little spirits were lifted.

Our vet called and had us bring him down around 1, and she looked at him and ran one final test to determine if his liver wasn’t performing like it should. The protein results were lower than before and at this point we did absolutely everything we could. We said our final goodbye’s and put my precious little boy down.

I honestly can’t recall a harder time in my life. This past week has been insane with the ups and downs of all of this. It was probably the most shocking/sudden thing I’ve ever seen with a pet, especially one that wasn’t very old.

I’m sure if you’re reading this and don’t have an inside pet you can’t have a clue what we’re going through, but I liken it to the loss of a child. My little Buster brought so much joy into our lives and I gladly would have dealt with the initial diagnoses of diabetes or gladly given anything that I own to keep him around.

I know we did all that we could, and he was such a trooper during this time. We love him and will miss him so very much.

We’d appreciate your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time.