Cat5 is still having problems. The feces problem has decreased, somewhat, but she’s still throwing up all over the place. Then, last week, Jaeger noticed that she had gone back to grooming herself raw. This time it was two places on the inside of her leg.

I took her to the vet again and he examined her and pondered. On the plus side, she’s still not constipated. That’s a major improvement over last year. Also, the places she’s over grooming means that her bottom isn’t particularly bothering her which is also a good sign. Our previous vet in Longmont did a lot of tests that ruled out some of the other possibilities. So, at the moment, the vet is leaning toward thinking she might have allergies of some sort that is causing her skin, and possibly bowel, problems.

One problem I have with Five is it’s extremely hard to give her medicine. She’s not a particularly smart cat but is pretty good at detecting medicine when it’s hidden in anything, including the pill pockets. I have about a 50/50 success rate when I try to brute force the pill down her throat. In addition, previously the vet prescribed a sticky gel (like hairball medicine) that you try to put in the cat’s mouth so they’ll lick it off and swallow it. I tried using it a while ago and got a little bit on the side of her jaw. Five completely ripped out all the hair on that side of her jaw. It looked like someone who had tried to shave for the first time. Completely bare skin with little red nicks all over. It was really, really disturbing. So, I stopped giving that to her.

With allergies the vet said he was thinking about trying to give her something like cortisone. This sounded like a good idea to me because back when she was doing very poorly last year, the Longmont vet had been giving her injections and that seemed to help more than anything else we tried. I mentioned that and our new vet said he was hesitant to give actual cortisone injections because apparently it can push a pre-diabetic cat into full diabetes and, unlike people and dogs, it’s hard to tell when a cat is pre-diabetic. He admitted that his opinion might be a little skewed because this is what happened with his own cat. He gave the cat a couple of shots of cortisone, triggered diabetes, and now has to give his cat insulin for the rest of its life. However, I can barely handle Cat5’s needs at the moment and I don’t think I could deal with her being diabetic.

In the end, the vet prescribed a gel solution of Prednisolone (0.1 mL Gel twice a day to start with and gradually decreasing if everything goes well). Given my experience with the last gel-like substance I was a bit leary. However, this is a different consistency and you apply it to the inside of the cat’s ear. Apparently the odds that she’ll over groom that part of her anatomy, at least to a harmful level, is low. Though, of course, I’ll monitor her closely to make sure there aren’t any problems. The vet also instructed me to try to avoid touching it and use gloves when I’m giving it to Five. It must be absorbed via the skin and the vet wanted to make sure I wouldn’t get an inadvertent dose of it. Fortunately, due to Five’s variety of messes, I always have massive supplies of latex gloves on hand¹.

I’m feeling slightly hopeful that this treatment might actually work. I’m definitely atopic and, given how many skin problems I’ve had, it just make sense that Cat5 would follow in my footsteps. So, now we’ll just wait and see. I really hope this somehow magically fixes all her problems . . .