Sheila Kalinovits from Toronto, ON Canada writes:
I am the owner of a lovely black cat named Otis. He is about seven years old, seemingly very healthy and suffering from meningitis for one week now. My husband and I have three outdoor/indoor cats, and a pit bull in Toronto, ON Canada.
We do take them to the vet for their shots, but may have been overdue for his. On Friday 6 July Otis started sneezing over and over all throughout the day. We noticed, but weren't overly concerned.
I did research on the Internet before bed and read that cats are susceptible to colds during the summer, so I was fine with that. The family went to sleep and woke up to Otis in the morning, unable to move with faeces on his body. His inner eyelids were closed and we thought he was blind.
We took him to our regular vet and they did a physical with blood work, checked his temperature but came up with nothing conclusive. They gave him an IV and let us take him home and said if he was the same on Sunday morning to take him to the emergency vet.
His state got worse, his head was spinning and he threw up a couple of times. We took him to the vet were they kept him for a night and we brought him to another vet with a neurologist for an MRI. They said his membrane was inflamed.
My husband and his family are animal lovers and have taken care and kept blind dogs and cats with diabetes, so they opted to keep Otis alive with a prescription for steroids and antibiotics. So, to recap, we started giving him medication three days after his symptoms started.
The reason I am writing is for some information please. There isn't much information about cats living and recovering from meningitis. We have the patience, desire and lovely home to help heal Otis. He is showing desire to get up and roam again, just not the balance.
We are feeding him and giving him water by syringe and he has urinated outside since we got him back home on Wednesday 31 July, but he hasn't made a bowel movement yet.
Dr Liesel answers:
I see you live in Canada. I didn't know The Bronberger went so far .
Cats are less inclined to develop meningitis than dogs. In Canada, though, I think you can also get fungal meningitis, which we do not get here in South Africa. Cryptococcus spp. also causes a snotty nose. However, I am sure your vets would have noticed this.
Recovery really does depend on the cause of the nervous signs. With neurological diseases, stabilisation of symptoms is good, as are incremental improvements. Time is really the great healer and if she is manageable and has sufficient quality of life in the interim, you could see quite a lot of recovery. |