A MESSAGE TO SFVMA MEMBERS

Dear Colleagues,

I think sometimes we can forget how hard being on the other side of the exam table can be. My own cat, Monkey, a “slightly” overweight orange tabby man had been vomiting a little more for a few months. He still had normal energy and wanted to eat nearly anything put in front of him. Being a veterinarian’s cat, he was of course a nightmare of open mouth panting, vomiting and diarrhea pretty much immediately upon being shoved into a cat carrier, so I delayed taking him in for a bit. I assumed he probably had IBD or intestinal lymphoma, and finally decided it was worth drugging him up on gabapentin and Cerenia to at least start with some blood work.

His senior screen was unremarkable minus an ever so slight elevation in proBNP that I added on after convincing myself that I could hear a tiny murmur. I went ahead and set him up to get an abdominal ultrasound and a quick peak at his heart. The 3 days before his ultrasound, he started eating a little less and did not want to eat wet food. Now he would on occasion decide he needed more variety in wet food flavors, so this was not unheard of, but I started to become a little more concerned. …

Continue reading this article and more in the
Summer 2022 SFVMA Newsletter (PDF)