The Case of the Week for the week of
June 20
Spivey is a four year old neutered male cat that came into
the clinic on 6-18-99. When we see a cat like Spivey with obvious
jaundice we are usually thinking the worst. Outdoor cats are 
frequently exposed to diseases like feline
leukemia and feline immunodefeciency virus and present as jaundiced
cats. Cats also are commonly afflicted by liver disease that is
related to a change in metabolism that causes the liver to become
engorged with fat and becomes a progressive disease that is difficult
to treat. I lost one of my own cats to this disease about 6 years
ago. Diabetes will often result in a jaundiced cat. When Spivey
was presented I was almost hoping that he had DIABETES! At least
this was something that we could treat and would not require surgery.
Angie is smiling in this picture even though we did not find
that Spivey had what I was hoping for. That's a good sign. We
started with several simple test to rule out renal and kidney
disease 
and made a blood smear to get an
impression of how much red cell destruction and white cell response
was going on. We came up with a fairly normal chemistry profile
on the I-Stat but stumbled into a possible diagnosis on the blood
smear.
The blood smear revealed the small purple bodies on the surface
of the red blood cells in large numbers. These organisms, Hemobartonella
felis, cause red cells to be destroyed and in the 
metabolism
of hemoglobin lots of bilirubin (yellow stuff) is produced. Since
lots of cats that have Hemobartonella have it because they are
immunosuppressed we went ahead and ruled out FeLV and FIV however
these tests were negative. We started Spivey on appropriate antibiotics
and he was feeling better within hours. We sent him home on the
next morning. Since this disease is contagious and Spivey is an
out door cat we recommended isolation for about a week. We will
want to keep track of Spivey to make sure things progress as expected
but we are EXPECTING steady recovery.
We love happy endings and minimal bills and we're hoping Spivey
doesn't let us down!
Spivey was doing well when we call on 6-22-99 and is scheduled
for vaccinations this week.
Other interesting Cases
Home