Cat Chat Feline Forum

Hi all!
I'm on here because it's one of my last resorts to try and help my cat. For a little background, my cat is a female cornish rex and is around 8 or 9 years old. She is the love of my life and I think she's still fairly young to be leaving this earth. About 5 months ago, she started getting very, very skinny and was leaking diarrhea all over the place. I finally took her to the vet and they originally thought it was hyperthyroidism because of her age, but when her white blood cell count came back, it was extremely high and they realized she had an infection. The vet was unable to tell us what kind of infection she had, but they did keep her overnight. They told us it might be a bacterial infection of some sort, but they were unsure. At first, she got better and we gave her imodium to help stop the diarrhea as well as wet food. For about two months or so, she was back to normal, but she got worse again and goes through cycles of having diarrhea and becoming emaciated. Usually when we give her imodium she "gets better", but recently she has not been responding and I'm afraid she's adapted to it. I'm really concerned about her because she is losing more weight (she's less than 4 pounds). I feel really bad for her and I want to help her desperately. The vet doesn't seem to know what is going on, so I'm turning to the internet to help. IIf you have any idea what it could be, feel free to respond to this! Thank you!

Sorry to say this but a vet has 7 years training and a whole load of test facilities at their disposal which nothing on the internet can replace. Has your cat had any tests ... fecal, bloods, etc? Any treatments, prescribed medication, supportive foods, recommended diet?

If not, perhaps another vet might be more helpful in working with you to establish a helpful treatment plan of some kind.

I agree with Mollycat, time to get a second opinion from a more experienced and qualified vet. Hyperthyroidism is very rare (ie pretty much unheard of) in cats less than 10years old, so I’m surprised your vet even tested for this.

Please don't just turn to the Internet, it’s not a place where qualified vets spend their leisure time, and they don’t have the benefit of examining your cat and a full set of test results. You’ll just end up getting mislead and wasting valuable time before getting her properly diagnosed, or you’ll scare yourself silly.

I won’t try to second guess what the problem is, but you really need to be ramping this up to the next level of tests. All you are doing at the moment is treating the symptoms and not the cause. It’s very unlikely that she has “adapted” to Imodium, it’s more likely that her condition has deteriorated to the point that this no longer works. Even in humans imodium doesn’t cure the cause of the diarrhoea, it just makes the colon absorb the moisture to reduce the liquid stools. It doesn’t address the gut problem that caused it in the first place. If there isn’t a more competent vet in your practice, change practice. I recently did this as so many of the old vets had left and all the replacements were young and inexperienced, and I had no confidence in their diagnoses. It may be time for you to do the same. Please don’t delay, your puss really does sound very poorly.