Baby Cat Health Update (August 2024)

Hi, I’m Nicole! Read my introduction to learn more about me and my distinguished Burmese, Mr. Baby Cat.

Just as I completed writing last week’s article about the toddler and Baby Cat tea party, writing about their beautiful relationship, Baby Cat started laboured breathing and caused quite a commotion in our living room.

Writing this update, I don’t know exactly what will come of this event, and what the story will be tomorrow. But I wanted to journal what we’re going through and hopefully offer some support to any readers that have geriatric kitties, or even those who have young ones, because if you’re lucky, you’ll have a geriatric cat one day, too.

The Physical Manifestations

Baby Cat was laying on his tower bed by the fire when we heard him cough. I must mention that tracking data tells me his Hepper Nest bed is only two days away from arrival here in New Zealand (been waiting years for this moment), so of course luck would have it that he is giving us quite the scare just moments before his new, comfortable, and safe-for-senior-cats bed is ready to be unboxed.

He doesn’t cough often so we were a bit surprised to hear the strange noise, and then he started jolting. He would have a big jolt every 3–4 breaths, but the breathing was heavy and coming from the stomach.

It may have been hiccups, or there are numerous other more severe ailments it could be, but we’re in this inner battle between taking him to the vet for a checkup (which will very likely cost us a fortune and not guarantee him much more time than he naturally has left), and keeping him at home and as comfortable as we can (which might be making him worse because maybe whatever is wrong with him is something simple and fixable).

We know he has kidney disease and that it is incurable, but manageable—but he hated the kidney diet food so we weren’t really able to manage it as well as we could.

He ended up laying down on the floor with my husband and I petting him and calming him down, while the breathing remained laboured and quite aggressive through the nose, the jolts started to fade away.

Where We’re At Now

He’s stable and loafing, and is eating the first thing he’s had in the past six to seven hours (which is a long stretch between meals for this guy). He’s lost a lot of weight this past week, his appetite has been dwindling but really fell off the edge a few days ago. He’s slept through meal times, but still finds the energy to jump up on the couch, outdoor chairs, and our bed.

Just when he seems sick enough for us to book the vet appointment, he eats a full meal and takes a nice healthy poo, and we feel relieved, but 24–48 hours later we’re worried sick again.

It’s a roller coaster, and my husband and I are learning how to navigate on-the-fly. It has us wondering if we’re being selfish by keeping him from the vet, or selfless, because if he is unwell, we’re also worried they might strongly urge us toward euthanasia, and we are not ready for that yet, either. Nor do we think he is.

Of course, it’s Friday, so a vet visit will have to wait until Monday anyways, so we will see.

Post-Update Update

We are now five days on from when I wrote the above message and I can’t believe I’m writing that Baby Cat is acting normal again! Still a geriatric slowpoke, but he’s eating as normal, walking as normal, drinking as normal, and even taking himself outside to enjoy the sunshine.

We have no idea what happened and we’re keeping a close eye on him, but we’re finding that in his old age, if we took him to the vet every time he did something odd, we’d be there 3-10 times/week.

I’m very grateful he’s doing his thing again and hope that we’re in the clear for a little while at least.