Hi, my name is Karen and I just joined. My reason for joining, I have an 18-year-old Siamese girl who is my heart. I love her so much and I have had her since she was about 3 months old.
My reason for joining as I said she is getting on in years and I am looking for health tips and ways to continue to enrich her life so I can keep her with me for as long as I can just so long as her health holds up and she still has quality of life, I would never be so selfish as to demand she stay if she was in pain or sick.
A bit of background on Mz. Elsa as I said she is an 18-year-old Siamese gal. She is the traditional Applehead; a gorgeous Sealpoint girl. She was purchased from a breeder and I got to see both her mother and father. Her mother was a tiny fine-boned Siamese and her dad was a big romper-stomper and my Elsa took after dad. At that time everyone was going for the smaller fine-lined Siamese and out of a litter of 4, poor Elsa was picked over and rejected. The breeder told me out of the 4 kittens Elsa had the most personality but no one wanted her; it was like she was apologizing for this poor kitten. In all honesty Elsa was exactly what I was looking for and it was love at first sight for me and she has been so very dear to me for the past 18 years.
Elsa is almost completely blind from cataracts but finds her way around with little to no problem, I try to keep the house exactly the same for her so she can find the fresh water in the kitchen and also find her litter box. Elsa has no teeth left so she gets canned food and she eats 5-6 times per day or as often as I can get her to eat. Our vet told us the most important thing is to keep her eating as that is the biggest problem faced with these older cats as they will quit eating and it is pretty much all over.
A fairly uncommon problem Elsa has, she began showing signs of Alzheimer's back about 9 months ago. At first she seemed like she would get a bit lost or confused and I laid it off to problems with her vision. But then she began getting really confused about what to do when she had to pee. I know how crazy that sounds but instead of getting down off the couch and going to her litter box she would get into my lap and then proceed to pee on me. Once in an 18 hour period, she got me FOUR times. Elsa always drank a lot of water, it became almost to a point of obscessive drinking making her urinate more. I was really getting to my witt's end with the situation trying to watch the clock and take her to her litter box every 3-4 hours and also moving the water bowl a few feet away. Nothing seemed to be working and after discussing it at length with our vet, I hit upon the idea of could she be showing symptoms of Alzheimer's and after doing considerable research on the subject, yes indeed animals can have a form of the disease. Doc and I discussed it and I mentioned a drug name I had come across that was showing some real signs of success with the disease and helping with the symptoms and doc told me he had a few dogs in his practice that were on it but not any cats. We discussed it a bit more and he asked me if I wanted to give it a shot and after giving it considerable thought I decided we would go for it. He had to calculate the dose for her as Elsa only weighs 5 pounds, in her heyday Elsa tipped the scales at 12-13 pounds. At first it seemed she was heavily sedated and there was no going to a lower dose, she was on the lowest dose the drug company made and forget about trying to open the capsule and only put about half of it on her food and stir it in, Elsa could always "ferret out" something that was not suppose to be in her food. Finally we decided to give it to her every other day and this has worked out beautifully. The drug seemed to life so much of the "fog" she was in, and in many ways it gave my Elsa back to me for at least a little while. It didn't turn the clock back ten years by no stretch of the imagination but it certainly took away so much of her confusion about things. I'm not sure about mentioning drug names so if anyone wants the name of the medicine, you are welcome to email me and I will give it to you. I would certainly recommend it to anyone who has a beloved pet and they had problems like my Elsa had.
So sorry for my long rambling, I didn't mean to turn my intro to a book so please forgive me. I love my Elsa so much and as I said I am looking for ways to help her and also to help enrich her life for however much longer I will get to keep her.
~Karen
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