http://www.pacific-pets.com/categories/cats-kittens/behaviour-training/feliway.html
For those of you who dont know, Feliway is a wonderful thing for cats - and humans who like their cats to be happy and calm. I've written about it before in my essential list of equipment to get when you're about to embark on a cat. In short, it is a diffuser you plug into an electric power point (like a 'plug in' air scenting thing), that disperses a fake pheremone that registers to a cat as the scent they make to mark territory as 'theirs'. It therefore gives the message that everything is safe and good. It is virtually undetectable to humans. I say virtually, as I have a super nose, and I can just smell it when I have plugged a new one in and when I'm within 1m of it (it isnt unpleasant - and I HATE air freshners). In my reading and chatting all things cat, I have come across the very rare instance of a cat who doesn't react well to feliway (if you're the rare exception, you'll notice, and can de-plug with no harm done). But for almost all cats, feliway makes a noticeable difference in their wellbeing, particularly in times of stress. I have just plugged a new one in, as Kato has been indicating a desire to wee on our bed - husband man is away, so that is a stressor for Kato - and the new feliway has calmed those indications down. Both Ava and Kato display a little more 'happy marking' when the new feliway is plugged in - rubbing happily against the closest walls and furniture, and even flopping on the floor in the vicinity of the diffuser. I was happy today, as I needed to re-stock, and I found an Australian site offering feliway re-fills at a staggeringly low $22.95...and I got free shipping :)
http://www.pacific-pets.com/categories/cats-kittens/behaviour-training/feliway.html
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Kato got some type of cat flu 10 months ago when we introduced Ava. Despite repeated vet visits, and various successful antibiotic courses, he now has yet another flare-up. So we will be going to our vet again this week. LysineIn preparation, I have been doing some reading and research. Our vet advised us to give Kato daily doses of lysine, and we have been doing this. Lysine is a natural stuff, that can be given long term. It suppresses viruses - so it is often used in upper respiratory infections, or for feline herpes. I will be asking about our dosage, as I have read on many sites that 500mg twice daily is the flare-up dose for adult cats. Currently we are on 250mg x 2daily. At this dosage, we certainly notice that it helps Kato's symptoms, but poor boy is flaring now, so I will be discussing if we should up the dose. At 250mg x 1daily, Kato's symptoms get worse, so perhaps our thinking is on the right track...I will update after vet visit! Update 1: We are going to start the 500mg x2daily regime for a flare-up... Update 2: It is week 3 now on this dosage, and Kato has had some improvement. He has more energy and is asking to play vigorously. His coughing has decreased, but still there some nights. His eyes are not noticeably inflamed, glassy with tears, blinking constantly, or with a yellow/green discharge. His eyes still do produce 'sleep' in more than normal amounts. We started the lactoferrin in addition to lysine yesterday, so still expecting more improvement. Update 3: With things going well, I dropped back the lysine to 2x250mg doses in a day, plus lactoferrin. But just late last week, Kato started coughing at night. Not much, but we still emailed our vet. While we waited for her reply (and the possibility we'd start another course of antibiotics), I again doubled the lysine. In just TWO days, his coughing has gone! We continue to monitor...there is also the possibility he has asthma. Update 4: 1 July 2014. We are still going strong with the 2x500mg dose of lysine, plus 2x125mg lactoferrin. No return of cough despite terribly cold weather (and he still insists on a daily walk!). Eyes are clear, energy is great, no sneezing. We will keep on this dose, as discussed with our vet. Where to get LysineThe good news about the lysine we get - enisyl-f oral paste for cats - is that both Kato and Ava think it is a treat! They love to lick it up off our fingers. Given that Kato is a terror to medicate, and that stress is a trigger for viral recurrence, this ease of medication is a major plus. Be warned, to humans it is stinky (the cod liver oil component no doubt), so don't breathe too much until you've washed your hands! The bad news about enisyl-f oral paste for cats is that it is very costly. Especially as Kato needs it indefinitely. From our vet, it is about $50 for 100g, and this is comparable or CHEAPER than internet options once we factor in shipping. Given to two cats (Ava has just one 250mg dose), the 100g lasts approximately a month. So expensive! I have been trawling the net to try and find a cheaper way to get my hands on this paste, which seems to be very difficult for Australians. I have written to the manufacturer's reps in Australia to see if they can come to some arrangement with me - I will update this too, if I get any good news (nope, they didn't even reply). And in the meantime, I have done several 'pot-luck' Amazon orders to see if American suppliers will ship to Australia. I'm no tech-head, so I find Amazon very annoying in that I have to go all the way through and order to find whether that supplier will ship to me or not. Time-consuming and frustrating. But I did 'bingo' onto one provider: http://www.amazon.com/Vetoquinol-Enisyl-F-6-Pack-Paste-100ml/dp/B00D6FFRGS. They aren't the cheapest in the Amazon listings, but they will ship to Australia, for $18 - quite good. And at the complete $AU price (including shipping) of $162 for SIX x 100g, that works out at $27 a tube. Hopefully I'll receive everything easily. Update1: Received by expected date! Will try these guys again when we run out in 6months! Update2: (Aug 2014) Well, my second order of lysine from Amazon got stopped by quarantine. I had a very frustrating week trying to get it through. It only required a very simple explanation - from the manufacturer - of ONE ingredient (what fish the 'fish oil' came from). But the manufacturer gave me the run around saying they couldn't help me because they don't sell directly to pet owners. Well that's fine, I wasn't asking them to sell to me - just to provide information to Australian Quarantine so that a customer could keep using their product for the next 15 years. Their response was maybe I could ask the retailer. I explained that Australian Quarantine wanted the information from the MANUFACTURER...and then I got complete silence from every contact I tried within Vetoquinol. SO, dead end, and I had to return the lysine before it got destroyed by customs. Fortunately, Amazon were excellent, and I was able to get my money back. Have I been able to find another money saving route to getting Kato his lysine? Not quite. You see, the bottles from overseas have 'fish oil' listed on the ingredients. But the ingredient list is DIFFERENT for bottles sold within Australia, stating 'cod liver oil'. Clearly, Vetoquinol supplies information or alternative packaging for retailing in Australia, and we are forced to pay double what other countries pay. Naturally, quarantine can't pick up every package, so perhaps I might be lucky with another shipment? In the meantime, I have bought lysine powder from the chemist (very cheap), and have tried halving the amount of Vetoquinol paste and mixing the lysine powder in so that I get the full lysine dose...delivered in that tasty medium that Kato loves. And that's the important thing - that Kato likes to eat it and it isn't stressful. This is ok, but because I want him to have the lactoferrin as well, there is too much powder to mix into the tasty paste. The cheapest online retailer of enysil f (Vetoquinol's lysine paste) in Australia that I could find still costs $42.50 per bottle : https://www.ovedshorseandpetstore.com.au/enisyl-f-oral-paste-for-cats-100ml?search=enisyl%20paste Lactoferrin and where to get itThe other thing from my research, that I will be discussing with my vet, is whether we should add bovine lactoferrin to Kato's supplements. From what I have read - both in scientific articles, and in forums - respiratory infections and herpes virus sufferers respond really well to lactoferrin. This is another natural product that is safe to administer long term. Here are some anecdotals with links to articles about lactoferrin. And then the problem I will have, no doubt, will be sourcing the lactoferrin in Australia! With our quarrantine controls, and mad cow disease in other parts of the world, I imagine I will be in for a search. And in for some experimentation in getting Kato to 'like' his medicine (treats! Think treats Kato!!). I will update on this also...
Update 1: I managed to find an Australian supplement company and have ordered Jarrow's Lactoferrrin (60 x 250mg capsules). I will be giving it a go, with a dosage of 125mg x2daily. Update 2: After two emails to this 'Australian' company, I finally got a response from them saying it was normal for delivery to be 2-3weeks (odd). Eventually, as of march 28, I received the lactoferrin...from AMERICA! At least the shipping was only $6.50 and hey, it got through customs....I have so far given 2 doses. It doesn't taste bad to me (milky), and Kato really investigated while I was undoing the capsule - he got a bit up his nose, but came back for more sniff/lick lol. So it's good that it is not unpleasant. I have been mixing it into his lysine doses and he still thinks it's a yummy treat. So far, so good on the administering side of things. Update 3: So, does it work? Yes, I think so! I was just reading how Kato was on the doubled lysine, and this let me know that we certainly did have more improvement with the addition of lactoferrin. His cough went away. Some days he even has no sleep at all in the corners of his eyes. Update 4: 1 July 2014. I've given up on the 'Australian' company posted above. Tried another order, and still had to chase them up over a month later. They were good enough to re-ship, but I'm going to give these guys from New Zealand a go (cheaper too, with free world-wide shipping). And they've been really helpful and FAST in answering my questions!...Received the product quickly from them - happy customer :) Very interesting news item last night and good news for people who are finding it difficult to get their cats desexed and microchipped due to money or mobility limitations - it's a trial, with the first area Heidelberg West. If you didn't get your letter, and live in Banyule Council, I'd try contacting your city council. In a first for Victoria, Banyule City Council and the RSPCA are piloting a mobile program offering residents free cat desexing and microchipping to combat cat over population and reduce cat euthanasia rates. I've never had a girl cat before - just boys. And boys are pretty easy to desex; for the owner, there really isn't any downtime at all. So I was a little bit anxious for Ava. She is a late spay too, as we have been battling with her health for months, poor little thing. There is still no 'verdict' as to what was wrong - she had bad tummy troubles. And she passed it to Kato at one stage, so it started out as something infectious. But all our testing, including the all-encompassing PCR test (which we did twice!) showed no conclusive results. So we went down the drug trial route, and that helped, and fixed Kato, but Ava was still a bit poorly. We then started on food trials (still ongoing), and she had sufficient improvement to catch up on all her kitten vaccinations, yay! And finally, at 7.5months, she was well enough to be desexed. I thought I'd write this post about our experiences with cats and bee-stings, because Ava finally got stung today, after going after the bees for the last week! Kato also got stung as a kitten - and carries a bald spot on his chin like a 'Guy Falks' goatee. Thankfully, it hasn't happened again for him, so here's hoping the first sting is lesson learned.
With Kato's sting, we saw the sting in his chin. We googled what to do - and tried scraping the sting off with a credit card. It didn't work too well, so husband-man had better success with grasping the sting with a tissue. Obviously, we don't want to squeeze in more venom, so a flicking/scraping action was the aim, although difficult with a cat who doesn't want to be touched. I think we rang the vet, and went with a 'watch and see' option. Some cats, like humans, will react to the poison and need to see the vet asap. In Kato's case, he was obviously quiet, did have some swelling, but no other alarming signs like respiratory distress. Today, with Ava's sting, husband-man went with his instincts and took her in to the vet. So I write about what a vet may do - as I really didn't know if they could do anything for an ouchie that wasn't life-threatening. Ava came out of the bushes scraping at her eye with her paw, and her left eye was weeping profusely. But we couldn't see the sting, so assumed she'd got it out. I gently bathed around her eye with cold water and a little salt, thinking at least this would remove any surface venom smeared on her fur, and possibly bring a little soothing coolness. We noticed her continually licking her nose, and she went and sat very quietly on her chair - too quietly for husband-man's liking. She had also purred under my ministrations (which she didn't really like), so I took that for her own method of pain-relief (cat's may purr to self soothe in times of pain or distress). As I had to leave for work, husband-man made the call and took her into the vet. We learned at least one thing! Look for the sting while looking down, over the top of their head. You can also better see any swelling from that angle. Lo and behold, the sting was still there - not near Ava's eye, but close to her mouth, in her whiskers. Very camouflaged. Our vet deftly removed the sting, checked Ava's temp (normal), and flushed her eye with a dye to check to see if Ava had inadvertently scratched it when she was pawing at her face (she was fine). Our vet also gave Ava a tiny amount of anti-inflammatory, injected in the usual neck scruff. And that's the end of the story - unless we have a further reaction, but all seems to be travelling smoothly. The past two weeks have seen both Ava and Kato on medication. Kato needed some antibiotics to help him get over a secondary infection accompanying the cat flu virus Ava gave him. Then Ava got an upset tummy, and needed a different type of antibiotic.
So, Kato's medicine was a paste. I like pastes. I simply cuddle Kato using my body to hold him - like I do in the nail trimming pictures in the grooming posts. Then I put a hand over this head from behind, so my fingers come down near his nose, mouth and chin (careful not to get a finger in his eye!). Then one finger lifts his lip at the side of his mouth. You will notice that the teeth on the side have a convenient gap. My other hand comes in with the paste on my index finger, and I swipe it into the tooth gap. The more I can get squished in the gap, rather than smeared along the gumline, or the lip, the better success I have with him NOT flicking it off with a vigorous head shake. And that's that. Naturally I talk sweetly to him the whole time too with lots of praise. Ava on the otherhand had a liquid. Which I had to syringe up in the correct amount, and squirt into her mouth. Sort of. Ava and I have not got a very good partnership happening. She squirms and wriggles. I try to hold her steady, with the same positioning as I used with Kato, and lift that lip so I can get the nozzle of the syringe into the tooth-gap. The tricky part is not squirting all the liquid at once to drown her, while trying to get enough in that she can't froth it all out. The liquid is sticky... I need a towel on my lap first, and tissues to hand to mop her little chin. Her eyes are big and pathetic as she tries to froth it out of her mouth, but look at me in interest as I smack my lips together to try and communicate she needs to lap and swallow! And she wriggles, shakes her head (bad, as drops fly and this stuff isn't supposed to go in eyes), and lifts her paw to take the syringe away from her mouth. Wow she is cute and clever! We are still going with Ava's meds. I hope enough is going into her. Kato is getting somewhat of a dose too - he cleans her! Which inspired a pretty good idea. Cats learn from each other and are fantastic observers. So, the second time for Ava's meds, I got Kato to show her how easy having medicine was (he cooperated, which was nice!). She sat and watched. Then I reached for Ava. While it went pretty much as above, she was a lot calmer than our first shot. And a stress-less experience is always something I want. So, while we don't have a really effective partnership that delivers all the medicine into her (yet), we do have a really good trustingrelationship, that has lots of communication and patience! |
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