February

A couple of days after Kali finished her courses of antibiotics and steroids I noticed that she wasn’t quite as alert or lively. She was still a bit better than she had been before having these additional medicines. Her appetite has remained good and she always gets up and comes to the door of her house for breakfast. She still comes out most evenings but she doesn’t stay out very long. She explores the room and finds the food I put out for her. She then usually visits her potty and goes straight back to her bed.

Generally she seems to be coping with her heart condition and, although it restricts how much she can do, she seems happy enough. The only times when she gets distressed are when she tries to do too much.

Her flaky skin condition hasn’t got any worse. The patches which were there have flaked off and left healthy looking skin behind. There are no signs of any new patches forming.

We haven’t been back to the vets again yet because the vet who had been treating Kali is on holiday. He should be back now so I’ll fix an appointment to find out the results of skin sample he took at the last visit.

After the changes to her treatment Kali is quite a lot better. She is very alert and is eager to come out of her cage at playtimes. She is also eating properly again. I don’t know if the improvement is due to the changes in dosage of her heart medicines, the antibiotic or the steroid. She will finish the antibiotic and the steroid in a few days so I’ll monitor her closely once they finish to see how she reacts.

We’re due to go back to the vets this week to get the results of the skin sample.

Kali went back to the vet again last night. The vet is confident that the diagnosis of a heart problem is correct. There is nothing that can be done other than try to manage the symptoms more effectively. We discussed the taurine supplement that I had been giving her and the vet didn’t think it would have caused any harm. The vet did suggest adding meat to Kali’s diet rather than use the supplement.

In order to help Kali’s symptoms we’ve increased the dosage of the diuretic and one of the heart pills (enacard). Just in case Kali has picked up a respiratory infection we’ve put her on a short cause of antibiotics. She will also be having a short course of steroids to help make her feel better. The vet also took a sample from her flaky skin for testing.