As I was driving Juno to the vet’s for her 2-weekly deworming today, I heard her cough-sneezing in the carrier quite a number of times. It was the typical high-pitched “achoo” sneezing, it was like she was trying to get something out from inside, more like a low-pitched cough-sneeze.
I managed to take a video after we arrived at the vet’s. You can hear the cough-sneeze at the beginning of this video below.
Initially I thought it was cat flu, but it definitely did not sound like a normal high-pitched flu sneeze. The vet later agreed too when she heard Juno cough-sneeze during the examination. I thought the cat flu took 14 days to incubate and is manifesting now (most likely not the case).
Juno reminds me a lot of Hiro. Hiro was brought by his mother, Misty, to our porch, seeking for help. But Hiro was already having very severe flu at that time, with one collapsed lung. He had all the symptoms – eye discharge, nasal discharge, the works. Hiro recovered completely from the flu and the collapsed lung but sadly, he was FIV+ and succumbed to IMHA (severe anaemia and liver failure) later. He only lived with us for 36 days.
The vet checked Juno’s temperature and it was normal. But Juno was scratching her left ear a lot and the vet checked and found infection in that ear. The right ear was okay. Her heart is also okay, but the cough-sneeze definitely sound like there is something going on in the lungs. True enough, the lungs sounded “noisy” on the stetoscope.
The vet said we would do X-rays to check what is going on in the lungs.
Juno also had fleas (oh dear), so the vet sprayed Frontline on her body.
The white patch on the left lung (right side of the image above) shows the collapsed lung, and there are also whitish parts on the red. Juno has a lung infection.
From the sound of her cough-sneeze, it is likely to be “aspiration pneumonia”. Remember there were two consecutive days where I found a bit of vomit on the floor in the morning? The vet said it’s likely that Juno aspirated some of the vomit and this went into the lungs, causing a bacteria infection. For this, Juno is prescribed Curam twice daily and Vetri DMG 0.4ml daily.
She was also nebulised at the clinic and I will do the nebulisation daily for another eight more days.
Juno’s PBF also showed the presence of a lot of WBC, which could either be due to the infection or FIV/FeLV, so this had to be tested. As I sat outside waiting for the results, I hoped and hoped that Juno is not FIV or FeLV+. Please…no. She reminds me so much for Hiro. I don’t want the same thing to happen to her. Hiro also had a collapsed lung.
Taking blood from Juno proved to be very challenging. The vet had to take from the jugular vein because she’s so small and it would have been too difficult to draw blood from the leg. Juno bit the vet. It took a few tries before blood was finally taken.
The blood results showed that Juno is FIV/FeLV negative. Negative – phew! I was so relieved. But this doesn’t mean what she has is minor. She is a very young kitten, and a collapsed lung and the pneumonia is serious. This also meant that the increased WBC is the body’s mechanism to fight the infection (and not due to FeLV).
But we caught it early, I hope, and she has medicine now. I am to monitor her breathing so we are going to bring Juno downstairs and will set up an area for her in the kitchen. Initially I was thinking of the cage in the pantry, but Gerald’s yowling will drive anyone bonkers.
600g today (on our home weighing scale)!
Nice poop this morning too.
Juno ate a lot of lunch after returning from the vet’s.
Her eyes are a bit watery, due to the lung infection.
One day at a time, we will get there together, Juno.