Fatty Liver Disease

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Lori&Scout

Lori&Scout

Member Since 2012
My good friend's cat Bobo has been in the hospital since Monday with Fatty Liver Disease. He has been my Scout's "boyfriend" since they were kittens, and I love him like my own babies. I'm really scared for him.

Bobo is 10 years old and has always been overweight but healthy. I checked his BG twice this year and it was normal both times, so he's definitely not diabetic. He's been on an all wet food diet for the past 5 months or so (I had so much success with slimming Scout down that I suggested it to Bobo's dad). He has been losing weight, but the past two weeks have been stressful for him with a new cat in the house and his dad being on vacation, and unfortunately it seems that no one noticed that he'd stopped eating. Well now he is jaundiced and has been at the hospital for several days and his liver numbers aren't improving.

I wondered if anyone here has had a positive outcome with this horrible disease, as everything I've read on the internet has been awful.

Also, does anyone here have advice for how best to treat it? Since I've found out how out-of-date a lot of vets are with diabetic care, I'm wondering if there's some new secret to treating Fatty Liver disease?

Thanks in advance,
Lori
 
Fatty liver disease CAN be treated, but it is very difficult .. I know someone on the Lantus TR board dealt with it and overcame it, but I can't think of their name quite this early! You might want to post a link on that board over to here, and hope that their eyes catch it .. Will keep bobo in my thoughts ..
 
Karrie and Maverick is the one you are thinking of, you might want to PM her and see what she has to say.
She has a wealth of knowledge concerning Fatty Liver Disease.

Terri
 
My old cat, Patrick, came down with this when he was about 3 years old (he lived to be about 11, eventually dying of unrelated kidney failure). All it takes is for a cat to go off his food for 24 hours, regardless of health (although it does happen more frequently in overweight cats, Patrick was not overweight at the time this happened).

It is treatable but it takes lots of work and lots of time. He had to be kept at the vet's for a few days while they gave him subcutaneous fluids (at the time, I didn't know how to do this myself yet) to get him stabilized enough before I could take him home. They had to put a feeding tube in him and IIRC, I had to feed him a special blended liquid diet (followed up with a water rinse) about 2-3 times a day. He had it for only about a month before he started eating on his own again and we could have the tube removed.

It was terribly scary and there were several times we almost lost him, but he was a fighter and I put in the time and dedication to make sure he got better, which I think is key for survival.

Another thing, once he had the tube in, to keep it from getting caught on anything throughout the day, I put a newborn baby shirt on him and would tuck the tube in. This worked perfectly as it only covered his neck area, was tight enough to not bother him, and wasn't some crazy "customized" tube-feeding harness that he would overheat in or be irritated by.

ETA: I just found this great page that goes into details about feeding tubes: http://www.catinfo.org/?link=feedingtubes
On a side note, it never bothered Patrick to have the tube in, either. He got so used to it that he would purr whenever I was feeding him through the tube. (It didn't hurt that I would also stroke his throat while doing it, which was his favorite petting spot.) It even fell out once and had to be put back in, with no bother to Patrick. When it was finally time to remove it, I was able to do it myself.

One last thing: cost. In your situation, since the problem was recognized immediately, the extra cost of diagnosis won't be there. For me, after taking Patrick into the vet for the initial problem I was seeing (a weird head tilt, usually symptomatic of brain pressure), exploratory surgery to find out what was wrong (at first, they thought it was his kidneys because he didn't appear to be jaundiced), the week-long stay at the vet till he was stabilized, the insertion of the feeding tube, the special wet food (and medicine?), and multiple follow-up visits (including another multi-day stay at the vet to stabilize him a second time when he took a turn for the worse in the beginning), I was close to $8000. This was about 15 years ago, so prices may have increased/decreased since then, as well as treatment options.
 
Also, visit the cat while he's at the vet! I can't stress how important I think this was for Patrick's recovery. Instead of just leaving him practically dying for a week while the vet took care of him, I would stop by every morning on my way to work and/or every lunch break and/or every evening on my way home from work. I would spend a few minutes petting him and talking to him and letting him know I hadn't abandoned him. I even got the vet to let me in on the weekends when they're normally closed (but they still have staff there to take care of the animals). Not sure if they were placating me, but the staff at the vet even said that he was more alert and seemed to do better after my visits.
 
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