I wrote this article last year after our cat Jill was seriously ill will anti-freeze poisoning, and I thought I would put it up again as I am writing about this subject in this month’s newsletter:
Dealing with sick pets can be a stressful and emotional business at the best of times – but when the patient is your very own animal, things get even harder. I’ve had quite a few pets over the years, and thankfully they’ve mainly enjoyed good health, with few problems to deal with, but over the last 24 hours however, I’ve had to deal with a really serious problem with our beautiful tabby cat Jill.
It was my wife Jenny who first noticed that there was something wrong.
‘She’s not right Joe,’ she said as she watched Jill wander slowly across the living room. ‘I’m sure there’s something wrong – can you have a look at her?’
She certainly didn’t seem herself – Jill is usually a very playful and happy cat who rubs herself against your legs and jumps up for a cuddle at every opportunity, but now she was dull, depressed and definitely not herself. However, there were no obvious symptoms other than generalised lethargy, so I decided to see how she was overnight.
Then last night things really took a turn for the worse, as I was woken 
in the early hours by Jill being violently sick downstairs. First thing this morning I brought her into the surgery and took a blood sample to try to find out what was wrong.
The results of the blood test were pretty devastating – far from being normal as I’d hoped, the results showed that Jill was very ill indeed, and suffering from acute renal failure. For a normally healthy young cat, this is very unusual, as kidney failure usually comes on gradually and is much more common in older cats. There was obviously more to Jill’s problem than simply failing kidneys, and some further analysis of her blood results revealed a very worrying diagnosis – it looked as though Jill had been poisoned.
Poisoning is not as common in pets as many people think, but it does occur occasionally, and often with very serious results. Rat poison is probably the number one problem, but that wasn’t what had caused Jill’s kidney failure. Instead, I believe she’s drunk anti-freeze, as this is highly toxic to pets and causes severe kidney damage, which is often fatal if not treated promptly.
As I broke the news of the diagnosis to Jenny, the true severity of the situation began to sink in, and I started to realise that there was a good chance that Jill may not survive. Suddenly having to deal with the emotion of having my own pet critically ill was hard – and gave me a real insight into the kind of stress and suffering my clients go through when their beloved pets are ill.
As I write, Jill seems to be slightly better, but she’s an awful long way from being out of the woods. She’s on intravenous fluids, which help to re-hydrate her and flush out the toxic by-products that accumulate in the blood when the kidneys fail, but otherwise there’s little else we can do to help her. If cases of anti-freeze poisoning are caught very quickly, there is an antidote available, but once the damage is done to the kidneys – which is when most people, me included, first notice that something’s wrong – it’s too late to treat the poison and all we can do is offer supportive therapy, and hope for the best.
I really hope that by the time you read this, our wonderful cat is fully recovered and back to her old self. And please make sure you keep your pets away from poisons, such as anti-freeze – check your shed, and other stores to make sure your pets have no access to anything poisonous. I have no idea where Jill has got anti-freeze from, but it’s probably an open bottle in a neighbour’s shed or garden.
P.S Update the next morning – after 24 hours on a drip, Jill is much improved and finally ate some food which is a great sign. So fingers crossed she’s going pull through!
