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This is going to be a sorrowful and triggering read, but I'd appreciate any insight you guys can provide. I'm struggling badly with a lack of closure and guilt. Apollo was a 1 year-old tabby male, fixed. He was a mostly indoor cat, but would go outdoors for 1-2 hours a day in the morning. He was perfectly healthy prior to this. We live in Northern California. We have one other cat, a 12 year-old female who has been just fine through all of this. Thursday 7/23: We leave to go camping at 12 PM Friday 7/24: My mother, who is cat-sitting, comes over at 2 PM and calls me informs me that Apollo was locked in the garage for some unknown period of time (anywhere from 1 to 26 hours). The cat door malfunctioned, and he couldn't get back in the house. There was no food or water in the garage. She spent about 1.5 hours feeding him and spending time with him, and getting him back in a good mood. Saturday 7/25: My mother comes again around 2 PM. Apollo doesn't come when he hears the alarm being turned off as he normally does, but he does come out after a few minutes. My mom spends about an hour with him, feeding him and playing with him. Nothing seems physically wrong with him. Sunday 7/26: We arrive home at about 4 PM. Apollo doesn't come out. He is hiding under our bed. He seems in a very grumpy mood, and has a thick line of saliva hanging down onto his front fur. We pet him and get him to relax, and give him fresh food and water. He eats normally. Although he was acting strange, he didn't seem to be in an any pain, there was no diarrhea or refusing to eat or drink. The drooling continues throughout the night though. (This should have been a clue to me, but I thought it was simply stress) We go to bed at about 9 PM Monday Morning 7/27: At about 2 or 3 AM I hear him running back and forth and banging around. He runs in our room and jumps on the bed and jumps full on into the wall. I think he's just having a middle of the night car freakout, and go back to sleep. At about 5 AM the same thing happens. My wife checks on him and notices that he's hyperventilating. We also notice a wound on his rear paw, almost as if he'd been gnawing at it. We wrap him in a blanket and try to calm him. He gets up for a few minutes, and eats and drinks. Then he starts running around again and hyperventilating. Then he has what looks like some type of seizure, and can barely stand up. My wife takes him to the emergency vet. They check him in and put him on a monitor. They start running tests and x-rays. He had extremely elevated levels of potassium and phosphates in his system. I go to the emergency vet around 9 AM, and meet with the vet. The vet tells us that they're treating the potassium and phosphate levels, and they want to monitor him for 6-8 hours. The vet gives him less than 50% odds due to the multiple systems that are failing. They have no definitive explanation as to what could've happened. Monday Afternoon 7/27: At about 2 PM the vet calls and says that he has been able to lower the potassium levels, but not the phosphate levels. Apollo is now blind and having a seizure every 45-60 minutes. The vet recommends euthanasia. We pick up our kids from their summer school, and went to the vet to say goodbye. He no longer recognized us and had a seizure during the process. It's obviously terrible that he's gone, but the other terrible part is not knowing what happened. We don't have fertilizers or insecticides or poisons just lying out in the garage, to the best of my knowledge. (Our garage is cluttered but not like Hoarders episode or something; we cleaned it out last weekend and are going to do more this weekend) I was doing some reading and maybe a black widow spider bite could cause some of these symptoms, but he didn't appear to be in pain until Sunday morning. (and that wouldn't explain the potassium and phosphate situation, I don't think) Another option is that he got into something on Thursday morning outdoors, some type of rat poison or fertilizer. But then it would've taken 4 days to make him sick? That seems unlikely too. I welcome any thoughts anyone has. It's all so confusing to me. Nothing adds up. And someday I'll want to get another cat....and I can't go through this hell again.
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Aug 6, 2021 00:36
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 21:31 |
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First, I'm sorry this happened to Apollo, you and your family. My gut says that he found a poisoned rodent in the garage sometime mid Sunday. Black widows are very, very shy and have to be actively harassed to be bit most of the time, which I do not put above a cat but I think the vets would have noticed a bite on a paw (most likely bite site if the cat was batting the spider). I am inclined to think that being stuck in the garage on Friday and not coming out as normal on Saturday (since your mom noted that she was playing with him and spending time with him for an hour) are completely unrelated, but I could be wrong and dehydration may have played a key in this. If he was poisoned at that point she would have noticed him reacting to it in some way (seizures, hyperventilating, some of the other symptoms you mentioned). There's also a very slim chance that this was something genetic. From what I understand dogs, cats and many pet animals are only fully grown at 2 years, even though they are sexually mature much younger. Sometimes a genetic hiccup can be found during the maturing process (or later even) that would have been entirely unpredictable. If that issue led to some organ failure that would essentially poison his own body. Hopefully someone more knowlegable than me can put input here, but I think you should check your garage if possible for any way a rodent can get in and die there. If they are poisoned they are going to have a little time to seek out shelter before perishing and in between boxes, in corners and such in a dark, quiet space sounds like a good place for most creatures to rest.
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Aug 6, 2021 02:25
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Good chance he found a rat or a mouse with some poison in its system (or a bug) and just died from biting it or eating it.
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Aug 6, 2021 14:24
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Sounds like ethylene glycol (anti-freeze) or other toxin ingestion results in acute kidney injury and anuric renal failure. Other toxins include grapes/raisins or Lily plants as possible causes. Sorry for your loss.
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Aug 6, 2021 15:22
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Thanks for your replies guys. I didn't mean to start such a somber thread and then abandon it, it's just that I try and compartmentalize dealing with this. I'll spend some time giving away his cat tree, or reading about cat poisonings, but then I make myself stop. The poisoned rodent theory has some merit, but if that had happened I would think I'd smell the dead rodent in the garage. And that didn't happen. The only antifreeze in the garage is in a bottle in a cabinet that a cat couldn't possibly get into. No poisonous houseplants that I know of. I'm sure my chances of getting an answer or even a good theory as to what happened are slim at this point, but I'm going to keep trying. Thanks for all your kind words.
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Aug 14, 2021 00:47
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