sick cat ... antibiotic suggestions?

[erinszoo]

We have a three year old male neutered cat who disappeared on us for about three weeks. He came home earlier this week skinny skinny skinny, like he hadn't eaten the whole time he was gone. Well, within the first 12 hours he sneezed a lot but ate and drank just fine and slept a lot as well. And he has continued to eat and drink and sleep and move around pretty normally, other than he wants to be with us now all the time. Yesterday, one of the other cats knocked a jingle bell off the tree and made a lot of noise with it. Our male started breathing really heavy like he was scared but calmed down after a little while. Then someone opened the front door on which we have a wreath made entirely out of bells, and the cat panicked again and started breathing really heavy.

Last night then he slept with my son and his breathing was normal and he ate and drank normally all day with no diarrhea at all, just normal stools. He even jumped up on the table where we feed them with no problems. By 5pm or so he was breathing heavy again and sounding raspy almost. Our vet is out of town and her partner, who only does livestock, told us that it sounded like he was getting a respiratory infection and we should give him antibiotics. I told him we had cephalexin and penicillin that we keep on hand and he said, sure use that. But he didn't say which one or how much ... it was after 5 when we called ...

Any suggestions for how much of what to give him? We gave him a small dose of cephalexin just hoping it was right, less than 100 mg.

 

[AinaWGSD]

Call them back and ask them for a dose and which one they would recommend over the other. I can't believe a licensed vet would give you that kind of advice (actually, I can, but it bothers me when I hear about things like this) so flippantly without giving you at least dosages.

In this sue-happy world that kind of advice could put his license and practice in jeopardy. My guess is that you would be better with the penicillin. The vets I work with use cephalexins primarily for skin infections, I can't recall them ever scripting it out for respiratory infections. Unfortunately, I don't know what the dose would be, and I suspect it would depend how big your cat is and what kind of penicillin you have.

How long is your vet out of town? If it's only going to be a few days and your kitty is eating and drinking normally, has no nasal or eye discharge, doesn't have a significantly increased sneezing or coughing, and is not acting lethargic I would probably wait until she got back before starting any antibiotics. You could also get lysine OTC at pretty much any drug store or health food store and give him 500mg twice a day to help counter any respiratory ick he might have going on. Lysine helps with viral respiratory infections by interfering with the virus' ability to reproduce. It is safe, has no drug interactions or side effects, and is often used on both short-term basis and long-term basis (some cats with chronic herpes virus are on lysine their entire life to help keep symptoms at bay).

 

[Nicola]

I would make sure it isn't the Cat flu.

 

[MaryMouse]

Wow I agree about the not believeing how flip the vet was about just give the cat whatever. I would definately get to your regular vet ASAP, or find one that will look at your cat, and prescribe the proper antibiotics at the proper dosage. Cat respiratory issues are not in my opinion something to mess with. They need to be treated promptly, and agressively. The otherwise can become chronic or antibiotic resistant.
I agree about the Lysine. Great idea, but I think agressive proper treatment is in order.

 

[itsmechrissy]

We took in a stray cat this past summer that had severe resperitory issues (I mean really bad). We had her on two different antibiotics and while did she get better, she still has issues. If you have other animals, make sure that they don't go near the sick cat until you know what he has and make sure they won't catch it.

Our cat was on Azithromycin for 2 weeks, that didnt' help so she was switched to another (can't seem to find the paper work for that but I know they switched), and after we had her spayed she was on Clavomax but that was used due to some dental work she had done. Anyway, seems like various antibiotics can be used but you really should get a vet to confirm which is best and what the dosage should be.

I agree with the others that lysene will help but that's more preventative (imo); you can get it at any petstore. We're pretty sure our girl has herpes virus (but the they never proved it in as the tests were going to be way to expensive) and we have her taking lysene daily as they say it helps her immune system and I really think it does, we didn't understand what it did and stopped giving it to her when we ran out of what the vet sold us, a month later she started getting sick again, I ran to petsmart and got some lysene and she's started getting better in a day or so.

Anyway, put the sick kitty in quarentine and call the vet, get expert advise to make you boy better!

 

[itsmechrissy]

Ok... Please do not take this as advice on dosage - I am not a vet and not qualified to give that advice... I'm providing the following to show that the dosage can vary and prove that you really need to get the vet's advice!!!!

I got into my vet's pet portal and looked up what they perscribed for my kitty...here's what she was perscribed, the second was the same as the third :

Azithromycin Suspension 15ml 20mg/ml: Give 1ml once daily for 10 days. Discard after 10 days.
Clavamox Liquid 15ML: Give one ml orally twice a day until gone. Shake well before use. Keep refrigerated. Expires 10 days after mixing.

See... one was given twice a day, the other once.... different dosages for different drugs.

Good luck with your kitty, hope he gets better soon!

 

[AinaWGSD]

Quote:
Good point. Not only that, but sometimes it's a different dose with the same drug depending on what you are treating. For example, whipworms and giardia can both be treated with fenbendazole, but the dose for treating giardia is something like 5x what is needed to treat whipworms. And while some drugs you can do either once a day or split that one dose in half and do it twice a day, sometimes a drug must be given twice a day.

 

[erinszoo]

Well, we got another vet to tell us what to use since ours wasn't going to be back before next week and his breathing got pretty bad. She has us using the Cephalexin 125mg/day divided into three doses. We started it yesterday morning and he's already back up and running around, playing, cleaning himself, etc ... And his breathing is almost back to normal. We also started a multi-vitamin that we keep on hand for our kitties anytime they aren't feeling well. Our regular vet also has us give them a mix of cream, water, and corn syrup - a couple of mL by syringe a couple of times a day to keep their appetite stimulated. Probably not conventional wisdom but it works. Thanks for all the advice. It's handy to know what other people have tried and used in the past that has worked for them. We'll be getting some lysine the next time we get to a petsmart.

 

[itsmechrissy]

Thanks for the update, I'm glad to hear your kitty is feeling better!