Author: admin

Pavel is doing much better. He’s not out of the woods yet. He made it through the first 48 hours. He’s coming up to the first 10 days. Then it’s the first 3 months.

The very good news is that the cardiologist vet we took him to on Friday said that the ultrasound couldn’t detect any more clots in his heart or in his major blood vessels. We’re now giving him blood thinners and diuretics to try and prevent clot formation in the future. There’s no major limb, nerve or organ damage, though there are a few crystals in his kidneys (which he’s also prone to but those, so far, are controlled by diet). He spent the first few days being a bit lethargic, and just about being able to jump on the sofa or our bed, but he’s now mostly back to his noisy self. He’s grooming, eating, drinking, pooping. All the usual good cat behaviours. He can also jump into the bathroom sink to get a drink.

So yeah. We seem to have dodged the 1st bullet. No telling when, or if, the next one will hit, so in the meantime, we’ve making the most of the time we have again with him.

Last Sunday, Pavel seemed to get a cramp in his back leg. It was bothering him and he kept shaking it. It seemed to annoy him but it didn’t last more than 10 minutes or so. Then, yesterday, it happened again, except now he was yowling in pain and couldn’t stand on his back legs. We managed to get him seen by our vet. The news was devastating. He had a feline aortic thromboembolism, or a saddle thrombus.

A saddle thrombus is a blood clot that cuts off blood supply to the back legs. The clot forms in the heart, gets pumped into the aorta, then travels in the bloodstream until it reaches the junction leading to the arteries in the back legs. It lodges at the junction and cuts off blood supply to the legs. Without blood, the back legs become paralyzed and extremely painful.

Saddle thrombi are most common in cats with heart disease (which we knew Pavel has but seemed to be in stable condition). This is because cats with heart disease often develop large clots inside their heart that release small clots into the blood stream. Sadly, outlook for a cat with a saddle thrombus is very poor – it’s an extremely serious condition that most cats don’t recover from. The first 10 days are critical.

A third of cats that recover from a saddle thrombus develop the condition again, and their symptoms may not completely resolve i.e. they may be left with some dysfunction in their back legs and will likely need ongoing treatment for the rest of their life to prevent further blood clots forming, and also for any underlying problems such as heart disease.

For now, he’s stable. He’s mobile, which is good. He’s not in pain. As long as he doesn’t throw another clot.. But there’s no way of knowing. So for now, we watch. We hope, and we book him in to the cardiologist for a full work-up.

So, on Saturday, I woke up to this:

Don’t worry, she loves it, for all that she complains about the weight on her bladder.

My leg is a cat magnet.

And then on Sunday, there was an interloper in Pavel’s box, so he took refuge in the fresh laundry.

And then I came into the bedroom and saw that my cat was using the duvet as a pillow.