? Vomited After Shot - Advice Needed

I don't know if anyone is on who can give me some more advice, but we gave Victor his PM shot as usual but about an hour later he tried to have a bowel movement and ended up throwing up all his food afterwards. I got an immediate BG reading of 375 and gave him some more of his regular food, but is there anything else I should do?

 

Is he constipated? I see he's on Laxatone

Straining due to constipation can often cause vomiting.

Any time a cat vomits, you should give them a few minutes to settle and then offer small amounts of food every 20 minutes or so and make sure they're able to keep it down.

If not, a visit to the vet is in order.

 

He does have constipation issues pretty much every time he has a bowel movement. We put down some more food for him and he's eaten a little bit of it so far. Getting him to the vet if it becomes necessary will be a problem for us since we don't have a car and with it being this late at night I don't know if we could find anyone to give us a ride, and we don't have any money for a cab or anything like that. @Bama Kitty Mom (AL) advised in previous question I had that if he ever threw up after receiving his shot I should monitor until his nadir passes and be prepared to intervene with syrup, gravy food and such. Would that be an okay way to handle this? I hope you're still up to see this, as I'm pretty distraught about this whole situation.

 

As long as he keeps the food down that he's eaten, I seriously doubt he's going to drop so low you'll need to intervene

He'd have to drop a very long way to be in any danger.

I'd get a +3 and if he's still doing OK and keeping his food down, I think you could probably call it a night.

I didn't mean tonight….I meant if he continued to throw up and wasn't able to pass any poop at all

 

Okay, thank you so much.
This has happened before where he throws up after straining to have a bowel movement, but it's always happened after he's past nadir, so this time it just really worried me.
When he throws up it's usually just the one time and eventually he is able to finish having his bowel movement.
I honestly don't know what I would do without this forum, you guys are all angels

 

We've all been there!! Somebody helped teach us and stayed up with us and worried with us....we're just paying it forward!!

Hope you have a quiet night and there's a nice deposit in the litterbox soon!

I do have to get offline....supposed to take my DM over to my DS's house to carve pumpkins and have an early dinner tomorrow.

 

In my opinion, as long as he gets it out, he can leave that deposit anywhere

Have fun with your pumpkin carving!

 

How is Victor this morning?

 

Hi Heather, how are you and Victor this morning? Looks like some nice blues on the SS. I noticed you’re having difficulty with the syringe plungers. I do too sometimes and have found it helpful to move the plunger up and down a good bit before I put it in the vial to draw up the insulin. What I do is I remove both the end cap & the sheath that goes over the needle. Then I plunge up and down to loosen the plunger before letting it rest on or between the markings for my dosage. Then I stick the needle inside the vial. Obviously this is after I have rolled the vial to mix the insulin. I plunge the air into the vial, turn it upside down and draw up the insulin way past the dosage mark & check for air bubbles before plunging out the excess into the vial and getting the plunger edge to the marking or between the markings if I am eyeballing on the quarters. If I don’t get the dosage I was aiming for I will plunge all the insulin back into the vial and try again. I have no hesitation about sticking the needle back into the vial if I have wthdrawn it. As long as it hasn’t touched anything it should still be good. I do place the needle sheath back over the needle until I am ready to shoot to avoid sticking myself or contaminating the needle. Hope this helps.

 

Thanks for asking, guys He's doing okay so far and finished having his bowel movement earlier, so that's good. It's really strange with his bowel movements, because sometimes all of the stool will be hard and other times, it's just the first little bit that comes out that is hard and the rest of it is softer We're going to stop giving him the Laxatone all together since it doesn't help at all with his constipation anymore (though it did work before he was diagnosed with diabetes), and we're going to start adding canned pumpkin to his food to see if that helps; if it doesn't I guess the next thing we'd try is Miralax.

We're already adding the B-12 to his morning meals, so instead of adding the pumpkin to it as well should we add it to his nighttime meals, or maybe to a smaller snack during the day? How much would you suggest we add?

Unrelated, but Victor also just turned 11 recently

@Bama Kitty Mom (AL) Thanks for the suggestions about the syringes, I'll give it a try

 

I think you can put the pumpkin in with the B12. You could post here for advice on how much pumpkin and how often each day.

 

Maybe start with a very small amount, about 1/8 teaspoon and mix in with the water you pour over his food. Leave it at that for a few days before increasing to 1/4 teaspoon. Try that amount for awhile before increasing by another 1/8. Watch for positive results as well as negative reactions. Ending dose may be as much as a teaspoon per day.

 

Will start out with the amount you suggested, thanks. But I do have a related question; the can we got says it is 100% pure pumpkin, with pumpkin listed as the only ingredient, but under the Nutrition Facts it says it has 5g of sugar, so I was wondering if that is okay or not?

 

The small amount you’ll be giving probably won’t make a difference. That’s probably for a serving size of 1/2 a cup or so and that is naturally occurring sugars or carbs not added sugar. May even be locked inside the cell wall of the fiber and not accessible or digestible.

 

I use generic Miralax to prevent constipation. Very easy to use.

 

Sorry to ask another question but how would we go about measuring out 1/8 teaspoon? We don't have a measuring spoon in that size and I'm really bad with stuff like that.

 

Use a 1/4 teaspoon measuring spoon and eyeball about half full as well as you can. I don't think it has to be exact for Miralax.

 

Yeah, that would work for either Miralax or pumpkin or just about anything you’re giving from over the counter. You’re just trying to get to a starting point and from there judge effectiveness.

 

@Bama Kitty Mom (AL) I would like to have your opinion on the advice given to us by our vet about the pumpkin. We had a consult the other day with a different vet who is much more open to working with us on Victor's diabetes and everything, and when we told him about Victor's constipation, he suggested canned pumpkin as well, but he suggested a teaspoon two times a day. Do you think that's too much to start with and it would still be better to start with 1/8 teaspoon once a day?

I really appreciate your patience with all my questions

 

Glad you’ve found a vet more likely to work with you. To me that is more important than a vet who seems too sure that his way is the best or only way. Sounds like this vet is focused on quick relief so maybe consider his recommendation as the highest dosage and start at a lower dosage if you are concerned about Victor refusing his food if pumpkin is in it or having diarrhea if the vet’s dosage is too much. My suggestion to start very small was out of caution for how Victor may react. I think you'll end up at 1 or 2 teaspoons per day to get results but it won’t work if he won’t eat it or feels bad afterwards.

 

Hi there,
Just wanted to add my two cents on the constipation problem. My big fella has had chronic constipation from the moment we adopted him 7 years ago. On our previous Vet's recommendation, we started giving him Miralax every day mixed in a teaspoon of chicken baby food. It's tasteless and he laps it right up. It's very gentle and it works like a charm. He's taken it pretty much every day of his life for the last 7 years and his bloodwork is perfect, and he's 13 years old now. So it's very safe. You'll have to experiment with the dose but start out with a VERY small amount. Like 1/8 of a teaspoon for a normal sized (8-10 pound) cat. Big Hoss is close to 20 pounds and his constipation issues are really bad. So we have to give him a much larger dose than that for it to work. But you can always add more if your original dose doesn't work. You don't want to send them too far the other way! One note - now that Hoss is on a 95% wet food diet, we've been able to stop giving him Miralax and his constipation issues are solved.

 

Agree with you so much about how it's better to have a vet that's willing to work with you; our previous vet was definitely one of those that was sure their way was the only way and that was so frustrating and discouraging. This new one even approves of home testing and was interested in seeing Victor's spreadsheet.

Thanks for your response, again. I had the same concern about Victor's reaction if we start him out on too much of the pumpkin, because we did try it once before this, with a teaspoon I think, and we're pretty sure it caused his stools to be too loose, so I'll see if I can convince my mom we should start with a smaller dose, because she wants to go with the vet's advice, but personally I really would rather start out with a smaller dose.

 

@Bama Kitty Mom (AL) Do you think we should only give the pumpkin once a day instead of twice?

 

If you’re starting with a small dose and his first dose goes down well, you could give another dose at his next meal. I would not dose more than twice per day. If he eats more than twice per day, just give with his two main meals.

 

@H.M. Victor

How is Victor tolerating the pumpkin? Any results?

 

He is tolerating it well and does actually like it, so we just let him lick it directly from the measuring spoon. We haven't really seen any results yet, so we did increase to 1/4 teaspoon, so hopefully we will start to see some improvement soon.

 

I had taken Bama off the pumpkin a couple of weeks ago, thinking it was having little to no effect. After 4 or 5 days off the pumpkin, his constipation got worse. After consulting with the Banfield vet, she recommended increasing his level of dry food, decreasing the wet food and going back on the pumpkin plus probiotics that I had been giving him. Apparently, his problems stem from too little fiber in an all wet diet. Adding more dry food in the form of Dr. Elsey's Clean Protein Chicken [4 to 5% carbs] will give him the extra fiber he needs as will the pumpkin. I add water to all forms of his food--wet, dry, pumpkin--so I think he is well hydrated. I hope you find the effective dose for Victor's constipation soon.

 

So do I, it's so distressing to see him have to strain the way he does to have a bowel movement, and his neuropathy makes it even more difficult for him; if we happen to catch him going in to his litter box we'll help him by holding him upright, but if we don't he actually lays down in his litter box to go

 

Please don't be upset with me for saying this again. Changing Victor to low carb wet food only can go along way to helping with constipation. Add a few tablespoons of warm water to each wet food meal along with pumpkin, Miralax, etc. until he's pooping more easily. Dry food literally sucks moisture out of the poop and dehydrates a kitty in general.

Friskies pates are very economical. I know you've expressed concern in the past about the quality of the ingredients and would prefer to feed the more expensive Fancy Feast but have said it's out of your budget. Why not look at it from the perspective of weighing the possible less than ideal ingredients in Friskies (although many feed it here on FDMB because that's what they can afford) against the pain and disability Victor has at this point when he tries to poop.

I know you want to do what's best for Victor. It's obvious that you love him very much. Please, please rethink the wet food issue. The tall cans of Friskies can be found for about a dollar each and that's probably more than enough for Victor per day. A months supply would be $30 max.

 

It's okay, I'm not upset for this being brought up again, it's honestly something that is on my mind every day and that I know needs to be done. Looking at it from the perspective you suggested makes a lot of sense, and I guess at the very least we can try him out on the Friskies and see how he does on it. I actually really appreciate that you care enough to keep mentioning it

 

Just wanted to know if you can tell me where to find these at and if it matters what flavor, etc.
Thanks

 

Any grocery store or pet store will stock the tall cans. They might be a few cents less expensive thantwo of the regular 5.5 oz cans.Some people even find them at the dollar store. Any of the pates are low enough in carbs. Just avoid the gravy/sauce styles or the "indoor cat" versions. Fish pates can be popular with kitties but it's best not to feed those more than once a week. Some kitties are sensitive to beef so I'd avoid those. Other than that, go for it! If I recall you've said that Victor enjoys wet food.

Check this - great prices and free shipping. Many people here buy from Chewy and sing their praises - great customer service, etc.
https://www.chewy.com/s?page=1&rh=brand_facet:Friskies