Donate to help Mika’s Path to Recovery and Health

Dearest family, friends, and animal lovers everywhere, Many of you know that Jason and I have two cats named Mika and Steve. They are our fur babies, and we love them to the moon and back. What you may or may not know that we have been struggling over the last several weeks with an unexpected illness or condition that hit Mika and came out of nowhere. We are still on the road to diagnosis and recovery, and if you’d like to read Mika’s full story please continue below. If you have it in your heart and ability to donate to our cause we would be forever grateful. Your love and support through this time means the world to us, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Full story: On Monday night 9/18, we noticed that Mika was aggressively lip licking/smacking as if she had a bad taste in her mouth. Within two hours she was lethargic, had glassy dazed eyes and dialated pupils. We decided to take her to the emergency vet at around 10p. After being examined by the doctor we decided to get a full panel of blood work done as Mika had a fever and was dehydrated. This came back normal, but they gave her subcutaneous fluids and an anti nausea injection. We brought her home with the instructions that if she wasn’t improving in 12 hours we’d need to follow up.

It was clear right when we got home as the adrenaline wore off from the vet that she was not doing better. The lip smacking/apparent nausea got worse and she would get up, run around agitated, and then was hiding, a classic sign of a sick cat. We decided to take her right back to the vet first thing in the morning where we found her fever had increased. They did additional blood work to rule out pancreatitis (negative), X-rays to make sure she didn’t have any blockage (clean) and admitted her for the day. All signs were pointing to some sort of toxicity, but we couldn’t find anything in our house that she possibly could have eaten so we were at a loss. They gave her activated charcoal and a steroid shot which brought the fever down and we brought her home. She seemed to be doing a little better that night, was interested in food and seemed to have more energy. But the next morning Mika seemed to be going downhill again. She was lip smacking aggressively and would even gag when food was presented. We were told that vomiting through this medicine was a really bad sign and so although she didn’t vomit, we took her back to the vet. They watched her, but the adrenaline from being at the vet yet again seemed to make Mika look totally fine. She wasn’t eating, but they thought she was just uncomfortable and needed time. So we brought her home and waited…

That night and the following day she continued to hide and appear uncomfortable and nauseous. Throughout the day her waves of lip smacking/nausea got worse and included heavy salivating and foaming at the mouth. She still was not eating or drinking and clearly not improving. We hesitated as long as we could but decided to take her back to the emergency vet that night as they seemed fo be more attentive than the last vet we went to. We were lucky that the internal medicine doctor was still there, as he agreed to perform an ultrasound that night and get a good look at her belly. After all the other labs we had done this was really the only logical next step. We had to admit her for the night, and learned that Mika had a thickened intestinal track and swollen lymph nodes. These indicated potential signs of a gastrointestinal disease and potentially lymphoma. We were devastated. They wanted to perform an exploratory surgery to get biopsies but we felt that was just too aggressive at this point. She was given iv fluids, anti nausea, pain killer, and antibiotics and we picked her up at 8am. We had scheduled a 10:30a appointment that morning with our local vet in Tumalo just in case, and planned on taking her there as she was still not showing signs of improving.

Our vet in Tumalo examined Mika and did a follow up xray to rule out any potential blockage which was all clear. She noted the thickened intestines, and we decided to do a GI panel of blood work. We decided to keep her on antibiotics to see if there was improvement and took her home. We scheduled a follow up appointment for the next day in case she wasn’t doing any better to do a sedated oral exam to rule out any dental or mouth issues that could be causing the lip smacking/nausea.

That night, she actually seemed pretty bright for a few hours. She came downstairs, was cruising around, and even ate a tiny bit of tuna. My heart was hopeful that maybe the antibiotics were doing their job and she turned a corner. But shortly after, she went down hill again. We tried to let her be for the night but she ended up hiding in the closet and we woke up to her lip smacking extensively and looking very uncomfortable. Our hearts grew heavy once again. We took her back to Tumalo where our vet told us that Mika needed to be hospitalized to get more supportive care. She had not really eaten in 5 days and she needed nutrition, fluids, and support. She referred us to a different emergency vet with a highly respected internal medicine doctor where we had to have her hospitalized so iv fluids and a feeding tube could be administered. They stopped the antibiotics for fear of it blowing any gut microbiome out of balance, but kept her on anti nausea medication. As this was Saturday, we had to wait until Monday for the internal medicine doctor to see her. So we waited, while Mika was hospitalized for 3 days….

The emergency vet was very accommodating and constantly checked in with updates, pictures and let Jason visit her (I couldn’t bare to see her with all the tubes). She seemed to be holding steady, but not improving. We were glad she was at least getting nutrition, fluids and care to support her.

We finally heard from the internal medicine doctor late Monday morning. He reviewed the previous workups and recommended an endoscopy to get the biopsies needed to (hopefully) diagnose her illness. At this point he suspected either irritable bowel disease or small cell lymphoma (form of cancer). It was really the only next step we could take, so we did what we had too. She would need to remain in the hospital for monitoring and care for a couple more days after the procedure.

All in all, the endoscopy went well and we got the needed biopsies. He started her on steroids and was hopeful we could bring her home the following day pending how she was doing in the morning. So again, we waited…

Tuesday around 10:30 we finally heard from the doctor and he said Mika was doing well, even ate a little bit on her own, which was welcome positive news. He was confident we could take her home and continue the steroids and appetite stimulant. We picked her up that afternoon, and were hopeful we’d see progress. She had lost so much weight you could/can feel all of her ribs, hips and spine. Unfortunately that night she had diarrhea all night long and was lip licking throughout (sorry if TMI). As she was so skinny and weak and after talking to the emergency vet the next morning, they recommended we bring her back Thursday morning to be looked at. The magic of the adrenaline kicked in again and she seemed ok, her vitals were normal and she had no fever. They gave her subcutaneous fluids and a steroid injection to last 24 hours and told us to let her rest and try to give the medicine time to do its job.

That night Mika started walking around a bit (we have her confined to our room for the time being) and ate some food. We were ecstatic, but almost too afraid to get hopeful after the previous false improvement nights. She slept in our bed and although she was a little restless, we were glad to see some potential progress. This thankfully continued on through the next day; she was eating on and off and started drinking water. She was still very weak and exhausted from 10 days of vets, hospitalizations and procedures but it was positive signs.

Thursday evening we heard from the internal medicine doctor with biopsy results. Her stomach samples were fine and healthy, but her intestinal samples showed extreme signs of inflammation and even cell death. The pathologist believed that this actually was most likely due to an underlying infectious cause, rather than IBD or lymphoma, although nothing is 100% ruled out yet. We had to run bacterial PCR tests (luckily we had that already submitted) and started her on antibiotics again along with the steroids until we hear more. Now we wait for the PCR test results which should come back mid next week…

Since starting antibiotics Mika’s energy has slowly improved. She continues to eat and drink and seems to have gained a little bit of weight back. We are happy to see any amount of progress and are trying to be patient. Our hope is that this infection is treatable and we can get Mika back to the happy, healthy, little lover she always has been. However, we are not out of the weeds yet, and hope we will have some answers soon but due to financial constraints from this whole fiasco, it’s now that we made the difficult decision to reach out to you, our friends, family and community, for support.

As you can imagine, this has been a physically and mentally exhausting few weeks, but we have also had to spend a substantial amount on the emergency visits, surgical procedures, and many days of hospitalization. If you have it in your heart and any ability to put a couple bucks in the tip jar to help us financially, we would be so very grateful, as every penny helps. She’s a young-ish cat and we love her very much, so we never wanted our actions about diagnosing and treating Mika to be based on money; we just want her to be a happy and healthy kitty again. Any love and support through this time means the world to us, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for any help you can offer.

<3 Heidi, Jason, Mika and Steve