First off, I want to congratulate my momma and little sister on starting their own business :D They have begun a fully insured and licensed cleaning service that will serve the central NJ area. Do me a favor: if you know anyone in or around Monmouth County who could do with some dusting, etc., please pass along this link. We would greatly appreciate it. Full website here! |
My mom and I have been chatting about her idea for a cleaning service for a while now, and it's always got me thinking about how nice it would've been to have such a service during our first year of graduate school. This was the era of leaky Moo (tl;dr at the bottom of the post).
Warning: What you are about to read/SEE is kind of gross.
| We adopted Moody and Margaery from Centre County PAWS in August 2014 because we are crazy and felt that the start of grad school wasn't a challenging enough time without learning how to care for two cats. We fell in love with these fuzz butts immediately, as you can see here. Dan fell hard for Moo for a few reasons: 1) he was adorable with his bright green eye and silky grey fur, 2) he kept reaching through the bars of his cage to get Dan to keep playing with him, and 3) his big, beautiful, bushy tail. I mean look at it! It was so fluffy and huge on such a tiny Moo. We'll get back to this glorious tail later. |
Moo was ~4 months old when we brought him home from the shelter, but his foster mom said that he was already pretty good at keeping himself clean. We transitioned the cats over to a Purina dry food, and they seemed happy and healthy for the first few weeks. Mid-September, we noticed that poor Moo was getting clumps of poop in his tail that were too stuck in for him to get out on his own. Our super supportive vet suggested we switch Moo to a Sensitive Smartblend Purina food that might be easier on his little kitten belly. This switch seemed to only make the poopy problem worse, and by mid-October we brought Moo into the vet for a hygiene shave to help us keep him (and our house) a bit cleaner. |
With the hygiene shave Moody was staying cleaner, but he began having episodes of leaking very liquidy poop. He would leave drops all over the house and sometimes get it on his fur. We started covering all of our furniture with spare bed sheets and even shaved off what little remained of his once-glorious tail :( Margy was a good sport, and was always trying to keep her little brother clean and happy. That said, she did not appreciate being locked in a room with him while we went to work every day. My great-aunt Lorraine (crazy cat lady/idol) told us to try feeding him a teaspoon of pumpkin puree every day, but that did not seem to help at all, even though both cats really enjoyed it. We did some research online, and decided to switch him to Blue Basics grain-free diet as our vet thought he might have some sort of food allergy. The leaking increased when we brought our cats back to NJ for the fall break - we had to leave the cats locked up in one room together to 1) avoid our families' other pets and 2) to contain the leakage to a more manageable area. |
When we brought them to NJ for the December holidays, Moo's leaking became bloody and mucousy. We were so worried about him that we took him to Red Bank Animal Hospital. The vet there told us that his own cat was very similar and eventually grew out of it at about one year. He gave us Fortiflora and Purina EN Gastroenteric formula. We switched him to the new food and supplement immediately, figuring that he could not get much worse. This was incorrect, and upon the switch he started leaking more, and his fur was absolutely disgusting. At this point we were bathing Moo at least once daily, and the stress on all parties involved was pretty extreme (he is only now getting over his fear of sinks...). We only let the cats out of our guest bedroom in the evenings when we could actively snuggle/clean. Earthbath Grooming Wipes saved our house and our sanity on numerous occasions. |
Throughout this whole ordeal, Moo was pretty active and always hungry. He slept quite a bit more than his sister and didn't gain any weight in the five months we'd had him. Then, in late-January, our amazing vet finally got one of Moo's poop cultures to work. We discovered that our poor poopy Moo had a parasite, Tritrichomonas foetus. Never heard of it? Us either.
As far as anyone can tell, this tricky little protist only infects bovine (cow) reproductive tracts and domestic cat intestines - weird, right? The only noticeable symptom T. foetus causes in cats is unrelenting, long-term diarrhea that typically decreases with age. While it's a pretty common pest in adoption centers and catteries, it's fairly difficult to culture for diagnosis, as found by Gookin et al 2004. The medicine that is most effective in treating T. foetus infections in cats, Ronidazole, can have rare yet harmful side effects in cats as well as humans. We had to glove up whenever we gave Moo his medicine as this drug is possibly carcinogenic, and I definitely would recommend the pill form over the liquid that we used (1 milliliter twice a day for two weeks is wayyy more troublesome than it might seem).
After treatment with Ronidazole, our fuzzy boy gained weight (and a big fluffy mane) faster than I would've imagined possible. He would run around and wrestle with his sister instead of napping all day and his fur became sleek and shiny. We were even able to switch them onto a normal dry cat food. Moo seemed all around cuddlier and happier, probably because we no longer had to bathe him twice a day haha. We love our fuzz babies more than I could possibly say, and I'm so glad we have such an awesome vet to help us keep our cat-kids happy and healthy. Cheers! tl;dr - if adopting a kitten and there's poops everywhere all the time, ask your vet about Tritrichomonas foetus. |