u/navi698

Hi everyone, hoping to hear from people who have been through something similar with their cats. This is Haddie, she is 6.5 years old. Haddies ‘normal’ weight is about 14 lbs although she has been up to 18 lbs and she is now at a low weight of ~10 lbs.

She has always been a good eater but a few weeks ago she suddenly stopped eating her dry food which is very strange for her (her kibble is her favourite). At first we thought it was her teeth/dental pain, as we have been told in the past that Haddie has dental/gum disease and some teeth will definitely eventually have to come out, she was diagnosed with tooth resorption with 1 tooth after our first vet visit a month ago. She was also attempting to eat her dry food but would spit it out. Haddie ended up having 5 teeth extracted. We hoped that when her mouth healed she was bounce back and her appetite would return but unfortunately that didn’t happen :(

Bloodwork
Before her dental surgery, her bloodwork was mostly good. Her red and white blood cells were good, kidney and liver values were normal. But she did have slightly low protein levels. Our vet said this could potentially be from not eating properly because of her dental pain, but also mentioned that problems with the GI tract can cause low proteins. Since Haddie continued to eat very little after her dental surgery and lost weight, we eventually proceeded with an abdominal ultrasound.
Haddie also had bloodwork done again prior to her ultrasound (2 weeks later) - her protein levels had actually slightly increased but her red blood cell count dropped drastically in just 2 weeks

Ultrasound
The ultrasound showed significant inflammation/thickening of her intestines and pylorus. There was no large obvious mass, but our vet told us that based on the ultrasound, the possibilities were essentially Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) or Lymphoma/cancer
We were told it was approximately 50/50 and that the only way to know for sure was a biopsy. Haddie was extremely weak and sick, already going through so much including her dental surgery while sick with an underlying issue 💔, she’s lost a lot of weight, not to mention another large vet bill, we decided to first try treatment for IBD instead of proceeding with the biopsy at this time.

Current treatment
We’re currently treating her as though this is IBD. She’s been prescribed prednisone, an appetite stimulant, antibiotics, a dewormer, a probiotic, medication to protect her stomach/GI tract, and a special diet.
She’s been doing a lot better, perked up, eating, drinking lots of water, she’s not fully herself but we’ve seen lots of improvement in just a few days. I think the plan is to wean her off of some meds in a couple of weeks to see how she reacts. I also don’t think she loves the dry food that we got from the vet (Royal Canin Gastrointestinal Support).

Questions
For those of you whose cats had severe intestinal inflammation on ultrasound:

1. Did your cat’s ultrasound initially look like IBD vs lymphoma?
2. If you treated for IBD without a biopsy, how quickly did you start seeing improvement?
3. Did improvement on prednisone make you feel more confident that it was IBD, or can lymphoma cats also improve significantly on steroids?
4. Has anyone had a follow-up ultrasound after treatment where the intestinal inflammation improved enough to make the diagnosis clearer?
5. If your cat was ultimately diagnosed with IBD, what did their initial ultrasound/bloodwork look like?

I’m just so worried for my girl and I feel like all of these meds are just a temporary bandaid and when we wean off of them she will get sick again (I hope I’m wrong)
Thanks so much to anyone willing to share their experiences or advice