Sick kitty
As 2gouda4u posted, Emily is sick. As of that last post, we were giving her antibiotics to try to bring down the inflammation in her mouth (and hoping it wasn't cancer). We brought her back to the vet a few days later, and she hadn't shown much improvement, so they had to pull basically all the teeth on the upper right side of her mouth, because they were basically "swimming" in a mass of swollen tissue. We are assured that domestic cats can do just fine no matter how many teeth they lose, because they only use teeth for killing, but still...
At the same time, they took biopsies and tissue cultures to try to get a definitive answer on what's causing all this, and we finally got an answer back today: it turns out it's none of the above. Emily has Cryptococcosis, a fungal infection. The good news is that it's treatable. The bad news is that it generally doesn't go away, it can just be controlled with twice-daily medication, which will be a real challenge, since Emily is still more than a bit feral, and does not like to be medicated. The more bad news is that it can be in indicator of immunodeficiency (in humans, it's generally a sign of AIDS), so there's a chance she has leukemia or some other underlying immune problem.
Just to top everything off, Cryptococcosis can be dangerous to humans as well, and there's some evidence (albeit fairly speculative) that it can be transmitted through bites, of which 2gouda4u has received more than her fair share from Emily. We don't really know how Emily got it, but our guess is that she may have gotten it by rooting around in the planters of grass we have for the rabbits. She wasn't the only cat to do this, and of course the rabbits spent time there as well, so theoretically everybody in our house is at risk. That being said, the risk is probably quite small, especially for Kael (who's never had contact with either Emily or the planters), so I don't expect to lose sleep over that aspect of it, it's just a little disconcerting.
As for Emily, we understand there are options we can try, like pharmacies that can formulate medicines into tasty chews, so that we can dose her without having to catch her and pin her down, so we'll see how that goes.
At the same time, they took biopsies and tissue cultures to try to get a definitive answer on what's causing all this, and we finally got an answer back today: it turns out it's none of the above. Emily has Cryptococcosis, a fungal infection. The good news is that it's treatable. The bad news is that it generally doesn't go away, it can just be controlled with twice-daily medication, which will be a real challenge, since Emily is still more than a bit feral, and does not like to be medicated. The more bad news is that it can be in indicator of immunodeficiency (in humans, it's generally a sign of AIDS), so there's a chance she has leukemia or some other underlying immune problem.
Just to top everything off, Cryptococcosis can be dangerous to humans as well, and there's some evidence (albeit fairly speculative) that it can be transmitted through bites, of which 2gouda4u has received more than her fair share from Emily. We don't really know how Emily got it, but our guess is that she may have gotten it by rooting around in the planters of grass we have for the rabbits. She wasn't the only cat to do this, and of course the rabbits spent time there as well, so theoretically everybody in our house is at risk. That being said, the risk is probably quite small, especially for Kael (who's never had contact with either Emily or the planters), so I don't expect to lose sleep over that aspect of it, it's just a little disconcerting.
As for Emily, we understand there are options we can try, like pharmacies that can formulate medicines into tasty chews, so that we can dose her without having to catch her and pin her down, so we'll see how that goes.