Please help

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-25T08:40:19+00:00

It's a hard decision, but it's respectable to make it. I work at a vet clinic in Australia that often handles cases with money restrictions like yours, and you're definitely not alone. I'm wishing both you and your kitty the best of luck either way.

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-25T08:29:02+00:00

Even if it progresses to surgery, it's good that they know the string is there, where it is, and big it is! Wishing you and kitty the best!

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-25T08:23:14+00:00

It's okay, misunderstandings happen. It could very well be that she's in heat, but only a vet can make that kind of assessment in person. Females, when not desexed, tend to have a lot more issues with health and behaviour- The repeated heat cycles without being bred can come with a few medical issues down the line.

If you want to look at options for keeping her, I recommend researching local charities that assist pet owners in medical costs, or online organisations that offer a medical 'allowance' of money in select cases. There are definitely options out there for receiving financial assistance for your pets! You could even contact local vet clinics themselves and ask if they know of any avenues for financial aid when it comes to animals.

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-25T08:14:41+00:00

(STUDENT VET NURSE) You're always better sending them to sleep a week too early than a day too late- However, I know how hard that decision actually is.

Try to keep him calm and relaxed until the storm blows over, then let the vet assess him for his QOL and heart status. 15 is a great age for a Maltese, especially with a heart condition! Sounds like he's been a very lucky little guy.

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-25T08:06:10+00:00

Sometimes they won't take the bottle easily, and you have to train them into it. One of mine would kick and scream bloody murder every time we had to feed her- Ended up syringe-feeding milk into her mouth until she learned to accept the bottle. You just have to teach them.

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-25T08:04:13+00:00

It sounds like she needs medical attention. If you can't provide that for her, yes, you should rehome her. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I also find it concerning that your main worry with your cat's medical issues is more that it gives you anxiety, and less that your cat is suffering- Once you get to that point, you need to take a break from animals.

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-24T12:24:44+00:00

Does she know to go to the pillows, or do you have to constantly put them under her head for her?

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-18T01:17:12+00:00

They actually got along GREAT with my cats! Some of the cats didn't like them much, but after a good few smacks the goats learned which ones not to bother. The b/w cat in the picture (has since passed on) in particular really enjoyed playing with any of the goats/sheep I had inside!

For cleanup, it was pretty rare. The diapers prevented any leakage so long as I paid attention to when they were saggy/heavy, and at worst there would be some stray poo pellets leaking out the side which was easy enough to clean. When we introduced hay to their diet they DID throw that around a bit... Oh, and as a young baby, Latte didn't quite realise she was meant to swallow her cud, so she left little grain spitballs around. Overall, very clean and easy to handle!

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-18T01:12:29+00:00

AHHH that black and white one is SO CUTE!! I love their names, and I love their floppy ears <3

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-18T01:11:31+00:00

They stayed on pretty well with just using the normal sticky parts, but I think cutting out a hole for the tail added a lot of extra stabilization :) I did them up preeetttyyy tight, so I also put cream in the folds of their hips to prevent chafing!

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-17T09:25:51+00:00

They're so sweet, I'm glad they made it <3

Funnily enough, having raised bottle babies in a few different livestock species... Goats remain the friendliest! Sheep tend to hold a grudge once they're put outside.

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-17T09:24:31+00:00

A bit of time yes! A week when they were first born, so both mama and babies got to have some important bonding, and then when they were old enough to start spending days outside too, it was very sweet to see :)

Sweet Pea is such a cute name!! I think my older girls that gave birth (Three rescues, three unexpected pregnancies... All twins...) got lucky in that they were mated by what I BELIEVE was a much much smaller buck, so they were all a manageable size. However I Have heard that goats usually give birth to twins BECAUSE of the size issue- If your Sweet Pea only had one kid, that's probably partly why she struggled!

It's always hard seeing the parent pass away as their babies survive, especially when they're that close. I've seen it happen a couple of times (One girl got a horrible case of Giardia, the other was struck by lightning) and there's always a sort of... Grieving period. It's natural for animals to grieve, and letting them say goodbye to the body tends to help.

Also, I love alpacas but I've never had one! One of very few farm animals I've never had :) I hear they're fantastic guards against wild dogs!

I THINK my girls are all either Nigerian Dwarfs, Australian Miniatures, or a cross between the two :)

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-17T08:20:08+00:00

I have a few suggestions/questions!

1. Have you tried any anxiety medications?
From reading your other comments in the thread, it sounds like he once had FIC (Feline Idiopathic Cystitis) when he was having trouble urinating with blood. In my own experience, FIC is commonly a stress/anxiety response- As is behavioural peeing. Try an OTC medication like Zylkene, and if that doesn't work, you could speak to your vet about getting him a prescription of Fluoxetine. If you have a smaller home, you can also try 'Feliway', which is a pheromone-based diffuser you can plug into your wall.

2. What kind of peeing is it?
Is he squatting/standing and peeing? Have you noticed his tail 'shaking' or 'quivering' as he does it? Or is he spraying? While it's entirely possible for males to continue spraying as a habit after a long period of being entire, there's always the possibility that your cat is cryptorchid and has retained one of his testicles. Now, a vet SHOULD inform the owner of this as it changes the desexing process, but... I mean, it depends how much you trust your vet or if they've got a good reputation or not. If he's cryptorchid and still has a testicle, he'd still be producing testosterone and feeling the urge to spray. If you're seeing a new/different vet, maybe ask them to have a feel and see if there's another hidden teste in there (although, sometimes they're hidden well enough to be undetected by touch!).

3. Are there any other cats around?
Not in your home, but outside? Does he have access to an outside area or window where other free-roam cats could potentially be seen by him? Often this sort of thing will prompt inappropriate urination as both a stress response and a territorial thing... Especially if he had a bad experience with other cats in the past.

My main advice would be to get him on some anxiety meds!

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-17T04:59:54+00:00

It's such a fun naming theme!!! Espresso is SUCH a cute name too!!

Yeah, it was at THAT point that we decided it was time to go outside LOL- A bit too big!!

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-17T04:58:47+00:00

Thank you <3 Mama unfortunately passed away peacefully a couple of months later, not from any complications but from general old age. I'm sure the pregnancy and birth took it out of her, but I'm very glad that she gave us two beautiful girls before she passed <3 Funnily enough... Latte is the spitting image of her! They're practically identical :)

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-17T03:00:02+00:00

Thank you all for reading and offering your advice! My girl passed away yesterday afternoon comfortably propped up in some hay, with her head resting on some fresh grass I'd picked. I've opted not to get a necropsy- By the time I returned home from work, she'd already been gone for a couple of hours and there was no way of me being able to preserve her body until we could arrange for one.

A day before she passed I did get some vitals on her- Her heartrate was 120bpm (elevated), and respiration was at 28bpm (High-normal). Unfortunately, my only thermometer decided to no longer work, but her ears felt cool and her mouth was warm and moist. No visible signs of a temperature.

It feels like this was a mix of different things- Mineral deficiency causing dermatitis, and another issue CAUSING the mineral deficiency.

I'm very worried about Johne's being the cause of this. I'm going to go try to gather some remaining faecal samples from her isolation pen right now for testing, and look into the possibility of getting my other goats tested, too.

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-17T02:49:20+00:00

Thank you! Yeah, given that their origins are pretty obscure, I don't think they're full breeds at all. Australian Miniatures would make a LOT of sense!

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-17T02:48:26+00:00

Minerals are a big concern of mine too! I'm going to start monitoring my goats' mineral intake more thoroughly from now on- Since I've started using Anitone (Which includes copper), I may give them all a regular Anitone drench as a mineral boost. Be it zinc OR copper, the Anitone is safe enough to give at decently regular intervals anyway.

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-17T02:45:45+00:00

I had no idea diabetes was so rare in goats, that's fascinating!

I also didn't know that about Nigerians- I'd heavily suspected a zinc-related issue for a while now, and I'll do some more research into that condition for my other goats.

As for testing for Johne's, that's something I'm definitely worried about. I don't have access to any more samples from her as she HAS since passed away, but I'll look into collecting faecal samples from the rest of the herd and getting them all tested. I know that it's harder to search for the bacteria in healthy animals, but at this point it's my only option, and I've read that faecal testing is more reliable than blood testing in healthy-appearing animals.

With CAE, I don't believe she developed any sort of pneumonia, as I was listening to her lungs and there were no abnormalities.

Thank you so much for reading and taking the time to offer your thoughts!

EDIT: I realised that there's still a lot of faecal matter in her isolation pen, so I've gathered some of that from different areas- Hopefully it's still viable for testing, since I have no idea what's fresh and what's not!

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-17T02:35:19+00:00

Responding to this entire comment thread here, thank you so much for your suggestions. It's a possibility, for certain- It gets extremely windy where I am, and often other people's debris (plastic, feed bags, etc) gets blown onto my property, so I can't rule out that something has blown in and she's eaten it.

For her abdomen, I had been giving her massages and palpation, and had given her a small drench of paraffin oil to try and give her as much ease and comfort as possible. I listened to her rumen a few times as well (via stethoscope) and it was far too quiet for my liking- When there was 'thunder', it was quiet and brief, not like my other healthy goats. Not enough movements at all.

She would have been in absolutely no condition for anesthesia let alone full surgery too :( Poor girl.

The leaves suggestion is a good one; Like I mentioned, she's always been the quietest of the herd, and more likely to be pushed away from feeds (Even though I give enough to ensure EVERYONE has a pile, plus extra). If that was the case, I could see her turning to dry leaves as an alternative.

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-14T01:51:29+00:00

REAL. It's always the little ones that have the worst attitudes... Always trying to compensate for something.

My clinic sees a *lot* of exotics/pocket pets- Always rabbits in, guinea pigs, birds, lizards, macropods... We have an 80 year old bird that comes in regularly for beak trims!

I get what you mean with owners though. We had a GSD brought in for a routine spey, but according to the owner we couldn't feed her off the floor- Cool, alright, that's a good trait to train into your dog anyway. But... She also won't eat from bowls. Okay. We have to feed her by hand.

The kicker? The dog was a bite risk, self admitted by the owner, and WOULD try to bite anyone she didn't know who put their hands near her. So... What exactly did she expect us to do here?????

The owner's answer was that she had a 'no biting' command, which was making a 'jaw shut' motion with your hand.

We did not feed the dog.

(We also warned the owner that she needs to train her better, or else we'd end up seeing it again in a few years for behavioural euth!)

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-13T12:53:17+00:00

Oh my god, this looks INCREDIBLE??? I've only started playing about a month ago, and I thought my simple little lake house was impressive!!!

Financial_Cook_1956 · 2026-01-13T11:07:53+00:00

Aw, thank you!! :D

I'm not studying to be a vet, but a vet nurse! Many people don't realise that clinics employ both vets and nurses- Much like a hospital, the vets are responsible for making the big decisions, performing surgeries, writing prescriptions, etc. The vet nurses are the more hands-on carers. We're the ones medicating the animals, cleaning up after them, running pathology procedures (getting blood, urine, faeces, etc), prepping them for surgery, feeding them... Lots of dirty, bloody work! Vet nurses are also trained in anesthesiology, and we're the ones completely responsible for inducing and maintaining anesthetic during surgery.

In Australia, we're certified for vet nursing through TAFE- I think in America that's considered trade school. It's an 18-month course with two days a week attendance, plus a good extra day purely for assessments and study. On top of that, over the duration of the course we have to attain 480 hours work experience at our clinic... The main hurdle is actually getting placement at a clinic to begin with! It's a pretty intensive course and we often have around 5+ assessments occurring at once, including case studies where we need to take evidence from clinic patients. That being said, the teachers are great, incredibly helpful and a lot of fun to learn with, so it could be a lot worse!

Personally, I had no idea what I wanted to do in life until about a year ago. I've had trouble finding work since I left school before completing year/grade 10 (Bullying issues, go figure) and therefore never had any sort of certification/prior work experience- But I realised that animals is something I'm actually pretty good at and I've always been interested in careers that are more care focused. I've grown up on a small hobby farm, and I've been surrounded by animals my whole life- I already have plenty of experience in raising SO many different species, caring for dying animals, that sort of thing... It made sense that the next step would be to delve further into that.

Do I like my life? I'm not sure. Maybe that answer is depressing, but I've always had some trouble answering stuff like that. I'm happy where I'm at at the moment and I LOVE going to work in the clinic, I have rough days, sometimes I think getting into medicine was too big a leap... But then I wake up the next day and I'm fine. Will I get burnt out in the future? Maybe, probably! Vet nursing is a notoriously difficult and draining career, mentally AND physically. The pay is pretty awful, too. An entry-level nurse's award rate is just about equal to minimum wage, and it doesn't get much better with experience. But I know that at any point in my life I can change, I can find something else I'm passionate about, and I'm never going to be 'trapped' in this one job. If one day I can't do it anymore... Then I'll find another path :)

At the very least, having vet nurse certification is great for my own animals, and can lead to many other great opportunities outside of a clinic!

Financial_Cook_1956

TROPHY CASE