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gum/mouth diseases?

1K views 7 replies 4 participants last post by  Vivid Dawn 
#1 · (Edited)
I know some of you are vet techs or studying to be. I need information on at least one disease (bacterial or virus, I'm not sure) of the mouth/gums in cats. It's a big huge long name that the vet's secretary wouldn't repeat for me (she knows I was gathering information, and I asked if there was an abbreviation...she said 'no', so I asked her to say it again, and she sort of just dismissed it as "oh, the doctors will know"...well I need it for MY information).
Anyhoo.... somewhere in the huge name is "centifilic" (or sentaphylic?).
There was also mention of another one that's for sure a contagious virus (passed through saliva/sharing water bowls), but I can't remember what it was... also had "C" sounds in it, so might be the same. I was dealing with SO MUCH today, that I lost track of everything. Having to oversee 10 cats euthanized AND try not to cry about it sortta made my brain melt :? (plus, later I got told 2 of those cats may not have needed it...so now I feel especially bad!)

I would either like your own info, links to info on the 'net, or just the proper names/spellings so I can do my own searching.

Thanks!
 
#3 · (Edited)
I guess since I'm "just" a volunteer people think I don't need to know much. Except that 50 other cats have been exposed and possibly contracted it... so I want to know all the signs of symptoms to look for, both in carriers and actively fighting it.

There are 2 supervisors at this place. The lady who started the whole rescue group has gotten health problems since starting, and now really only can do the book-keeping and managing "remotely". The lady who goes down to the shelter with me and can actually SEE what's going on, never seems very concerned about problems that arise.
I kept saying that one cat had something seriously wrong with it, by all the weird ways he was acting, but kept getting told "Oh, just give him Amoxi, he'll be okay"... well, after 3 months of him not improving (not getting worse either, but the way he was I think "worse" would have just been dead), I finally insisted to the first lady that this cat is horrible... while we're a "no kill" shelter, I do believe there's a point where you shouldn't make cats suffer if they're obviously miserable.

Anyhoo, now the first supervisor is all upset, as we found out that a virus has been going for 3+ months, and nobody said anything (or at least I wasn't firm enough in my opinion to get Gabriel checked out), and now the whole place could be kaput.
Even if cats don't get symptoms, this thing can make them carriers... and hardly anybody wants to adopt diseased cats.

Oh, and the reason I need names of more than one mouth condition, is that later I was told maybe 2 cats had something different that COULD have been cured. Oiy!
 
#4 · (Edited)
I found my cat Tigger as a stray, 4 weeks old. On his first vet visit the doctor told me he had calicivirus. The symptom was a red line that ran around his gums.
Calicivirus is one of the viruses that cause 'cat flu', but after the typical attack of respiratory distress the virus stays in the body, and often affects the mouth.
The vet recommended no treatment at the time. She said to monitor Tigger as he grew and became healthy again after nearly starving.
The red line did disappear. I understand that treatment with interferon is often used.

There were no lasting ill-effects from the virus. Tigger is 11 now and has always been healthy.
 
#5 ·
That's it! The 2 cats had calicivirus... they were on Amoxi (to get the initial treatment for their system to start handling it better) and also Prednisone for the rest of their lives.
But then the doctor said we had to put them down... THEN the group director said that it hadn't been needed, as it wasn't bad as the thing the other cats had.

As I said, I'm just a volunteer. I just do what I'm told, and I get told so many different things, I never know what to do.

I'm to the point that I want to quit. The only reason I keep hanging on, is for the cats. The people make it so hard, though! Not only do I get confused with conflicting commands, but then there's never enough volunteers to help which is why I end up doing it 4 days a week (give or take a day), and with my own health problems, I just can't handle that a lot. But if I don't do it, nobody else will. :?
 
#7 · (Edited)
As I said, I'm just a volunteer. I just do what I'm told, and I get told so many different things, I never know what to do.

I'm to the point that I want to quit. The only reason I keep hanging on, is for the cats. The people make it so hard, though! Not only do I get confused with conflicting commands, but then there's never enough volunteers to help which is why I end up doing it 4 days a week (give or take a day), and with my own health problems, I just can't handle that a lot. But if I don't do it, nobody else will. :?
I didn't want to highjack your thread, but since it seems you got the answer to your original question about the calcivirus, I wanted to comment on this.

I too worked at a "low-kill" shelter. Whatever that means. . .subject to various interpretations, apparently.

It is terrible that they (employees/vets/management) of shelters treat the volunteers the way they do - lies, changing stories, not giving the facts, treating them as lesser people, etc. They seem to forget that without volunteers, they are nothing.
It seems a trained, experienced volunteer should be worth their weight in gold, huh?

I know what you mean, I often felt that they couldn't get their stories straight. I had to quit working there because of the lies and deceit from a shelter that could have been doing so much good. It costs animals their lives! I don't know what the answer is, but I hope shelters develope a way to treat the volunteers like the valuable resource they are - otherwise they will face a resource-sucking black hole of a constantly revolving pool of volunteers.

I am very sorry you have gone through this experience - or that it has turned out this way for you and the cats. Take some time for yourself to heal. It's okay to be angry.

((hug))
 
#8 ·
I'm not so much angry, just frustrated and exasperated.

Today at adoptions, both supervisors reassured me that I did the best I could under the circumstance (i.e. me not knowing all that medical info, and just following orders I was given 'randomly'). They said that the vet probably should have checked each cat for symptom levels, rather than just telling me "oh, any cat with a mouth problem and all that have been exposed" and just doing it in one hour rush to get it all "taken care of" for the day. Which I sort of agree... but oh well, too late now.

SO! If anybody wants a cat with a mouth virus, there's about 50 for your choosing ;) A'course, ya gotta come to northern Utah!
 
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