Rosko Update: Ileocolic Intussusception

we had thought we were looking at a case of pancreatitis, but another ultrasound at the University of Pennsylvania revealed an intussusception, i.e., a segment of the ileum had slid into the segment of the colon just distal to it. in young cats, such as Rosko, it's likely that the cause may not fully be known. tests for IBD not back yet. in any case, he's doing fine.
recovery without any complications so far. he got amazing care at Penn and we're fortunate to be located (we live in the city) nearby. word of advice: pet insurance is a smart thing to have. it paid a large portion of the last 2 surgeries on our cats, and we are glad we opted for it after Rosko's first surgery.

Poor Rosko!! I hope he's on the mend soon - poor baby. xx

Love to you all & special cuddle for Rosko,a big op for a babe to go through....x

Unfortunately we know all too well about intussusception, having had two MCs develop it. The first cat had it in the same place as yours at two years of age. Unfortunately, by the time he had emergency surgery there was too much colon tissue death and he could not be saved. My wife and I had a very hard time as we blamed ourselves for not pursuing his not feeling well more aggressively. The second cat was our current boy Zephyr, who out of nowhere became ill at 16 weeks the day before a scheduled vet visit for shots. From visiting emergency vet early Sunday to regular vet Monday, the intussusception apparently developed and resulted in him losing several inches of intestine during emergency surgery. Zephyr's occurred between the small and large intestines, though, so vet expected absolutely no long term side effects. In fact, once Zephyr got back to being able to eat normally, he rapidly regained all lost weight and then went on to grow much faster than our other male, Remy.

The first week he was home was pretty stressful. The hardest part of the recovery was dealing with his ravenous appetite! He had surgery end of the afternoon on a Monday and came home one week later. We were supposed to keep him from playing too hard of course, and feed him only a few teaspoons of wet and dry food several times per day. Both things were very difficult to accomplish, as Remy and Zephyr were so excited to see other they wanted to play, and Zephyr wanted to eat constantly. While he looked great at first, by Tuesday afternoon he was looking quite poorly so took him in to see vet. It was awful! She clearly blamed us for turning him from a healthy looking to very sickly looking guy in 24 hours. She wanted us to leave him, but since she was on call we took him home to watch. The funny thing was, we got him home and he suddenly raced off to play with Remy, obviously feeling great! Turns out we hadn't killed him after all!! After a few days of ups and downs, I was able to notice that the down periods were occurring at similar times during the day--about an hour after he had his doses of antibiotic it turned out. Whew--just the antibiotic making him feel bad. Talked to vet and got antibiotic injection and he never had any further episodes of looking poorly. Wiithin two weeks of being home was quite back to normal. He is now a very big and healthy one and a half year old guy.

Unfortunately there will probably never be any way to know what might have triggered this in our cats or yours. The two year old of ours that developed it had appeared to have some food allergies, and we had struggled trying different foods, so that may have been a contributing factor. On the other hand, Zephyr had been the kitten with the iron stomach. Ate anything and everything from the moment we got him and never had an diarrhea or other issues. He was absolutely the last kitten I would have expected to have such a problem. Parasites are often suspected in young kittens with this, but Zephyr was tested many times and nothing ever found. Vet said the undamaged intestine looked absolutely perfect, so no sign of any issues. The breeder did find in talking to other breeders that two related females had developed intussusception while nursing and presumably becoming somewhat dehydrated. Zephyr had vomited a few times and emergency vet did not give him fluids, so perhaps dehydration had something to do with it. The thing that is so strange is that we have now had two MCs get this. The vets I have spoken to about this say it is quite rare and that they don't see that many cases, so for us to have had two cases is hard to believe. Seems to be no connection between our two cases, though, as they were quite different (very different ages, occurred in different parts of intestine, had totally different diets, very different breed lines). A mystery that we continue to wonder about.

Anway, wanted to let you know about our experiences. Good luck to Rosko!! Let me know if there are any other questions I might help try to answer.