Viral Gum Attack
Two years after the first attack of inflammed gums around his left lower canine tooth, in March 2009 we suffered another major setback. Sage began dragging his biscuits out of his food bowl onto the floor one by one, drawing them to himself and eating them gingerly. This was very odd but amusing behaviour and at first I thought he had developed yet another cute trait like the ARTHUR cat on tele, but it wasn’t long before he began hissing at his food again. I checked his mouth and to my horror both sides of his lower gums were severely inflammed and smelly. It was obvious to me then that the reason he had been dragging his food out of his bowl was that somehow he was blaming the food bowl for the pain in his mouth.
I rushed him to my vets and he was put onto Stomorgyl and Metacam for a week. I stopped using Immune Plus in case there were interactions with the painkiller and antibiotics. There was little improvement in his mouth and I was syringe feeding him with Hills A/D diet so my vet changed his anti-biotics to Antirobe for a further 3 weeks. At the end of this very worrying period his mouth had improved to the extent that we stopped the treatment, as though the redness of his gums was still present he didn’t seem to be in any pain and the smell had gone.
For about 2 months he was fine but then his mouth flared up again. He stopped eating, his mouth smelt and when he groomed himself he left a sticky wet residue on his coat which he spread all over himself as he tried to clean it off. Another 2 week course of antibiotics, Metacam and syringe feeding began. In the following months, Sage lost weight and suffered repeated attacks of gingivitis/stomatitis untill he could only go without antibiotics for 3 – 4 weeks before his mouth flared up again.
Every time I took him to the vets the stress would cause him to come down with cat flu a few days later and he was a very poorly little cat indeed. This pattern of mouth flare up – vet – cat flu continued for many more months untill my vet decided to try him on oral Interferon which is an anti-viral drug.
This treatment is very expensive and consisted of me syringing 1ml of diluted Interferon onto his gums daily for 3 months.
A month after Sage started this treatment he suffered one gingivitis/stomatitis attack, but it was not as severe as other attacks and settled after a week of antibiotics instead of the usual 2 – 3 weeks. His cat flu symptoms also seemed less severe. At first he did not seem to mind the Interferon and was a little happier in himself.
However, after 2 complete months of this treatment, Sage started hissing when I syringed the Interferon onto his gums and became very difficult, i.e running off when he saw me approaching, and as this was so unlike him, I knew that for reasons known only to himself he’d had enough of the Interferon. Perhaps it hurt his gums?? made him feel ill?? who knows, but I was unable to continue with the treatment for the third and last month. Also as his mouth had flared up again and he had become very snotty so I wasn’t happy that the Interferon was helping him anymore, certainly not enough to force it on him and make him more stressed and miserable.
It was now September 2009 and I had tried all conventional veterinary treatment for both his mouth and cat flu but none of it helped him for very long. I put my thinking cap on to find something that would.