All the staff here at The Animal Hospital  have nominated Eli McCarthy as September pet of the month. Unfortunately Eli passed away on September 6th after a fight with a very long chronic illness.  We all grew to love Eli and his feistiness.

Eli presented to us September 2013 with suspected head trauma. After some blood tests we realised his kidneys enzymes were extremely high. We then thought Chemical poisoning. The vets here put Eli on a number of medications to help with his kidneys. In October an ultrasound confirmed his kidneys were severely enlarged. April 2014 he didn’t seem to be doing well so he underwent another ultrasound. This one confirmed bilateral perinephric pseudocysts, which is extremely rare for such a young cat. At this time he was sedated and 50ml of serosanuious fluid was removed during a guided ultrasound procedure. He done extremely well for a while. July the cysts around his kidneys filled up once again.

He also became anemic during this chronic illness and was receiving injections weekly to help increase his blood count. We got a call September 6th to say Eli was falling over. When he came in his PCV was 8% , which is extremely low. A normal PCV for a cat ranges between 27% and 48%. At this stage he needed a blood transfusion, so we transferred him out to the Pet Emergency Hospital at UCD along with one of our foster cats Peppa to be his blood donor. Sadly his PCV was not increasing. His owner Amanda made the hard decision to say goodbye to him a few weeks short of his 5th Birthday. He left her peacefully while lying on her lap.

Here are a few words from Amanda:

Eli was such a fighter from day one. He had such a will to live. Each time he crashed he amazed everyone with his zest for life and he recovered. He spent his days in the sun on top of a high wall out a neighbours back garden in the weeks up to his death. He loved being brushed. He was a spitfire also but once he loved you, he loved you for life. His illness was tough, hard to cope with considering its terminal from day one but seeing him each day after diagnosis enjoy his life made Eli and I want to fight all the more and he loved his life up until the end.

R.I.P Eli (02.10.09 – 06.09.14)