Iggle Piggle
This is little Iggle Piggle.
We were contacted in the week by officers from West Yorkshire Police regarding a cat that had been found in the property of a deceased individual who may has been deceased for around 6 weeks.
Iggle was moderately dehydrated and received emergency care.
He was fed a teaspoon amount of food every hour throughout the night and assessed by our vets.
Apart from obvious and understandable trauma Iggy is responding well to treatment.
He is currently receiving intravenous fluids and lots of TLC .
We are only able to feed Iggy a teaspoon of food every hour as we don’t want to risk Introducing refeeding syndrome.
This syndrome is reported relatively commonly in critical human patients being fed after a period of malnourishment and is now recognised in veterinary medicine too.
The body’s metabolism changes dramatically during starvation to prevent protein and muscle breakdown.
Refeeding leads to a surge of insulin, which may result in severe electrolyte shifts including hypokalaemia, hypomagnesaemia and hypophosphataemia. These electrolyte shifts can cause severe clinical signs, and may even be fatal.