Old Cat Drags Leg!

by Nita
(New York)

QUESTION

My 16 year old cat had a problem a couple of months ago. He was dragging his back left leg. I massaged it for a day and a half and he was fine. He is an indoor cat. He has the problem again, but this time it hurts. What should I do to help him? Thank you in advance.




ANSWER

Dear Nita,

I am very sorry there has been a delay in my answering your question. More importantly, I just got your letter about Roscoe passing away and I am very, very sorry for your loss.

I just would like to assure you of a couple of things.

(1) The first is that even if I could have answered you five minutes after you wrote, my answer would have been to "take him to the vet". A 16-year-old cat is quite elderly. Also, dragging a hind limb is not something I could diagnose or recommend treatment for online nor could you have treated him yourself.

(2) I have several reminders around the website that if your cat has a serious health issue, you should not wait for an answer from me or anyone else online; you need to head straight to the vet.

(3) Just so you know that I am not uncaring nor were you in any way not important to me, I'd like to admit that I have been getting more emails each day. I get hundreds a week now and the number increases each week and yet I have a more than full-time job as a vet.

I suppose it was foolish of me to think I could answer every single question I receive, but that is what was in my heart and my wishes.

However, I manage this website alone and answer all questions alone and do it during my time away from the hospital. Time which should really be family time. However, my little boy loves animals and is very patient with my spending so much time on the computer.

It has come to the point that I see that any one person could not possibly keep up with the number of emails I receive. I have been searching for solutions for some time.

It is difficult because I love helping cats around the world through this website and I love doing things for free for animals, so it breaks my heart that there's only so many hours in the day.

If I could answer emails all day and not work at another job, it would perhaps be manageable, but I have no other income except from my "real" job and I have a family to support.

I am making some changes to my website in an effort to continue helping readers as much as I have been, but by doing it in a different way. I will soon have a long list of most commonly asked questions with their answers. It will cover most questions that any cat owner who comes to my website is hoping to have answered.

For the few things that aren't covered, I will still take questions, but have to charge a small fee of $2.00 (a very small fee compared to anyone else on the internet) to offset the expenses of keeping the website up and the time involved in running it.

I will also make it even clearer on the website than I already have that neither I nor any other vet online can handle a reader's emergencies. Online veterinarians can provide a great service by providing an enormous amount of information, suggestions, possibilities, etc., but we can't be emergency vets. Anyone that has a cat that is ill and in danger of dying needs to be running out the door to their vet instead of sitting down to write to someone online.

I have tried to help readers know how to determine when their cat has an emergency by writing several articles about signs of illness in cats. I will add more such articles in the near future and will continue to add more questions to the list of frequently asked questions. That way, hopefully most readers will find their question and the answer to it right there on the site ready to help.

Again, if a reader's question isn't already answered on the website, I will continue to take questions for a small fee. My hope is that I will eventually provide so much free information on the site that there won't be many of you who have to pay even the ridiculously low fee of $2.00 to get your question answered.

I also am promising that if you do submit a question, I guarantee your answer within 48 hours, most often within 24, or you will get your fee refunded.

Again, I am so sorry for your loss. I know all too well how painful it is to lose a beloved pet. I hope you find some comfort in the fact that he lived to be rather old and that if he died that quickly, it is very unlikely that anyone, even your local "hands-on" vet, could have saved him.

With my deepest sympathies,
Dr. Neely