Thinking happy thoughts

Here's todays "Depressing Case of the Day" at GVC:

A sweet, 9-year-old Siamese-ish male cat and his owners arrived around 4:30 this afternoon.

Kitty presented with a 2-3 week history of lethargy, not eating well, vomiting, and losing weight.

Ok, never a good list of symptoms, especially in an older cat, and especially when they've been going on for weeks...

Kitty also had a totally rotten mouth that would probably require extracting all of his teeth.

The plan was: chemistry panel, CBC with differential, electrolytes, venous blood gas, T4, FeLV/FIV snap test, SQ fluids, and sending home antibiotics. At a cost of over $300 just for today's workup, not including possible xrays if needed, and not including the estimated $400-800 of dental work he'd need next week, I was surprised when the owners okayed everything.

But not too far into the bloodwork, we got a positive result on the snap test - poor cat had FIV.

Long story short, kitty ended up euthanized.

Then I got home and had to call the owners of the hospice cat (20 year old cat with liver cancer) that I visited 3 days ago, and find out if they'd put the poor thing to sleep yet (they had).

Only happy endings tomorrow, ok?