My Cats' Hematology Reports

Before my female cats were spayed, one vet had a policy of doing bloodwork before operating to see if there would any kind of special problems he might have to address during the brief surgery. He also wanted to know the condition of the animal, and in some cases, would recommend drug therapy, or I'm guess, maybe a special diet.

They both loved sitting behind the books while I studied!

Anyway, both Aulait and Cafe had their operations and he didn't particularly like the outcome of either of their bloodwork. Aulait, at one year of age, had her operation first. The vet commented that it might be necessary to give her some kind of therapy, but I wasn't too keen on infusing a drug cocktail in my baby and that was as far as the conversation went. Aulait as an older cat having the operation really had a lot of pain, and I vowed that Cafe wouldn't have the operation so "late". But since she had panleukopenia as a two-month-old and then needed time to recover before she had her inoculations, which had to be spaced, the vet wanted her well enough to be able to recover from another shock to the system. So finally at eight months of age, Cafe was fully inoculated and thought to be healthy enough. The bloodwork certainly shows that she was f-a-r from healthy. The vet just shook his head, didn't recommend any kind of therapy, and said she was well enough for the operation.


I was so busy at the time writing my thesis and researching that I didn't pay as much attention to Cafe's bloodwork as I had when Aulait's came back. For Aulait I had to look up everything online to figure out why something was 'high' or 'low' or even normal. I just didn't understand much about the medical terms and what they might imply in regard to health. I know a lot more now, but I intend to study further and so I post these hematology reports for future referencing.

Got us a wee cat fight on our hands!

The bloodwork did help me over the past few years to understand a little why Aulait always wanted to eat plastic bags, plastic coated strings, Christmas (plastic) colored strings, and other soft plastics ... she was low in lipase, the enzyme for fats. Cafe was also very low in lipase but only on rare occasions did she go for plastic, so I'm still thinking on this weird plastic eating phenomenon. I've read online about other cats doing it or even eating computer cords. Thank goodness Aulait didn't do that, but I did have a trick to prevent her from eating the plastic bag edges that hung over on my trash can - I would lather my hands lightly with dish soap and smear it on the visible plastic. I would have done that to my computer cord too if necessary. And then looking at Cafe's blood report, it was obvious that she already had renal issues as an eight-month-old, although it wasn't obvious to me at the time. I really wonder what I would have done differently if I would have known how to read the blood report.



Cafe, after being diagnosed with serious renal problems knew and accepted that she couldn't have Aulait's food ... so she would get just as close to it as she could during Aulait's feeding times. She never tried to get IN the cupboard, but boy did she have to sit ON the cupboard while Aulait ate!