Cat in House Fire

angelfire9

I had a house fire on Sunday night/ monday morning and though the fire was confined to the kitchen (which is a write off) the cat was also in the kitchen and suffered severe smoke inhalation (the back door was open i'm assuming the fumes got to him before he could get out)
So my poor cat is at the vet's since yesterday morning and though he has improved a great deal from when he was brought in, his walk is still very unsteady & the vet is not happy with his progress and has suggested possible brain damage!
He recognised me this evening & purred when i rubbed him, he has been using a litter tray as well so there is certain brain activity there alright
He didn't suffer any burns and is not in any pain but how long should i wait before making the decision to put him down?
He's only 12 months old we have had him since Christmas as he was a rescue, he'd only started really coming out of himself lately as he used to be very very shy & reluctant to engage with strangers I just wonder will this trauma finish him off altogether?

artieanna

So sorry to hear about the fire and kitty. I really could only say talk to your vet and follow his/her advice.

emsy g

aw poor kitty,that's one of my biggest fears,my dogs stay in the house during the day when we're at work,always terrified the house'll go up and my babies will be stuck in it!!!your cat'll probably be ok,just loads of love and nursing it back to good health with vets advice.google 'ask a vet' for more advice too.can't remember the name of the site but some of them sites give really good advice rather than going back to a vet over and over to have him do little to nothing for your cat.

carwash_2006

That is also one of my major nightmares. My dogs are confined to the house when we are not there and the cats have a flap, but they sleep so soundly I fear they mightn't wake in time if anything happened.

Hope he continues recovering and is fine in the end.

hadook

I have had one experience of a cat with possible brain damage, not for the same reasons, but hopefully this will help.

I took in a kitten last year who arrived fitting badly - so badly I thought I was bringing her in to be pts and was amazed that the vet thought she had a chance. Her diagnosis was a bad case of worms that had gotten into her bloodstream and to her brain. After a week in the vets under sedation they were able to bring her around but we were warned of the high likelihood of brain damage so you can imagine how I felt bringing her home.

It took her a couple of weeks to work out her senses again (she seemed to have trouble with her hearing and sight when we first took her home and often fell over her own uncoordinated feet) but she slowly got better to the point where she'd divebomb our feet in the morning from out under the kitchen table. She's now living with a friend and has developed a very distinct personality :rolleyes: but there's nothing wrong with her now We think she might have been feral or just not socialised at all before she was found, so her demanding personality does make sense. She's spoilt rotten now too, which never helps

If your cat is eating, drinking and using the litter tray then I'd say give him a chance. If he's not in pain then you're not doing any harm by seeing if he'll recover from this. You might end up having to keep him inside if his coordination never becomes 100% or he might be fine in a few weeks. Or he might not be.

Talk to your vet about his quality of life etc and trust yourself to make the best decision for him.

angelfire9

hadook wrote: »

It took her a couple of weeks to work out her senses again (she seemed to have trouble with her hearing and sight when we first took her home and often fell over her own uncoordinated feet) but she slowly got better to the point where she'd divebomb our feet in the morning from out under the kitchen table. She's now living with a friend and has developed a very distinct personality :rolleyes: but there's nothing wrong with her now

If your cat is eating, drinking and using the litter tray then I'd say give him a chance. If he's not in pain then you're not doing any harm by seeing if he'll recover from this. You might end up having to keep him inside if his coordination never becomes 100% or he might be fine in a few weeks. Or he might not be.

Talk to your vet about his quality of life etc and trust yourself to make the best decision for him.

Thank you for that it does give me hope!
I'm obviously going to give him all the time i can to recover, probably going to try bring him home at the weekend to see if having him around us rather than strangers helps, his walk is still extremely unstable (falling over almost constantly) but in other ways he has improved a great deal since Monday. (though he's not eating, is drinking & using litter tray but vet thinks throat may be too sore to eat so he now has a feeding tube! As he isn't in pain (from the fire related injuries) waiting awhile longer won't do any harm but obviously if he doesn't improve drastically his quality of life won't be worth a damn and he doesn't deserve that!

I'll keep ye posted!

Lauragoesmad

Give him at least a couple of weeks.
I know this situation is not the same but it shows you how much more vigilant animals are at recovering than people.
My king charles had 3 strokes when she was 11. She couldn't even stand or focus her eyes on things. My parents were away when it happened and when I brought her to the vets I thought I was going to have to get her PTS. The vet said to give her 2 weeks and see how she was. She had to relearn how to do everything herself from going up and down steps to even standing while eating and drinking to getting down from the couch. I really thought there was no hope for her and like you, did not want to see my pet suffer but everyday she got a tiny bit better. Two months after the strokes she was good as new if not a tiny bit better. Cara is still alive and well although she is getting a bit slow now. She is going to be 14 on the 4th of July.
Afterwards the vet told me that he knew she would be ok as animals have this instinct to stay alive and I well believe it!!
Don't give up on your cat unless he is in pain or extremely frustrated. He is very young and has a great chance of bouncing back as age is on his side. All the best with him and I'm really sorry about the fire. I'd say thats stressful enough without your cat getting hurt too.

angelfire9

Unfortunately, Zoe had to be PTS yesterday :-(
His throat was still bleeding & his chest was not improving, his stability was not improving and he was not eating & had problems with the feeding tubes!
It broke my heart but it might have been months & months before there would be any quality of life, and even then the quality of life he might eventually have was nothing compared to the cat I had this time last week!

hadook

Really sorry to hear this Sleep tight Zoe kitty.

Having to make that final decision is the hardest part of being a pet owner. I know that's no consolation now but putting his quality of life before your own feelings was the right thing to do

Sigma Force

So sorry to hear about your cat, you did all you could for him.
We had a house fire last year and it's not a pleasant experience obviously. My budgies, guinea pigs and my mothers dog were in the house at the time and only that the door was closed in the room that the birds and pigs were in and the door where the fire started was closed they would of all died.

Luckily the mothers dog was in the front of the house and I opened the front door to get her out but waiting for news on the birds and pigs was awful. They were all fine by some miracle because the place was very badly smoke damaged but it is a terrible way for any animal to go and to watch them suffer like that is hard so can understand how upset you are about loosing your little one.

Was the rest of the house smoke damaged? Even with our doors closed the whole place was ruined (we were in the middle of just finishing work on it) it was months before we could move back in.

Victor

carwash_2006 wrote: »

That is also one of my major nightmares. My dogs are confined to the house when we are not there and the cats have a flap, but they sleep so soundly I fear they mightn't wake in time if anything happened.

Get a fire alarm! :rolleyes:

angelfire9

Guineapigrescue wrote: »

So sorry to hear about your cat, you did all you could for him.
We had a house fire last year and it's not a pleasant experience obviously. My budgies, guinea pigs and my mothers dog were in the house at the time and only that the door was closed in the room that the birds and pigs were in and the door where the fire started was closed they would of all died.

Luckily the mothers dog was in the front of the house and I opened the front door to get her out but waiting for news on the birds and pigs was awful. They were all fine by some miracle because the place was very badly smoke damaged but it is a terrible way for any animal to go and to watch them suffer like that is hard so can understand how upset you are about loosing your little one.

Was the rest of the house smoke damaged? Even with our doors closed the whole place was ruined (we were in the middle of just finishing work on it) it was months before we could move back in.

The whole house is a mess with smoke and soot, the kitchen ceiling is coming down on saturday and i've still haven't packed up all the clothes for the launderette its been a mental 8 days hoping (fingers tightly crossed) to be back in for Aug / Sept! :eek:

luckat

Very sorry to hear about poor Zoe.

Sigma Force

How did you get work men in so quick, it took us ages. At first we wern't allowed to do anything not even clean a bit until the insurance guy came along so that was a delay, then trying to get someone to start asap and find somewhere to rent was a nightmare.
We had to get a professional cleaning crowd in but be careful one crowd quoted us 3 times as much they just want to make more money from the insurance which would of left us with less. Not sure where you are based but we got a cleaning crowd that came from Wexford area and we are in Tipperary they were great, cleaned and sealed the walls ready for painting.

The ceiling where the fire started had to be ripped down it was soaking wet, the kitchen next to it wasn't painted at the time so just painting it solved all that. We hadn't started renovating the rest of the house and were only thinking about it but had to in the end anyway so all the old ceilings came down and walls we re plastered. In the end you end up loosing money no matter what happens.
We found it cheaper just to throw away the clothes (if they are in a wardrobe or something they are easier to save but these were everywhere as we had no storage at the time). The laundrette would of cost about 4 times more so we just bought a few new clothes.

This was about 8months ago the whole thing took around 4 months but that was because of the extra things we had done because we were in the middle of renovating anyway. So I would say you should be back in the house by the end of Aug. but if a workman says something will take 2 weeks always add on an extra 2 weeks to that.

If there's not one already they will have to fit smoke alarms ie not the bog standard ones but they have to fit the ones that connect to the electrics.
We got them fitted and a heat sensor in the kitchen, but we had some trouble with the wiring with it and the bloomin things kept going off every time I hear a smoke alarm I nearly have a heart attack.

To top it off when we were in the middle of cleaning up and the builders were in silly hubby put one of the old smoke alarms in the bin with the battery still in it, when I came home to check on things nearly had heart failure because the first thing I heard when I apporached the front was the flippin smoke alarm!
Being paranoid we now have an alarm in almost every room in the house now.

I bet you are sick of people saying to you 'oh it could of been worse' that used to drive me mad, like duh of course it could but that doesn't help matters right now grr. lol

Things will feel a lot better when all the work men are gone and you can go back in with some big tins of paint and start re decorating, just keep looking forward to that and it stops you going crazy.