Help with 17 year old boy!

[INeedADayOff]

So my beautiful first ever cat is now 17 years old.

About 8 weeks ago I took him to vets as he’s lost a lot of weight, was always 6-7kg now he’s 4.2kg and I was really worried out him.

Vets did lots of tests and couldn’t find anything really wrong with him. Kidneys were fine, thyroid was fine, he’s not diabetic. We did discuss him having some X-ray on his back legs as they were worried about arthritis but he’d need sedation for it and due to quite a serious heart murmur both the vet & I were a bit reluctant.

He’s now feeling even lighter, you can feel every bump on his spine, he looks awful, his fur isn’t right, he’s not really grooming himself like he used to.

He is eating, toileting ok, still his normally cuddly self.

I will make another appointment for him in the morning.

Just wondered if anyone had any good ideas for me to ask the vets

Wishing him well and hoping he gets better.

My cat had a growth on his spleen, it was picked up because he had heart failure and they did all the tests and scans because he wasn’t doing well.

Hopefully it is just a quiet phase for your cat. I can hear from your words that he is much loved and has been taken care of vey well for a long time. 😍

Could it just be old age? A lot of our elderly cats got skinny just merely because of old age rather than anything sinister. If they’ve done a lot of blood tests and nothing has flagged up then that’s a fairly good sign. Some of the other things they can do would require sedation which understandably they won’t do on your cat due to its heart murmur. If he is arthritic that might be making it painful for him to groom hence his fur not looking great.