Reply To: Cartrophen in Cats

Well, a few years ago my oriental had a very weird accident and presented with puncture wounds all over his body. He was ataxic and could only walk in circles. Nothing on x-rays. He went onto metacam for two weeks and the ataxia slowly resolved. His foot the absessed and anti-biotics did not resolve it. His tiisue was surgically removed from his hock down and culture down. The targetted anti-boitics helped and it resolved. He was lame continuously and diagnosed with a lateral retinicular ligament rupture. The vet was suspicious of an ACL injury too but the cat is not a good candicate for this surgery as he is a bit daft with recovery. We used cartrophen off-lisense about one year after the injury and it seemed to improve

Secondly my 19yr old cat is very arthritic. She is CKD and does not react well to opioids so she is on a low dose of gabapentin and we have just started a trial of cartrophen to see if this helps her. I did not find much on this is cats but it seems that vets are using it and I read an article about the use of Adequan in cats but there seems to be no real data on whether these therapies are beneficial. The old lady started her catrophen today. She is having one sc (0.1ml) injection weekly for 4 weeks then one monthly. We will assess any improvement at her next kidney check in April. Will let you know how she gets on