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| Dear Swheat Scoop, Thank you for returning my phone call about your wheat litter, and being concerned about the health of my cats. As you know, I have 5 cats that all live inside my house, and keeping the litter boxes clean is a job in itself. I have always used XXXX Cat regular litter and then about 3 years ago I switched to XXXX Cat scoopable litter, and it made my life a lot easier. Needless to say I did not know I was on the verge of killing one of my cats by using this type of litter. The cat I am referring to is Sheba. She is 7 years old and her normal weight is about 10 pounds. Over the years I would catch Sheba licking litter off the floor once in a while and I did not think much about it. Then a couple of months ago I noticed Sheba started slowly losing weight and sleeping all the time. So I thought it is really hot out and she is getting older so it is nothing to worry about. But weight kept coming off, she was eating like she was starving to death and drinking water like she would never see a drop of it again. She also started sneezing all the time and urinating outside the litter box. So I called Sheba’s doctor and he wanted to see her right away. She was down to 7.2 pounds by then. Her doctor was thinking she might be diabetic so he ran blood work on her. She was tested for that and other diseases. The tests came back all negative, but she was severely anemic. He put her on tetracycline (4 pills a day) and pet tinic (vitamin & mineral supplement). After about a week of fighting her with medicine the doctor decided to keep her and give her injections that would be easier on her and me. I told him I had seen blood in her stool that day so he wanted to check her on that and run some other tests. I also informed him she has been eating kitty litter for a long time, but he did not seem concerned. A week later the doctor’s office calls me and tells me the doctor has a family emergency and is leaving town for a week and Sheba is not doing any better. In fact her red blood cells count had dropped more and she needed to be transferred that day to another doctor to get the help she needed or she would die. So I found a different doctor for her. When I arrived with Sheba the doctor was checking her out and felt a lump in her stomach and wanted to run x-rays on her. As I was telling the doctor about how she had been feeling I told him about her eating kitty litter. At this point she was down to 7 pounds. The doctor called the next day and confirmed Sheba was full of kitty litter (colon and intestine). He kept her about a week. She is on tetracycline, pet tinic, laxatone (the rest of her life), and he gave her steroid shots to help build her back up quicker. Her red blood cells are coming back up slowly and she is up to 8 pounds now even though she does not look like it. Next week she has to have another blood test done and a urine test and hopefully that will be all. Sheba has a long road ahead of her to recover from the litter being in her system. The litter absorbed everything out of her body. It is heartbreaking to look at her, she actually looks like a cat you would see living on the street starving to death, nothing but skin and bones. It also does not help that she has bald spots on the front of her legs where they had to do so many blood tests on her. She looks like an animal abuse case. I have learned my lesson the hard way about scoopable litter and I am hoping this letter will help you get the message to others as you are trying so hard to do. It is so nice to know there are people out there like you that do care about our animals. After I hung up with you I called Sheba’s doctor and he is very interested in reading the letters people have wrote to you and the flyer on the wheat litter. I will make sure he gets this material. I also have ordered the wheat litter for my mom, sister and I. I have enclosed copies of Sheba’s x-rays, a picture of her and a copy of the letter I have written XXXX Cat. If I hear from them I will let you know what they say. Sincerely, Lesia F. |
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