Warning..this is a long post. In telling my history with my cat and with traditional vets, it stirred up emotions and my typing fingers went into overdrive! AS much as I'd love to get all the insight I can here, I understand if anyone wants to skip it over and just tell me what they think of holistic medicine in general (mail hlr1129@juno.com). Thanks.

ANd for those of you who are continuing to read:

I have an 18 yr old cat who has been suffering for about 3-4 years now with respiratory issues. They all started when I brought her into a traditional vet's office (the fist time I ever had to do this since I got her spayed and neutered as a young adult) for some teeth to be removed. OF course they wouldn't do the surgery w/o vaccinating her. My gut told me that wasn't a good idea since she hadn't been exposed to those things in a very long time, but I also felt that she needed the teeth removed and that the shots were something I had to deal with in order to make that happen. I didn't even know about holistic medicine then and really, really, REALLY am wishing I knew that there were alternatives at that time. I mean, does an indoor cat really need to be loaded up all of that junk?! Especially when up to that point, she's never been sick even for a day? And at the age of 15 (which most vets consider PAST the realistic age of being alive)?!?!

In any case, within weeks she started sneezing and runny nose. Then the doc put her on antibiotics. They antibiotics work for the time she is taking them but within a week of being off, she starts to sneeze again. SO they put her on antihistamines, which worked for a bit until her body got used to them and then she started to sneeze some more. Then the vet told me there was "nothing more that they could do with a cat her age" and that I should consider putting her to sleep. SO I went to another vet's office and started the whole thing over again. When this vet told me to accept the facts of age and the putting to sleep issues, I figured "to hell with them". I'd just see where the issues progresed. After a few months she began to lose weight and was extremely lethargic so i brought her to yet another vet's office (definition of insanity... repeating the same task over and over again, hoping for different results). This vet wanted to keep her for a week, pumping her full of high doses of antibiotics and fluids. I told her NO, that I thought the cat's immune system had already been compromised enough by the antibiotics and I wanted other alternatives. The vet didn't really have any other than to give me fluids to give at home to keeo her comfortable until she died (b/c we all know that her age, there wasn't much else to expect). So then I started researching holistic meds (actually was looking for some information for myself and stumbled upon care for cats!). I found a holistic vet in the area and have an appointment for this week. It's a lot more expensive than a regular vet but my gut is telling me that it's the right move and that my cat still has some time left. Despite the traditinal vet's life expectancy of 12-15 yrs tops, I know that a lot of my mother's and grandmother's cats have lived into their 20s (and they all spend half of their time outdoors eating a natural diet with only a small ammounf of packaged food).

What really gets me going is thinking about how many people have had their pets put to sleep at the vet's urging for something relatively minor. I'm not blaming the pet owners here, but the practices themselves who are in the job to save animals lives, but seem to prescribe death as the most logical alternative. I don't know whether to get angry or to cry.

I am a little nervous about making the swich to holistic medicine. All the information I've been reading seems logical but overwhelming. Yes, I know that the vet will tell me how to go about it in the best way. But I wanted to get other people's opinions on it who've actually tried it. Thanks again for listening! Can't wait to hear back from you!

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