Hannah is a lovely 5-year-old Maine Coon cat who, at the beginning of January saw us for vomiting and lethargy that got worse over a few days. On examination, she seemed uncomfortable in her abdomen and had a fever. We treated her with pain medication whilst waiting for blood results - which came back relatively normal, aside from a massive increase in young white blood cells (band neutrophils).
As she was not getting any better, we proceeded to diagnostic imaging and on abdominal ultrasound found an intussusception of her small intestine.
This means that part of her guts had "telescoped" inside of another part - resulting in an obstruction of her intestines. Because the part of intestine that is stuck inside another part of intestine loses blood supply very quickly, we had to perform an emergency surgery and ended up removing this part of her intestines completely.
We also sent the removed part of intestine to a pathologist and the results suggest that Hannah's misbehaving guts were suffering from inflammatory bowel disease.
We are happy to report after her hospital stay and post op checks Hannah is doing splendidly on her new (horse-protein only!) diet. Well done Hannah for being so brave!!!