To be aggressive or not?

[XMcShiftersonX]

Thanks everyone for all of your support and helping me think of all the options. My husband and I sat down and talked this morning about the situation. I showed him some articles I read about the condition and he looked into some other articles.

We decided we'll go ahead with giving him the aspirin as the vet prescribed to prevent blood clots, we'll monitor his weight and switch him back to his old food, just to make sure the weight loss isn't something more. We'll play with him and love him as usual (probably give him even more attention though ).

But we won't get the ultrasound until he starts showing symptoms. I'll check with the vet to make sure I understood her correctly. It sounded to me like she said we don't start treating it until he goes into heart failure anyways. If I notice any symptoms, I'll take him in, but I think until then, I should just let him be a carefree kitty.

I have talked with some people who have had cats with heart murmurs and they had the ultrasound and it turned out to be a different condition, that didn't require treatment, and the animal lived a normal life.

My husband was worried this would be a repeat of our first kitty Ishmael. They didn't know what was wrong with him, but kept prescribing tests and medications - it ended up not helping him at all, in fact with some of the side effects, it made things worse, and because we were forcing him to take horrible medications three times a day, he never wanted to be around us. It was horrible. We finally got the diagnosis of FIP a few days before he died, and there was nothing to treat it with anyways. Hopefully he won't have any side effects from the Aspirin.

Here's a silly picture of the man we've been discussing... Affectionately known as "Colbert-Mofrair," "Colbert-a-saurus," "Batman," "Little Man," or "Little Fang."

-Jessica