Pyometra

Poppy started calling at the age of 5 months (to the day) and went 8 weeks between calls, which is longer than usual, and had never been given a pill to stop her calling.

We'd just got to the stage of thinking about arranging  a stud cat for Poppy, when at the age of 10 months, she developed pyometra (a serious life threatening infection of the womb - there are two sorts of pyometra.  Open, which is least life threatening and is what Poppy had, and closed, which is only usually discovered when the cat is seriously ill!) and it looked as though our hopes of her having kittens were dashed, because this is often only cleared by having the girl spayed, (although our cats are first and foremost our pets, and what they do in showing or breeding is an extra bonus to us).  This began with a slight white discharge from the vagina - we noticed this when she began to keep licking the area.  

We took her straight to the vet who gave her antibiotics and told us it could have been vaginitis, or the beginnings of pyometra (which was what we'd suspected), so it didn't come as a great shock when the situation got worse and she developed a brown discharge that looked very much like chocolate milk shake. We had heard of prostaglandin treatment, which we discussed with them, but since no-one there had had any experience of this treatment for pyometra, they were unwilling to go down that route, and wanted only to try antibiotics. A first course of antibiotics didn't work, so they tried a second, and when this didn't work,  a decision was made after discussion with them, that we would try a third course, but at that time, if her health had deteriorated in any way, then she would have been spayed immediately.  Her health was the most important thing to us.  Fortunately she appeared to be healthy - her eyes were bright, she was active and eating well, with no fever.  The third course of antibiotics did work, and we hoped that we might be able to mate her when she was a year old.

Shortly after we changed vets (for several reasons, but nothing to do with Poppy's treatment), and when pyometra suddenly flared up again a few weeks later, this time the new vet had had experience of prostaglandin treatment and was very keen to try it on Poppy.  We had got an article from Dr. Susan Little's web site about this:  http://www.cfainc.org/health/reproduction2.html  and our vet followed this article to the letter.  Poppy had five injections - one a day, with the only side effect at all being that she was fairly vocal for about an hour afterwards - we got the impression that she was in a little discomfort, but not in pain, as the uterus contracted to expel anything that the infection had caused.  She was also kept on antibiotics.  This treatment did work, and the pyometra took the course exactly that Dr. Little's article describes.   Poppy remained on antibiotics, as the article suggests, until 4 weeks into the pregnancy, and we are delighted to have this opportunity to have kittens from her.  The full information regarding pyometra and many other aspects of feline reproduction can be found on the cd that can now be purchased from the Winn Foundation on: http://www.winnfelinehealth.org/cd-feline-reproduction.html