Last Friday I brought my 18 y/o old lady, Boo, to the vet for her annual checkup & rabies vaccination. A couple concerns I mentioned when making the appointment were that I’m 99.44% certain she’s deaf (turn the vacuum on 3 feet away while she’s sleeping and there’s not even a twitch), and that sometimes she’s a little unsteady when walking on an infirm surface or jumping. The vet agreed she had to be deaf (I don’t know if there’s a test, but my vacuum cleaner test was all I needed), and told me she’d lost some muscle in her hind legs which would explain the unsteadiness.

She’d also lost about 0.7lb since her exam last year (6.7lb from 7.4), she’s been losing weight for years, going from a high of around 11lb when she was much younger, so I didn’t think too much of it. The vet recommended bloodwork to see if there was another underlying cause so I approved it. The results showed that she had mild kidney disease and a very elevated WBC count (33K/ul, with 17K/ul being normal max.) The vet said that she didn’t have a fever, which pretty much rules out an infection, and that cancer was the next most likely cause. He also suggested forgoing the rabies shot to avoid stressing her already stressed immune system even more, and I agreed.

So, to get to my question, it never dawned on me until yesterday that there’s no shaved spot for the needle on her wrist. There IS, however, a shaved spot about the size of a quarter on the right side of her neck, under her chin. I’m not going to ask if it’s normal because I’m pretty sure it’s not, but is it acceptable? It’s not like they tried in her wrist but couldn’t find a vein so they went to the neck.

Also, over the weekend she began sneezing & sniffling, so I’m thinking the high WBC count was probably a reaction to the cold virus.

Pic for interest and because she’s fucking awesome.

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Drawing blood from the jugular (neck) vein on cats and dogs is standard practice and extremely common.  We rarely draw from legs in order to preserve the vasculature in the legs should an IV catheter need to be placed in the patient any time soon.

As far as the elevated kidney values go, she's 18 which is basically the equivalent to a 90 year old person; unfortunately the body start to wear out at a certain age and in cats, the kidneys are often the first to go.

cschelk2 DVM

Thanks, I’ve never seen it before so I was a little surprised. I talked to a crazy cat lady neighbor (who has fewer cats than me but I’m not crazy) who’s done a lot of shelter/rescue work and she said it wasn’t exactly common but far from unheard of.

I knew Boo was a VERY senior citizen at her age, so the kidney disease wasn’t a surprise. I’d say she’s actually doing pretty good, she still gets around fairly well and can get on the counter to drink out of the sink without any problems. About once every day or 2 I’ll let her out so she can take a nice slow walk around the yard, sit on my woodpile or porch, or just drink from a puddle. She definitely spends most of the day and night sleeping, in close physical proximity to me whenever possible. I think her most recent trip to the vet is going to be her last until it’s time for THAT trip.

Best of luck with everything; hopefully she keeps going for some time!