My beloved childhood cat was diagnosed with autoimmune hemolytic anemia as a very young cat. His symptoms where pale, pale membranes, I think a little weight loss, and extreme lethargy. We, too, were painted a fairly bleak picture, and he was started on prednisone. I was devastated. It took some tweaking of his meds over the years, and he did have some crises/crashes over the years that he bounced back from with the help of blood transfusions, but he lived for over a decade and had a wonderful quality of life. He died at 12 or 13 from blot clots, and I’m sure that living on constant low dosage of pred for over ten years played a role in that. He was happy and “healthy” cat until he wasn’t, and then we let him go. Yes, he died younger than he probably would have had he been healthy, but he exceeded all our expectations and lived a very full life. Good luck with your girl. Thinking of you all as you look for answers.
Thank you for sharing this story. Maybe Baby Kitty will see a few more happy years yet.
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I really appreciate your response. I’m going to look into this further.
From what I recall, we already did an ultrasound. It was the first thing they did when her tests came back anemic. All her organs looked pretty normal, or normal considering. The pancreas was mentioned at one point. I think they said it was slightly enlarged which was normal considering that her body was dealing with such severe anemia, but I might have the wrong organ and the wrong description at this point.
What I did, since I was running out the office door when I saw your message, was take a screen shot of your update post with the info about the pancreas and the resolution, and I sent that screenshot to our vet to make sure this avenue had already been considered. I really believe this is a good vet (this case actually has become a team effort at the clinic at this point) and will wait to see her response.
If her levels continue to drop and this vet isn’t cutting it for us, I agree that it would be wise to seek a second opinion from a specialist.
She is eating on her own right now !!! 
I can hear her purring from across the room 
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My cat’s ultrasound showed all normal looking organs as well - including her pancreas. While a lot of your basic vets are really good at differential diagnoses, if the cat is not thriving, it is worthwhile to see a specialist. I got a TON of fantastic information just spending an hour with the specialist. And it wasn’t prohibitively expensive - less than $400 for everything - consult, ultrasound, meds, additional blood work. It saved my cat’s life. I wouldn’t wait too long though. By the time cats show signs of sickness they’re already really sick. They’re stoic creatures so their suffering may be much more than they’re letting you know of.
I hope all my updates are not becoming tiring.
I did email the vet to ask about the EPI idea. Here is her response:
Thank you for sharing that with me. I agree that EPI is very rare in cats and I have only treated it in dogs. That would not show up on the ultrasound because it is more of a cellular issue. Usually the stool is soft, light colored and stinky because the food is not being digested properly. We can run a blood test for that which is $95 but I would be fairly surprised if that is the issue. There is also the anemia panel we had discussed which is $200. I hope that helps, I know you are worried about Baby Kitty and it is difficult when we don’t have straight forward answers.
I’m going to agree at this point, especially because it looks like she is starting to improve. Slowly but surely. She doesn’t mind her antibiotics and will take them but she hates the prednisone and today, for the first time ever, she swatted at me while I tried to give them to her. This is good. This is old Baby Kitty behavior, she truly is a grumpy lady cat.
She looks a little fatter today. Still isn’t really moving much. Still have not seen her poop. But I think maybe we can feel a little positive today.
We’ve held off on the anemia panel for now because it hasn’t sounded like it would actually fix anything and money is a bit tight. If things continued to decline, we would definitely jump on the panel and any further tests.
