How Lily, Our Cat, Was Saved With Herbal Remedies!

Little "Bug" was adopted from a local shelter when she was just 6 or 7 weeks old. She looked at us from behind the shelter cage bars and it was love at first sight. A Maine Coon mix, our pretty baby is a very sweet and loving girl. She sports a beautiful, red tabby coat complete with the bottle brush tail and long belly hair of the Maine Coon breed. An average size cat, she is smaller than a true Maine Coon, and has never set even on paw in the snow.

She has a very expressive face with large, piercing yellow eyes. When she stares at you, you can practically feel it! Graceful like a ballet dancer, she can jump from the floor on to the top of a table covered with stuff without disrupting a thing.

Lily is a lap cat. She loves to snuggle on a lap with her face buried under our arm or in a shirt sleeve. She purrs the entire time she is being petted and if the petting stops, she stops purring, pull her head out and looks at you with her piercing eyes as if to say "I didn't say you could stop!" When the petting resumes, the purring resumes and she buries her head back in the snuggle position. Needless to say, she gets lots of attention.

We have long been believers in the benefits of herbal remedies, especially when it comes to our cats. Studies have shown that cats respond very well to herbal remedies. Our own experience bears this out. We use all natural essences like Bach Flower Essences and Spirit Essences to help our cats heal, adjust to changes, cope with grief and trauma, and to just deal with each other when life gets too much! But, if one of our babies requires medical attention, we are the first ones at the vet! For emotional stress and chronic problems, we find that herbal remedies tend to work the best and without the harmful side effects of modern medications.

Lily is a very sensitive cat when it comes to modern medicine. We no longer vaccinate her as the vaccines make her very sick and she is unable to tolerate them. We are quite lucky however, because she has never been sick - until recently. We watched our beautiful, sweet, affectionate "Bug" turn into a cowering, fearful, sickly cat almost overnight!

It all started one day when we noticed she was bleeding slightly from her ear flap. We figured she had been scratched by one of the other cats. We cleaned the ear, applied a bit of antibiotic ointment and called it good.

Over the next couple of days, we noted that her ear kept bleeding off and on and she kept scratching at it. We assumed that she had another injury deeper inside the ear. The whole ear was turning red and it had some drainage crusted in it. We knew the wound was becoming infected. It was time for a trip to the vet.

The trip to the vet was uneventful and we found out she did indeed have a wound deep inside the ear that needed treatment. She was sedated, the ear wound irrigated and cleaned, antibiotics flushed through the ear, and after she woke up, we brought her back home.

She didn't eat dinner that night but we didn't worry about it too much. After all, she'd had a stressful day! We figured she just needed some time to rest and recover and that by morning, she would be her old self again. Boy! Were we wrong!

For 2 days, Lily hid under the bed and wouldn't come out for anything. Using a flashlight, we could see her ear had been draining and was crusted up with dried blood and drainage. What was worse, she had developed a red,crusty rash around her chin and along her jaw, her coat was dull and listless, she cried plaintively whenever we looked at her, and she had a pained and frightened look on her face all the time. Our poor Lily was in trouble!

We knew we had to act! Lily's life was in danger! If the stress didn't get her, infection and shock surely would! But, what to do? Dragging her out from under the bed and forcing her back to the vet was out of the question. The stress of that would be too much. Yet, she had to get treatment. After much discussion and a few phone calls, we decided upon a course of action.

First priority was to de-stress her. He exceedingly high level of anxiety would interfere with any sort of treatment but yanking her from under the bed would only increase that anxiety. We had to get some anti-anxiety medicine in her to start the calming process so, even though she wasn't eating, we decided to try to give her some baby food anyway.

We got some St. John's Wort in the liquid form to make it easier to measure out the proper dosage, mixed it in a tablespoon of chicken baby food, spooned it into the lid of the baby food jar (fearing that a normal size dish would scare her more). Then, using a stick, we pushed it as close to her as we could, backed away slowly, left the room completely, and prayed Lily would eat it.

A couple of hours later we checked on her and were elated - she had eaten the baby food! That evening, we repeated the process with dose number 2. The next morning, while giving her dose number 3, Lily meowed more normally and appeared visibly calmer. Later that day she came out from under the bed, used the litter box and ate some actual food! We were alive with hope!

The following day, it was time to start treating her injury and infections. We added some Neem Plus to the baby food/St. John's Wort mixture. Neem Plus is an Ayurvedic herbal combination that features Neem which is an Indian herb that has antifungal, antiviral, and antibiotic properties. Neem has long been used to treat a variety of skin conditions. Neem Plus is available in a liquid form specifically for use in pets and is completely safe for cats.

We had to restrain Lily to apply the Phytogel and the second we finished and let her go, she shot from the room like a bullet and hid again! We weren't too worried because running and hiding after any type of treatment is normal behavior for many cats but especially for Lily! Still, we kept an eye on her, talked reassuringly to her, and hoped she would forgive us enough to come out for dinner.

That evening, as we were getting the cats' dinner ready, we went to check on her under the bed but - no Lily! We looked everywhere but no luck. She had hidden herself too well for us to find. We continued getting dinner ready, fed the rest of the cats, and just hoped Lily would come out on her own.

Later, as we were cleaning up after dinner, we walked into the kitchen, and there was Lily, calmly eating her dinner! She stopped eating and stared at us, ready to run if we came near her. Deciding it was better to err on the side of caution rather than show her how happy we were she was out and eating, we ignored Lily and went about our business. Lily continued to eat but kept a watchful eye on us.

After this experience, we have decided that, should Lily need to go to the vet again, we will start with the St. John's Wort right away, preferably before we put her in the car. And, if it is nothing life threatening, we will start with herbal remedies first! We never, ever want our Lily to experience such stress and anxiety again!

There are no holistic vets in our area but we have been fortunate to find one that has been willing to consult with us over the phone and by email. She recommended a book called "The Veterinarians Guide to Natural Remedies for Cats" (which you can get through our bookstore) and we have all read it cover to cover and find it to be an excellent resource.

The liquid St. John's Wort can be purchased through our

store (click here) or at most health food stores. Neem Plus can be purchased from Ayush Herbs and the Phytogel from Tomer Labs. We have not been able to find the Neem Plus or the Phytogel anywhere else. In fact, when we inquired about them at several health food/natural remedy shops, they had no idea what we were talking about so if you want to get them for your cats, we recommend simply ordering them over the internet.

If you are a believer in holistic remedies for you cats, we highly recommend getting the book or, even better, finding a holistic vet near you. We firmly believe that, because she is so sensitive, modern medicine almost killed our beautiful Lilybug. But because we were open to alternative methods of treatment, herbal medicine brought our baby back to us. She is as happy and healthy as she ever was and back to enjoying her snuggle and pet lap time on a daily basis!