Tripawds Three Legged Dog & Cat Forum Archives

Hi all,

Background: Lemon is 9 months old. He was brought into the local shelter as a stray with an injury. The shelter decided to amputate his rear left leg on 3/5/20. After a month of recovery, he was deemed adoptable.

I adopted Lemon on 4/13/20. He was very energetic and had no issues. Then in the last week of April, he started walking backwards and howling. It was once or twice at first but then it escalated to the point where he couldn't walk. I eventually got him to a vet and they started him on gabapentin (0.5ml twice daily) and amantadine (15mg twice daily). I also give him CBD at night.

After some research, I found tripawds.com and saw that this sort of behavior is common and typically goes away within 2 weeks. It has now been 2 weeks since this behavior started and I am not seeing much improvement. In the last 2 days, he has started running again (which gives me hope), but he is constantly falling over and he still howls a lot. I feel really bad for him since he has so much trouble using his litter box and eating.

I have another vet appointment scheduled on 5/15/20. In his last appointment, they did an xray and said they did not see any sign of infection but they are recommending that he goes under again to remove the little piece of bone that was left from his amputation. They are not sure if this will help but they think it's one solution to try since the medication isn't helping much. I'm concerned about him having another surgery. What if it doesn't help? Is it too much trauma? 

I'm reaching out to other pet-parents who have gone through something similar for insight on their experiences, if their cat recovered and if so, how long did it take for them to recover, how bad was the walking backwards / pain, etc?