Kahn the Cat Movie Trailers and Liver Shunts in Cats Update

Kahn the Cat Movie Trailers and Liver Shunts in Cats Update

by Joe Tracy
(Wilsonville, OR, USA)

When Kahn was a kitten, we took lots of videos of him, posted them on YouTube and shared many here. But then disaster struck. Kahn went in to get fixed and wouldn't come out of the anesthesia state. Because we've had other kittens, we knew it was taking way too long. We rushed him to the emergency vet where they gave him fluid and gave us instructions to watch over him.

We really thought we were going to lose him. After that, Kahn was never the same. He would "twitch", press his head against things, experienced tremors, and sometimes would have episodes where he would drool excessively.

He wouldn't purr during the day, but at night would purr and knead the entire night. We also noticed that his eyes had turned a copper color.

Now before finishing the story, I wanted to post a couple of videos we made of Kahn before his surgery:

Ninja Kitty:

Kahn Versus the World:

Kitty the 13th:

So that was Kahn as a kitten. A few months after the "anesthesia incident" we noticed Kahn stopped growing. This coupled with all the other problems caused us to spend hundreds in vet bills trying to figure out what was wrong.

There were theories, but never any answers. For all these months we stopped taking and sharing videos of Kahn. His Website, KahnTheCat.com, remained quiet.

After another recent episode of drooling and not eating, we arranged another vet appointment. But this time we started doing our own in-depth research online.

After many hours I discovered a lot of Kahn's symptoms were consistent with a very rare cat disease called "Portosystemic Shunts", also referred to as liver shunts.

It's a condition where a blood vessel takes the blood of the animal around the liver instead of through it like it is supposed to. It's not uncommon for a dog to have this condition, but it is very uncommon for a cat to have it (something like 1 in every 10,000 cats has liver shunts).

We were pretty sure we were onto something and started specifically researching liver shunts in cats. It's then that we made a major discovery that really connected the dots - some cats with liver shunts have a hard time coming out of anesthesia!

Armed with this new information we paid a visit to our vet and told him that we were "researching on the Internet" (vets just "love" it when patients come in with Internet solutions). 🙂

We presented the information to him and he said that if Kahn was a dog, he'd believe it was a liver shunt right away, but he highly doubted this was the case. But he agreed to have Kahn tested and several days later in came the call - "You Were Right!" Our vet was quite amazed he (or the clinic) had never seen a case of a cat with Portosystemic shunts.

Unfortunately there's no cure for liver shunts, although surgery is an option. In most cases, it's just dealing with the condition by feeding the cat a low-protein diet and giving it lactulose.

With this now behind us, we're pleased to announce that "Kahn is Back!" His Website - KahnTheCat.com - tracks his progress in trying to "rule the world" and he's now "starring" in new videos. Here's the first of him getting his head stuck in a box. He loves to try and get into boxes - especially ones smaller than him. And sometimes he succeeds! This time he didn't though.

Cat Gets Head Stuck in Tissue Box

And that's Kahn's story to date. Thanks for reading/watching!

Joe