What the Vet said and What I think is true

First off, Smokey is home and doing very well.  She is a bit needy in the "pet me, love me" area, but otherwise back to her old self.  We brought her home at the close of business yesterday.  We also brought home KFC.  She insisted that she needed a bit of chicken..we succumbed.. though we try not to feed her chicken anymore..but she's been sick... so she got a bit of chicken.

At bedtime, she joined me in bed as usual.  What was unusual is her insistance that I pet her non-stop while she drifted off to sleep.  Never mind that I was also sleepy and wanted to drift off.  She clearly felt I owed her big for all her time away from us.  She's lucky that I am nice. She also finally went off exploring and I managed to get a little sleep before she came back at 4 am, insisting on more petting.

Okay... so the Vet really isn't sure what brought all this stuff on.  He says that older cats can be that way sometimes... be unhappy, quit eating, cause metabolism imbalance and WHAM.. sick cat. When we first took her back to the Vet (the clinic also has a kennel which is where she stayed while we were in transit), he mentioned something about abcessing from not eating, so he'd start her on antibiotics just in case.

I think that Smokey had Kennel Cough.  While I understand it's rare for it to transmit to cats, it does happen and her symptons match the ones I found on the internet (for cats). I suspect that this is what happened with Smokey.  While she is home now, we do need to continue the antibiotics for another week and return to the Vet next Monday for new blood tests.

I could be wrong, but... Smokey's been in kennels enough times that I know how she behaves... and this was really different.  She was really ill. But the attendant claimed that she was eating fine there, so how could her not eating at home just a few days cause such a quick and debilitating result?  I think it is the Kennel Cough...or someone was lying about how well she did in the kennel.