you need to get her in to a vet.

Sorry to hear of your concerns for this stray.  Often cats will move away if there is a shift in patterns.  So, this kitty may be a few streets over, being fed by a different person.  Or it may not have been stray at all, it might belong to a neighbor that finally decided to get serious about being a responsible cat owner and has made this kitty an indoor-cat.

There is also the possibility that it got eaten by a coyote or Great Horned Owl.  Coyotes take a lot of cats in the fall and during cold snaps in the winter.  Great Horned Owls are starting families in Feb and so take larger prey as they prepare to nest.  This would have happened even if you had been home during that time.

I think you did the best you could.  Cats are independent thinkers and just don’t always fall in line with our expectations.

PK

She sounds super cute and a handful 🙂 Dont have anything to add, but have an injured kitten that im handling who sounds very similar to yours before she got injured. Didn’t know a drop trap even existed until now. i like it! Will try finding one for my next vet visit.

This could be a serious spinal issue — you need to take him to a vet for evaluation.  Swelling disks, a pinched nerve, could be the problem, but you can’t be sure what is going on without a vet’s evaluation and probably an xray or soft-tissue scan.  Any thing involving the spine is pretty serious in my book, so I wouldn’t wait.  Often problems can be resolved with crate rest and some medication for swelling and pain.

Good luck!

His xrays showed hip dysplasia but told to rest him (very hard when he is an excitable crazy pup). But reading on treatment options there’s a number that can only be done before arthritic changes begin to show or under 1 year of age…..by time he goes for next xrays he will be over a year!! I feel like will be offending the vet if I ask for a referral

take your dog to the vet.  take a urine sample, when you go.  but please get your dog in now.

One of the challenges of conventional medicine is a limited number of both diagnostic and treatment options. Depending on what your vet said yesterday (I assume after Dr. Krista’s comment you did call the vet back) this may be a time to seek integrative care. 

I
strongly recommend finding an integrative veterinarian with whom to work because they are trained in many different approaches, including using conventional
drugs only when absolutely needed. Working with one can increase the chance
that your cherished companion can live a long and healthy life after recovering
from this current problem. There are good ones and great ones, and a few
homeopathic veterinarians will consult by phone or email. You can go to the web
sites for each type of holistic practice and use their referral list to find
one near to you. If this interests you, please read my article on selecting a holistic vet at my site. Many practitioners are members of only one or two of the
organizations, so you do need to go to every site to find who is near you:
1. Wide range of other treatments: http://www.AHVMA.org, American Holistic Veterinary
Medical Association and http://www.civtedu.org.   
2. Homeopathic veterinarians (these can often help you by phone if no other
holistic practitioners are nearby that you like): http://www.theAVH.org and http://www.DrPitcairn.com.

3. Chiropractic and Osteopathic – http://www.animalchiropractic.org;
http://equineosteopathy.org/ (they
treat dogs, too)
4. TCVM (Acupuncture and Chinese medicine): http://www.IVAS.org,
http://www.aava.org & http://www.TCVM.com

5. Herbal
– http://www.VBMA.org

Laboratory studies need to be done on her if they have not been already. Specifically, a blood panel. One concern that comes to mind is immune-mediated thrombocytopenia which is what my girl, Hannah, died of. You did not mention her age? Hannah was 5-weeks short of 8 years old. Older dogs are more susceptible to immune-mediated diseases – just like humans. However, immune-mediated diseases can affect younger dogs, too. Just like humans. 

The key signs for immune-mediated thrombocytopenia would be a blood panel that showed low platelet counts because they are being consumed through an immune-mediated process. Low platelets when the count reaches to a certain level – about 50,000 – can lead to spontaneous bleeding in both the dog and the human. Platelets are responsible for our clotting mechanism. i.e., without them, we will freely bleed and bruise (both, internally or externally) without a means of quelling the loss. 

This will, then, lead to low red blood cell count as the dog or person will not be able to manufacture replacement cells to make up for the loss. The dog will be anemic. Dogs are stoic creatures and they can become pretty darn anemic before they will show us physical signs of their anemic state. They are people-pleasers and will compensate for their anemia. 

With spontaneous bleeding, a dog can have gastrointestinal bleeding which would lead to bloody  stools. The colon could be bleeding which would produce bright red blood per rectum or the bleeding could be higher up in the stomach or small intestines which would produce black and tarry stools. 

Bleeding in the stomach can cause nausea and vomiting in the dog and person because blood is a somewhat caustic product. My Hannah was not vomiting but she had no appetite when the illness was clinically apparent. Unfortunately, I lost her because the veterinarian did not bother to carefully look at her laboratory studies that I had ordered.