I accidentally gave my cat double the dose of antibiotics for a few days

Question

My cat was diagnosed with a UTI and was given ciprofloxacin for 14 days every night

But accidentally I gave him a dose in the morning and at night for 5 days now.

There is no sign of blood with urine and he is urinating although still incomplete.

Should I be worried about anything serious or should I just continue with the regular course of action? And will the double dose cause other health issues in my cat?

Answer 1

If you overdose only once or forget only one dose, the usual advice is to give the next dose according to your schedule without skipping a dose or giving an extra dose.

But since it happened to you for 5 days, you should really talk to your vet again for 2 reasons:

1. Ask if this could have serious negative effects for your cat. Keshlam already covered this in their answer. Your vet may or may not tell you to pause the treatment and continue later or to switch to a different type of antibiotics.
2. You don't have enough medication to run the entire course anymore. The problem with antibiotics is that the symptoms improve after only a few doses, but you cannot kill all the bacteria in such a short time. If you stop taking them at this point, you basically breed resistand bacteria. That's why it's very important to take antibiotics for the prescribed time even if you don't have any symptoms anymore. You really want to make sure that you killed all the bacteria.

Answer 2

The cat will probably survive.

An overdose of antibiotic puts the animal's body under more strain. Remember that the basic principle of an antibiotic is to lightly poison the animal, counting on the fact that the animal survives this poison better than the infection does. The dosage is adjusted to be high enough to kill off the targeted microorganisms while being low enough not to do significant damage to the patient. Increasing the dosage forces the body to work harder to detoxify the chemical; specifically, it is likely to consume more of the liver enzymes which play that role.

But there is usually plenty of safety factor in the standard dosage.

To answer more specifically we would need to know exactly which antibiotic, in which formulation, at which dosage; the size and health of your cat, what illness is being treated, and so on. Your vet has all this information, so you should ask them rather than us. You may also want to ask them whether you should continue the original dosing schedule, switch to the new schedule, or get one more pill so the treatment runs for the recommended number of days.

Summary: don't panic, do ask your vet.