Aral has been in slowly declining health for almost a week. It started with poor appetite; I initially wasn’t that worried but by last weekend I was like, “This isn’t finickiness; this is something else.” I called my regular vet on Monday morning and described his symptoms: poor appetite, “I don’t like the way his fur looks, and he rattles when he breathes.”
My regular vet (well, her coworker) worked him in and was very concerned. She diagnosed him with a serious upper respiratory infection, gave him subcutaneous fluids and an antibiotic shot, and said “And his hindquarters are incredibly weak and I can’t figure out why!”
Er. That would be because your coworker did a double femoral head ostectomy on him in 2018, so he has no hips. She felt a little better at that point and asked me to bring him back the next day, which I did. She gave him even more fluids and some of the really common eye drops cats hate.
I then spent the rest of the week coaxing him to eat. He would tell me he was hungry, eagerly charge up to his dish, then sniff it and look disappointed and leave. (Cats who can’t smell won’t eat, so I blamed him being stopped up.) I could get him to eat by 1. dropping kitty treats onto the kitchen counter, where they would click and the sound made him eat them, or 2. putting Fancy Feast in a microwave-safe cat dish and nuking it for 15-30 seconds to warm it up and make it smellier.
Last night I decided that I just didn’t like the way he was breathing and took him to the emergency vet.
Emergency vet: IT’S THE END! It’s either cancer, FIP, heart failure, or kidney failure. THE END. We’d like to hospitalize him. If you don’t want to hospitalize him take him to your regular vet for diagnostics. If you’re not willing to diagnose him please euthanize him; we can do that now if you want.
Um. No! You can keep him overnight and diagnose him.
Emergency vet, two hours later: IT’S THE END! He has fluid in his chest and in a young cat that’s either heart failure or FIP. THE END! Also I would like to give him a transfusion but not gonna lie cat transfusions are not like people transfusions we don’t have cat blood in stock and it’s possible that I might kill him if I make even the slightest error also it will be a day-long process, also it won’t cure him it’ll just make him feel better. Do you want me to give him a transfusion?
Me: I… have slept maybe two hours in the last twenty-four and you just woke me up, so I honestly don’t know how to answer that. When will the specialist get in?
Emergency vet: Two hours.
Me: Why don’t we see if the specialist thinks he needs a transfusion? I mean, if it’s only two hours…
Emergency vet: That’s very reasonable; let’s do that.
Two hours later, New Lawn Guy came by with a loud m*therf***ing tractor and I’m okay with that as long as my lawn gets mowed. It did sound like sleeping in a jet engine, however.
Three hours later, the specialist called. He doesn’t think my cat needs a transfusion but does think my cat has FIP. Also he says that if I google I’ll find a bunch of “crazy things” that he doesn’t recommend but they exist. Aral has fluid in his chest and abdomen and kidney changes. On the up side, they suctioned out all the fluid and now he feels much better, so they sent him home.
So, I googled, since there was a lot of hinting that I should, and yes, it’s crazy. Here’s the deal:
FIP was previously considered incurable and 100% fatal, but UC Davis did a study where there was a drug that was amazingly effective and cured cats! the only problem being that the company that makes the drug refuses to make it available for veterinary use, so people get it off the Chinese black market. For $12K you might get a cure, or someone in China might ship you poison instead. Do you feel lucky?
Sources:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/remdesivir-cats/611341/
https://sockfip.org/ (link via UC Davis vet school)
So I called UGA vet school to ask if they had any connections or whether they were doing any studies. They said no, and referred me to the UC Davis vet school. The UC Davis vet school referred me to that second link. I kind of feel like I cannot fly my cat to California during a pandemic to be treated by a vet hospital that probably isn’t even doing that study any more, anyway.
(Also, I now wonder if Aral’s sister Cordelia, who, as the vets say, “failed to thrive,” had FIP. She did have fluid in her abdomen, they said.)
