I have 2 cats, the female is 1,5 years old, the male is 10 months old, has been with us for 6 months. He was thrown out as soon as he was born, amazing people found him on the street and brought him up on formula. He's always been sickly, even when he was in the shelter. With didn't vaccinate him immediately cause we knew he reacts strongly to stress, we waited a week for him to show any symptoms and lo and behold, he got an URI. It took us forever to get rid of it and he could finally start getting his shots. After that he got an eye infection, after that we moved and he got sick again. Up to that point everyone was telling us he's immune system is weak and that's that. The vet noticed he's slightly anemic and underweight and recommended a nutritional supplement. He started gaining weight fast and soon after his stomach ballooned. One week ago he was diagnosed with fip. He probably had the dry form for ages, he was diagnosed with the wet form. Just to be clear, I'm not kidding myself, I know what's going to happen and trying to make my peace with it. It's still a bit bottled up and this is the first time I'm openly talking about it to someone who isn't a vet or my boyfriend.
We drained his stomach 4 days ago and after the shock wore out he was back to his old self, acted the way he does when he's healthy. He hasn't accumulated much fluid yet but he's still dehydrated and losing weight even tho he eats like crazy. He gets an extra meal every day, extra supplements and treats, steals food and screams for food when we go near the kitchen. He used to drink water anywhere he could find it, he stopped doing that and now drinks regular amounts. Tomorrow we'll talk to the vet about electrolytes or infusion/diuretics combo. To me it doesn't look like he'll be one of those 5% that survive but there's no way we'll just sit around doing nothing.
Keep in mind that we live in a "developing" country where 90% of the people think fixing your pet is something ungodly and when their pet gets sick they ask for advice in fb groups instead of taking it to the vet. Once I got into a fight with a person that advised someone to treat panleukopenia with chicken broth instead of giving money to a vet. I'm saying this just so you get the picture of what kind of shithole I live in. Fip happens here as it does everywhere else, but probably those cats die undiagnosed cause I called all vets in the country and maybe half of them have never had any experience with fip. Luckily, our vet has but I'm still getting conflicting advice and I'm worried sick about what that means for our other cat.
We don't have any tests atm, in a few weeks I'll be traveling abroad and I'll buy some but it's just a formality to confirm that our other cat has the coronavirus. How could she not, they've been sharing a litter box, stealing food from one another and drinking from whatever water bowl. She's probably not a carrier cause we used to live with roommates before we adopted him and had plenty of cats around, one of them is very old and very prone to the mutation of the virus. We'll test their cats too just in case. I'm also worried about the cats in the shelter we adopted him from. It's not just a shelter, it's run by friends of mine and I used to visit a lot and love some of those cats as my own. Our vet says our female will be fine as long we keep her immune system up and not put her in any stressful situations. One of the technicians knows I used to foster strays (stopped when we adopted him cause he was always sickly) and told me to not even look at strays for at least a year after he dies. The other technician mentioned to my boyfriend that after her cat died of fip, she didn't touch a cat in months, just to be safe. In any case I won't be adopting/fostering any new cats as long as my girl lives cause I'm 100% sure she has the virus. They make it sound as the mutated virus can be transferred as well, while the internet tells me that coronavirus is very common and only mutates in 5-10% of the cases.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/akdetl/one_of_our_cats_was_diagnosed_with_fip_i_have/
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