Recently a 3QD reader, Cris, wrote to me after reading my account of my cat Freddy’s illness. Her cat, Dada, has been diagnosed with Feline Infectious Peritonitus and is not so well. She wrote that:
Today I found out that my cat, Dada, has feline infectious peritonitis and i remembered i read about it on your blog a few months ago. Reading the article again was so helpful, because i also belong to the category of people who would do anything, try anything to save a little friend.
I found Dada an year and four months ago, she was a little stray cat, living in a really bad habitat. She was, I suppose, no older than a month. Me and my boyfriend took her home and took care of her. She is a very special and affectionate cat, we sometimes perceive her as a human.
From time to time she started feeling bad and having fever. The vet was treating her for different diseases, but in fact he had no idea what it was.
After a few months, we went to another vet who said it was haemobartonella and treated her for it for a long time. Seeing that there was no improvement of her health condition, we went to another vet who told us today it is fip, in a dry form. I am aware it is an incurable disease, but i still hope to find a way to make her feel better, at least for a period of time.
What did you do with Freddy? How did you treat her? Our vet recommended us supportive treatment with prednisone and vitamins, but we are not sure it’s enough.
I told Cris that I believe that Freddy was probably misdiagnosed as having FIP (after a couple of other misdiagnoses by other vets–although she did have a blood test come back positive for FIP) and she just became better on her own. Cris wrote that:
I also hope there is a misdiagnoses, but the doctor said that other tests she had say the same thing. She has a high level of proteins in her blood, respiratory problems and a lot of white cells. 🙁 On the other hand, it’s hard to believe she resisted for so long with that terrible disease, I read on the internet that the life expectation is much lower.
If you are a vet, or know about such things, please leave your advice for Cris in the comments. Here are a couple of other pictures of Dada (she is partial to Julian Barnes, it seems!):
And Freddy says Hello!
