Update On Itty Bitty Kitty

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Picture of Helena on my knees from last week. She nestles there, past my laptop.

Okay, she’s not well YET (keep up the prayers.) but they put her on an anti-viral last night, and today she was sitting up and raising her head. Not for long. She doesn’t have the strength to do it for long, but for a little bit.

And therefore they’re now leaning to a type of neurological virus that’s literally imbibed with mother’s milk. Most cats who have it, have it dormant, hers just activated suddenly. They are testing, and might also put her brother on anti-virals though he’s fine so far.

Anyway, continue praying. She MIGHT come out of this all right. Let us hope so. It’s going to be ruinously costly, but I don’t even care if I get her back okay.

50 thoughts on “Update On Itty Bitty Kitty”

  5. Sarah, this is great news.

    Did the vet mention if there’s a test for this bug? Future kitty staff will want to know.

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      1. If she’s reacting (positively, I assume) to antivirals it’s almost certain that a virus is at least part, probably a major part, of the problem. Fingers crossed…

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  6. I am so sorry. Prayers ongoing.

    I wonder if that is what got our Bugs (gray tiger) 30+ years ago. He was not quite 3 years old also a relatively small cat for adult male. He showed up on our porch on a very rainy day as a young kitten. Folded him into our cat household. The clinic tested for everything but never really came to a conclusion on the cause. He’d rally then finally went into decline, we had to let him go. The worst? Our son was two. Then (as it turned out it was the neighbors new kitten) Bugs almost (darker) clone shows up on our front porch. Turns out Hobs was just rehomeing himself because the existing adult felines were not welcoming (fine as long as he didn’t live in their house). Neighbors hadn’t quite come to that conclusion while they’d been gone the two weeks we’d had him. But how could they take him away from a two year old? ;-) ;-) ;-)

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  7. Thank you for sharing the good news that Helena is still with us and possibly improving. Sending love and healing wishes. ❤️😺

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        1. I’m very happy to hear about Helena’s recovery so far. GiveSendGo sounds good; less fiddle-faddle than writing a check and hoping that the Postal (dis)Service actually gets it to where it belongs. (It’s usually parcels that get screwed up, but there have been incidents.)

          I’m happy without swag, so GSG it is.

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          1. I was wondering if you had an existing “pay us” thing there.

            Of course, it would be better if I could help you out in July. :wink:

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  15. Aw, geez. Cat fundraiser for sure.

    She’s part of your mental health/editorial staff, so it is enlightened self-interest on our part.

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  16. Here’s hoping for you. We lost a young kitty to FIP. That was the same year we lost 5 cats. One kitten to FIP, his brother to a great horned owl, our miniature Maine Coon to a mountain lion, Joe to an adverse reaction to the anesthetic ketamine (after we told the vet not to give it to him) and the last one to old age.

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      1. that would break me.
        …………

        Me too. It is bad enough to know that because the clowder one has, has members only a few years apart in age, or the same age. That it is possible to lose multiple in the same year, or over just a few years, to age alone. But to lose 4 the same year? No. Just no.

        When we lose an elderly cat we generally know it is coming. It is a balancing act on when to intervene. Be they 15 or 22. What hit me the hardest is losing our last one at age 5, out of the blue. Ultimately we know why he was sick, just not how he got sick. But short of a transplant, which would have tied him to impossible repeated out of state medical processes, we had to intervene and let him go; it still hurts.

        To the point I refuse, absolutely refuse to let the current new 3 (now ages 3 and 2) out unsupervised. Even the older cat, age 9 (almost 10) hasn’t been out since last summer. Note, we’ve always let our cats come and go. We’ve always waited until they were at least a year old, then picked a time when it was raining (or snowing) to teach them to stay relatively close to the house. Taught them to come when called. Naturally there was always one who loved snow, the one who loved the rain. Hubby keeps saying we need to start letting them out unsupervised. But notice that kitty door we’ve talked about isn’t installed. Nor is the upstairs to roof window ajar.

        Does not letting them out totally protect them? No. Witness the neighbor’s cat who has never been allowed to wander. Just the house and attached catico. She had lung cancer at age 9. But no one accuses me of being logical when it comes to our cats.

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        1. Yeah. Helena is six months old. So this was a gut punch we were not in any way expecting. If I lose her, I probably won’t be okay.
          Havey and Valeria are six months apart and going on fifteen. So…. there’s a bad year coming sometime in the next three to five. But HELENA? My tiny-pretty who is still a baby? Oh, heck no.

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          1. Reason #2 (or is it #1) why we can’t foster. Fostering kittens is a way to heartbreak. The odds of motherless kittens surviving, even from 2 weeks to 5 weeks, let alone from hours to days old, is not high. We are 2 for 2 surviving, and really 3 for 3, if we count Thump, who we lost at age 5, who we think was 2 to 3 weeks old when we found him. We were lucky.

            The other reason we can’t foster is because if an unowned animal crosses our property line and threshold, it is home. It would be Foster-Fail-R-Us.

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              1. All I have is broad statements and the fact that it is often the sad outcomes that become cautionary tales. The fact is we’d foster a litter once and then have to be done.

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  20. Happy to hear she’s improving. Please us where/how (when you can), so I can donate to you and the kitteh.

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  22. My oldest cat, now gone, developed a thyroid problem. The vet said they could send her to another province for treatment for two weeks and she would be fine. The problem? She was picky and only ate when I fed her. So lots of meds and lots of blood work over the next 7 years, but it was well worth it. Good luck with your furbaby, they are always worth it.

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    1. We had a cat who had thyroid problems. She was on medication for a year, because the treatment at time of diagnosis was a 6 week stay, until all the radiation was through her system. A year later it was only two weeks but she couldn’t be around anyone pregnant. Also keeping her away from our infant son, not required, but still was so not a problem.

      The cats we had at that time, including her, would not have anything to do with that interloper. And, honestly before, he had a tendency to kick the cats off my lap before he was born. Expensive for the time but we bottle raised her. We didn’t have to send her far as the only clinic that did this for the tri-state PNW was across the river.

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      1. We have had a cat on thyroid meds for…. 6 years — Pixie of blessed memory.
        We’ve had two radiation treated: DT and Greebo both the later died of cancer within a year. I’m not sure if related to radiation….

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        1. We had a year to debate the treatment. After a year of fighting her to take the pills … We did wait 4 months after son was born to take her in. But keep giving her the pills was so not an option. She lived another 7 years. Found her in the garage. We think her heart gave out.

          She also was the one, based on the wound shape, got bit by a large possum. Almost lost her then, at age 3. Noticed her on the rocking chair pad. Something was not right. I scooped her up, put her in the carrier, and took her to our veterinarian clinic, without calling. Massive infection from the bite. Good news was based on the bite profile the veterinarians weren’t worried about possibility of rabies (possums are immune and cannot be carriers). Bad news was the infection was massive. To this day we are very proactive about possums and the cats.

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  24. Our son and daughter just lost their cat, who snuck out of their apartment. They found the cat dead. They located a pet cemetery with a guard dog who watches over the many beloveds.

    Today they took their cat supplies to the local shelter. A cat came up to them, introduced herself, spoke to my son, and rubbed his leg. The cat now has new staff.

    Prayers continue for your beloved.

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