Spats… revisited

Spats has hung around and is now celebrating his third week of living with us.  He is extremely easy going, never bites or claws and does not wander.  I guess he has decided that things are pretty good here and he might as well hang around.

Last week we began to notice Spats sneezing.  We joked that he had allergies and dismissed it.  Well the sneezing became worse and there was occasional coughing.   I pulled out our trusty essential oils book and started daily massaging eucalyptus oil into his chest.  He loved the massage but was ticked about the smell   As the days went on he wasn’t getting any better, so yesterday my dad told us to make an appointment for him and our dog to go in to the vet, Dixie just needed some shots updated.

When the nurse came in she suggested scanning him for a chip that might locate his owners, we hadn’t even thought of this.  After a couple minutes of scanning his body, nothing came up.  The nurse then wrote down all of his symptoms and shared that the doctor likes to run a series of tests on new cats for FIV,  Leukemia and one other thing I can not remember, because if one of these things comes up positive it might change how you want to treat the cat completely.  My dad told them to go ahead and run the tests and the doctor then came in to give a thorough examination.

While we waited it was determined that Spats is a neutered male and has a possible cold.  However he was showing signs of a possible respiratory infection as well.  She suggested a de-wormer for another gross symptom he is having and an antibiotic.  She continued to talk about him while we waited for the test results to come back.

A few minutes later the knock at the door came and a nurse dropped off the test results, the first words out of the doctors mouth were “OH, HONEY!”.   Never good, right?    For those of you who know me and my sister well, we do good until sympathy is shown to us, then the tears start.  I hate sympathy

The doctor brought the test strip over along with the chart showing what the different dots on the strip mean.  He was positive for FIV.  FIV is basically cat aids, it is an auto immune disorder that he may have been born with or contracted when he was young.  There is also a chance that he has been vaccinated for FIV already which would give a false positive on his test.

Here’s where it becomes a bit frustrating.  Was he vaccinated by his original owners?  Did they know he had FIV and decided they didn’t want to care for an animal that might have this virus and that’s why they dumped him?  We have no way of knowing because this cat was not given to us, but abandoned in our neighborhood.

The vet was kind and gave us some options about his life.  She suggested he become an indoor cat to protect neighboring cats, or to make our other cat an indoor cat to protect her.  She also said the risk of our existing cat contracting FIV is extremely low.  The only way she would contract it is by giving or receiving a deep bite wound and since they seem to be getting along fine that is highly unlikely.  The only risk then would be to neighboring cats.  We only have two neighbors who have cats and they stay at their own homes never coming over here and Spats doesn’t go over to their homes at all.  Once again there would have to be some pretty major fighting going on for him to spread it.  The virus is not spread by sharing the same food bowls, thank goodness.

The vet also told us about “cat colonies” that take in these cats and care for them, she didn’t know of any locally, but was pretty sure we could find one through the internet.

There was also the option of putting him down.  We took Spats home, waiting to get his meds until we had decided what to do with him.

Last night was spent looking up information about FIV, the risks, contacting our local SPCA to see if they had any information about local FIV cat colonies and deciding just what it is we wanted to do with Spats.

I have to say it was pretty heart breaking thinking of someone dumping a sick cat off because they didn’t want to deal with it.

Here’s what we decided.  Spats will be staying with us and we will be picking up his meds today.  If in the future he starts getting sick a lot we’ll try to find a cat colony for him (I’m still waiting to hear back from the SPCA).  If we can’t find him one, then we’ll be faced with putting him down as we can not afford expensive veterinary bills.

The threat to neighboring cats is all but nonexistent, and the threat to our own cat is very low.  Our cat is also very old now, so if she were to contract the virus the chance of it affecting her life is very low.  There’s still also the small chance that he has been vaccinated against FIV already which is showing up as a false positive.

Once again, I ask that you reconsider before abandoning a pet.

Click here to read more about Spats.