Coping With Calicivirus

I am so perplexed. We adopted a stray that showed up on our door step almost 5 yrs ago…she was pregnant w/ one blind eye, about a yr old? She was a miget cat we called her, very short, but always a little porky. We had her fixed, and vaccined once, (now looking into what those vaccines were exactly).

Blackie coughed from time to time, like out her nose..I always suspected she was asthmatic, but it was very mild so we didn’t pay much bother. She was very healthy. Well about 2.5 months ago we noticed she was sitting eating at her cat dish for 15 minutes at a time? Then her inner eyelid began to creep up her eye, and her meow was very hoarse, and I caught her eating cat litter a few times :O Vet said the cat litter eating was “just weird”, Dr. did blood work, white blood cells very high, all else ok, put her on eye drops w/ steroids, oral antibiotic Baytril 22.7 mgs.

Dr. suspected this was “bigger than the eye”…suspected the most dramatic, a brain lession, which was causing the eye and meow problem..made no sense to me…she gave us an estimate for $600 for inibation for skull xrays etc, and we couldn’t afford that…I called a few days later and told Dr. that Blackie was very congested (nose), and asked that Blackie simply be sedated, the eye swabed for specimen so we knew what we were dealing with…Dr. declined. We saw another Dr. in the same office. She sedated Blackie, investigated the eye problem, and drained a lymphnode to see if it was cancer..nope, it was chlamidia.

THIS Dr. sent us home with a very sedated cat w/ body temp low, Doxycline and eye ointment. Blackie didn’t come out of this sedation for a full 24 hrs. She ate and drank the next day like normal… but, that following day she hid in a corner drooling, and wouldn’t eat or drink? We brought her back to vet… saw the first Dr. again. This Dr. said the “disease” had progressed (the disease? what disease?)…but was not sure what was going on with Blackie (contradicted herself often)…gave Blackie a duieretic, and Baytril again, along with a high caloric food to force feed her with.

I put her in the bathroom at night with humidifier and on a heating pad for two days…she just wasn’t getting better..always seems to aspirate when I fed her? Nonetheless, I brought her back to Dr. she said her heart sounded fine and she was breathing ok. She’d do an xray but the machine was down…(I declined all the xrays before this point because it was so expensive the estimate she gave us!) I took Blackie home and she just slept in the bathroom. The next morning she walked (she hadn’t been able to walk barely since sedation, BEFORE SEDATION ATE LIKE A HORSE AND WALKED FINE), she walked to her food dish, and drank some milk! I was hoping the duiretic was working and her lungs were draining, because the Dr. had said she could hear fluid on the lungs.

But, by that afternoon, she fell on her side, open her mouth and began to hiccup like, obviously trying to breath. I ran her to vet..she snapped out of it right before we walked in. Dr. xrayed her, laying her on her side…came to tell me the lungs looked “good” and the Vet tech knocked at the door, and they rushed the cat to me, she was dying/sufficating…Dr. couldn’t find a vein to put the needle in to put her down, so I got to watch her sufficate…Dr. eventually got needle in, but I can’t tell you which killed her. I am hysterical. I believe this was handled wrong by my Dr. and I can’t sleep or anything!

I’ve had a lot of cats…currently have a 20 yr. old male…but Blackie was the most petite sweetest lover girl. Can anyone give me any insite so I can sleep? I have been researching and suspect it was the Calicivirus w/ the Chylamidia? I am so sick about this. Nothing is worce than being burned alive or sufficating and she sufficated! I am hysterical…can someone help me deal with this somehow? Lea