Coping With Feline Infectious Peritonitis

I adopted Minnie 4 months ago and she was only 2 months old. When I first adopted her, I noticed that her head would shake a little. I thought maybe she was a nervous nelly. About a week ago we noticed nasal discharge but thought nothing of it. We did not see any change in her behavior until a few days ago when my husband noticed her drooling. When I got home and took a look at her she seemed ok and was not drooling, but I decided to call the vet and take her the next day.

The vet suggested we take her to the Emergency Hospital because they thought that she had maybe eaten something that was poisonous to her. She was drooling once more but now had a twitch. The emergency hospital’s doctor did not make a note of that and decided to have Minnie get x-rays. The x-rays came out ok but she had a seizure. At this point we didn’t trust the doctor because she didn’t seem competent and decided to bring Minnie home and take her to our regular vet in the morning.

We brought her home and within an hour and a half she had two seizures. The first one she was just screaming and had her ears back and looked like she was about to attack. The second seizure was more severe and she even defecated on the floor. We brought her back to the emergency hospital where they gave her Valium throughout the night until we could take her to the vet. The vet put her on medicine for 12 hours and if she didn’t have a seizure, they would start to bring down the dose.

Minnie had seizures throughout the morning. She stopped having seizures, but at 3pm she had another one. We had been visiting Minnie morning and night to check on her. On Thursday morning she seemed to be better, she hadn’t had a seizure in over 12 hours so we were all hopeful. The vet even managed to half the dose of the medicine. They reduced her medicine again and she had another seizure. The vet said that all signs pointed that Minnie had FIP and that there is no cure for it. Our options were very limited because she was just a baby. We couldn’t do a spinal tap. So we had to make the decision of putting her down.

On Thursday evening my husband and I went to visit Minnie and she seemed so normal. She even gave us little kisses on the nose. But she started to have another seizure soon after and we knew that there was nothing we could do. The vet offered to have it done somewhere else and that a technician would hold her. But I decided that we should be there for it. I didn’t want my little baby’s last moments to be with strangers, I wanted it to be with those who love her. So we put her down.

It’s the hardest decision we’ve ever had to make. Hopefully it will be the last. I did find out from the vet afterwards that FIP (she had dry) is contagious and we have another cat at home. So after that ordeal we had to throw away her toys, her bed, everything. It was very weird because I noticed that the house was eerily quiet. And I thought how can it be if she barely knew how to meow. And then I realized we spent so much time playing and talking with her that now there’s just a big quiet and emptiness in our home. Our other cat isn’t as playful or social. She’s older and was abused before we adopted her, so it can be a challenge to even pet her. This all ended yesterday and I miss Minnie and I feel sad but I also feel relieved that she is no longer in pain.