Coping With Feline Infectious Peritonitis

We noticed that Brie (7 months old) had not been his normal kitty self for a few weeks back in mid Feb. He used to be such a little terror. Gradually it appeared that he was losing interest in playing, he looked depressed, and was always wanting to sleep. He didn’t want us to even touch him and he would actually move away from us and look in the other direction as to ignore us. We thought it was very bizarre behavior. Also he wasn’t eating much at all. We brought him in to the vet the day after we noticed all he wanted to do was sleep. He had almost a 105 temp. Things went steadily downhill.

He was in the hospital for 4 days on IV’s and medicine and after many tests (blood and chem work) and along with his symptons was diagnosed with the dry form. We were told it is not curable and fatal. We decided to bring him home and continue him on his medications. We took a week off of work to be with him. One day he would seem ok, then the next day sick again. Brie got to the point he would hardly eat, so we started mixing wet cat food and water and thinned it down enough to put it in a syringe and force feed him. He was starting to walk funny like he was disoriented and he no longer had the strength to jump up on the cabinets and hardly enough to jump in bed with us. He hardly slept at night ( I know, as I watched him). I think part of it was because he had lost over a pound in a week and was slowly becoming skin and bones. It hurt my husband and I to watch him go through this and although we hoped the vet was wrong and we prayed that somehow Brie would have the strength to fight this that he was losing the battle.

So we decided to help him “cross the rainbow bridge” which was the hardest decision we have ever made. We were with him in his final moments and pet him and told him how much we loved him and that he would not hurt anymore. The time from when he went in the hospital to the end was only 11 days. We are still grieving and I cry every day for my sweet baby boy. We have 2 other cats (both 12) who show no symptons of FIP so we are puzzled as to where our kitty came down with this horrible disease. I contacted the lady who we got Brie from and his litter mates also show no symptons. We are devasted and we sympathize with others here who have told their story and suffered the loss of their precious cats and kittens.