Coping With Feline Infectious Peritonitis

Monday, 2/1/2010 - We could clearly see something was terribly wrong with our 2 yr old seemingly healthy, approx 15lb male “bengal” tabby. He was normally so active & curious, but for about a week..he wasn’t the same Charlie we knew. He was lethargic, didn’t want to be around anyone, didn’t want to eat, had a hacking cough (sounds like when they want to hack up a hairball) and wasn’t using the litter box. He was hissing at our youngster who was normally his #1 playmate.

I suspected an impacted hairball so, my husband brought him to the ER Vet at 9 pm on Monday. After some 3 hours later, some tests and x-rays ($250) he was sent home with no real diagnosis (but it definitely wasn’t a hairball) and instructions to see our regular vet.

Our regular vet saw him asap Wed. 2/3 and took blood tests. Charlie was finally diagnosed with Wet FIP & put on 1/4 of a 5mg Prednizone every other day ($167). A couple days later, We would notice he wasn’t getting better, so Doc upped his dose to 1/4 everyday. I thrive on being informed, so I immediately began looking for any information about FIP online. I found this site and some others. Most sites didn’t give us a lot of hope, but the holistic support sites allowed for more hope.

I found a wonderful holistic site based out of Australia who offers a FIP concoction that I could buy ($54). I didn’t feel like he had that much time for it to be shipped from Aus to Texas, so I began looking searching locally for holistic support who could suggest something. On Friday, I came across a wonderful Naturopathic Doctor locally who treats humans, but spoke to his office and explained our situation. I forwarded a link to the Australian site to him. Later that day, his office called me and I went to pick up two extracts (AV-MH & Usnea Barbata formulated by Good Herbs, Inc.)

I give him 10 drops of each 2 times/day in 1ml of tuna juice in a syringe (shot into the back of this throat with my husband holding him on the table so he doesn’t run, scratch)and in the morning dose, I crush his 1/4 Pred. and add it. Sunday nite, We were having beef steak for dinner and he began begging so we cut him off some. I cut the raw meat into very small pieces and hand fed it to him. Within days, he was eating his raw meat, tuna & hard food, drinking water & using the litter box.

We clean all bowls and litter boxes daily and make sure they all get fresh, clean water. At Petco (in the all natural section) I found cat and dog vitamins called Daily Best by PetNaturals which we give to every cat (and the dog) as a yummy flavorful treat. We went to all organic cat/dog food to help build every furr-babies immune systems. Charlie C is doing amazingly well and shows only little signs of FIP today.

We are watching the other furr-babies closely to make sure we are on top of it if this horrible virus strikes them. BTW, we PRAY for him, his furr-brothers and sisters and our friends/family in Jesus name. Charlie may not have survived if he wasn’t already a pretty large, healthy cat to begin with, but without his conventional medicine and holistic support and love… he wouldn’t have survived at all. We KNOW we almost lost him.