Category: Cat

Today, Jim and I are celebrating the anniversary of a momentous occasion. One year ago, Athena was declared cured of FIP. Allow me a moment of pure, unadulterated joy that our little goddess is not only still here with us, but going strong. Even just five years ago, there would have been a high chance we wouldn’t be able to say that.

Breaking News!

The U.S. has taken a step forward in FIP treatment. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) announced that they have effectively decriminalized vets providing treatment to FIP patients. Stokes Pharmacy started selling a compounded treatment — in this case a pill form — on June 1. While we’re still a ways from the legalized treatment available in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands — I can’t find any other countries listed as having legalized the treatment — it’s definitely a huge improvement. I can only hope that this development will make treatment more accessible, both in availability and price.

Now, back to Athena.

This post is a continuation of my series on Athena — her diagnosis, treatment, integration into the household, and life after FIP. If you haven’t already, I suggest taking a look at my previous posts on her. You can find them on her tag page.

It’s hard to believe it’s only been a year since Athena’s diagnosis. So much has happened in the last 365 days that it feels significantly longer. The important part, though, is that Athena has improved, drastically, from the left to right below.

This post is a continuation of my series on Athena — her diagnosis, treatment, integration into the household, and life after FIP. If you haven’t already, I suggest taking a look at my previous posts on her. You can find them on her tag page.

We’re just over one years since Athena’s health saga started, and just shy of one year since her diagnostics. This time last year we were desperately trying to get her to eat and gain some weight. I’m planning a post for the one-year anniversary of her diagnosis — Christmas Eve — looking back on everything that has happened this past year.

This post is a continuation of my series on Athena — her diagnosis, treatment, integration into the household, and life after FIP. If you haven’t already, I suggest taking a look at my previous posts on her. You can find them on her tag page.

Let me start with two things right off the bat.

1. Athena is doing well; we’ve already taken care of the biggest issue that popped up.
2. This post is a bit later than I’d planned because I waited to include her most recent blood work results.

This post is a continuation of my series on her treatment and integration into the household. If you haven’t already, I suggest reading my previous posts on her. You can find them on her tag page.

Let’s get the big news out of the way: we are officially considering Athena cured. *Cue applause*

Because of this, I’m changing a couple of aspects of these posts, including the frequency. Unless anything catastrophic happens, I’ll be switching to posting about Athena every other month. If I don’t have enough to share, I may increase time between posts.

Second, as we are now considering Athena cured, I’m restarting the counts to “Post Cured.” I’m not going to count days anymore, I’m just going to count months — e.g. July 3rd is 0-Day post cured, August 3rd will be 1 month post cured, and so on.

This post is a continuation of my series on her treatment and integration into the household. If you haven’t already, I suggest reading my previous posts on her. You can find them on her tag page.

Like the previous posts, this one is in a journal-esque format. I’m covering major/important events and updates, rather than what happens each day.

This post is a continuation of my series on her treatment and integration into the household. If you haven’t already, I suggest reading my previous posts on her. You can find them on her tag page.

Like the previous posts, this one is in a journal-esque format. I’m covering major/important events and updates, rather than what happens each day.

This post is a continuation of my series on her treatment and integration into the household. If you haven’t already, I suggest reading my previous posts on her. You can find them on her tag page.

Like the previous posts, this one is in a journal-esque format. I’m covering major/important events and updates, rather than what happens each day.

This post is an overview of Athena’s third month of treatment. If you haven’t already, I suggest reading my previous posts on her treatment. You can find them on her tag page.

Like the previous posts, this one is in a journal-esque format. I’m primarily touching on major/important events and updates, rather than what happens each day.

This post is an overview of Athena’s second month of treatment. If you haven’t already, I suggest reading my posts on her first week of treatment and her first month of treatment. If you want to dive deep into her story, check out her tag page.

Like the previous posts, this one is in a journal-esque format. I intend to only touch on major/important events and updates, rather than what happens each day as I did in the first week post.

Phew! This should be my last Athena-centric post for a little bit. I look forward to some variety in my writing again, despite how proud I am of my recent posts.

This post is an overview of Athena’s first month of treatment. If you haven’t already, I suggest reading my post on her first week of treatment. If you want to dive deep into her story, check out her tag page.

Like the first week post, this one and future monthly updates will be in a journal-esque format. I intend to only touch on major/important events and updates, rather than what happens each day as I did in the first week post.

This is the second installment (chronologically) in Athena’s history. If you haven’t already, I suggest reading the first installment on her life before she got sick.

Before We Begin

Be Aware: This post is rather different than usual as it serves a dual purpose. While I’m hoping that this account of how we got to a Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP) diagnosis will be helpful and/or informative to others, I’m also providing this for transparency with regard to our GoFundMe campaign.

To hopefully help others on the road to an FIP diagnosis, I’m including some more technical information alongside my more typical plain language. I’ve done my best to link to the highly technical information for those who are interested, rather than include it in this post. When I have to use medical terms that don’t have a plain language equivalent, I’ve provided explanations through [def] (definition) links.

To address transparency, I’ve added an “accounting” section with an itemized list of the charges for each vet visit to explain the amount we requested. Perhaps that information may also help someone trying to determine if they can cover diagnosis and treatment because it is expensive.

NOTE: We live in the DMV — District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia — area, where the cost of living is rather high. Therefore the prices I include are almost certainly higher than they are in other areas of the United States.

Before I get started I want to note that, for the rest of January, Fridays will be “Feline Friday” as I share the Athena posts I have planned. Also, be aware that this post is rather long. It covers from November 2019 when we first met Athena up to October of 2022.

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Alright, yes, my title for this post leans toward cliché, but it’s true. Athena definitely adopted us as her humans before we officially adopted her into our family. But, for you to understand, I have to look back a few years, to November of 2019.

We were in our garage when “MEOW! MEOW!”

“Oh, hello little one!” Jim spotted the adorable little furball first. “How are you?”

“MEOW!” The kitten couldn’t have been more than 6 months old. It was all black and puffed up, sitting next to the downspout by the garage door.

When I wrote in my fundraiser post that I’m planning some posts on Athena’s story up to her diagnosis, and updates on her progress, I intended to start with her life before her illness. However, given the timing, it seemed prudent to provide an update on her first week of treatment. My next post will be about her life pre-diagnosis. If you’re interested in that, subscribe to my blog (link below) or bookmark her tag page.

As I mentioned in my post on Saturday, our formerly outdoor girl has just been diagnosed with FIP. She will need 81 more daily injections — as of this morning — of a fairly new, and rather expensive, medication. The total volume of medication she’ll need over the course of treatment will depend on how much weight she regains.

As of yesterday morning, she’s 6.4 lbs — she’s a rather small cat, and she’s still underweight — up from a horrifying 5.7 lbs at her lowest. Our goal is to get her back up to between 8 and 9 lbs. We don’t currently know exactly what her dose per injection will be as her weight goes up.