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Fundraiser for Athena

Posted in Cat

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.

Her initial dose, based on the 6 lbs she weighed a couple of weeks ago, was 1.5ml. We’re waiting to hear what to adjust her dose to now that she’s at 6.4 lbs. Should she reach 8.5 lbs, her dose will be 2ml.

I know his doesn’t sound like much, but each vial of the medication is only 5ml and costs between $85 and $110.

So, on the low end — if she were to weigh 6 lbs for the entire treatment — that’s 126ml, 26 vials, $2,205 -$2,780. On the high end — assuming she hits 8 lbs quickly and stays there — that’s about 168 ml, 34 vials, $2,885-$3,660.

Those ranges are only for the medication. they don’t include the syringes and needles, monthly vet visits and blood tests, or all of the vet visits and diagnostic tests that got us to her diagnosis.

What We’re Doing

Jim and I are fortunate enough to be capable of paying for Athena’s treatment and vet care. However, the hit on our savings account will be significant.

Saturday’s post covered my initial thought: sell some pens. Since I already had pens for sale, it made sense to promote them.

To my surprise, however, Jim — who shared my post — and I both received questions about how to help/donate without buying a pen. So, after some discussion between ourselves, Jim set up a GoFundMe.

We are keeping careful track of the donations we receive, both through GoFundMe, and from those amazing people who donated before we set it up. Should we receive more money than we need for Athena’s diagnosis and treatment, we will split the extra 50/50 between Sock FIP, and King Street Cats. If we do this, I’ll share the donation receipts for transparency.

Sock FIP supports FIP research at UC Davis, and that work may pave the way for this medication to be available in the US.

King Street Cats is a local — in Alexandria, VA — no-kill shelter that specializes in cats that often get overlooked for adoption. My dear Bumbledore came from King Street Cats and is a perfect example of the lives they save.

If you would like to donate, we greatly appreciate your help. If you don’t want to, or are unable to, that’s OK, too. We aren’t attempting to solicit donations, we’re merely providing an easy method for those who wish to do so and for us to track the donations.

My Plan

I’m sure there are those of you who would like to follow Athena’s progress. I’m already planning some posts to cover her story up to this point, and I intend to write monthly updates on her progress. You are welcome to subscribe to my blog, the link is below, or you can bookmark her tag page and check back occasionally.

Jim and I haven’t really come up with a good way to appropriately thank those who are helping us, so this is my offering in the meantime.


Thank you for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed my post. Have you dealt with FIP before? Are you interested in my upcoming Athena posts? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear from you.

Make sure to subscribe to my blog or follow me on Instagram so you don’t miss any posts. I generally post at least once a week.

2 Comments

  1. Matthew Webb
    Matthew Webb

    The GoFundMe idea was a great idea! Hoping Athena makes a full recovery. Every fur baby deserves to lead a full life.

    December 27, 2022
    |Reply
    • Thank you! We’re doing everything we can to ensure she does.

      December 27, 2022
      |Reply

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