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- Aug 4, 2014
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Hi everyone.
This is confusing, please bear with me. My entire house is at risk right now.
Some of you may have seen my recent post about an emaciated, sick-with-a-yet-to-be-identified-illness stray kitten that I picked up last week. In it, I also mentioned that we picked up another, much younger semi-feral kitten from a colony on a construction site the same day. A few days later, we also picked up one of his sisters.
A couple of months before, I also trapped a feral litter of 3. They were spayed/neutered today finally, and are (were) ready to go to their new homes in a few days.
Now... if you thought the kitten situation was confusing, brace yourself.
We also have 3 other adult foster cats, a 7 month old foster kitten, and 6 cats of our own - 5 of the 9 adult cats are medically special needs and seniors or geriatric.
For clarity, I will comment with an easier to follow “roster” right after I post. But basically, 5 of our cats “free roam” the living space together, the other 5 are separated in rooms, the sick female kitten is quarantined in a bathroom, and 5 kittens are in our “kitten room” with the newest little female still being quarantined in a covered crate within the kitten room.
We also have a dog and a foster dog, but were able to find pet-less people to take them in at the first sign of trouble until we can get control over this, and to hopefully prevent them from spreading giardia to our colony outside.
Anyway... because we had the sick kitten under very strict quarantine, we have been even more vigilant than normal as far as our sanitary and disinfectant habits go with her. So I am not sure if she is the one who brought in the giardia, or if it was the new male kitten, or they both just happened to have it.
But I am inclined to think that the new male kitten (his name is Ash) very likely had it to begin with.This is because my boyfriend couldn’t help himself and released him from quarantine a week early (we already knew he was FIV/FeLV negative at that point).
Meanwhile, our original October litter of kittens had been quarantined for nearly two months, and kept busting out of their room, so we finally formally introduced them to our cats to help with their socialization, as two are set to go into homes with 4-5 resident cats.
This meant that Ash ended up being let out with them.
All kittens used the 5 “free roaming”/“core” cats’ litterboxes while out.
I won’t go into too many details here. I called our vet at the first sign of one of our core 5 kitties (Titan) showing symptoms, but she thought it was more likely to be the stress of the new food we had been (slowly) introducing the core 5 to + the introduction of the kittens.
Within a day or so of that conversation, I noticed more cats (particularly the core 5) showing symptoms and at that point I was fairly confident we had something parasitic in the house. I then promptly moved the still asymptotic dogs in with a generous friend.
On Friday I managed to scoop up 3 fecal samples from Titan, Ash, and the sick kitten (Elvira).
Over the long weekend of waiting for those results, things became even more clear, and much worse.
The October litter developed identical diarrhea, and I was able to confirm that Ash also had it as well.
But I am most concerned about our two most susceptible cats, Hazel and Oliver, part of the core 5, and both geriatric, with CKD and other issues. Both became anorexic, especially Hazel. Oliver developed identical diarrhea to Titan and the kittens, and Hazel has been vomiting (not sure if diarrhea yet).
Obviously, we got the results for the stool samples today, and all three tested positive for Giarda. We assume any symptomatic cats have it too, and all others have been exposed. Practically our entire household was prescribed metronidazole.
I have no idea what to do. We have no way to separate all of them.
To make matters worse, the other room cats have also been directly exposed. Toby (part of the core five, and mostly asymptotic as of yet/as far as we know) gets along with 3 out of 5 room cats, so he has daily visitations and play time with each. And part of how we ensure the room cats have enough interaction is by having a rotational “sleep over” schedule, where we rotate who we bring in to sleep with us at night. So the two room cats who would have been drastically less exposed to Giardia, now have been basically as much as the others due to this rotation and sharing litterboxes.
I am sick over this. I cannot quarantine this many cats, so I have no idea what to do.
I am devestated and feel hopeless because I don’t know how i will ever get control over this without the ability to quarantine every single cat.
I can probably quarantine some. I have a few crates and I know today is the last day Tractor Supply is having a 25% off sale on crates, but I’d be struggling to even afford a couple of those right now, let alone one for every cat, since I am going to have to save every penny for medical expenses right now.
What do I do here?
What are my options if I can’t quarantine? Cardboard litterboxes? New litter scoops for everyone?
And how do i disinfect carpeting and fabric? I usually quarantine in easy to disinfect bathrooms and crates, and only use easy to disinfect toys and pet blankets I don’t care about bleaching, so I’ve always been able to contain giardia and other things until now, and have never had a contagion basically reach every square inch of the house, and on mattresses, carpets, couches, etc - how do I clean these things without destroying them???
The cherry on top of all of this is that I, myself, am immunocompromised, and have been experiencing severe GI upset (very unusual for me) for the better part of a week now that has been resistant to dietary changes. So the subtype these guys have may very well be the human one, and I might also be infected now.
I just want to cry at this point. I feel like I’ve failed these guys.
This is confusing, please bear with me. My entire house is at risk right now.
Some of you may have seen my recent post about an emaciated, sick-with-a-yet-to-be-identified-illness stray kitten that I picked up last week. In it, I also mentioned that we picked up another, much younger semi-feral kitten from a colony on a construction site the same day. A few days later, we also picked up one of his sisters.
A couple of months before, I also trapped a feral litter of 3. They were spayed/neutered today finally, and are (were) ready to go to their new homes in a few days.
Now... if you thought the kitten situation was confusing, brace yourself.
We also have 3 other adult foster cats, a 7 month old foster kitten, and 6 cats of our own - 5 of the 9 adult cats are medically special needs and seniors or geriatric.
For clarity, I will comment with an easier to follow “roster” right after I post. But basically, 5 of our cats “free roam” the living space together, the other 5 are separated in rooms, the sick female kitten is quarantined in a bathroom, and 5 kittens are in our “kitten room” with the newest little female still being quarantined in a covered crate within the kitten room.
We also have a dog and a foster dog, but were able to find pet-less people to take them in at the first sign of trouble until we can get control over this, and to hopefully prevent them from spreading giardia to our colony outside.
Anyway... because we had the sick kitten under very strict quarantine, we have been even more vigilant than normal as far as our sanitary and disinfectant habits go with her. So I am not sure if she is the one who brought in the giardia, or if it was the new male kitten, or they both just happened to have it.
But I am inclined to think that the new male kitten (his name is Ash) very likely had it to begin with.This is because my boyfriend couldn’t help himself and released him from quarantine a week early (we already knew he was FIV/FeLV negative at that point).
Meanwhile, our original October litter of kittens had been quarantined for nearly two months, and kept busting out of their room, so we finally formally introduced them to our cats to help with their socialization, as two are set to go into homes with 4-5 resident cats.
This meant that Ash ended up being let out with them.
All kittens used the 5 “free roaming”/“core” cats’ litterboxes while out.
I won’t go into too many details here. I called our vet at the first sign of one of our core 5 kitties (Titan) showing symptoms, but she thought it was more likely to be the stress of the new food we had been (slowly) introducing the core 5 to + the introduction of the kittens.
Within a day or so of that conversation, I noticed more cats (particularly the core 5) showing symptoms and at that point I was fairly confident we had something parasitic in the house. I then promptly moved the still asymptotic dogs in with a generous friend.
On Friday I managed to scoop up 3 fecal samples from Titan, Ash, and the sick kitten (Elvira).
Over the long weekend of waiting for those results, things became even more clear, and much worse.
The October litter developed identical diarrhea, and I was able to confirm that Ash also had it as well.
But I am most concerned about our two most susceptible cats, Hazel and Oliver, part of the core 5, and both geriatric, with CKD and other issues. Both became anorexic, especially Hazel. Oliver developed identical diarrhea to Titan and the kittens, and Hazel has been vomiting (not sure if diarrhea yet).
Obviously, we got the results for the stool samples today, and all three tested positive for Giarda. We assume any symptomatic cats have it too, and all others have been exposed. Practically our entire household was prescribed metronidazole.
I have no idea what to do. We have no way to separate all of them.
To make matters worse, the other room cats have also been directly exposed. Toby (part of the core five, and mostly asymptotic as of yet/as far as we know) gets along with 3 out of 5 room cats, so he has daily visitations and play time with each. And part of how we ensure the room cats have enough interaction is by having a rotational “sleep over” schedule, where we rotate who we bring in to sleep with us at night. So the two room cats who would have been drastically less exposed to Giardia, now have been basically as much as the others due to this rotation and sharing litterboxes.
I am sick over this. I cannot quarantine this many cats, so I have no idea what to do.
I am devestated and feel hopeless because I don’t know how i will ever get control over this without the ability to quarantine every single cat.
I can probably quarantine some. I have a few crates and I know today is the last day Tractor Supply is having a 25% off sale on crates, but I’d be struggling to even afford a couple of those right now, let alone one for every cat, since I am going to have to save every penny for medical expenses right now.
What do I do here?
What are my options if I can’t quarantine? Cardboard litterboxes? New litter scoops for everyone?
And how do i disinfect carpeting and fabric? I usually quarantine in easy to disinfect bathrooms and crates, and only use easy to disinfect toys and pet blankets I don’t care about bleaching, so I’ve always been able to contain giardia and other things until now, and have never had a contagion basically reach every square inch of the house, and on mattresses, carpets, couches, etc - how do I clean these things without destroying them???
The cherry on top of all of this is that I, myself, am immunocompromised, and have been experiencing severe GI upset (very unusual for me) for the better part of a week now that has been resistant to dietary changes. So the subtype these guys have may very well be the human one, and I might also be infected now.
I just want to cry at this point. I feel like I’ve failed these guys.