Hello everyone, I want to start off this by warning everyone that the cat I am going to be talking about has unfortunately passed, so if this is upsetting for some, you may not want to read further.
11 years ago, we found a six month old kitten up a tree on my parents property. We searched for the owners for awhile but never found them. We later found out that he likely came from an animal hoarding situation.
Anyway, after we didn’t find his owners we decided to keep him and named him Charlie. When we took him to the vet for his first set of shots the doctor notices his gums were extremely sore and she wondered if it was feline leukaemia or teething. We tested him for feline leukaemia and it came back negative. So we assumed it was just teething and gave him soft food for a few days.
As the years have gone on, Charlie has received all of proper medical care and has always been super healthy. He was strictly an indoor cat and never went outside. Although he was my cat, my parents decided they wanted to keep him after I moved out and they took over all of his care. (I was going to take him with my but they loved him and wanted him to stay with them)
I went to my parents in the fall and I noticed that Charlie has begun to loose a bit of weight. Nothing major, just a bit and chalked it up to a food change (he had been on one particular kind of food for 11 years and they stopped making it)
At Christmas I saw him again and was very concerned with how thin he had gotten. But he was acting like his normal self. My parents took him to the vet a few days ago and they were super concerned.They ran tests and he had an enlarged heart, they only found 4 white blood cells, he was breathing very fast and tested positive for feline leukaemia. They told my mom that he was at the end of his life, and didn’t have long left and that he was suffering. They said his death would not be peaceful, so my parents made the difficult decision to end his suffering.
I just don’t understand, I don’t know if it’s the grief talking but I don’t know if they made the right choice. They said he was walking around the room, prior, and had been seemingly normal at home other than the weight loss. From what I understand with feline leukaemia he should have passed away years ago, but he made it 11 years old. He was perfectly healthy his entire life. He has received proper vet care and nothing abnormal was ever found. I just don’t understand how this could happen. My other cat, who hasn’t seen Charlie in two years is healthy. They lived together for years, and she is completely healthy. We are going get her tested. But she definitely would have been exposed.
I’m hoping someone can help to provide clarity towards feline leukaemia. They told my parents that Charlie should have been retested a month or two later after he was initially tested (we were not told that at the time). And that he had likely had it this entire time as he never went outside. Is it normal for it to be completely undetectable for this long? Is there anything that we could have done differently? He has been sooo healthy this entire time I just don’t understand how things can go downhill so fast.
11 years ago, we found a six month old kitten up a tree on my parents property. We searched for the owners for awhile but never found them. We later found out that he likely came from an animal hoarding situation.
Anyway, after we didn’t find his owners we decided to keep him and named him Charlie. When we took him to the vet for his first set of shots the doctor notices his gums were extremely sore and she wondered if it was feline leukaemia or teething. We tested him for feline leukaemia and it came back negative. So we assumed it was just teething and gave him soft food for a few days.
As the years have gone on, Charlie has received all of proper medical care and has always been super healthy. He was strictly an indoor cat and never went outside. Although he was my cat, my parents decided they wanted to keep him after I moved out and they took over all of his care. (I was going to take him with my but they loved him and wanted him to stay with them)
I went to my parents in the fall and I noticed that Charlie has begun to loose a bit of weight. Nothing major, just a bit and chalked it up to a food change (he had been on one particular kind of food for 11 years and they stopped making it)
At Christmas I saw him again and was very concerned with how thin he had gotten. But he was acting like his normal self. My parents took him to the vet a few days ago and they were super concerned.They ran tests and he had an enlarged heart, they only found 4 white blood cells, he was breathing very fast and tested positive for feline leukaemia. They told my mom that he was at the end of his life, and didn’t have long left and that he was suffering. They said his death would not be peaceful, so my parents made the difficult decision to end his suffering.
I just don’t understand, I don’t know if it’s the grief talking but I don’t know if they made the right choice. They said he was walking around the room, prior, and had been seemingly normal at home other than the weight loss. From what I understand with feline leukaemia he should have passed away years ago, but he made it 11 years old. He was perfectly healthy his entire life. He has received proper vet care and nothing abnormal was ever found. I just don’t understand how this could happen. My other cat, who hasn’t seen Charlie in two years is healthy. They lived together for years, and she is completely healthy. We are going get her tested. But she definitely would have been exposed.
I’m hoping someone can help to provide clarity towards feline leukaemia. They told my parents that Charlie should have been retested a month or two later after he was initially tested (we were not told that at the time). And that he had likely had it this entire time as he never went outside. Is it normal for it to be completely undetectable for this long? Is there anything that we could have done differently? He has been sooo healthy this entire time I just don’t understand how things can go downhill so fast.
