Hi everyone!
I am not new to the site here but haven't been here for a very long time and forgot my old username.
I didn't post much if anything back then. I started following the site in 2016 when I took in an abandoned
siamese cat who came to my door in the pouring rain. I asked around my neighborhood if anyone lost
their kitty and nobody came forward so we adopted her into our family. Well she was a bit skinny and
started putting on weight right away. We thought she was just getting really healthy but her tummy kept
growing and took her to the vet and she was pregnant. I came to this site and checked on the threads
about cat pregnancy and what to do when the birth happened. I was scared but everyone here made me feel
good that everything was going to be alright. Long story short, Chloe had 8 kittens, one sadly didn't make it. We
kept mom and 3 of her babies (CaptainJack, PrincessBella, and PrincessTiana...all disney names lol).
We spayed and found homes for the rest by having 2 families adopt them in
pairs since we didn't want a kitten to go home alone. They all would be 5 this June.
Last Thursday night we were sitting home and Bella who was always the talker and had the most energy of all
came out from under a blanket crying, which normally she talked allot but this time it was a help me sort of cry
and then she collapsed on the carpet. My husband ran to her and talked to her and she sat up and seemed to
be okay. He put her on the couch next to me and she was panting. We thought she might have gotten overheated
for some reason and tried to give her water from her dish but she refused. I tried to feed her Fancy Feast broth but
she didn't want that either. I petted her and she seemed to look allot better so figuring she is so young I wasn't too
worried and thought she would be okay. Looking back now I regret not running her to the vet right away. I feel so
bad about that. We monitored her overnight taking turns and she was sitting up on the couch and would meow a bit
when talked to..a normal meow not the help me cries she was doing. The next day (Friday) I came and sat by her and she looked
better, but tired. Our Bella was our Nightowl and would stay up all night playing, running through our house so her being tired
wasn't out of the ordinary. Normally in the morning she would say good morning to us and let me rub her tummy on the couch
and then she would go and sleep somewhere till evening time when she would get all her energy and pretty much
be up most of the night playing. When on Friday she was still not better by afternoon my hubby rushed her to the vet knowing
the weekend was coming and we wanted to get her in and not wait all weekend. We lost another much older kitty several years ago when they got sick late on a Friday and we had to wait all weekend and that was so hard. He turned out had kidney disease.
I still wasn't too worried because Bella was so young and full of life but I was worried about her maybe not getting any water
or food since her collapse. I didn't know if she had gotten off the couch in the middle of the night to eat or drink.
We took her in and with covid now they came and got her in the parking lot while we waited. They said she was dehydrated
and they would be giving her an IV and run some tests. She came back with a positive for FeLV or feline leukemia virus.
We had taken in Chloe to the vet last summer. She sat in a very sunny window one day and the skin
on her ears was very red and hot like a sunburn had occurred. She was lethargic and we were worried. At
the time they suspected FeLV and did a test and it came back negative. We were relieved but all our cats
are completely indoors. The kittens and Chloe were all vaccinated and spayed after she gave birth.
We have a male cat here we adopted from a shelter 10 years ago. He was neutered
and vaccinated before the shelter allowed us to adopt him. He bonded with Chloe and the babies like a father
to them. He bonded with Bella the most and is crying at night looking for her. When she would play all night
he would sometimes play with her and they talked or kind of had this chirping language together that was really
cute.
Anyways the vet on duty at the time looked at Bella's blood under the microscope and said her white cells were
extremely high (the highest she said she had ever seen) and her red blood cells were too low. What worried
her she said was the shape of them and the number. For her it confirmed cancer. She said she was severely
dehudrated and they would keep her on the IV and also give her antibiotics. Saturday morning the vet on duty called and said her blood cell levels improved dramatically almost going back to normal levels but Bella wasn't eating or drinking and he was concerned. He said they would try some gravy type of foods to get her to eat. On Sunday morning the vet on duty called and said Bella still wasn't eating or drinking and they were still trying to get her to eat. That night she said she had a low grade fever and
was uncomfortable and that she was going to give her an opioid med to help. Monday morning they called
and the vet on duty which is the one who saw the cells back at close to normal said Bella had unfortunately had
some swelling on her tummy area indicating what he thought was pancreatitis. We decided right then to say goodbye
rather than let her suffer. He said that probably would be the right decision. I have since looked up pancreatitis and she had most of the symptoms of it. It could have been what caused her dehydration.
Looking back I regret not running one last blood panel to see how her cell numbers were before making the
decision to let her go. I regret not taking her to the vet sooner and I should know better. I am EMT
trained and she collapsed and that should have been an emergency. Knowing that every second counts I can't help but
wonder if that time would have made a difference. Our house is so quiet now without her. Sleeping is so hard without hearing
her at night playing. Chloe and her siblings Tiana and Jack are walking around crying and looking for her. And our male
stepdad kitty (Mickey) is devastated and hasn't done his normal playing and chirping noises except on the first night when
she was in the hospital. I didn't realize how quiet our house would be without her. Her energy being missing here is
very hard. She was always talking to us telling us about her night. She was the only one who had the siamese voice
that loves to tell us about every bird she sees or what she was up to. I feel so lost without her and devastated that we
lost her so young in life. When we kept these kittens I mistakenly thought how nice it would be to raise a cat
from birth and have them all of their 15 to 20 years. I keep all my cats indoors because I the best for them and for
them to have a long life. Most I have adopted have been adults and when let go it was in their senior years where they
had a very full life with me. Bella was just a baby still in my eyes. She was even smaller than the other 2. The others
are more traditional cat size and Bella was built like Chloe and was smaller boned like the siamese. I was happy that she
would always be the baby in the family because of her size even though she was the first one born from Chloe.
I am also wondering how could she have had cancer or even FeLV when all our kitties are housecats and have never
been allowed outside. I wonder if that could have been a false positive. No second test was ran, just the one there
at the vet, I think called an ELISA test. I am now in the process of scheduling the rest of them in for an FeLV test to
see if any of the others test positive.