Net Trapping: Experiences And Opinions

[fionasmom]

That is an amazing story and certainly speaks to your commitment to the welfare of your cats. You have done the best possible thing for her to have gotten her to medical help. Imagine how much better she feels with whatever intervention they have done even if it will not be enough to save her life. She is comfortable and not struggling to make it on the streets, especially if she was not able to eat. I agree with you in wanting the whole story for the sake of the rest of the colony, and also to get to the bottom of whatever has happened to this cat that you have tried so hard to help.

 

[Antonio65]

Thank everybody for your nice words of appreciation. You are of great support, even from such a distance!

I still can't believe what I did. Every time that I close my eyes, I see what I did, like in a movie, and I can't believe it was me.
I felt so proud of myself when I finally got her in the carrier and we were on the way to the clinic. I felt so happy because I was right on time to save her.
I'm totally positive she would have died within a day or two if I hadn't got her.
Nonetheless, now the possibilities she has to get well are null, and her days are numbered

Yesterday I went to the clinic in the afternoon. She was at the bottom of her cage, with the drip in her vein and an empty dish before her, she had eaten, so the hydration and the first cures are giving her some relief.
I told the vet I want to investigate more about her disease. And even if there is no doubt about her conditions, I want to know if it's FeLV-related, this would mean a lot to me in order to keep a closer eye on the rest of the colony.
Should it be FeLV I wonder where this comes from, I always had the cats tested, and no case of FIV or FeLV has ever appeared. The colony was healthy.

Today the vets will draw some bone marrow, likely from the humerus, and send it for a PCR.
Any further step will depend on the result of the PCR test.

Thanks for following me!

 

[Antonio65]

I don’t know anything about bone marrow dysplasia, is there a way to confirm that diagnosis or is it usually diagnosed by exclusion?

The way to confirm the diagnosis is a test on the bone marrow.
If the test is positive to FeLV it will very likely not be dysplasia. If the test is negative, we will know it's dysplasia.
The only thing there is no doubt about (I think) is that the cat suffers from a non-regenerative anemia, so the source of the disease is the bone marrow.
Her MCV is 91, which means the her red cells are much bigger than normal. This is, according to the vets, a clear clue of the disease.

 

[fionasmom]

She had very little time left on the streets and you did perform a miracle in saving her from that fate. Even if this is not good news for this cat, you have to focus on her comfortable and eating at the vet's and think about how much that means to her.

 

[Antonio65]

Tonight's update is that the vets took a sample of her bone marrow at 3:30 pm today (it's 10 pm sharp over here now), and they will do a cytology and a PCR test on it tomorrow. In a couple of days this will give us the answers we need.
The poor cat ate all her food this morning, then she fasted for the little surgery, now she is stable and not too bad. The fluids, with ranitidine and antibiotics, are working miracles.
The cat is untreatable, wild and hissing, so she has energies enough to be herself. The vets had been warned beforehand
I am hoping for a miracle!!!
I'm planning on going to the clinic tomorrow after work, rather than calling them, so I will see her with my own eyes.

Today I told the other cats of the colony that their friend is at the hospital and I asked them to say a feline prayer for her.

 

[fionasmom]

Hopefully you will get some sort of good news. The fact that she is hissing and fighting is both good and bad, but as you say, the vet was warned and he does not seem to be giving you a hard time about her personality.

 

[Antonio65]

UPDATE:

Yesterday after work I drove to the clinic to hear what the news was.
The cat is much better, I saw her, her eyes aren't narrow anymore, and this is a big step forward. She had her eyes narrow for the last couple of months.
The cat was still fine in June, I looked at the photos of my colony and she was fine four months ago. Then she started getting thinner. I thought it was the extreme heat of this past summer. But when the summer was turning to an end and she was still thin and weak I thought it was something different. And her eyes were narrower and narrower. Till when I decided to trap her.

She will be discharged today (the vet bill is around €800 so far), and I will take her to a shelter where she'll live in a cage, unfortunately, because she's wild. This way she will be able to live a bit longer on the cortisone the vet will prescribe. It's an unglorious end of story, but I think it is better than to suffer and slowly die under a bush were nobody can help her.
This is my opinion, but I'm rather sure she would have preferred the "natural way"...

It's so hard to deal with ferals when they are that unmanageable.
Yesterday the vet told me something that I didn't like much. He said that I did even too much for a feral and that it's pointless to investigate further. I think he was referring to the money I'm going to spend for a cat that isn't mine.

The results for the cytology and PCR tests will come in a few days.

 

[fionasmom]

The vet who gladly TNRs all my ferals and who will accept them in any condition always tells me nicely that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" meaning that you are really putting yourself through the wringer if you deal with ferals and colonies. I don't appreciate the remark, but the cats are always well taken care of and he will even put kittens up for adoption in the office, so I let it go. Your vet might have been praising you in a round about way, like you really went to the mat for this cat and most would not.

You are doing the right thing. Of course she wants to be free, but she does not understand that the freedom will mean suffering and that the pred will ease that and let her spend the rest of her days in some sort of comfort and dignity. I sometimes think that in the end they even understand that in their own way.

The worst feral capture I ever had was of a previously neutered male who somehow found my house as an adult and lived on my property with food and shelter for years. Crazy wild. Eventually I realized that he was sick, probably diabetes for one thing and then neuropathy set in the back paws, all the while remaining untrappable. He is the one that I bought the drop trap for. Finally, with incredible difficulty...not as bad as you and the wheel, but close, I got him in a carrier and slammed the door. I was scratched and my hair was everywhere but I rushed him to the ER looking like a madwoman. When I got there they would not let me be in the room because he used his last bit of strength to go double live gonzo crazy on them. ( I knew they were not hurting him or abusing him and it was for reasons of liability). Finally they sedated him and I got to hold him. He was purring like a kitten, comfortable, not in pain and I believe that he finally, at the end, felt some sense of comfort. At least he was not eaten by a coyote or hit by a car.

You really did everything you could for your cat.

 

[Antonio65]

UPDATE:

I think it's time for an update.
The cat was discharged from the clinic on Wednesday afternoon.
The secretary was able to apply a good discount on the vet bill. All the staff agreed to, because the bill was expensive, because she was a feral, because they know me well, and because they know my devotion to the welfare of cats, my own cats and ferals.

The cat was then taken to a shelter where she'll live in a cage where she can receive the medicine she needs and where she can checked daily by the shelter staff. She has to take a pill of Cortisone a day for ten days. Then we'll see how she goes and the vets could adjust or change her therapy.
As soon as she was put into the cage she ate her wet food, that was a good sign. Her eyes are wide open, I hadn't seen them open like that since June.

Yesterday I went to the shelter and she was eating when I arrived. I was so happy!
I was also able to pet her a bit, but only because she's very weak and tired, or she would have torn my hand.

I'm still waiting for the bone marrow tests reports. They should be in this afternoon or on Monday, I hope.

The clinic gave me the reports of all her tests, and the blood test is the one I am scared of. Her CBC is a true disaster!
Here are some values:

RBC 0.86 [6 - 10.1]
HGB 2.00 [8.1 - 14.2]
HCT 6.70 [27.7 - 46.8]
MCV 77.5 [41.3 - 52.6]
WBC 24.54 [6.3 - 19.6]
MON 2160 [0 - 1000]
EOS 3632 [300 - 1700]

The good thing is that yesterday this cat's best friend showed up again in the colony. I hadn't seen her for 11 days. But she was clearly sad and stayed isolated from the rest.

 

[Antonio65]

He was purring like a kitten, comfortable, not in pain and I believe that he finally, at the end, felt some sense of comfort. At least he was not eaten by a coyote or hit by a car.

Sorry fionasmom , I think I haven't understood how your story went... Did the cat survive?

 

[fionasmom]

No, he was beyond help at that point and would have been beyond help even if I could have trapped before. For one thing, he was clearly diabetic and there was no way that I could have reliably given insulin to him, or subQ fluids.

I am so glad that you were given a discount, at the least by the vet, for all your devotion to cats. Hopefully you really can take comfort in seeing how happy and cared for your cat is, despite any personality issues. The blood test is not good, but you suspected that, so just go one step at a time. I am glad that the friend returned. No matter what, you have worked a miracle for the cat you trapped.