Kevin came to us a beautiful happy kitten, we picked him up from the airport and he was instantly happy to see us, purring like a tractor! He fit right in at home with our frenchie and coolie dogs, loving to play and cuddle with them.
He was such a friendly cat and always wanted to be involved with everything we were doing. He also became a great mouse hunter at around 6 months of age, proudly leaving them at the bedroom door for us.
Kevin becoming ill seemed so sudden to us, he dramatically lost weight and gained a huge stomach, with our busy lives we didn’t communicate enough between ourselves to realise that he had reduced his feed intake and was using his litter box less frequently(we always thought the other was doing it).
Looking back it is all so obvious, we were having arguments thinking the dogs were peeing in “Kevin’s litter room” where we had his litter tray up on a table to keep it away from the dogs for his privacy, there kept being pee on the floor, naturally we would blame the dogs but also wonder how and why they would be doing this when they have been outside and with us all day etc, we now realise Kevin had become too weak to get up on the table.
We promptly reached out to our breeder and took Kevin to the vet, the young vet laughed as Kevin weakly batted his pen as he took down details, he was such a playful little guy to the end, he suggested FIP immediately, the older vet said it wasn’t exact presentation for FIP so treated him for liver failure, he gave him a lot of cold fluids and unfortunately let him get very cold, by the time we came to pick him up he was so cold and weak.
It took us all night with Kevin on his heating pad between us in our bed to get his temperature back up, the next day we were in touch with Angela Irvine who correctly identified FIP.
It was Friday and we madly scrambled to try and get medication to begin treating Kevin, Angela put some on a plane for us and we got Kevin eating again under her advice, he held on for so long, even with some improvement after being so flat returning from the vets, going to drink and eat all be it so weakly.
Sadly Kevin lost his battle, before the medication could arrive. We hope Kevin’s story can help others get help quicker for this awful disease.
