my friend’s cat is struggling medically with what is highly likely FIP and I am hoping to help her raise some money to help combat his financial costs for treatment. Here is what she wrote in her Facebook page about what’s going on:

“Yesterday, Jason woke me up around 5:25 a.m. because he noticed Charlie was behaving oddly. I jumped up, and as soon as I saw him I knew it was an emergency, I told Jason it was neurological, and we had to get to the ER.

Charlie was wobbling, struggling to walk, had head tilt, nystagmus, and severe lethargy. When I picked him up he collapsed into my arms. When I sat him down, he just fell over into his bed.

He had also messed all over his hind end.

We got him to the ER and waited. And waited. And waited. 5 hours later we got the call that they were doing labs. And we waited and waited. And waited. Finally, 7 hours after we had taken him in, the vet called to say she believed that Charlie has FIP. FIP, or feline infectious peritonitis is fatal 100% of the time, often within days, without treatment.

Unfortunately, the treatment is currently experimental and extremely expensive. Our only chance of saving Charlie is with this treatment. Between ongoing labwork, the medication, the ER bill, and palliative care- due to the severe neurological impacts I've had to buy quite a few items to protect him from himself and protect our floor from him as he may experience incontinence, we are looking at a bare minimum of $5,000.

The medication alone has to be administered for 84 days, at about 2.7 mls per day, and each vial is 5 ml. The duration of treatment and dosage may vary depending on several factors including:

his weight- the dosage is very exact and weight dependent, so even a few ounces will impact the dosage, so he will need to be weighed several times a week to ensure we are continuing the proper dosage.

His responsiveness - he may need up to 4mls 2x a day if he isn't initially responsive to the dose, think about it like with humans, we never start at the max dose of a med, we start towards the minimum and increase if needed.

Any relapses. After 84 days, generally treatment stops, however for another 84 days he has to be closely monitored, if he relapses in that second 84 day period, he will have to restart the treatment.

After the first 30 days he may be able to graduate from injections to pills, as long as he is not experiencing vomiting or diarrhea. The pills are more expensive, but less risky (no risk of injection site infection), and less supplies are needed, as I won't have to buy syringes and swabs.

This is a long and expensive road, and with everything else that has happened in the last year, we are struggling to see a way to make this happen financially.

As a quick recap:

October, 2021- Charlie has severe bout of anemia, is hospitalized for 2 days.

April, 2022- Charlie has bowel obstruction and is hospitalized.

August 5th, 2022- I have cancer scare, have major surgery and am out of work for 2 months.

August 29th, 2022- Charlie hospitalized for gastritis, pancreatitis and stomach twisting and we almost lose him.

November, 2022- Benson begins months long bout of recurrent ear and skin infections due to allergy flare ups that create multifactorial infection system- fungal, bacterial, and yeast.

December, 2022- kitchen fire where we lose our oven and dishwasher.

February 5th, 2022- we wake up to Charlie having neurological symptoms and ultimately receive a diagnosis of FIP.

There is a possibility that Charlie has toxoplasmosis, but in speaking with vets, both conditions can occur concurrently, and FIP is much more common than toxoplasmosis. The hope of toxoplasma was more of a hail Mary hope than any real possibility.

We desperately want to save Charlie. He is only 4 years old and has been a fighter since the day we brought him home.

If you want to help save Charlie, please consider donating to my PayPal, or to my FIP care team. I can help connect you if needed. I am attempting to set up a GFM as well, but for whatever reason I keep getting an error. My FIP care team is going to help me with it later today.

$45 buys Charlie 1 day of medicine, which in this case literally equates to 1 day of life.”