Chicken Nugget Barbecue Sauce McHappy Meal was recently diagnosed with FIP. (Feline infectious peritonitis) This has devastated our entire world. Nugget is our 11yr old sons cat, hence the silly name.

Our orange boy hasn’t had the easiest go at life. He has always had stomach issues which we were told were caused by a chicken allergy (ironic, we know), and diagnosed with IBD. We have done everything we can to make this boy comfortable and gain some weight. He has struggled to pack on the pounds and nothing seemed to be working. From supplements, fiber, novelty proteins, steroids…nothing was working.

If we could go back we would have seen all of these symptoms and known it was FIP from the beginning. All the signs were there but this virus isn’t always easy to catch early on. We have brought it up to his vet many times about other possibilities and were never believed until now.

Saturday night Nugget displayed some very scary symptoms; lethargy, round firm belly, no interest in food (if you have an orange cat you know how odd that one is), as well as being hot to the touch.

We rushed him to the emergency vet and they ran a bunch of tests, x-rays and told us some horrible news.

Because of his age (almost 2) he likely had FIP or congestive heart failure. With no options we spent our savings to save him, they drained 2lbs of fluids from his stomach, kept him over night and asked us to not keep our hopes up because this was serious.

He is a champ and pulled through enough for us to take him home. We waited two days for the FIP results, while keeping him comfortable, giving him antibiotics to hopefully keep away infections. We got the call from the vet we dreaded, he is positive for FIP.

With all this news, our hearts crushed and our savings drained we are reaching out for some help.

FIP medications are expensive ($150-1,000 every 10days depending on the strength and who provides them) and it is a 84 days treatment with constant care and devotion. He is not out of the woods even with these meds but we are trying everything we can to keep him alive and comfortable. FIP can be cured if caught early enough and treatment started.

If you have anything to spare in this time we would greatly appreciate it. Nugget is our whole world and we don’t know what we would do without him.