UPDATE: Thank you to everyone who donated. Sincerely from the bottom of my heart. Hope is getting bloodwork next week and we’ll see how she’s doing. I’ll update you all then. For now, your donations have made it possible to afford her fluid/cerenia injection appt visits, food, litter, and medicine. 

I will keep this open for now, but you’ve already helped more than you know. 

—————————————————————-

Hi, you may know me as the guy who posts radio calls on Twitter/X, but even more importantly, I am a Cat Dad for a pet that's changed my life for the better.

In 2007, a small group of cats would come by to the rear entrance of my workplace and we would leave a makeshift cardboard shelter and food for them. One cat gave birth to babies, and we think went to get them some more food, and never returned. A few of us took each of the kittens home. I took one home, but it was evident she was severely ill, so I took her to the vet.

The vet said they would have to keep her for two weeks, and then if we decided to take her back if she was healthy, we would have to pay $200. I didn't hesitate. Two weeks later, the severe upper respiratory infection was cured, and the fiery cat came home with me.

I named her Hope. Because that's all I had at the time; hope. And while she was certainly fiery at home, my mother decided to get two more cats to try and help domesticate Hope. And it may have been just normal cat maturing into an adult, but I like to think those two cats helped Hope normalize to her surroundings. Unfortunately, one of those cats passed away the next year after falling severely ill, and the other had hopefully what I like to consider a long and loving life before she passed away in October 2022 from a seizure, likely due to a brain tumor.

Hope doesn't get along with most other people, but she loves me and loves being comfortable. She loves curling up on my computer chair and gives me stares of anger when I have to move her to work at my computer desk. She doesn't like anyone else touching her, but once she realizes you're not a threat, she stops the act. She doesn't want people thinking she's a sweetheart, but I know she is.

Hope was relatively healthy up until this past year, where routine bloodwork in May discovered she likely has chronic kidney disease, so it was subQ fluids and Hydra Care to try and stabilize that. Through the next few months, other flags have shown up in her bloodwork and I have been getting new meds almost on a monthly basis to try and treat her. Some days are better than others, and I just recently had her hospitalized for what they believe was a kidney infection. Her follow-up bloodwork looked good for her kidneys after she was released, but her anemia returned from before and now I am giving her multiple meds a day. The anemia med makes her vomit so I have to try and give her an anti-vomit pill that she just never seems to swallow. I try and get an injection when I take her every other day to get subQ fluids because I am unable to give the fluids to her at home anymore without her getting away. It's tough to do it as a one-man job.

So, I'm asking for help. For as many more trips I can take her to get fluids and try and stabilize her quality of life before I have to make an incredibly hard decision. She is still acting relatively normal, so I just want to give her every opportunity in the world to continue living a relatively normal life for as much time she has left. I'll already be paying her hospital stay off for the rest of the year, but this could help alleviate some of that burden as I try to give her the best end of life care as she can possibly get.

Thank you to anyone that's already donated, and Venmo did help an incredible amount as it allowed me to get her the care she needed multiple times a week, but I thought creating this would probably make more people take me seriously. I get it, trust me. There's nothing I wish more than having the ability to help Hope myself and not have to ask for it, but at this point, it's all I can do for her.

EDIT: I wanted to include that she has been on the Hill's Kidney Diet for almost a year now, she actually started it before she was diagnosed because my other cat was diagnosed and I was giving her subQ fluids and giving her the food before she passed away in 2022. So, if you don't know, that food is also expensive. Part of this will also go towards that because Hope still loves to eat, even if she can't keep it down.

Nick