It truly takes a village and I can not do this without all of you. Pluto wants to live, and deserves to live. I’d like to share his full story with you to help others understand all this little angel his endured in the last 3 months just to lead him to where he is today in critical condition due to the horrific disease, FIP.

Three months ago a local police officer reached out to me to help take into foster this tortie cat who appeared to have an injured eye. After further examining her I quickly realized she was full of milk and a nursing mom. I panicked and gathered her into a carrier to rush her back out to where the cop had originally found her in hopes she’d call out for her babies. Sure enough she began meowing and two beautiful babies came running up to her carrier. One of those was Pluto. After several hours of waiting for them to both go into our traps, they finally did and home we went. They were approximately 3 months old at that time and unsocialized to humans, also known as feral. The older they get the harder it is to socialize them but we knew we could get them where they needed to be in order to help them find forever homes. Pluto was much more shy than his litter mate but after about a month of working with him he was finally a lover and cuddler and couldn’t wait to spend time with his people.

However, he did have a deep bacterial & yeast ear infection that we were treating. He began to develop a subtle head tilt that the vet believed was coming from the ear infection but we later realized this was not the cause and part of his illness. Fast forward, to 5 months old Pluto was adopted!! We couldn’t have been happier for him. Until 5 days later when he went from a happy, playful, loving kitten to regressing to hiding under the bed, experiencing a loss of appetite, weight loss and lethargic. Fortunately the adopter stayed in touch with me and we were able to get him checked out by a vet. The vet found he had a high fever of 103 and gave him metacam, a convenia shot and fluids and sent him on his way determining it was simply a cold. I found this to be odd but took her word for it as the expert. He perked back up for 24 hours then quickly declined again leading him to November 24th, the day before thanksgiving. He was rushed to the vet where an X-Ray was done, blood work and a chem panel. His white blood cell count was very high and protein levels near concerning. It was then determined that with all his symptoms and these tests ran that he has life threatening neurological dry FIP.

Feline Infectious Peritontis (FIP) is a rare disease that occurs generally in young cats and is extremely fatal if left untreated. Many cats contract feline coronavirus in their life time which is non life-threatening but only in a small percentage of those cats will it mutate into FIP. This horrific disease is one of the least understood and under-researched of all the cat diseases. It is extremely difficult to diagnose & once determined, cats are generally always rapidly deteriorating from it.

There is no legal FDA approved treatment for FIP in the United States. However, other countries do have this life saving treatment which is able to be imported to save their lives if found early enough!

I previously had a foster cat, Vinnie, who developed FIP and by the time I was able to find and order it for him he had unfortunately passed the day before it arrived. That being said, I still had a small dose on hand to be able to treat Pluto with as he came back into our care.

I quickly began Pluto on this life-saving FIP treatment as well as syringe feeding him 5 times a day, providing SQ fluids, metacam, clindamycin, B12 injections and syringing other restoring nutrients.

FIP treatment is extremely expensive and with Pluto’s condition being neurological he receives double the dose his weight would otherwise require. The treatment is 84 days long but if he is able to complete this treatment he is able to be CURED of it!

I can not do this alone. Pluto can not do this alone. It truly takes a village and at only 6 months old and so much life left to live, he is every bit worth it. If everybody was able to contribute even just a tiny amount it will surely add up to be able to save his life.

I can not express enough how much I appreciate every single one of you.

Thank you so much for all the support along the way and I will be providing updates of his journey.

#PlutoStrong