Help Poe Overcome His Health Challenges

My name is Rob, and my partner Jessica and I are asking for help covering medical expenses for our young cat, Poe.

Jessica brought Poe into her home when he was just 8 weeks old. A friend of her roommate had a pregnant cat, and they couldn't handle any more kittens in their mobile home so she decided to take the leap and bring Poe home. I did NOT particularly like cats at this time: I had generally only had negative-leaning interactions with them. Even when I lived with one with a long-term ex, it took YEARS for her to get used to me. Ultimately it didn't matter, because Jessica and I had only been dating a few months. Obviously, both her and Poe are still around and I love them both very much.

Over the years, Poe has had a number of issues. When he was about a year old, he managed to knock a shelving unit over onto himself which broke his leg, leaving him with a slight hitch in his walk (It's kinda cute when he does his happy lil gallop though). When we brought home our other cat Booch as a rescue, Poe took a very long time to adjust (and even after 2 years he still gets extra anxious around Booch).

In early June '24, we woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of dry-heaving under our bed, and discovered that Poe had spit up. Not a big deal, we thought; this stuff happens. But the next day it got worse, and by the following day he was just spitting up bile. I had to work a festival on day 3, and Jessica ended up was apparent that he had stopped grooming himself, and was no longer eating (though he thankfully was still urinating normally; we knew if THAT stopped that we had a real emergency).

Our first visit to the vet determined no cause for the issue, and we left with some anti-nausea medications and a special food. Blood work and a physical exam showed nothing of note, aside from a slightly elevated enzyme, which the vet indicated could be due to inflammation, or in more serious cases pancreatitis or cancer. Two days later we were vomiting again, and we alerted the emergency vet who told us to simply monitor him and reach out to our normal vet in the morning. Back at the vet on Thursday blood work and physical exam still showed no sign of cause. It was suggested that we hospitalize so that the vet team could monitor and administer fluids. It was also suggested that Poe see a specialist who could perform a full-abdominal ultrasound. Poe remained hospitalized until the Saturday, when the vet's office was closed, and returned Monday to see the specialist. The specialist noted similar things as the vet, blood cell count was normal, physical exam was unremarkable, and we have one enzyme slightly elevated likely due to inflammation. The specialist also noted some mild mottling on the spleen and some redness on the kidneys. We were told that both of these things could be completely normal for cats, but it was possible that he’d like to take some samples from them. He indicated possible cancers, pancreatitis, or FIP as causes, but he indicated that all of these were very low on the list. It was brought up that if we did not improve, to explore having a feeding tube placed. This was a way to remove “nutrition” and “anorexia” from our list of causes with the hopes that the issue would either solve or reveal the underlying cause. At this point we were down two pounds and the vet asked us to administer IV fluids at home. We did this until returning on Thursday for a follow-up with our regular vet. She performed another set of blood work, still showing similar data as previous. Returning on Friday, the specialist placed our feeding tube. Poe now requires three feeding via e-tube a day.

All told, these visits have cost us nearly $8,000 thus far. I'm a small business owner so money has already been tight, and the veterinary bills have put a serious strain on our financial and home life.

Poe is an important part of our little family, and we're not about to put a pricetag on his health. Throughout this whole process, every single vet tech and person who has interacted with him have noted that Poe is in very good spirits. We're hoping with your help we can continue to give him all the treatment he needs so he can get back to being the rambunctious little bundle of joy he's always been.