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GoFundMe Status:
As long as it's allowed, we are leaving up this GoFundMe for anyone who wishes to contribute to Chai's aftercare and help us cover the debts we owe. Thank you so much for helping us look after Chai even after her passing.
Final Update:
Chai passed away a little after 2am at the veterinary office today. Our plan was originally to let her pass at home on her own terms, since there was no way to keep going if we couldn't get blood with platelets, but her primary care hospital promised to reach out to us either yesterday afternoon or this morning to discuss the possibility of helping us with the cross-matches. So we headed in to try to tide her over. It's beyond frustrating that given Chai's critical nature they thought it was appropriate to wait.
I'm terribly heartbroken, because we had so many transfusions along the way that could have better secured her future if they had just been willing to supply fresh whole blood from our own cats instead of the packed red blood cell units. I had been trying to arrange the means to donate and transfuse my other cats' blood for the entirety of the last four weeks, but the lack of locations willing to cross-match for us was ultimately the deciding factor in preventing Chai from getting the care she needed and deserved.
But I don't want to linger on lamenting the anger and frustration I feel. Instead, I want to express my profound gratitude to each and every one of you who contributed and helped Chai the past few days. You all have been a light during these days that the future felt so bleak and dark. Many of you I have never met, and many of you are friends I have not talked to in nearly years or even decades. Yet in this moment, you found the time and goodwill to stand by me even as those who should have stayed in our corner were willing to leave and give up on her.
In the end, I am grateful for all the time I had together with Chai. I am grateful that Kelvin flew thousands of miles and arrived just in time to spend her final day together. And lastly, I am eternally grateful for the love and support that you all have provided throughout this very difficult time. I find solace in knowing that we gave her the best life we could possibly provide. From the 5-month old kitten who was at death's door when we found her to the pampered kitty she grew to be up until today -- I am grateful that she got to experience life as a normal and healthy cat, even if it were just for a little bit. It was just a little over 2.5 years that we got to spend time with you Chai, but it is forever that you'll remain in our hearts.
Chai, until we meet again. I promise to find you in whatever comes beyond. Meanwhile, please help pass on all the love and affection that I've given you to both Dante and Calabazin for me -- and, of course, send Nunri and Goldie my regards as well.
Te amare siempre, mi amorcito -- mi princesa, bebecita, mi Chai-Chai Chaicita.
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About Chai
Chai is more than just a cat—she’s my family, my daily joy, and a survivor who has already beaten incredible odds. We've already come so far with her that we're not ready to give up, but now she needs your help to keep fighting. For the full story, please read the passage below this one. But I'll try to do my best to summarize Chai's journey here.
Chai's Medical Journey So Far
Chai has been battling anemia since December 2024. She had been stable and was even improving from then until June 3rd, 2025. However, she began having chronic diarrhea, which caused her anemia to drop, which has culminated in needing four transfusions just in the last month. At that point, we did not know what went wrong and were focused on sustaining her, but as of this week we have made significant headway on identifying issues and are pivoting to directly address them.
Her conditions are complicated, and treatment has to be agile to adjust to her needs. She has three active major issues that we have to balance, and by far the most pressing things have been blood transfusions and cross-matches.
The issues are:
1. GI bleeding from antibiotics and immunosuppressants, possible newly developed food allergy to chicken
2. IMHA at the level of the liver and spleen
3. Low RBC caused by non-regenerative anemia from FeLV
Issues we believe have been addressed:
1. Infectious diseases with Mycoplasma and Bartonella
Is Chai Suffering?
These are very valid concerns, and you are right to be worried. It would be most accurate to say that she's in discomfort from her anemia, but it wouldn't be right to say that she's in pain. She's bright and alert, she's curious of new surroundings, she purrs plenty, she drinks water frequently, and she still jumps onto her perches just fine. However, it is also true that now she doesn't play since she tires very easily. Judging her quality of life from these metrics is not straightforward, but I would say she still has the fight and will to live. So, as long as she doesn't give up, then I won't give up either.
What I can promise is that I have no intention to make her needlessly suffer. If I see no solution forward for any of her problems, then I would begin to strongly consider euthanasia. In fact, it was already heavily on my mind until we identified the issues behind her rapid blood loss -- mainly the GI bleeding -- and that's why I created the GoFundMe. With the problems now much more clearly defined, it is significantly easier to justify another push forward.
For example, we went from endlessly giving her blood transfusions and hoping for stabilization to now understanding that we need whole-blood transfusions to get Chai platelets, and the lack of them in the packed red cell blood was why the transfusions were not holding. Once we stop the bleeding, then we finally have a chance to stabilize her and get her back to her normal baseline.
The following is not a comprehensive list of what it would take, but if at any point she develops cancer, stops drinking water, or stops being alert and ambulatory, then we would re-evaluate her prognosis and then make the decision whether to humanely euthanize her.
What's Our End?
The first and foremost issue we are aiming to address is to stop Chai's bleeding through whole-blood transfusions. Pack red blood cell transfusions are only a bandaid to the problem, and relying on them is like trying to fill a bucket to full even though it has a hole in it.
If we are able to achieve stabilization with an HCT above 20%, then from here on out there are two distinct possibilities. The first is that Chai returns to her baseline normal and no longer needs any additional transfusions. The second scenario is that her FeLV has progressed to the point where she becomes totally nonresponsive to treatment, and will instead require blood transfusions on a 3-4 week long basis. Any more frequent than that means we will need to evaluate her quality of life and if the transfusions are doing more harm than good for her.
For the latter scenario, as long as Chai is able to hold her transfusions for 3-4 weeks, then we will continue with the blood transfusions as needed.
Why We Need Help
Unfortunately, Chai is the only cat I have who is not insured due to pre-existing conditions, and so her costs have been exorbitantly high. That's why everything counts toward her care. We've exhausted our nest egg, taken on loans and debts to care for her, and unfortunately the writing is on the wall if we cannot get support elsewhere.
At this stage in Chai's care, every day counts. With your support, we can continue to give Chai the transfusions she needs to recover while we address the root causes of her illness.
Immediate Treatment Costs
The most important thing so far for us is to secure blood for her while we lower her antibiotic and immunosuppressant use, and the cost of blood transfusions alone is staggering. For reference, the cost of a blood transfusion at her primary vet is ~2.8K per transfusion. At the VCA, it's ~1.4K. In Tijuana, it is approximately $400, but we need to supply and cross-match our own blood and donors. Cross-matching alone is ~$270, and blood purchased directly from abrint.net is also $278. So that effectively brings the Tijuana costs up to almost $1K.
With costs as high as this, it is unrealistic to keep going without sponsorship or support. We are exploring additional ways to bring down the costs, but it depends on whether the hospitals we have taken her to are willing to use blood we supply ourselves.
We also care for 7 other cats who could be donors for Chai to cross-match with her, and one additional volunteer from a friend. It's our hope that we can stick with only our cats in the future instead of using packed RBCs, since in theory, it should reduce the risks of reaction from future transfusions. We already tried cross-matching in Tijuana, but our vets believe that those results were anomalous and so we have been recommended to try again here in San Diego. The cost of each cross-match is about $270, so we need funds to be able to do this as well.
In total, to get her through this upcoming month while we tide her through her issues, we expect to need the following funds:
• Abrint Type A bags: 5x($270+$278)=$2,740
• Tijuana Transfusions: 5x$400 = $2,000
• Cross-matching local donors: 8x$270=$2,160
Total: $6,900
We also have another supportive treatment plan to ease the suspected IMHA at the liver and spleen level, caused by Reactive Oxygen Species produced in her body while her HCT has been low:
• PawPrint Oxygen Bundle: $500
• Denamarin (antioxidants): $84
Total: $584
And then also a new wet food diet due to suspected food allergy:
• Rabbit + Pea wet food: 2x$107=$214
Total: $207
Every donation, share, and kind word makes a real difference. Will you help us save Chai’s life?
My Promises
I will post frequent updates with Chai’s progress and every step your generosity makes possible. Any excess funds will go equally toward both repaying existing credit card debts and saving for future costs. I will share receipts of all procedures for full transparency.
I will try to keep all the updates through the following link on instagram, since it is the easiest platform to post both photos and videos.
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What Makes Chai Special
It won't be easy to share Chai's story, but I will try my best to. It begins with two cats -- Chai and Calabazin.
In December 2022, Chai was born in Puerto Rico to her father Calabazin and raised by her adoptive granddad Kelvin. Unfortunately, she was sickly when we first found her as a young 5-month old kitten, and visits to the vet revealed that she was born with two viral diseases that greatly impacted her general health: FIV and FeLV. Her prognosis was not good, as most kittens born with the diseases die before reaching age 1. We braced ourselves for the worst, thinking she wouldn't make it past kittenhood.
Chai beat those odds, and for over a year after, life was good and peaceful. But by the beginning of fall 2024, her dad Calabazin started showing signs of illness that would not resolve despite several visits to the local vets. Our poor, newly neutered Calabazin had to go through several additional surgeries for his mouth and eyes to treat the obvious clinically presenting issues that he was having, but they were to no avail.
When Calabazin's condition became critical in November 2024, it became painfully obvious that the local veterinary practices were unable to handle his specific case, so on November 16th, I flew to the island and brought him with me to care for him in San Diego. It was a desperate move to save his life. Unfortunately, it was too little, too late.
It was my first time ever meeting him in person, and after over 14 hours of air travel, I finally made it home by midnight—this was Calabazin's first impression of me. I didn't know if Calabazin would trust me to care for him, and I didn't know if he even knew that I was trying to help him. I had just torn him away from everything he knew and loved, and so I had no reason to believe he would accept me. But that night, he let me hold and syringe-feed him, he let me pet and coo to him, and he let me clean and wash him. At that time, I wondered if that was trust or if he was simply too weak to resist my efforts to tend to him.
By that morning, I had to dispel any notion that I could care for him on my own. He needed fluids, and his condition had drastically worsened. By noon, he was at urgent care, but urgent care turned me away and directed us to an emergency hospital instead, whereupon he was immediately seen on intake. Calabazin and I didn't even get to have one full day together before I had to leave him hospitalized. The guilt tore at me every second as I described Calabazin's history to the vet. After I had finished, I asked to see Calabazin one last time for the night in a hopeless attempt to show him that I loved and cared for him. Because how could I expect him to know? There was no way.
I will never forget that evening. As they guided me to his kennel and opened its door, I found him limply tucked under covers with a heater blowing warm air into his blankets. It was a wretched sight. I sat down on the floor next to his kennel to watch over him. And then I cried. I cried knowing full well by now that it would be unlikely for me to bring him home to experience all my love for him. I just didn't want it to be the end—not like this.
No clinics we had reached out to in Puerto Rico would euthanize him at his home, and in fact, we were having trouble finding any nearby clinics that could even do the procedure. So if it couldn't even be somewhere familiar, would that even be fair to take him? How stressful that must be! How impersonal! And without even trying to save him myself? Unforgivable. So I convinced myself that it was better to give him a chance with me if it had to be somewhere he had never been before. Fast forward to San Diego again, and it started to look like the only thing I succeeded at doing was taking him away from his dad.
And then, like a ray of light piercing through my dark and stormy thoughts, I realized Calabazin was watching me too. And when our eyes met, I bore witness to how he worked to pick himself up from under his covers—in order to crawl to my arm—just to rest his head on me. I don't think any words can describe how that moment felt. Not even a full day after our flight together, and he was already trying to comfort me. I guess he did trust me.
That moment was the last time I ever saw him so lucid. I had always known that Calabazin had a big heart; that he had a huge cattitude; and that, above all else, he was a strong fighter. I visited him as many times as I could—multiple times a day, and for hours on end to speak with him—just hoping to share another moment like that with him. A full week passed, and I wasn't sure if he could hear me, and so I played the sounds of the birds in Puerto Rico in hopes of stirring something in him. And wake him they did, but their calls worked to beckon him to return home. And that was the next and last moment we shared together. I don't know if he was fully aware that I was carrying him, but I consider myself blessed to have been by his side to hold him in my arms when his time came that afternoon on November 23rd.
Everything I thought I knew about him was actually far more and beyond. He wasn't just a strong fighter, he was a warrior. Throughout his stay at the hospital, as we combed through his symptoms and discovered a number of ailments that the vets back home were unable to diagnose. Even after his death, there were more to be found. And so although Calabazin ultimately lost his battle, his efforts won us a wealth of information that we otherwise would not have learned. It was our hope that we could refer to his case for the upcoming wars we sensed on the horizon. Infectious diseases, anemia, IMHA—all were things we now had to be on the lookout for, and I vowed to do my best to protect his daughter.
And this is where Chai's story comes in.
After Calabazin passed, we were on high alert for any signs of trouble in Kelvin's other cats—and especially Chai, given her conditions. We were determined to not let any single symptom slip by. And so when not even two weeks later Chai began having issues with inappetence, we immediately brought her to the vet for blood testing. It was so early that those tests indicated nothing, but I knew from Calabazin that she was likely exposed to Mycoplasma and other infectious diseases since they were from the same household. We tried to get her on doxycycline for treatment, but the vet declined, saying they couldn't prescribe that antibiotic without first testing her, which was also something they couldn't do. Instead, they prescribed amoxicillin and recommended waiting to see if this was something she would improve on her own.
Unfortunately, that never happened, and her HCT dropped from 30% to 23% in less than two weeks. When we asked again for the proper antibiotics, they said that her HCT was now too low to administer the drug. That was the cue we needed to fly her here to San Diego for proactive care. This time, she was brought to me for care under my watch and the specialty hospitals available to me.
Together, Chai and I weathered and overcame many challenges. From December through June 3rd, she was stable and even seemed to be on the mend. Her blood tests went from as low as 20% to 27%, which remained at that level throughout May. We thought we had done it—that Chai was saved!
We were just about to finish her infectious disease treatment when she started having chronic diarrhea. We witnessed her HCT fall to 15% on 5/28/25, but since she was clinically stable, a blood transfusion was not advised at that time. And then her blood continued to drop to 9% on 7/5/25, and that's when her first emergency transfusion was performed. And then another was needed. And then two more followed.
We are still working out the causes of the changes, and we have identified two likely contributors. We think Reactive Oxygen Species, caused from low oxygen, are causing her transfused blood to deform and be marked for removal in her liver and spleen. So we need to try to bring her HCT back to at least 20% HCT, which is a point that we know she had been historically stable at. Another recently identified issue has been GI bleeding. So we need to adjust her diet, reduce the drugs she is on, and find ways to clot and heal that for her too.
Now, our credit cards are maxed and we are running out of time for funds before she requires another transfusion. But just like her dad, Chai is a fighter. She's been through so much in the past 8 months, and she's still holding on. Her weight has been consistently above 10.4lb, and she still drinks plenty on her own. She's bright-eyed and alert, and whenever her blood is at 16%, she will also begin to eat food on her own too.
Chai is more than just a cat—she’s family. Against all odds, she survived as a kitten with FIV and FeLV. Now, after months of fighting, Chai’s life depends on urgent blood transfusions and ongoing medical care. We’ve given everything—our savings, loans, and all the love we have—but we’re out of options. We need your help to give Chai a fighting chance.
Every donation and every share helps us reach our goal. Please help us keep Chai’s light and Calabazin's legacy alive.
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