Fip??

I'm a newbie, so hi to all

Yesterday morning I was ushering all of the cats out of the bedroom so we could sleep when I found our only little boy, Buddy, close to death. I picked him up and tried to get him to stand and he couldn't so we put him on a pillow to lay while we called the emergency vet. Buddy's always been littler than the rest of his litter and we had been planning to take him to the vet today because he was losing weight. We rushed him to the emergency vet and the vet basically told us even if we pumped him full of antibiotics and fluids that he would probably only live for another week or two. We asked the vet what he though it could be, because it just came out of nowhere on us and he said more than likely FIP. He was suffering so we made the decision to pts. The emergency vet told us to have our other cats tested twice, once right away and then once again in six months. He said that it was common for one kitten to be sick and the others to be okay. I went home and disinfected everything that Buddy had laid on and took the boxes out to the porch to bleach and switched out all the food dishes and water dishes with temporary paper ones. I called my vet today and asked about a test for FIP and my vet told me there wasn't one. I've been reading all the threads on here about it and now don't know what to do. We have four other cats in the house, three of them were Buddy's littermates. I guess I just need some general guidance on this. Should I have them do the bloodwork on the remaining kitties to see if their titers are high even though that won't tell if they have FIP? The remaining four are all in great shape and seem to be growing like normal cats. I just really don't know what to do. Does it sound like FIP to any of you? Buddy was becoming lower energy than he had been and he was losing weight, which is why we had the vet appt today scheduled. My husband said that he noticed him having trouble getting on to the bed on Saturday but I didn't really notice anything. Any suggestions are appreciated.

firstly i am so sorry that you lost little buddy so suddenly. it sounds like you have been through a terrible time.

i lost my boy last october to undiagnosed FIP. he had lost a little weight and just seemed not quite right. from the day i took him to the vet it was just under 3 weeks and i had to say goodbye to my beloved cat. he had lost virtually all his body weight, gone blind and was a pathetic shell of the vibrant, cuddly cat he so recently had been.

i had 2 other cats at the time, 9 month old milo and 8 year old tabitha. the vet never said anything about any risk to them or when i said i was getting another kitten a while later.

your vet was right to say there is no test for FIP, it can only be done once the cat has passed away. from my point of view i would say your other kitties should be fine.

please correct me if i'm wrong people!

They should have necropsied Buddy to see if it was FIP. I lost my baby boy Glitch to FIP Nov 16th 2007 at 2:35pm, His belly was HUGELY swollen and I had it drained once, they took out 18 oz of fluid!

I wish I could tell you that it was FIP or not, but I can't. It would have had to be the wet form of FIP to take hold so quickly. Which is what Glitch had.

I am a PM away if you want more information... I have plenty of it hon!!

I was told Yoshi had the Dry form of Fip last May and he had Kidney Stones that could not be removed. We do not know if it was Fip for sure. He was 5.2 Pounds when he was Pts Jan 11. Two week before that he was 7.5 Pounds.

I am so sorry about your kitty.

I believe that there is new test for FIP that can only be done through tissue biopsy, according to Cornell. But this test will still only determine if there were coronavirus-antibody titers in the body, not necessary one that causes FIP.

My Pix has just been given this test, as she has all the signs for it. We are waiting for the results to come back. I'll be devistated if she has it. :-(

An autopsy will tell if it was FIP or not. I have no idea if it was FIP. What kind of symptoms did he show? A nasty E. coli infection can knock out a kitten (most obvious signs -> weight loss and diarrea).

About tests in the other cats. There's little value in blood testing for FCoV. The test results won't tell you anything really, only if they have FCoV or not (of course if they don't have positive results it's highly unlikely your kitten had FIP so maybe you should test for that reason).

What your cats need if it was FIP is stress reduction. No new cats entering the home, no cats leaving the home, no matings, no showing... nothing stressful at all.

First of all, I'm very sorry that you lost your Buddy. How old are the kittens? There are a lot of things that can go wrong with young kittens very quickly, only one of them being FIP. You would have to take an autopsy to prove that it was actually FIP.

The tests are worthless. If you run the titer test on all of the cats across the world, many of them would test "positive" for FIP. The titer test only shows that a cat was exposed. The development of FIP seems to be based on a genetic predisposition to the disease and not exposure.

I lost an 18 month old cat to FIP. He was always very small (5 pounds full grown) and he got sick within a week after we moved (stress triggered), and he was gone within another week. He lived with 7 other cats who never contracted the disease, and they in turn lived with probably another 30 cats over the years. If a cat is going to get it, they will get it, and no test will help you one way or the other.