A beautiful girl showed up at my parents house recently. There is a feral colony nearby but I feel like she has to have been dumped by someone. She is such a loving sweet girl.
My parents generally keep some food out for the feral cats so I assume that is why she began to hang around there. For about a week before I attempted to pick her up she would generally lay under the carport and appeared to me to be eating quite a bit. Her belly became swollen within about a week's time. She's now been brought inside and has several rooms of the house to herself while we take care of her. At this point I've taken her to the vet and had many tests and an x-ray performed to try and determine the problem.
Based on the tests so far, the vet does not believe that it is FIP. He also has ruled out heart worms. Her blood work is generally good. The x-ray did not show anything unusual. He estimates her age to be around 2 years. She does not have a temperature. She's still very loving and puts up with all the pokes and prodding associated with the tests. We've had the fluid drained off (about 60%) once but it is returning. She doesn't appear to be in any real pain but her appetite has decreased and we now have her on some meds to stimulate the appetite. I can tell she's uncomfortable and who wouldn't be given the swelling
The vet feels that the next step is to perform an ultrasound which will run around $500. Is this a reasonable cost?? Sounds like this could help determine if there is anything cancerous or possibly a rupture somewhere?? I haven't actually sat down to total up everything spent so far but it's somewhere around $1500. I'd love to be able to help her but I'm starting to wonder how far we should go. Has anyone ever had a circumstance such as this and what were the results?
Thank you all.
My parents generally keep some food out for the feral cats so I assume that is why she began to hang around there. For about a week before I attempted to pick her up she would generally lay under the carport and appeared to me to be eating quite a bit. Her belly became swollen within about a week's time. She's now been brought inside and has several rooms of the house to herself while we take care of her. At this point I've taken her to the vet and had many tests and an x-ray performed to try and determine the problem.
Based on the tests so far, the vet does not believe that it is FIP. He also has ruled out heart worms. Her blood work is generally good. The x-ray did not show anything unusual. He estimates her age to be around 2 years. She does not have a temperature. She's still very loving and puts up with all the pokes and prodding associated with the tests. We've had the fluid drained off (about 60%) once but it is returning. She doesn't appear to be in any real pain but her appetite has decreased and we now have her on some meds to stimulate the appetite. I can tell she's uncomfortable and who wouldn't be given the swelling
The vet feels that the next step is to perform an ultrasound which will run around $500. Is this a reasonable cost?? Sounds like this could help determine if there is anything cancerous or possibly a rupture somewhere?? I haven't actually sat down to total up everything spent so far but it's somewhere around $1500. I'd love to be able to help her but I'm starting to wonder how far we should go. Has anyone ever had a circumstance such as this and what were the results?
Thank you all.
