Sadie

Sadie is a semi long haired calico tortoiseshell cat, approximately 3 to 4 years old. She came into care on the 18th. June in an emaciated condition. Her coat was badly knotted and she had glaucoma of the right eye. In addition, the eye was ulcerated and the lens had shifted. This was almost certainly due to trauma at sometime.

A visit to the vet resulted in a blood test, which showed that she had a liver infection. She was also found to be FeLV positive. Her bowels were in a terrible condition. Research opinion suggested that a cat in this condition should be put to sleep.

We decided to try and give her more time. After grooming, she was taken into the surgery and put on an intravenous drip to flush her kidneys out. This was followed by a course of antibiotic tablets and a short diet of a mixture of chicken, scrambled egg and a little boiled rice. In addition, she was given a half mil. of natural, live yoghurt to settle her bowels.

Three months on and Sadie is very much stronger, although she still looks bedraggled, and her bowels will be quite normal for two or three days then become semi loose for four or five days. However, our vet now feels that she is strong enough to undergo surgery to remove the bad eye, which shows a tendency to re-ulcerate.

Sadie must prove the case that we should never be too ready to put a cat to sleep purely because it is FeLV positive.

September, 2001.

During September, the veterinary surgeon decided that Sadie was strong enough to undergo surgery. Her defective eye was removed and she recovered very well.

January, 2002.

Sadie has gone from strength to strength. She no longer has a bowel problem; in fact, she has no problems at all other than the fact that she needs to be groomed regularly.

June, 2002.

Although Sadie is still eating, not so well a before, she is now loosing weight. A blood test has shown that the liver infection she had when she was first rescued has now started to show again. She is on treatment for the infection. Sadie is losing weight but she still seems content. As long as she keeps going, we will continue to fight for her.

August 8^th. 2002.

Very sadly for us, Sadie left us this morning. Over the last two weeks we had been giving her pro-biotics due to her bowel swings between normal and very loose. Other than that she had been quite normal in herself.

Last night she was her usual self, she was crying for food as usual. I decided to give her some of her favourite – boiled chicken, she would kill for it. After her meal she used her litter tray and her bowels were normal. She then found her favourite spot, lay down and went to sleep. She slept well and later when feeding the rest of the cats she did not stir, which was unusal for Sadie when food was available. But, her breathing was calm and steady and she was obviously sleeping soundly.

At 2.30 am, she was still sleeping very comfortably. At 8.30 am, I got up and found her in the same position breathing lightly. Examination revealed that she had slipped quietly into coma. She may have remained in coma for the rest of the day so we called our vet. He confirmed that she was in coma and was at peace. We decided that it was best to ease her passing. She went to Rainbow Bridge at 9.30.

We feel that we have proved that an FeLV positive cat can still have good quality of life and that we did the right thing throughout.