/furi/ - Yaff

Cat ownership is great but can be heartbreaking when they get sick or die.

This is Little Girl. 3 years ago a 5-month old kitten outdoors came up to me meowing. She weighed very little. I fed her, taking her inside 3 weeks later.I had lost my 11-year old cat a few months ago. She is now almost 3 and a half years now.

Last Wednesday her right inner eyelid swelled up. I used sterile eye rinses on her, by the next morning she looked fine, but then by mid-afternoon she's laying in the hallway, being very lazy & then her eyelid got worse again. Friday she was still lazy but eating. Yesterday she stopped eating off plates or bowls & stumbles when she walks, I am still giving her water mixed with cat food gravy by mouth with a syringe to keep her fed.

I will probably take her to the vet tomorrow, she may have lost a bit of weight. I don't know what the deal is. Maybe she has something stuck in her eye that's really bothering her. Maybe her stunted growth when she was tiny has caught up to her.

Or she may have caught FIP from a Siamese kitten I took in last August. I took him to the vet for liquid poop on the kitchen floor, was informed he likely has FIP which is untreatable & can be contagious to other cats. I ultimately had to put him outdoors as he would not stop pooping in the kitchen & to cut down on infection risk as I have 3 other cats. But they could already have it… or it could be a number of other illnesses. The outdoor cat population here has been prone to random deaths from illness & we have half as many now as last year. Most of the kittens born here die(we have 1 left out of about 25 born in April). Little Girl's mother got sick & vanished in May.

I took in a small kitten in 2022 which died 9 days later spontaneously. Illness? Inbreeding? I took in one last year that was paralyzed, gave him a ramp for the litter pan. He could crawl fast on his front legs. He died a month after that, probably from nervous system failure.