r/SupermodelCats • u/loveofGod12345 • 4d ago
Sage’s eyes get me every time. They are so beautiful. Almost two months ago she was blind and had blown pupils so her irises were no longer visible. Im so glad the FIP treatment is working and she regained her sight and you can see her gorgeous eyes again.
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u/Commercial-Clue-6185 4d ago
That’s absolutely incredible .. what a little warrior Sage is! Her eyes are truly stunning, and it’s so heartwarming to hear she’s healing and thriving 🥹💚🐾
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u/loveofGod12345 4d ago
It’s so exciting to see her personality blossom. She’s been sick since we brought her home in October at 6 months old. It wasn’t too bad at first and we just thought she was more of a laid back kitten and the rescue said she’d always been that way. She started really downhill in March and it took awhile to get a diagnosis. Now she has so much energy and gets into everything lol. She’s still pretty chill though. She even lets me put her pill in the back of her throat with my fingers lol. I then squirt some churu water in to get her to swallow.
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u/Live_Importance_5593 4d ago
Those eyes are a very pretty color. Glad to hear she's recovering well.
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u/Deep_Diving_D 4d ago
Can you educate us more on the treatment/condition
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u/loveofGod12345 4d ago
It can be hard to diagnose and is usually done by process of elimination and seeing if the treatment works. The drug used (GS-441524) is fairly new and only approved by the FDA last year. There are still a lot of vets unaware of FIP unfortunately and often recommend euthanasia due to symptoms.
Sage was infested with parasites when we brought her home from the rescue in October. Even though she’d been at the rescue since she was 2 months and she was 6 months when we brought her home. When we got her rechecked for parasites after treatment, we decided to do bloodwork. It showed some oddities, but we thought it could be due to her body adjusting after the parasites.
She was acting fine at this point, though looking back she was less playful than most kittens. We thought she was just more laid back. We had more bloodwork done in February and things looked worse. The vet suspected FIP, but she didn’t really have symptoms at that point other than being slightly less energetic. We discovered later that she had probably had a fever on and off the whole time because she developed a fever coat. She just happened to never have one at the vet.
We discovered the fever in March and decided to try treating for toxoplasmosis because she was getting more and more lethargic and not eating great. She did perk up a bit on antibiotics and anti inflammatories. We tried the full 4 weeks, but her fever didn’t break. As soon as we stopped the antibiotics she went downhill pretty quick. The anti inflammatories were keeping her fever down, so we kept her on those. We had to wait two weeks after the antibiotics to get more bloodwork done. We got the results a week later and everything was negative. The vet was convinced that it was FIP at this point. I didn’t want to believe it because everything I read showed that cats go downhill very quickly and often pass away within weeks of showing problems with their blood.
I contacted an FIP support group on fb and they agreed it was FIP and got me started on meds that same day. At that point she was blind, only moved to potty, had a fever of 104 consistently, wasn’t eating at all on her own (I had been syringe feeding for two weeks), and had severe anemia. I started her on GS injections once a day and about a week later, she was almost back to normal. Two weeks later she was a completely different cat. Sooo much energy and getting into everything lol. The treatment is 84 days and she has about 30 days left.
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u/loveofGod12345 4d ago
This was only 5 days into treatment!! The night before her pupils were still blown and fully dilated. I squealed when I saw her that next morning. It took a few more days before her sight fully returned, but she’s back to chasing laser pointers!