I have been trying really hard to not be negative, but sometimes it feels like we are just cursed…
We took Winter to the vet for her chronic diarrhea last week. It wasn’t an emergency; it’s a problem she’s had off and on for a long time, and every time we tried to schedule a visit, one of the other animals ‘cut in line’ with a more pressing crisis. Anyway, finally we managed to get her in for an exam. We had them run a major blood panel — figuring if we were going to have blood drawn for a basic panel, we might as well go for everything so we would not have to put her through more bloodwork later.
The results came back today. Everything was more or less OK, with one exception – a fairly high positive on both feline coronavirus titers. This means that at the very least, she has been exposed at some point in her life. At worst, it means she is at risk for developing full blown feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) at some point. And the others may be exposed, through her.
It’s not a cut and dry situation. All the test shows is that she was exposed; (BTW this is probably not relevant to her digestive issues) but if I am understanding the articles (link above and another one here) I’ve read and the explanation from the vet correctly, the virus can remain latent for a considerable period of time, able to be spread to other cats or the carrier cat themselves can come down with the disease if their immune system is suppressed, or the virus mutates… it’s a weird virus because the disease is immune mediated, it’s not just a matter of being infected and then developing the disease like with most viruses . If/when a cat does develop full blown FIP, though, it is almost always fatal.
Even though we know that, statistically, up to 30% of house cats will show a positive titer for coronavirus, we can’t help but feel like we have 3 furry time bombs in the house. To say that we haven’t had the greatest luck with animals is an understatement, so the ‘remote’ chance that one of them will suddenly show FIP symptoms and die doesn’t seem quite so remote to us. We’ve had three cats with luxating patellas (common in dogs but not in cats), one die of toxoplasmosis, Nipsy’s asthma and heart tumor, Wednesday’s bladder stones and vaccine-associated sarcoma from the one vaccine she never should have gotten, Simon’s femoral head necrosis that resulted in two hip surgeries and a crippled cat (he also has feline herpes), Olive nearly dying of a reaction to benadryl (which, Ironically, she was given for a reaction to a vaccine)… and more. You get the idea. I think we have good basis for being a bit on the paranoid side. 
As far as her bowel issues go, it looks like a food sensitivity or possibly irritable bowel disease… the latter of which has been known to develop into lymphoma. Yeah, rarely, but, well… see above.
Oh, and I found out today that stupid Motorolla charged us $725 on that fraudulent order after all! Argh!!!!! I spent an hour with them on the phone and apparently they will be refunding the money “within 7-15 days” but that doesn’t help our bank account now. The charge went through nearly two weeks after the day all that mess happened, and after the authorization on our account had already expired and been removed. I don’t even understand how they could have done that, when by that time there was no authorization hold and the card in question was closed?
Some days I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or scream, or just do all three at once.
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