If you are on my
Instagram, you probably noticed a couple of posts over the past couple of days featuring my kitten, Dora.
For those who do not know, just before
Lily passed away we took in 3 kittens who were abandoned by their mother. They were named Nuggest, Boss Man, and Dora. They were born in April of 2021 and have since all be vaccinated and scheduled for their spay/neuter and microchipping in October. All were healthy. Boss Man does have a heart murmur, but this is apparently quite common in kittens, and is very likely he will grow out of it. Paws crossed for that.
Fast forward, about a week and a half ago I noticed Dora had a cloudy eye. I did warm compresses and it seemed to be starting to do better. By the 3rd day of this, that evening, we noticed it had some blood in it. So I got her in to the vet for the following day. I am assuming that this injury came from her brother, Boss Man, as he likes to rough play. He's not mean, but he and Dora were always roughhousing. You know, holding each other down and biting and kicking the face. Nothing hard, just a lot like kittens like to do. I can only assume during this play a claw caught her eye or maybe even a tooth. It's hard to say since there was no initial bleeding. At any rate, how it actually happened doesn't matter at this point.
When we went in on August 12th to get Dora's eye looked at she was given some antibiotics and some eye cream. The antibiotics were to be given twice per day and the cream was to be applied 4 times per day. We set it up to go to the vet everyday to have her eye looked at to see if it was improving or not. Because it is an eye injury, these are known to take their turn quickly if it is going to go downhill.
On August 13th, the vet techs
thought her eye may have looked a
little less hazy. It looked about the same to me, but they're the doctors, not me. So along with the antibiotics and cream, they wanted to give her some serum to use in her eye. Now, this was interesting because the way this is made is by using healthy feline blood. After I was home from the appointment, I actually did some searching and found this is actually called
Autologous Serum and there are some success stories of it being used, such as for
this dog. It's something they do for humans as well! It's an interesting process.
Anyway, I had never heard of this, but I was willing to try anything to help my baby out. Since Dora is roughly about 4-months old, and the blood needs to come from her neck for this (from what I was told), they were unable to get any from her. Luckily, any feline blood, that is healthy will do. Of course, with my luck, they only had K9 blood on hand to be able to do this. Luckily, though, I have multiple cats and asked if I could bring one of my other cats back to get blood from to make the serum. So my sweet Maine Coon, Elvis, became a donor for this serum for her.
(He's the one wearing the sunglasses in my cheap finds for cats post!)
He went in, gave some blood and we were sent home to wait. They need to let the blood clot first (which can vary from animal to animal as it does for people), then for them to do the other part of the process, which takes 20 minutes. So that afternoon, the process was completed and I picked up the serum. This needed to be given as 1 single drop every 4 hours around the clock. So I was waking up through the night stumbling half asleep to make sure Dora got these drops in addition to the other provided medication. Of course, we continued our daily check-ins.
On Saturday, August 14th, when we woke up, I took notice that Dora was not acting like herself. Normally in the mornings, I feed all the cats. So everyone is outside the bedroom door, ready to eat and go after their food bowls as if they hadn't eaten in years. Dora wasn't too interested. Well, she needed to eat in order to take the antibiotics as it requires her to have food. Otherwise, she would get an upset stomach. I opened up a can of wet food, which she never turns down. She stuck her nose up to it. I was able to get her to take a few licks of the
Tiki Cat Mousse pouches I had, but I had to squeeze it from the pouch for her to lick off. This was not normal behavior for her. I brought this information to the attention of her vet and it was suggested to take her off the antibiotics for the weekend as that may have been the cause.
Throughout the day, Dora was not interested in eating. Just sort of laying around still. I tried various treats and foods. No interest. Finally, around the time I would have been given her the 2nd dose of her antibiotic for the day, I decided to start giving her low sodium chicken broth. I waited since that meant the antibiotics should have been mostly out of her system and she was starting to show some signs of wanting to play. Just wasn't interested in eating. So I used a syringe and was squirting it in her mouth every 30-45 minutes. About an hour or so later, I tried her regular kitten food and she finally ate a few bites! It wasn't a lot, but it showed she was on the right track. By morning, she was playful and eating - basically her normal self again!
We continued with the eye serum and cream throughout the weekend.
Now, today, August 16th, we went in for Dora's check-up, and basically, her eye is not getting better. It is starting to look nasty and not improving. It's beginning to bulge out a bit and the best course of action to take at this time is t have it removed. This was not the news we were hoping to hear. I was hoping for some signs of improvement. I had a feeling this is where it was going since I wasn't seeing any improvements myself, but I was holding out hope.
I have scheduled her for the surgery, which is going to be this Wednesday, August 18th. The total cost is estimated to be $457.72 to get it done. This was not an expense I was prepared for on top of the additional expenses of these vet visits this past week, but of course, I am going to do what is needed to help her. I'm not sure if there are going to be additional expenses past this (medication, after-care expenses, follow-up visits, etc).
UPDATE 8/18/2021 9:05am
Dora has been dropped off for her surgery as of this morning. Upon signing the paperwork there were some additional fees I signed off for. One was an additional $64 fee to run a blood panel on her liver, kidneys, etc, before being put under anesthesia. This is to ensure there are no underlying issues that a basic exam will not display and to hopefully prevent any complications of using anesthesia for her. I was not prepared for this on top of the other fee, but I felt it was the best thing to do. Additionally, I opted for the anti-nausea medication for her for after her surgery for $13 and a laser treatment for her eye that is supposed to help for $10. These are smaller costs, but ultimately that's another $87 added to the total. So now I am looking at a total of around $544! Any donation towards her procedure would really help and be so much appreciated.
UPDATE 8/18/2021 2:05pm
Dora's surgery was a success and she is currently in recovery. So I will be calling to check in a couple of hours if she is ready to come home. I was told had I even gone to the eye doctor for her I would have been right back there for the surgery with how bad it had gotten. So as much as I hate to see her go through this, it's for her own health and wellbeing. I'm hoping for a speedy and comfortable recovery for her at this point.
UPDATE 8/18/2021 6:29pm
Dora's surgery was a success!! I was expecting her to look a little bit "rougher" from photos I saw when trying to research on what to expect as far as the surgery went and aftercare. I probably overstressed myself. So I was happy to see she looked basically the same as she had. They did not do the laser treatment that was mentioned this morning (it was a possible option) because of her age and the doctor didn't think it would be beneficial for her. She looked nervous upon being picked up, which I totally expected. Once we got home she enjoyed being carried around then started to get a bit antsy. I fixed her a nice wet food for her to eat and put her in the bathroom with her favorite bed while she recovers.
Since we have multiple cats, it was suggested to keep her separate for about 5 days just to be safe as far as other cats trying to play or groom her eye she had the removal on. So while I can't monitor her constantly, that's where she will recover. For bedtime, I will be having her as the only cat in the room so she can enjoy some free-roaming time.
I can expect a call from the doctor tomorrow to check in on her and to set up a follow-up visit and such. So I'll keep you all posted on anything new.
I want to give a special shout-out to
askmrfrisky.org for their kind donation of $100 towards Dora's bill! With regular life expenses, regular cat care expenses, and it is a slow month for me in the blogging world income-wise, donations make a huge difference! So if you have a chance, please say hi and
follow them on Twitter!
UPDATE 8/19/2021 9:04pm
Dora seems to be doing well with recovery. Still a little nervous and shy. She likes being held and cuddled a lot but is eating and drinking as normal. She has even been playing a little bit! Recovery is going to take some time, but she seems to be handling it very well!
One thing to note, all 3 kittens are still scheduled for their spaying/neutering for October 4th. I was able to get a discount on this based off a local program that offers this service for low cost. So it's $15 per cat for the spay/neuter and $25 per cat to be microchipped. Good pricing, however, this unexpected surgery definitely put a damper on my funding for this. The total cost for all 3 kittens to be spayed and neutered along with microchipping will be $120.00. This doesn't include if any tax is involved. So if I get an additional donations from the surgery expense, it will be used to cover the spay/neuter/microchipping I have scheduled.
UPDATE 8/25/2021 12:17pm
Dora went in yesterday afternoon for a follow-up visit. She is healing and doing well. She has gradually gotten more and more playful. Trying to keep her from wrestling around with her brother and sister (especially her brother) has proven quite challenging! I'm happy to see she is her same old self again, just worried, and carefully watching, that her eye gets a chance to properly heal before she gets back to her inevitable rough play!
We have her scheduled to get her stitches removed next week on September 1st! YAY! So I'm happy to have some positive news to pass along. I am still hoping for donations to help me recover the cost of her total medical expenses since it definitely put a dent in my wallet with bills, but grateful to have everyone's prayers and support through all this as well.
UPDATE 9/11/2021 8:49am
Dora FINALLY got her stitches removed! She was supposed to get them removed on September 1st, but unfortunately,
we were hit by Hurricane Ida. So that delayed the removal until the vet office could re-open. Thankfully her stitches have been removed and they said her eye healed up nicely! I was nervous after evacuating with all 13 cats if that would have impacted her (being in a small space, infection, etc), but thankfully, everything was good. So thankful! She's excited to get back to wrestling with her brother, Boss Man. Those two have been impossible to keep from wrestling around! LOL!
Final Surgery Expense: $523.82
Total Donated: $100.00
(One was the surgery, the other was the blood work done before the anesthesia, which came back looking good they said!)
Please help with her surgery costs!
If anyone can help with this expense for Dora, I would be beyond grateful. I have attached a donate button below, which is to
donate via PayPal. I can also accept Cash App to the username
$closetsamples
I'm not too sure if the vet will let anyone pay directly to them, but if someone is willing to try, I am happy to pass along that information.
Thank you so much for considering helping Dora during this difficult time.
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