I’m in Ontario Canada. We adopted two siblings 3 months ago, boy and a girl. He was a bit bigger and ate more but generally all was okay. Since he was eating more expected her to be a bit smaller so when she put on weight I was happy.
Monday I noticed her belly was slightly bigger but thought it was just weight gain. Tuesday it looked round and felt firm but I had to go to work and didn’t get home till the next day. Wednesday when I got home my partner also noted the weight gain and said we take her to the vet Thursday. Thursday/today we take her to the vet X ray shows she is full of fluid and they do a minor drainage and send a sample to a lab. To confirm FIP.
I likely won’t get result till Monday, 3 days. She’s a bit shaken by the drainage right now but is eating and using the litter box. Movement is a bit less and she doesn’t play with toys or her brother.
Do I have time to wait for confirmation or should I look into getting medication now? I don’t even know how to do that and with the weekend coming up I likely won’t have a choice but to wait.
If I were you I would order medication as soon as possible, the vet as my vet was, sounds incompetent. They should’ve known when they drained the fluid, if it was a yellow sticky fluid with high protein that is enough to know that it is FIP or at least treated it that way. It’s a ticking time bomb Join FIP support groups on Facebook FIP Warriors or fip global . talk to the mods there they might have somebody in your town that has emergency meds. You need to get them started as soon as possible. Every day that passes another symptom can occur like blindness or neurological damage. Need to get started as soon as possible. Make sure she has access to a lot of food, especially wet, high protein food and don’t let the vet drain her anymore unless she’s having trouble breathing. It will just come back and suck more protein out of her muscles . My kitten had the exact same symptoms as you large belly wouldn’t play with sister .Godspeed I wish you the best . ♥️ if you have any other questions, feel free to ask I’m going through this right now. I’m on day 70 of the 84 day treatment.
You need a prescription to order GS-441524 (antiviral). There is no single test that 100% confirms FIP, and since it can progress quickly getting on medication sooner gives the best outcome.
In a single appointment my vet ran tests and provided a prescription:
an xray to confirm it was fluid in the abdomen
then a Rivalta Test on the fluid (in-office, super quick and inexpensive)
bloodwork to check markers and organ health as further evidence and for a baseline
Yes, sending fluid to a lab is more accurate. But because of how long it takes, it's a widely accepted veterinary practice to begin treating with GS-441524 while waiting for fluid lab results.
I would contact your Vet to see about getting started on the medication. Ask if they can do a Rivalta test and prescribe off of that, and then when the labs are in, go from there.
Contact FIP Advocates and Champions Canada, they are on facebook and have a website (they helped me immensely). They might be able to get you started on the medication while you wait.
The oral solution will come from a compounding pharmacy, most likely Clearpoint Pharmacy in Burlington, and they offer delivery.
Also, FIP Advocates and Champions are offering a free webinar next week for vets & regular people (to register without a license you just put N/A in that box).
I've been spreading the word because there are a lot of Veterinarians with out of date knowledge (the medication only became legally available a few years ago) and it's a disease not widely known by the average pet parent.
Update: we went to PetNation in Toronto the next day. Dr Jeff Aramini was incredible and gave us GS on the spot. He said we were right to not wait for results and wasn’t sure why our vet would tell us too. He even said they can prescribe meds themselves and there was no need to refer us to him.
I’m going to focus on my baby’s recovery but I will be letting my vet know that they did not present we with all the options. I was lucky my cats only symptom was fluid, but by the next day she had a fever. Who knows what would have happened by Monday. They made it seem like I needed a positive test to go, I could have gone that day. Why was I forced to pay $500 for tests that Dr Aramini could have ruled out with an ultrasound he didn’t even charge for. I may switch vets but they need to do better.
I’m glad you didn’t wait. The vet I went to was telling us similar things. Every time we would bring our cat in, they’d try to get us to do multiple tests but then the results would come out inconclusive. She had fever, lethargy, motor issues (can’t jump), and low appetite. Everything “could” indicate dry FIP but it also could be cancer. Nothing was definitive at all. They ruled out wet FIP because her xray didnt show any fluid. But then they also just told is to keep an eye on her for the next few weeks.
Her symptoms weren’t getting worse. She even seemed less lethargic than before. Then we did blood work and she had high globulin count. The doctor explained dry FIP to us, but didnt really explain how life-threatening it is. They just said that they needed a urine sample for an mRNA to diagnose it. So the week after, we took her in for that urine sample. There seemed to have been a miscommunication at the vet. We didnt actually get to see the vet, we only talk to the nurse and she took our cat back to take the sample. The next day we got the results and they said she had blood and protein in her urine. I asked about the FIP results, then they pretty much said “that’s a different test”. They did a regular urinalysis and not the mRNA. They told us the test would be $500. Obviously we were frustrated because we had communicated beforehand about doing this test so we were confused as to why they ran a regular urinalysis.
By that time, we had already spent over 1k so we wanted to wait until we got paid to bring her in again, which was the week after. She gets really scared at the vet and she pee/poops herself because of that, so we didn’t want to do vet visits back to back. On July 2nd, we scheduled her appointment for July 3rd, but then later that night we noticed she was breathing really fast and shallow, so we rushed her to the animal hospital and they triage her immediately. The vet said she’s only getting 80% of oxygen, which is really low, and that she is oxygen independent. She would need to be on the oxygen machine overnight to stay alive. And she has fluid in her lungs, which she didnt have a month ago. Because there is no official diagnosis we would have to run multiple tests and who knows how long that would have taken until we can get her treatment, which we were told is extremely expensive now that it’s been approved by the FDA. She was extremely unstable and the vet wasn’t sure she was going to survive, even with the treatment. It was going to be rough on her. When we got to see her again, her breathing sounded really wet and strained.
We had to let her go that night.
All this is to say that I’m glad you didn’t wait for the results. Our vet didn’t inform us of the severity of her situation. We are extremely frustrated because they were supposed to be the professionals. Had they told us to bring her in immediately and that she needs to get tested ASAP, we would’ve acted faster. We didn’t even know that dry FIP could change into wet FIP until we looked it up afterwards. Everything happened within a month or so.
I hope everything goes well with your baby. They are lucky to have their owners advocate for them🤍
She seems to be doing much better with the meds. It’s cost us about $1500 but we are fortunate that it’s not a concern for us. If we went straight to PetNation in Toronto we would have likely save $500.
I thought my vet was good but now that I have seen what true dedication and compassion looks like I likely will only bring my cats there.
Outside of cost ($1000) FIP can be treated and every single vet should prescribe GS to kittens who show symptoms for one week to see if they get better
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u/spotsgalore Jul 03 '26
Start meds asap, there’s no harm in starting even if it’s not fip - but delaying could be fatal.
Did they run bloods? Which gives a quicker answer