[Felvtalk] 4 month old kitten with Feline Leukemia

[Katherine K.]

Kathleen,

I have used LTCI on my 13 year old cat. He was diagnosed with FeLV 2 years
ago and got 3 injections in the first month, and then has gotten an
injection once per month after that. I think it helped him initially come
back from being very ill when first diagnosed (that plus daily syringe
feeding for a month, until he regained his appetite). If you are OK with
spending $50 per shot it might be worth a try. I have not tried it on
younger cats or kittens. Don't know about Canada, but in the US my vet
orders the LTCI in packs of 3 or 10 for me, and I learned to give the
injections to him at home. It needs to stay refrigerated so there's usually
a shipping charge for an ice pack.

If he can fight through the URI, good quality food, TLC and a low stress
environment will be good for your little Oreo. If you have not tried
syringe feeding (aka assist feeding), ask your vet for a handful of 10mL
syringes and look up how-to videos on YouTube for pointers. (I think my vet
once gave my cat a dose of Valium or something similar to help jumpstart
his appetite, but that was years before he was FeLV and just had a regular
URI.) Thank you for taking care of him. Sometimes we do everything we can
but the virus is just too much for the younger ones' developing systems to
handle. In those cases just keeping them comfortable and loved is the best
you can do. Enjoy the happy moments you have with Oreo.

Katherine

On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 12:18 AM, Sally Dwyer <sallyldwyer at yahoo.ca> wrote:

> Hi Kathleen,
>
> I have used LTCI and I live in Hamilton, Ontario.  My cat was IFA positive
> for FeLV (meaning persistently infected as the virus was in bone marrow)
> and he went negative a few months after starting the LTCI, so in my
> opinion, it is definitely worth a shot for your little Oreo.  Your vet can
> call Terry Beardsley at LTCI and he will help explain the paper work.
> Should only take a week for Health Canada to make an exception.  Otherwise
> LTCI can be shipped to a vet in the states virtually overnight.  Hope this
> helps and best of luck with your little guy.  just curious, where in Canada
> are you from?
>
> Sally
>
>
>
>   On Sunday, June 28, 2015 10:13 AM, KATHLEEN BUSO <kngbuso at shaw.ca>
> wrote:
>
>
> Hi, I am looking for advice about our little Oreo. We adopted him at 9
> weeks from a rescue group. His mom was a stray who was ill when she had her
> kittens. The kittens were eventually bottle fed and had a rough start in
> life, but then seemed to recover and were adopted out. About two weeks ago,
> our Oreo started to show signs of illness. His inner third eyelid came out,
> and then he started running a fever. I took him to the Rescue's vet, and
> she gave me antibiotics and some metacam to bring down the fever. She said
> the mom had been tested for a bunch of viruses, including feline leukemia
> and came back negative, so there was no reason to test Oreo. A week later,
> he was worse so I took him to another vet and she tested him and told me he
> tested positive for feline leukemia. Up until yesterday, he seemed to still
> have a fairly good appetite but was sleeping a lot and showing symptoms of
> upper respiratory infection. Today he is uninterested in food and seems
> much worse. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions that would help,
> or should I just accept that there's nothing that can be done? We were
> considering trying the LCTI drug but we live in Canada so we would have to
> travel into the States to get it. It would be about a 3.5 hour drive there
> and would be hard on Oreo, as he hates the car. Has anyone used LCTI and
> had any success with it? Is there anything else I can do for Oreo now, to
> help him feel better, like steroids? Any suggestions or advice would be
> very much appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Kathleen
>
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