Hi Teresa,
My cat was diagnosed with felv when he was 2 yrs old, he is now 7 1/2. It
was such a shock at the time as I have had so many cats and this was the
first time I had ever heard of felv.
He was put on 5 mg of Prednisone a day and is still going strong and I do
mean strong. The vet began lowering the dose after the first year and
slowly continued. We now give him 2.5 every other day and have been doing
so for about 2 yrs now. We did try to take him off of it completely, but
after about 3 months we noticed he was a bit hangy so we started it back up
again and if you could see him he is a chunk and so healthy.
It's so hard to know we share this world with people that dump or throw
little beating hearts away like garbage. God Bless people like you Teresa.
From: Teresa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: felvtalk@felineleukemia.org
To: felvtalk@felineleukemia.org
Subject: Prednisone?
Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 10:35:48 -0500
I recently have acquired several felv+ cats, the one who is sick at the
moment is a pathetic case who was dropped off on the highway "near" a farm,
a very popular dumping spot I've been monitoring for the past few years.
Many or most of them end up at home with me if they seem not to be faring
well at the farm. Anyway, turns out this poor thing is totally blind as
well as felv+. I mean he sees NOTHING. I've had many cats who were "legally
blind" but this one doesn't even react to bright light. He was dumped, in
winter no less, along a highway roaring with 18 wheelers night and day. How
this critter ever lived this long, he's probably 4-5 years old, is totally
beyond me.
Well I did not mean to get harping that, I'll never get off it. It just
makes me sick to my stomach. Timmy is the most loving, slobbering,
kissable, hugable, sweet thing to come along for a long time. But I have to
guide him to his food dish and this is inside his cage. I mean, how has he
LIVED? I suspect whoever dropped him didn't realize he was blind. Cats can
sure fool you. But then again, seems it would be hard for him to fool
anyone when he has to be shown his food dish. My understanding is that this
farm only "feeds" cats that are dumped off "dog food and cow milk", so the
daughter told me a couple years ago. And the night I picked him up, Timmy's
stomach was making very loud growling noises for several hours, and seemed
distended. That all went away in a day or so and I attributed it to
drinking milk
Ok, what I was checking the list for was, some time ago I thought I saw
some info on prednisone use in felv+ cats but I don't find it now. (Also
several of the links from the felv site do not work at the moment,
including the Cornell info one.) I haven't been giving Timmy pred, or
anything solely for his felv, but he's gotten this upper respiratory that
is going through my flock and got real sick with it and is now improving
with baytril spiked with some dexamethasone just to allow him to breathe
better etc. But I understood that pred can be beneficial in felv. Actually
I think I snatched him from the jaws of death this time, my fingers are
still crossed. Another felv+, Inky, that I picked up at the same time, just
died last night from this virus, in spite of the most intensive treatments
we could give him.
I do have a wonderful vet. But of course I still like to double check up to
put into context, what he might be saying about this subject or others. But
he has won my confidence over the past 5 years but again, YOU GUYS are the
real experts.
So can anyone tell me where the pred info is or any thoughts on building
Timmy up for future battles? I've been sort of subconsciously switching him
over to people food, first as a means of enticing him to eat but the more
I've been thinking about this pet food adulteration situation, the more it
seems to answer my questions for such a long time now, about why kidney
failure seems to be such a big issue with cats these days. What have we
been feeding our cats lately? I guess we have no way of really knowing. At
least people food is usually more recognizable, you can SEE a piece of meat
or a carrot. With cat food, who knows? And now they say even fish meal is
contaminated, and that seems to be used in almost all cat foods. He loved
chicken noodle soup (low salt kind) and went nuts for some chicken ala king
awhile ago, also a little tuna. Oh yes, he is very very hard to pill! He
will crouch in the far part of his big cage where I can't reach him and
hold it against me for a few days if I even try it. I try to stick to
injectible baytril. So it would seem giving a lot of vitamins and
supplements would be out.
Thanks for listening.
_________________________________________________________________
Windows Live Hotmail is the next generation of MSN Hotmail. Its fast,
simple, and safer than ever and best of all its still free. Try it today!
www.newhotmail.ca?icid=WLHMENCA146