Adoptable FeLV Kitten Lovely Miss Petunia
by Wendy S.
(Coral Springs, FL)
Hi, my name is Wendy and I am a Vet. tech at an animal hospital in the Ft. Lauderdale area. Petunia was brought in to our hospital recently by a young girl who had adopted her from someone who had posted an ad for kittens on Craigslist. She only had the kitten for a few hours when she realized the kitten was very sick. She brought her into our office. It was immediately obvious this baby was only hours from dying. She was flea infested and very cold, lying on her side, unable to move. Her gums were pure white and her PCV was only 7%! She needed a blood transfusion right away. The girl who owned her had no money and signed her over to us.
Because I work for a wonderful and caring Dr, we proceeded with trying to save Petunia life. Our fat and somewhat lazy house cat, Charlie, was happy (not!) to be a blood donor, and within 12 hours it was clear that we had a little fighter on our hands, all 1.1 lbs of her!!! Over the next several days she did a total turn around and regained her health. We estimated her to be about 5 weeks old. We waited about 2 weeks to test her for Felv. We used the Idexx Elisa test in the office. It was a strong positive. We then sent a IFA to Antech and it also came back positive. Not good. Of course in the mean time we have all fallen in love with this little cutie. She has a wonderful personality, a little love bug. Actually, she is being sort of annoying at the moment, seems she wants to help me type this and is stepping all over the keyboard! So any misspelled words are her doing!! I have bottlefed and raised countless orphaned kittens over the years and this is the first one that is positive for FELV.
We have tried every way we can think of to place her in a home, either someone with no cats, or a home that already has a cat with FELV. I work for VCA and we sent out a mass email to every office in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County to ask if they knew of someone who could help us place her in a forever home. No luck, yet. We are determined to find this beautiful baby girl a great home with someone who will understand her special needs. It is difficult to ask someone to open their heart to a pet and know that they could lose her in a few short years. Petunia is currently at home with me, living in my guest room. I have 3 adult cats so I am not able to keep her myself. I am unable to upload a picture at this time, but my little girl is a medium/long hair solid gray beauty.
She will be a georgeous cat one day! If you have any advice or can help me in anyway, it will be greatly appreciated. Thank you for allowing me to share Petunia’s story.
Wendy S.
Coral Springs, Florida
Read About Adoptable FeLV Cats
Adoptable FeLV Kitten Lovely Miss Petunia — Hi Wendy: Thanks for taking the time to share this story that touches my heart with your tenderness for this vulnerable kitten. A good and sad story that I read word for word. I think that all I can do it try and get the word out in my modest way to see if someone will respond. I have altered the title a bit to help Google find this page. I hope that is OK…Michael (PoC Admin)
Update: Message to Wendy. I have put an advert on the home page. If someone leaves a comment (see the link below) you can leave a comment in return. Thanks.
