Mario Needs Your Help

Catnap is home to four resident rescue cats and between 10-14 cats and kittens waiting for their forever homes. A few months ago, two of our cats Mario and Eddie developed an awful disease called FIP.

FIP is caused by a mutation of feline coronavirus (FCoV). This virus itself is very common, most cats are exposed to it during their lives and it usually causes few or no symptoms, but in a very small number of cats, a genetic predisposition causes the virus to mutate leading to a fatal systemic disease called FIP that progresses over weeks to months.

Until recently, FIP was a death sentence. However, a new treatment called Remdesivir has now become available and is having a lot of success curing cats of FIP.

The treatment is a 12 week course of daily injections followed by 12 weeks of observation, due to the small risk of relapse during this time. Recently, we completed treatment for Mario and Eddie and they moved into the observation phase. Eddie is doing well but unfortunately Mario relapsed.

We have started Mario on a second round of treatment at a higher dose and he is doing well but unfortunately this medication is very expensive and we already spent thousands on the first round. It's been a rough year and we just don't have the funds available to cover this.

If you have any questions about FIP or Remdesivir, please feel free to get in touch with us.