Hi Dianne, sorry you had to find us, but I am glad you did! Yes, you do need to find a more sympathetic vet! First off, JUST doing a FELV test is NOT really good enough to make such a drastic decision on. Your vet needs to pull a CBC (that's a full blood testing panel), or at least check her hemocrit (that's the amount of iron in the blood) and see if she's anemic. Anemia is the #1 cause of FELV+ cats feeling under the weather, and VERY OFTEN, it is totally treatable. If her hemocrit comes back below 10, you should do a blood transfusion. You should also have your vet test for Hemobartonella if she is anemic, as that is a major CURABLE cause of anemia in cats.
You may also want to consider a course of Immunoregulin, and start her on oral Interferon, as an immune booster. You can find the info about those treatments on our treatment webpage. On your own, you can go ahead and start her on vitamin C supplements, and feed the VERY BEST food you can afford. Wellness, Innova, Chicken Soup, and California Natural are all very good cat food brands. The Whiskers brand cat milk is OK, but they do make BETTER liquid diets for cats, try Catsure, Formula V, Clinicare, or Rebound brands: https://secure.petag.com/products_details.asp?ItemID=1666&CategoryID=2&SubCategoryID=13 http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Product/Prod_Display.cfm?pcatid=14075&N=2002+113617 http://www.allivet.com/Rebound-Feline-Liquid-Diet-p/12070.htm http://www.southernagriculture.com/southag/product.asp?dept_id=3028&pf_id=PAAAAABBFKMPKIBH Your vet can also prescribe easy to digest and easy to mix with liquid canned food, called Prescription A/D. You can blend this with one of the liquid cat food diets, and syringe feed it to her using an oral syringe: http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=3393&Ntt=feeding%20syringe&Ntk=All&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Np=1&N=2002&Nty=1 Here's a few sites on WHY and HOW to syringe feed: http://www.assistfeed.com/FelineAnorexia.htm http://www.felinecrf.org/persuading_cat_to_eat.htm Phaewryn PLEASE SAVE WHITEY: http://ucat.us/Whitey.html Please adopt a cat from Little Cheetah Cat Rescue!!! http://ucat.us/adopt.html Low cost Spay&Neuter services in VT, and Emergency Financial Assistance for cat owners: http://ucat.us/VermontLowCost.html Special Needs Cat Resources: http://ucat.us/domesticcatlinks.html
