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Bailey's Story
In October of 1995 while I worked at Walmart Bailey walked into my life. After losing 3 of our 5 furkids in a 15 month period to FeLV, we had decided we would not put ourselves in that situation again. Well Bailey and a higher power had other ideas.
Bailey was a stray that walked into Walmart and I was elected to bring him back outside, the second I picked him up to carry him back out he went limp, totally relaxed and snuggled his head under my chin ... I was his. I took my break and took him home. You can imagine my devastation when I took him to the vet to get tested and he tested positive, we had three furkids at that time. I had educated myself on FeLV because the vets I had at the time we lost our 3 were not up on the latest info, what little there was. I knew in my heart I was keeping Bailey even though officailly as far as hubby was concerned I was trying to find him a good home. He was isolated from my others in a bedroom of his own. All 3 vets I took Bailey too told me to euthanise him, told me that he would be dead in 3 months, as did a 4th
I had called and talked to. Thank God I had educated myself and knew better.
One day in February I came home from work and couldn't find my Joey (my guys were indoor only), within a few minutes of coming home, my little stinker Joey came out of Bailey's room, he had been sneaking under the door all along and playing with him while I was at work! Well hubby and I talked about it and since all of our other furkids were vaccinated and had already been exposed to Bailey through Joey we decided to keep him and leave it in a higher powers hands. Bailey officially became part of the family in February of 96.
Bailey has been healthy all his life until about the end of 2004 when he started having mouth problems, he was losing weight and his gums we red and inflamed, and his lymph nodes were inflamed, this condition is called stomatitis. We tried azithromyacin, we tried acupuncture, we tried herbal remedies, all helped but none completely cleared it up. After 6 months of trying everything we could think of we decided to pull most of his teeth, we left the canines and insisors, the tiny teeth in between them.
This seemed to resolve his stomatitis. I also put him on a home made raw diet which he loved, he put on 2 pounds in just a few months. Things were good.
In December of 2005 I noticed Bailey was not eating as good and looked like he may be losing weight again. We did blood work and found he was anemic, his HCT was 21. It went down to 19 in a short time and we decided to try epogen, Bailey still was not eating good and was sleeping more. While on the epogen it took 3 weeks for his HCT to start rising and it got as low as 15%. We also decided to do a bone marrow aspirate to find out what was causing the anemia. It came back with a diagnosis of preleukemic Myloid Dysplastic, in my understanding abnormal possibly pre-cancerous cells were present. I had a feeding tube put in at this time also because Bailey had stopped eating 2 weeks prior and syringe feeding was not working, he hated it and was terrified of it. After 5, almost 6 weeks of getting epogen, prednislone, vitamin B complex and pet tinic his anemia resolved and his HCT was at 40%, normal. He was however still very lethargic and there was muscle wasting going on. He exhibited pain when his kidney was palpated but an xray, ultra sound, and a urinalysis all showed his kidney's to be normal.
Finally on May 5th 2006 I decided to do the exploratory surgery to find out what was going on inside as his latest xray showed that his intestines didn't look right.
They had looked fine in a previous xray just 2 months before.
The next day, the day of surgery Bailey was not doing well at all, he had taken a bad turn late the night before. His blood wasn't clotting and his temeperature was low at 96. We did IV fluids, gave him a transfusion but he just kept getting worse. My vet truthfully told me she thought Bailey was leaving us on his own and I did too. I took him home and he passed an hour later, with both of us right there by his side. His HCT was still normal at 32.7% when he passed.
We did a necropsy both for us to know what took our Bailey and so our vet would hopefully be able to help another FeLV+ or non positive kitty in the future that may have confusing, unclear symptoms. It showed his kidney's were normal, he did however have an inflamed pancreas, and upon further investigation of his pancreas, it was discovered he had pancreatic cancer.
Because of Bailey many positive kitties have been saved, 
he is my inspiration for this website and another I am proud to have started. It is a site where anyone who finds themselves with a positive that they simply can't for whatever reason keep can post the kitty up for adoption. The ONLY rule I do enforce is that they can not post the kitty as free. This is for the safety of the cats, there are too many crazy people who look for free animals to exploit in the most horrible ways. You can find this resource here. I also belong to a group made up of people who are owned by FeLV+ kitties, we also have some FIV kitty people and one or two who have dealt with FIP. I have belonged to this group for 7 or 8 years or so. There is a wealth of information here, both from all the combined knowledge of each vet used by individuals and from experience, lots of experiance. If you find yourself with a positive kitty in your care this is the place to check out, whether for support or knowledge, I can't speak highly enough of this group.
My sweet boy had 11 very good years that he would have not had if I had listened to the 4 vets back in 1995. Because of Bailey coming into my life I know more about FeLV than I ever wanted to know and have directly and indirectly helped save many kitties whose people were told the same thing as me, "Your cat is positive for FeLV, you should euthanise them". Thank you Bailey for being in my life ... we miss you so much
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Disclaimer * This site and site owner are not responsible for some of the information posted here. All articles are the responsibility of their author. This site is to be used for informational purposes only and has no medical credentials. All posts are written by authors and or owners regarding their own experiences or research pertaining to FeLV, FIV or FIP. Please do your own research and consult your vet before trying anything with your cat. Credit is given to writers where possible, please inform us of a credit not given or if we have an incorrect one.
This site is dedicated to Bailey, my positive and inspiration to keep helping positive cats in need.