Will I end up spending $$$ and still end up with a dead cat?

parilous — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:44:32 -0800

[cat filter] Can anyone give me a story in which their cat started sneezing blood but stayed healthy? After losing our 12-year old cat four months ago (kidney failure; vet bill = $1200) and niece's 3-year old cat last month (lymphoma caused pleural effusion; vet bill = $2K), we swore off another pet for financial reasons. Having been a cat owner for 15 years, loneliness got the better of me and I brought home an 8-month old cat from the animal control shelter 10 days ago. (In retrospect, this was my first bad decision.)

His medical history was spotty, though he was tested for FeLV and given a rabies shot (bad decision #2; should have required more proof of vaccinations, etc). He developed a cold three days after bringing him home, starting as a runny left eye, then fully manifested in congestion and sneezing. At his checkup, the vet said that he was healthy and that a cold was typical for a shelter animal. He was prescribed 1ml of Clavamox orally, 2x/ daily. We are almost a week into that treatment.

His appetite has been fine and he drinks lots of water. He's active and playful and other than the congestion, he's seemingly healthy.

This morning, he sneezed blood. Twice. A Google search returned dozens of stories of cats who had sneezed blood and resulted in a diagnosis of cancer or related illness that was terminal after dozens of expensive diagnostic tests and treatment attempts.

We honestly (honestly!) can't afford any more major vet bills (we have tenuous jobs, live in a crappy economy, and are raising my sister's kid) and probably should have never brought home another pet until we had a vet budget established (bad decision #3).

However, here we are, and the crux of the question is this: I'm feeling quite pessimistic about his chances given what I've read so far, so I cannot justify spending the money for diagnosis and treatment if the end result is a dead cat (though I'm not sure what my next steps would be).

Therefore, I'm hoping to get stories of cats who had similar problems but it turned out to be something simple and treatable to give me hope that it's worth a trip to the vet. Feel free to reprimand me for adopting an animal without having financial ability for care, though it may be ineffective in making me feel worse than I already do.

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Will I end up spending $$$ and still end up with a dead cat?