Sweet Dreams Vidalia
This week has been hard after an unexpected and sudden illness took our sweet, healthy 2-year-old cat. We are heartbroken, and it’s still surreal to think she’s gone. 💔 She went into respiratory failure Wednesday morning (6/4/25) around 2:45am while we were making the hour and 15 minute drive to see her at the vet specialist where she had been hospitalized Monday morning. We didn’t make it in time to say goodbye, and it hurts my heart so much to think she suffered at the end without us there to comfort her and to put her to rest. I am so sorry my sweet girl! 💔 💔
The attending vet’s best guess was either FIP or pneumonia, though we never heard her cough, sneeze, wheeze, or do anything to indicate she was sick with upper respiratory issues. We initially took her to the vet on Tuesday, May 27th because she had been itching so much over the 3-day holiday weekend – causing scabs around her neck from the itching. A steroid shot stopped that, but she still wasn’t eating very well and didn’t seem to look as though she was feeling better overall. We took her back to the vet Friday the 30th. Xrays were good. Bloodwork was overall good – no huge red flags. She had a fever and a urinalysis showed bacteria in her urine. UTI – problem solved, so they gave her an antibiotic shot that lasts about 7 days in their system.
Sunday morning, no improvement, and she wouldn’t eat anything. We took her to the emergency vet, and after reviewing Friday’s bloodwork with the bloodwork they ran, no major significant changes. The attending vet said she believed Vidalia was responding to the antibiotics. We declined having a feeding tube (surgically) put in and opted for IV fluids with nutrients to see if that would give her a boost to feel well enough to eat. She stayed overnight and was given an appetite stimulant. We picked her up the following morning, and she still had not ate anything. We were taking to our regular vet when they opened to continue IV fluids, but on the way home, we noticed she was breathing harder. She wasn’t doing this when Shish was holding her at the ER vet while we talked to the vet tech.
Our regular vet saw us immediately that morning, and upon examination, told us Vidalia had fluid in her lungs. We left immediately to make the hour and 15 minute drive to Birmingham to see a vet specialist. Her oxygen level was 88% so she was hospitalized in an oxygen cage to help her breathing. That was the last time we saw her alive. 😠We didn’t visit Tuesday but had planned to go see her first thing Wednesday morning when visiting hours opened. The last few nights of her life were spent in a cage in a strange place without us to comfort her.
Updates while she was at the specialist told us she had tested positive for a protein in her blood that comes specifically from damaged heart muscle. The first treatment plan for her involved heart medication, but she did not respond to those. After consulting 2 radiologists who both said not to rule out pneumonia, they switched her treatment plan Tuesday afternoon and started IV antibiotics. She had 2 doses in her system at the time she crashed, so apparently she wasn’t responding to those either. A friend of mine that does non-profit cat rescue highly suspects FIP – a mutation of the feline coronavirus that is often fatal once the mutation happens. The attending vet said a virus would explain why she did not respond to anything they tried, but there were some inconsistencies with her and regular FIP-positive cats. We were told by 2 of the 3 attending vets from the specialist facility that she was a unique case.
We will never know for sure what took our sweet little girl from us. From 2022 up until her passing, we have lost 4 other cats. Vidalia was different and harder on us. Our other 4 ranged in age from 15-18 years old and had health issues leading up to their passing. While it’s never easy regardless of what takes them from us, the suddenness of Vidalia’s passing makes it much harder to come to terms with. We were also there for the other 4 in their final moments. Vidalia is the only one that has spared us that choice. 😢
It’s been hard for me to focus on doing much of anything the rest of this week. A silly part of me feels that if I try to stop thinking about it so much and continue with life as normal, it will be as if she never existed. I know that’s not logical, and time will eventually heal the hole she left in my heart.
Since we aren’t 100% sure what caused things to escalate like they did for Vidalia, we have been watching our remaining 4 cats like hawks, counting sleeping respiratory rates to make sure they don’t have the slightest increase in breathing rates. The anxiety caused by worrying that another cat could get sick makes me feel like I can’t breathe at times. I hope whatever took Vidalia isn’t contagious because I can’t bear the thought of going through all of this again so soon. It would probably break me. Vidalia is the 3rd cat we’ve lost in an 8-month period. She didn’t deserve this. 😢
I can’t believe our sweet, beautiful girl is gone! 😠I will miss Vidalia cuddles!
Our spicy little onion, Vidalia. Named after the onion because of her coloring and because Shish rescued her in the Purple Onion (restaurant) drive-thru on July 11, 2023.
I just hope she knows how much we loved her and how truly sorry we are that we couldn’t save her and be there for her. 💔