As most of you on here know, I foster kittens for HAWs.  I have five 7 week old kittens at the moment and until Thursday I had their Mum.  However, we found out she has the FIV virus (not transmittable to humans and, though life threatening, not as serious in cats as in humans).  The short version of the story is below, on the next post I'll (try! and) post a photo of the kittens and the longer story but we need to raise £500 to pay for the kittens to have a specialised blood test to see whether they are clear of the virus, which they are likely to be but we can't, in all good conscience, rehome them until we know.  The address of the Golden Giving website is also on here. I would really appreciate it if a few people could donate even a couple of pounds towards the cost as the sooner we can test the kittens the sooner we can find them the right home, depending on whether they do or don't have the virus. This is the address of the donation page: http://www.goldengiving.com/fundraising/the-author-kittens And here is the shorter version of the whole story: I am fundraising for £500 needed to test my foster kittens, Bronte, Dickens, Auden, Shakespeare and Byron, to ensure that they do not have the life threatening FIV virus. Not quite the Ebola of the cat world and this is an unusual test to do on kittens.  However, these 5 and their exhausted mother were brought to HAWs after their “owner” abandoned them upon moving house. Sadly this lovable little lot have now become an example of why indiscriminate breeding of kittens for cash is wrong.. this was the mother’s 13th litter!  13!! Having got them all nearly over a stomach bug, the mum started to deteriorate, so I rushed her to the vet, she was put on a drip and blood tested. Sadly she turns out to be FIV+. By leaving the Mum to be mated by whatever tom cats were around she was exposed to this life threatening virus. She is recovering from her tummy bug but she can’t come back to her kittens and we will have to place her into an indoor adoptive home. It is rare for a mother cat to pass FIV onto kittens but not impossible. So these little bundles of fun will have to wait to be adopted until we have tested them for FIV- that’s not simple in kittens due to antibodies from Mum’s milk. The test we need to do (an FIV PCR blood test) will test for the live virus. But it’s not cheap - the cost is over £100 per kitten. This cost is after the wonderful vets James and Clare at PetCare Chiswick have waived their fees + discounted the costs of the lab. So I am raising money to test these 5 kittens so we can get them adopted knowing they are healthy, into loving homes as soon as possible. HAWs is a no-kill charity, meaning we never put an animal with a reasonable quality of life to sleep. Any funds donated in excess (she says hopefully!) of the £500 will go towards the vaccinating, chipping and other emergency treatment costs of the other animals in HAWs care. (Now to try and post a photo of the kittens!!).....

Entire Thread

Topic	Date Posted	Posted By
Fundraising for special blood tests for my foster kittens...	13/10/14 16:07:00	Louise Cole
Re:Fundraising for special blood tests for my foster kittens...	13/10/14 16:10:00	Louise Cole
Longer tale, with more details of the disease and the circumstances...	13/10/14 16:15:00	Louise Cole
Re:Longer tale, with more details of the disease and the circumstances...	13/10/14 16:23:00	Claire Moran
Re:Fundraising for special blood tests for my foster kittens...	13/10/14 21:41:00	Louise Cole
Re:Re:Fundraising for special blood tests for my foster kittens...	13/10/14 21:58:00	Claire Moran
Great news....	24/10/14 22:02:00	Louise Cole

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