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Recovered cat Max: rampage of the immune cells
Photo:
Katja Weber
The cat Max was more dead than alive when his owner Katja Weber hurried with him to a Cologne animal clinic in early 2019.
It was the fifth practice in which she sought help for her darling.
He had been limp and apathetic for two weeks and had a high fever.
Now his stomach was also badly swollen and the circulation threatened to fail.
The vet drained around half a liter of fluid from the body of the six-kilo male cat with a puncture.
But owner Weber already knew that this would only help in the short term.
Max suffered from feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), arguably the most feared disease among cat lovers.
FIP is almost always a death sentence.
Veterinarians advise that affected animals be euthanized quickly;
the cats usually die within ten days of diagnosis anyway.
"I'll never forget the pitying look the doctor gave me when she said this," says Weber.
Around the same time, Susanne Künnecke also noticed that something was wrong with her young cats Pepper and Leeloo.
"Pepper looked like he'd swallowed a handball," she recalls.
Shortly afterwards, Leeloo also felt bad.
Both had FIP.
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