![]() “What we’re helping people do is understand an unregulated treatment,” Kintz said. ![]() I joined with Ben’s dormant account because I had deleted my own years prior, killed under the name of self-care.įIP Warriors has a team of moderators who handle the requests for people who want to join, prioritizing anyone whose cat needs immediate care and turning away anyone looking to join simply for information. The Facebook group is riddled with rules: don’t name the medications, don’t say too much, someone will be in touch. She wrote down the name of a Facebook group on a piece of scratch paper: FIP Warriors. She couldn’t help us, but she knew who could. Capaldo broke down the realities for us: in the United States there are no readily available drugs to treat FIP in cats. Our vet, Christine Capaldo, could not hide her grief for us. Now on its fifth iteration, FIP Warriors is a community of over 42,000 people working together to do just that.Īt the vet, Snoots curled into my arms, a ball of heat, his belly distended. In honor of Henry, and with Fiona by her side, Kintz founded the Facebook group FIP Warriors, a place where other cat parents like herself “could find a supportive community of people that wanted to try to save their cats”. ![]() Kintz had a fire, and she took it to Facebook. There had been hope where there had once only been death. The family got an extra year full of playtime and cuddles with him. Through WeChat, translation apps and overnight FedEx deliveries, Kintz found herself with a handful of unmarked vials, and Henry and Fiona found themselves with a chance.įiona made a full recovery, but over the next year Henry slowly built up a resistance to the injections before succumbing to complications. Two other women side-chatted Kintz: the drug worked, and they would help her get it. There was some chatter in the group about a black market drug out of China, but the administrators of the group didn’t support it. In Kintz’s research, she found an online support group for people trying to save their cats. “At that point, my vet and probably 99% of vets on the planet thought FIP was 100% fatal,” Kintz said. Kintz took her kittens to the vet, and when Henry developed ataxia (a loss of balance), the vet diagnosed both kittens with feline infectious peritonitis – FIP. But soon, something was off, and Kintz could see it: the lethargy, the behavior changes, the eerie warning of the third eyelid showing – the same things that were haunting me and my husband, Ben, when we looked at Snoots. ![]() Robin Kintz and her husband had adopted two kittens, siblings they named Fiona and Henry. Years earlier, in December of 2018, someone across the country had been shivering in the same fear. “Hello?” I was walking out into the cold Colorado air. Photograph: Kelton WrightĪ year and a half later, I was at a coffee shop with Alana, now a friend, when the vet called. ![]()
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