Hi, my name is Marnie and together with my family we are raising funds for our recently added kitten, Arwyn. For around 10 years or more, I have wanted to add a Sphynx to my household. Finally, this year, I not only had the funds but the willingness of my household to add a cute naked kitten, full of wrinkles and love to our growing family. It was a brand new experience for all of us to buy from a breeder as we all felt very strongly about taking in animals that needed homes. The difficulty of finding abandoned Sphynx cats lead to looking into breeders. After some research and finding breeders with newer litters we found some that we just fell in love with. There was some miscommunication and fear of being scammed that lead to the happy accident of not only adding 1 but 3 new furless babies to our home. One by one, they were picked up or delivered to our home. It was love at first sight for all of them. There was our black beauty, Freya, our gray and white elf girl, Arwyn and last but not least our handsome red tabby boy, Castiel. About a week after completing our trio, we noticed our elf girl's, Arwyn, left eye swelling and having discharge. We immediately got some over the counter medicine to give some relief till we were able to schedule a vet appointment. If only we knew what was coming... After a little more than 12 hours her eye had completely swollen shut and panicked calls to our vet ensued. Getting her in within 2 days of symptoms. We got her started on eye gel and oral antibiotics and were told to let them know if anything changed. Well, that's when the upper respiratory symptoms started. Another frantic call to the vet and there we were in the emergency vet anxious and awaiting news with our sweet girl in the ICU due to fears of her breathing. After 10 hours of waiting we were able to take her home but had no new answers the other eye now swelling quickly and we were awaiting test results. A couple days later, she stopped eating and again we ended up in the emergency vet and decided that her staying gave her the best chance to get better. As hard as it was to not bring our sweet girl home we had to let the professionals handle it. She had a feeding tube placed to give her nutrition, an IV to give her hydration, antibiotic injections to give her a boost, and a bunch of other medications to help her upper respiratory symptoms and help her to stay comfortable. After one night, our brave strong girl my made huge improvements and continued to do so over the next 3 days. We also figured out the causes of her being so sick. She has feline herpes virus and mycoplasma. Getting hit with both bacterial and viral caused it to be so extreme. She got released from the hospital on 3/17 (luck of the Irish haha). We were able to get her straight to the opthalmologist that day to get an answer to the hardest question we had besides what was causing this...if we treated quickly enough to save her eyesight. The doctor suspected that she was exposed to the mycoplasma as a kitten and then was brought in contact with the herpes virus either through travel or somewhere and double whammy, super sick baby girl. The best news of all, the opthalmologist said that there was a very low chance she would lose her vision. Man, did we all cry hearing that. For weeks, we were trying to come to terms with her being our blind baby and thinking of accomodations to make sure she would still thrive. The doctor also told us that we were the reason her eyes could be saved. More tears. After weeks of blaming ourselves for not acting fast enough or treating hard enough we were able to be validated in our ability to be great pet parents. The doctor is optimistic about continuing aggressively treating her to clear the ulcers that developed on her eyes. Luckily, none on her corneas or eating at her eye and whatever the medicine doesn't get rid of she can clear up in a surgery. We are asking for your help to make up for the financial toll all the medications, vet visits, emergency vet visits, hospitalization, and possible future procedure(s) took on us. I am grateful that we had savings for a down payment available but sadly they have been depleted. It is a difficult thing to ask for assistance after doing what was right and whatever we could to keep our baby thriving and able to see. We ask for anything anyone is able to do to assist our family and our sweet babies. We have a dream of being able to give everyone, fur baby, naked baby, or human baby a nice home to call our own and to continue down the road of treating our recovering little elf girl and her siblings and possible procedure in the future. All of our thanks will be sent your way, even if just $1 is all you can spare. Please share this sweet girls story and her sweet face with wide eyes that we hope to see again ❤️😻
