Dear Friends, many thanks for all your good thoughts and prayers for Priscilla. She came down from her shelf when I sat down at the computer and jumped up on my lap, where she is resting and purring as I write.

She's doing about the same.. not much interested in food on her own, though she munches on the kibble on and off. I syringe-feed her 3 times a day and give her fluids twice a day. I just gave her her 4th Epogen injection today. she gets it every three days.

Epogen is a medication that stimulates red blood cell production when the body isn't creating enough on its own. Priscilla had gotten very anemic, with a hematocrit (measure of red blood cells) down to about 11.. then it came up a bit with all the things we were doing and leveled off at 15 for a while.. but then it was back down to 13.5 at last week's blood test. That's when we started the Epogen. When she was checked again on Wednesday (14th) it had gone up to about 18, so the stuff is definitely working.

I think the normal hematocrit for a cat is something like between 24 and 45.

The trouble with Epogen is that it is synthesized from HUMAN rather than feline DNA (a version specifically for cats has not been developed), and at some point the species difference could kick in and render it ineffective.

Thank you, Taccoa (Elmer says hi!) and family, Gary, Sandra, Kalei, KAK, and Medusa..

Love,
Priscilla and Pat