Help save Siva's life! english version

Kitten SIVA was diagnosed with a liver shunt which requires an urgent operation to save her life.

Donations can be made through GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/5b125159

Everyone who knows me or has visited Sunville Alpacas knows that besides alpacas, I also adore cats. Beginning of July, we adopted a 3 week old kitten. Unfortunately we recently found out that she's got a congenital defect of the liver, a liver shunt which will cause her to die if we don't  perform a (very expensive) operation. Siva's full story can be found here below.

During the past year, we already had lots of expenses due to our recent move and the creation of our alpaca paradise. Which we are still working on by the way, extensions are planned and we keep on improving our infrastructure in order to provide our visitors with the best alpaca experience possible. The cost of Siva's operation is is therefor very inconvenient. Nor for a single moment we had doubts about the operation, our love for animals is just too big to let her go already, this early in her life, but a little financial help from outside would be very welcome. Sunnville Alpacas now has 1777 Facebook followers and 1021 on Instagram. If everyone of them would just donate 1 euro, we would have collected the total amount already. Just 1 euro….

Would you be willing to help us and Siva?

All my love, Inge

This is Siva's story:  

As a 3 week old kitten, Siva was found all alone. Mother nor siblings were nowhere to be seen… The people who found her just ‘dumped’ her at our vet’s.

Shortly afterwards, I visited our vet with one of our other cats. I told them we lost our beloved Garfield just a month before. He was 13 years old and got run over by a car, sadly enough. And yes, we were looking for a new cat to replace him, preferably the same sweet character as our Garfield, affectionate, a lap cat… Because our other cats just aren’t like that.

‘What a coincidence’ the vet said, ‘someone just brought in a 3 week old kitten. Would you mind taking care of her, even if it’s only temporarily? We would have to take her to the animal shelter otherwise, we are not able to care for her here, that’s simply not an option. She’s got cat flu and we’re afraid she won’t make it in the shelter. If, after a few weeks, you decide you don’t want to keep her, that’s okay, we will help you look for another home for her.’

You can already guess, after a short discussion at home, it was decided. The little kitten could come to our place, I would take care of her and we’d see what happened.

The first weeks were intense: giving her bottles of kitten milk because she wouldn’t take in solid food, rinsing and applying ointment to her eyes 3 times a day because of the cat flu, daily weighing…. She was not even 400g when we first got her.

But all went well and slowly this little fluffy witch conquered our hearts! A witch indeed! She might look super cute with her long-haired fur coat, curly whiskers and bushy tail but there’s a fierce character hidden inside! She’s very strong willed and likes to terrorise us often. But she’s also super sweet. Every night, she crawls onto my lap. When I’m at my desk, she lies with me. She’s absolutely not afraid of water and just sits next to the shower when we’re in it,  catching water drops.  She follows me everywhere I go and I take her outside on a leash.

But very slowly it started to go wrong. At first, after we had her for a few weeks, there was the diarrea. The vet advised to quit on the kitten milk, it was time for solid food. However, she was not very keen on it and she ate very little. After a while, I started noticing she felt really bad after her meals. Drooling, lethargic… But overnight, after a night of no food intake, she was looking great again. And this behavior started to repeat itself over and over again.

Again, the vet advised us to stop with the kitten food and give her adult cat food. Because kitten food is high calorie and if she’s very sensitive, it could make her sick. This went well for a week or so and then the same symptoms started to appear and it got even worse. After every meal she got so sick, she was huddled and shaking her little head, hiding in the most impossible places. At times we couldn’t find her anywhere, we were very worried until we learned her hiding places.

Normal active episodes became shorter and shorter and also less active. She didn’t play much and didn’t follow me around any longer… So we contacted the vet once more and she advised us to have her checked at the veterinary clinic. She feared something serious.

It appeared she was right. After physical and blood examination she was diagnosed with a congenital defect of the liver, a liver shunt. This means her blood bypasses the liver and, without being properly detoxified, leads directly to the heart. The presence of elevated toxin levels in the uncleansed circulating blood can lead to a wide array of serious and in some cases life-threatening conditions. The head shaking for example is a neurological effect of the toxins in her brain.  

A tough diagnosis but the good news is it can be repaired with an operation.

The bad news however is that this operation is very very expensive. Additionally, a CT-scan has to be performed in advance, to determine exactly which blood vessel is affected. Only after the CT-scan they will be able to operate on her, in the specialised veterinary clinic.

CT-scans are expensive! The cost will be around 1500 euros.

The operation itself and admission to the clinic will cost an additional 1000 euros.

So 2500 euros in total….an enormous amount of money!

Would you please be willing to help us save Siva?

❤