We drove down to South Carolina to pick up two Chows on 5/21/99. As we have gotten several Chows from the Lenoir County Animal Shelter in NC, we decided to stop by and see their facility for the first time while in their area. While at the shelter, we saw three lovely kittens. Two of the kittens were in a separate room with a group of other kittens running around on the floor. They were very small, black and white Manxs. We told the two ladies we work with that we would take them and the other kitten when we got back from picking up the Chows in SC.

While we were in SC, the ladies took the three kittens to the vet to get all their shots and first worming done. Upon our return, they met us with the kittens so we could take the wee ones back with us.

We named Cindy for the store manager where we held our adoption days, Charlie for Charlie Chapman because of the marking above her mouth. Cindy and Charlie were very small for their supposed 8 weeks. Later it would become apparent to our vet that the kittens were not 8 weeks of age when he first saw them, but rather more like 4 weeks. That would explain much.

About a week after we'd picked up the kittens (5/30/99), Cindy had been running around and playing hard with the other kittens until suddenly she dropped, almost comatose. We rushed her in to the emergency vet clinic where they wanted to run some very expensive, extensive testing on her without any idea of what could possibly be wrong with her. They first ran a blood panel to check her levels. From what they saw, they wanted to keep her in the clinic overnight and run further tests on her since the panel didn't tell them much. We were on our way home from the clinic and hadn't gotten far when we decided to contact one of our vets to ask their opinion. We gave them all the information from the paperwork we had on the panel that had been run, and they indicated that there was really no need for her to be kept at the hospital, but that we could take her home and administer all she needed ourselves. So we returned to the clinic, paid the bill, and took Cindy home with us. Within hours, she was doing just fine as our vet had said she would.

Not long after (6/12/99), she once again became comatose, only this time she was barely breathing when we discovered her. So once again she was rushed to another emergency clinic. She stayed overnight at that clinic and they were able to save her. The next evening we were able to bring her back home. We took her to our regular vet a couple of days later and had a follow-up exam done. It was determined that she was not getting enough out of the food she was eating, so from that point on we made sure that we kept her quiet and fed her supplements to ensure her well being. When she went in for her next re-examination, she was doing well.

After all the close calls and expense, we decided that we would keep Cindy. She is now a very healthy, sweet, loving kitty, but because at one point she'd been exposed to another kitty that died of FIP (feline infectious peritonitis), we unfortunately can not bring another kitty into the household to be her companion.