Owner With Cat Given 1 Week To Live Wakes Up to Shocking Scene

A woman in Georgia has been shocked that her “dying” cat is still alive, two weeks after being told the feline had “a week at most to live.”

Poppy, a 3.5-year-old domestic shorthair cat, was seen playing with a toy “like nothing was happening” in a TikTok video shared on March 13 by her owner Sydney Conto (@poopypoppycat).

Conto, a 24-year-old horse trainer, consignor and photographer based in Athens, told Newsweek that Poppy recently tested positive for the feline leukemia virus (FeLV) and anemia (a low red blood cell count), a life-threatening condition.

A message overlaid on the video reads: “Waking up at 2am to the cat who was given a week to live playing with her toy, a week after the prognosis.” Conto said this clip was captured on March 10 in the apartment that she shares with her fiancé.

The footage shows Poppy curled up on the floor appearing to bury her head in a pile of toys. The cat looks up and stares at the camera before the clip ends.

Conto said: “I thought it was a little funny to myself that she was told she was supposed to be dying, but in front of me she was playing like nothing was happening.”

The cat owner said she took Poppy to the doctor’s today, March 18, for the first time since being given a prognosis of a week to live on March 4. Her veterinarian was “very shocked and excited to tell me that her RBC (red blood cell count) has come back up a bit, and she is starting on medication for her anemia as well,” Conto said.

What Is the Feline Leukemia Virus?

FeLV is a virus that causes leukemia (a cancer of the white blood cells). In addition to leukemia, it can cause a variety of conditions, such as abortion, severe enteritis (intestinal inflammation), neurological disease, and ocular (eye) disease, explains an article for VCA, the animal hospital chain, by veterinarians Krista Williams, Rania Gollakner and Ernest Ward.

Affecting between 2 to 3 percent of all cats in the United States and Canada, FeLV is one of the most common infectious diseases in cats, according to the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University.

The number of felines infected varies depending on the geographical location, environment, and the lifestyle of the cat. “Infection is more common in colonies of cats where there is close contact between individuals,” notes the VCA article.

FeLV-related disease is “usually fatal,” with studies showing that “80-90 percent of FeLV-infected cats will die within three to four years of initial diagnosis,” the veterinarians said in the VCA article.

While infection rates are significantly higher (up to 30 percent) in cats that are ill or otherwise at high risk, “the prevalence of FeLV in cats has decreased significantly in the past 25 years since the development of an effective vaccine and accurate testing procedures,” says Cornell University.

‘A Week at Most To Live’

Conto told Newsweek that Poppy was first found when she was only a few weeks old in a Chick-fil-A, drive-thru restaurant. She brought her home, where she bottle-fed and raised her.

The feline first started showing signs of being ill on February 20. When she was taken to a veterinarian’s office outside of her home state on February 22, “it was obvious she was declining rather than improving” overnight. She was initially diagnosed as being diabetic by the first veterinarian she saw after “they only did a glucose read,” Conto said.

She recalled: “They didn’t provide me with much instruction, nor information, so as soon as I returned home from out of state, I returned to my personal vet and they did a full bloodwork exam and body exam.”

This resulted in Poppy being immediately sent to a hospital for a blood transfusion. Both veterinary practices ran blood tests and the results came back as positive for FeLV and anemia. On March 4, Poppy was given a prognosis of “a week at most to live,” after being in and out of the veterinarians for the previous week and half.

She noted: “All of this did come as a surprise, as she had not been showing any signs up until the first initial days of her getting ill. She was very healthy, and up until then, had not been a concern to the vets, considering she is a small cat, topping out at 4.5 pounds when healthy.”

The veterinarians provided Poppy with prednisolone (a steroid medication to help reduce inflammation) on March 15, after Conto “reached out to them about my concerns with her still being with us, and how I wanted to keep trying, against their beliefs of her making it as long as she did,” she added.

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