Cats aids/FIV

[Dontsweatthelittlestuff]

My lovely 18 month old boy went missing. He was gone for around 8 weeks and had almost given up hope of him returning when we received a call from a cat shelter about 35 miles away that he had been found but was in a pretty poor state.
Picked him up and took him straight to our vet. He has a broken front paw and a broken tail, some infections, anaemia and the results of his blood works show he has cat aids as well.
The tail must be amputated and can’t be saved and the original plan was to amputate the front paw as well as due to nerve damage he will never be able to use it again.
The problem now being is the diagnosis of cat aids makes him more prone to infections and slower healing.
The paw doesn’t stop him getting around nor does it give him any pain so now the vet has put the option in of leaving the limb and just amputating the tail.
The vet won’t operate for a couple of weeks yet as he needs to gain weight, fix the anaemia and imorove his overall health after practically starving for 8 weeks.
I want to give him the best chance of making a good recovery and am leaning towards keeping the paw even though it is useless as moving both is a much bigger risk than just doing the tail.
Has anyone got a cat with a paralysed limb? And do they cope ok.
At present my lad is getting around fine, can still jump up on the sofa, use a litter tray and seems to ignore the damaged limb.

With the cat aids he will now become an indoor cat so I am not to worried about his coping outside. I have other cats but none are aggressive so for me the cat aids is not an issue apart from the risk of infections and healing.

Firstly how awful for you and him. How on earth did he end up 35 miles away.

I can't really comment on the paralysed limb - we tend to amputate anything paralysed, so I'm not sure how cats get on without amputation, I would be guided by your vet.

Your cat doesn't have cat AIDS, he is FIV positive. The majority of unneutered male cats are FIV positive (is he neutered? was he neutered late? It's unusual for a cat neutered at 4 to 6 months to become FIV positive). Anyway, regardless of the reason, he now has it. But it's really not that big a deal. Yes it will make him more susceptible to various things, but he can probably live a normal life span quite healthily. There is also no reason to keep him in. If he's neutered he won't be getting into fights to spread it around and, in any case, there are unneutered, FIV positive stray male cats absolutely everywhere - they will be a much bigger risk to the general cat population than your (presumably) neutered boy. Having your cat roaming around will be neither here nor there in that respect.

At the time he went missing the gas board were replacing pipes in our road and we think he got in the back of one of the vans when the workmen left their doors open. Where he ended up is more or less just open farm land and lucky for us he was sported bin diving by a farmer.
He is chipped so once he was handed in it was simple to reunite us with him.
He is a pretty young cat at around 18 months old. We have had him and his brother since they were 8 weeks and they were both neutered at around 6 months. They are both deaf and no one else wanted to take them both on together but they are both lovely cats and he deserves the chance to make the best recovery possible.
It will be a while before he is in any position to go out and I have already paid a small fortune on new fencing to try to keep them in our garden as I worried about traffic and the fact they can’t hear the cars but where there’s a will there’s a way and the do manage to get out.

It will be a few weeks before the vet will do any surgery so I will see what they advise.

That makes sense. I lost (and later found) one of mine in a similar way.

I think it's very sensible to try to keep them in. It's very dangerous for deaf cats to be on roads (are they both white with blue eyes?), and deaf and disabled is worse still. Have you looked at the proper cat-proof fencing systems (Protect-a-Puss and similar)? They are expensive, but more reasonable if you fit it yourself, and it seems to work well.

He's been very unlucky to catch FIV as he was neutered young, but it's always possible that he was born with it. In any case don't dwell on the FIV - it's not ideal but it's certainly not a death sentence.

My little lad before he went missin

This one has blue eyes but his brother has one blue eye and one green. They are both all white so deafness was always quite likely.

We live in a quite area away from main roads and I hoped 6 ft fences with concrete gravel boards would keep them in but they discovered if the climbed up on the roof they could then go over the house to the front. With his new handicap I don’t think he will be able to do that again

Really you should have a look at the Protect-a-Puss system or similar - it would keep them in the garden.

Thanks I will have a look