Hello! Join me as I run miles for our Tori girl, our sweet, fun, loving, spunky kitty who passed away from lymphoma that she developed from Feline Leukemia Virus (FeLV) this past July. Tori was only 1 year old when she passed, which seems so wrong to me as she was truly just so full of life. Tori was unlike any cat I have ever had. She was so smart, inquisitive, affectionate, loving, spunky, and just so truly full of life. Tori chose to live her best life every single day that she woke up, and I want to continue to do that for her. I can’t express enough how much I loved her and how much I continue to love and miss her everyday.

My fiance and I found Tori as an 8 week old baby just wandering alone outside our condo. We caught her and brought her inside. We checked for a microchip but she didn’t have one. She also had no collar. So we quarantined her from our other cats while we decided how to move forward. We got her vaccinated, spayed, and tested for all possible diseases. She came back with a positive FeLV test, and we were devastated. FeLV is sadly essentially a death sentence for young cats. If diagnosed as a kitten, the average lifespan is 6 months - 2 years. If diagnosed as an adult, cats can live anywhere from 2-6 years following diagnosis. Tori was a baby, and our heart broke at her diagnosis. So we put her up for adoption but continued to foster her, becoming more and more attached every day. We couldn’t keep her with our other cats because they risked getting infected from her, so we wanted to find a loving home for her as the only cat to live out the time she would have. But we came to love her so much, that we got her retested twice more just to be sure, and both tests came back negative! We were ecstatic and instantly decided to keep her forever.

Tori was so precious to us. We talked about how much fun she would have with our kids someday, and all the adventures we wanted to have with her. We loved her big heart and personality so much, and one of our other cats, Queso, came to love her as a sister. Tori was endless fun and love. She loved us and her cat brother so much, always wanting to be around us, and truly attached at the hip. Wherever we went, so did Tori. And we loved her for it. She was so affectionate and loving, always. And she had SO much energy. This little cat spent most of her days playing and exploring and seemed to want to pack in everything she could to her days. We were so excited for her to have a long life with us. And then, one day, seemingly out of the blue, she started having breathing difficulty and I picked her up and could feel her heart pounding in her chest. We rushed her to the emergency vet. They ended up retesting her for FELV and she was positive. We were heartbroken, and I remember just sobbing in the exam room. They told us she had developed a large mass in her chest, likely lymphoma, which came from her having FELV. The vets were amazingly kind and gentle with us and Tori. They gave us our options: chemotherapy or euthanasia. We were all in on chemo for our girl until they retested and found out she was FELV positive. Because that meant her cancer would keep coming back, and the last thing we wanted was for our girl who was so full of life to suffer and be in pain for her last days or months of life. So to save her from the fight of her life, we had to lose her. Tori passed so very very loved in our arms at 11:16pm on July 28th, 2024. Life hasn’t seemed the same since. Life is a little duller, and a little sadder every day we go without her. She truly felt like the piece that made our family complete, and we miss her every single day.

FELV is a terrible disease, and I want to do whatever I can to honor and remember Tori, and to help fund research for a cure. Vaccinations have helped reduce FELV significantly, but it is still around, and it is heartbreaking for the sweet kitties who get it, and for their families. Please help me memorialize and honor Tori by raising money to support the Morris Animal Foundation so they can fund lifesaving research into diseases like Tori’s. If we could have saved her, we would have. But what we can do is try to prevent other cats from getting FELV.

Morris Animal Foundation is a nonprofit organization that funds science to advance the health of animals around the world. Since its founding in 1948, the Foundation has invested over $149 million in more than 2,940 studies that have led to significant breakthroughs in diagnostics, treatments and preventions to benefit animals worldwide. Please help me support advancing the health of animals everywhere by contributing to my fundraiser and sharing this page with your friends and family. Every dollar we raise will advance this great cause!

Ask how you can get involved, and together, we can make a difference in the lives of animals!