Thanks for the reply, Phil.

I emailed my brother asking those questions, and he replied with the
following:

begin paste---

Hi - Shiro has non-regenerative anemia, and is not CRF related - his
kidney's are fine, but his marrow is just not producing. They tested for
ehrlichiosis, hemobart and bartonella. He is on prednosone and his PCV is
holding steady.

He will get a third blood test today to see if the steroids are working and
then we can determine if we can take him home.

The vets don't think RhEPO will be effective since his kidneys are fine and
but marrow is unresponsive. At this point we don't know if it is
auto-immune. I've heard about Leukeran - some people have had great success
with it but it has some side effects, like marrow suppression. I plan on
broaching the subject with the vet today. He hasn't had a marrow aspirate or
biopsy, just because the cost of the specialist would be about $2000 or more
just to run the diagnostics. It sucks (REALLY sucks) that it has to come to
dollar figures but we just don't have this. The emergency clinic wanted
$1500 up front before they did anything!

To complicate matters even more, Shiro has to be anaesthetized whenever we
do any kind of procedure on him - he turns vicious whenever we take him to
the vet. Think of Shiro as his normal laid back loveable self. And then
think of an animal that is the exact opposite - that's Shiro at the vet.
This adds considerable stress to him, and expense to us.

We visited him yesterday, he was happy to see us. We fed him baby food - the
steroids make him so hungry! He was pretty weak, but he purred for us and
tried to head butt us like he always does. It was heartbreaking for us,
because he has to wear this cone around his head. The staff was amazed at
how nice he was for us, but I can't blame them as they've only seen the
at-the-vet Shiro.

I think we are coming to terms with letting him go. We can do small things,
like additional transfusions and steroids, but the big ticket things that
might really help him are out of reach for us

Oh, BTW, the samples are fresh. His PCV count went from 9% to 13% after the
transfusion - still very bad. Unfortunately, he is so big that the donor cat
wasn't able to keep up!

end paste---

they're getting ready to euthanize, I think.  I have much to say about that,
but I won't say it right now.  It wouldn't be very productive, and I just
want to help Shiro.

Thanks again for your help.

rona