Looking for advice: FIV and FeLV positive foster -FERAL- cat
I have little foster experience, and I have no experience with chronically ill animals. I've only fostered healthy cats before. Mostly feral kittens who I've socialized and found homes for.
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TL;DR: I'm fostering a feral cat who is FIV and FeLV positive, and he's in very poor health. He's scared of me and my dog, and I'm not sure if he's tameable or if he's suffering too much. I want to help him but I'm not sure if I'm doing more harm than good. I need advice from people with experience in this situation.
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I got asked if I'd be willing to foster a feral, FIV and FeLV positive cat from a local cat colony who was taken to the vet for suddenly becoming very sick and skinny. After the FIV and FeLV tests came back positive (and, thus, the cat could not go back to his colony) the lady that took him felt bad about putting the cat to rest and the vet suggested placing him in a foster home in an attempt to tame him and get him adopted.
When I accepted fostering him, I knew about his conditions, but I had no idea how bad these diseases were, and the state the cat is in has caught me a bit off guard.
He came to me after spending a few days at the clinic and after finishing antibiotic treatment.
He's just skin and bones, he's even missing some patches of fur, he has a huge sore on his tongue, wobbles quite a bit, seems to space out in the middle of eating and is, as expected, not fond of my and my dog's existence or of being in a closed space.
He actually has an appetite and seems quite motivated by food, accepting my hand to get close if I'm holding any, and even eating from it. I was even very confident he was going to be able to put on weight fast with how much he was eating. But since he arrived almost a week ago, he started having diarrhea. I started feeding him rice with chicken to try to help his gut, but he's not doing much better.
Initially I had him enclosed in a crate to help him feel safe and to prevent him from escaping, which he seemed eager to do, even successfully escaping once when I was cleaning the litter box. But yesterday when I decided to leave the crate's door open to start giving him more space and freedom, he just stayed in the crate and didn't want to come out. He only came out today when I attempted to hold him using a towel and he decided he'd rather come out than be held. He walked around the room, even walked extremely close to my dog, stole food from my dog's bowl, then went back to the crate and refused to come out again.
He still hisses at me and my dog every time we approach him, although he seems to have become more tolerant of my dog. I can pet his head, but he always hisses, sometimes even swats at me, he growls the entire duration of the petting, and he doesn't seem to enjoy it at all, but he doesn't seem to be in pain when I do it. He just seems to be very scared and defensive. Sometimes he seems to get comfortable after a bit, tucking his paws under him while I pet him, but when I come back to pet him later, it's like he's back to square one, hissing and growling at me again. At some point he seemed to be getting used to me, even laying down with his belly exposed while I was sitting on the floor next to him in his open crate, but then he went back to hissing at me again the next time I approached him. It's like he has no memory of the previous interactions. It has made me wonder if he's just going through the process of slowly getting used to me, or if he's actually having some cognitive issues due to his illnesses that are affecting his ability to remember and learn from interactions.
Showing belly after me sitting next to him for a few hours
I must confess I'm having a hard time dealing with this situation. I know this cat's life is in my hands. If I don't succeed in taming him, I doubt he'll get adopted... which means he will have to be put to rest, since he can't go back to his colony.
I'm so torn and I feel like crying when I think about this situation. Can he even get healthier with his conditions? He is so thin and sickly, and he's now being put through the stress of being in a new environment with a dog and a human who he's terrified of. Am I actually helping him, or am I just torturing him? I want to try so hard to help him, but I also don't want to cause him more stress and suffering. I don't even know if he's tameable. And I also feel some guilt because I can't foster other cats while I'm fostering him, and I know there are many other cats out there who need help. Besides, I also feel guilty for accepting to foster him in the first place, because I didn't inform myself and I didn't know how bad his condition was. If I tell the lady who asked me to foster him that I don't think he's tameable, I feel like his blood will be on my hands, that his death is on me.
Am I overthinking this? Am I overreacting and his condition is not as bad as I think it is? Can he actually get better with proper care, or is he just going to stay in this state or even continue to decline?
I need to hear from people who have experience dealing with this kind of situation, especially with FIV and FeLV positive cats. I want to know if it's possible for him to improve and if there's anything specific I can do to help him feel more comfortable and less stressed. I also want to know if his behavior is normal for a cat in his condition or if it's a sign that he's in pain or suffering more than he should be. Any advice or insights would be greatly appreciated.