FeLV Month 2025 has come and gone.
The FeLV Warriors: Raltegravir & Anti-Retroviral Support group has now passed its first birthday, with more than 150 members from around the world!
And yet, here I am—still hesitant to “let go” and fully share this blog. This is a public yet intensely private space. Chiana is just one cat, but she’s my cat. And I pray her life will somehow matter in the larger search for an FeLV treatment.
The fear, of course, is always there: What will people think? Will they judge me? Will the blog come across as too rough, too imperfect, too personal? It’s easy to imagine just handing the URL to someone who specifically asks about Chiana. But what about everyone else—those who might stumble across her story and find hope, or at least a glimpse of what the future could look like?
Even after all these years, I feel new at this. Naïve, even. Blogging, like YouTube or social media, never feels finished. Every post takes incredible amounts of time, energy, and mental bandwidth. It’s not just writing—it’s making things look polished, presentable, “professional.” And honestly, I don’t know how others keep up with it. I've learned at times, that it does become easier though--and this is always worth it.
As I finally think about sharing this more widely, I know it’s not perfect. The fact that there's serif and sans-serif fonts in the posts bothers me. There’s a random bar floating on the home page. The “Just the Numbers” and “Viral Load Graph” pages constantly need updates. The “About Chiana” page probably should become “Start Here.” Even the big question nags at me: Can people actually find this blog online?
But there’s also so much more I want to write:
- My husband brushes Chiana’s teeth—how in the world does he manage that?
- I use AI to help shape these posts—what does that look like in practice?
- And sometimes, I want to break away from test results and write “just for fun” or faith-based posts. Because while data matters, sometimes I need to lighten things up.
This blog will never win awards or gather thousands of followers. And that’s okay. If even one person finds hope or understanding here—or if one day this data helps research move forward—it will have been worth it.
I admit, every time I update something I worry I’ll “break” the whole blog. Blogger feels fragile, like a relic of the internet past. What if Google sunsets it? I'm not even sure all the links and tools work. But Blogger is free, and for now, it’s still here—and so am I.
When is “good enough” enough? Maybe now. Because every morning I wake up and Chiana—my FeLV-positive cat who was never supposed to live this long—is still alive. Still purring. Still following me around like my shadow.
And this blog is part of making her life matter.
If you’ve ever thought about starting a blog yourself, know this: it doesn’t have to be perfect, expensive, or flashy. It just has to be yours.
