The Black Market for a Lifesaving Cat Drug
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
4.7 • 8.7K Ratings
🗓️ 3 January 2026
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2023, Marlena Arjo adopted a one-eyed kitten with a penchant for destruction. She named him Otto, and over the next eight months, Otto grew into his own little chaotic personality.
“ He’s laying on houseplants, he’s tearing books out of the bookshelves, ripping the calendar off the wall…I wasn’t prepared for having a criminal in my home,” Arjo joked.
Within months, Otto got sick and stopped eating. Arjo rushed him to a vet and learned he had feline infectious peritonitis, better known as FIP, a disease that kills nearly all cats that contract it.
The vet said there was nothing the clinic could do. But there was something Arjo could do.
“I shouldn’t tell you this,” Arjo recalled the vet telling her. “But by the way, you can get drugs for this if you go to this Facebook group.”
This week on Reveal, in partnership with the Hyperfixed podcast, we tell the story of the cat drug black market, why it was even necessary, and how cat lovers fought for big changes to make the black market obsolete.
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| 0:00.0 | From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. |
| 0:06.1 | I'm out Ledson. |
| 0:08.0 | Back in the summer of 2023, Marlena Arjo made the huge mistake of stopping by a kitten |
| 0:15.4 | adoption event at a local pet store on her birthday. |
| 0:18.4 | I wanted to look at kittens, but I wasn't, of course, going to get one. |
| 0:22.7 | And then I went in, and there was a tiny little kitten who had just had his eye removed, |
| 0:27.9 | so he had purple stitches over one side of his face, and he was way younger than the rest. |
| 0:32.0 | And I, like, was so sad that I blacked out and came to with a cat in a box in my car. |
| 0:38.9 | She brought that cat back to her home in Portland, Oregon. |
| 0:42.2 | She named him Otto, and over the next eight months, |
| 0:45.2 | Otto grew into his own little chaotic personality. |
| 0:48.6 | He's like laying on houseplants. |
| 0:50.7 | He's like tearing books out of the bookshelves, like ripping the calendar |
| 0:55.2 | off the wall. I wasn't prepared for having a criminal in my home. Things started to change |
| 1:02.8 | around February 24. At first, all Marlena noticed was that Otto didn't seem as energetic or |
| 1:10.1 | playful as he usually is. Then he stopped |
| 1:12.9 | eating his regular food, and then he stopped eating treats. And then things got a little scary. |
| 1:19.4 | So it was early morning on a Saturday. I was sitting on my bed, I don't know, like on my phone |
| 1:26.3 | or something maybe, and Otto jumped on the bed and then, um, |
| 1:30.3 | and it looked at me for a second and then kind of twisted his head over to one side and got kind of like stuck like that for a second. |
| 1:36.3 | She scooped Otto up and rushed him to the emergency vet, where they immediately recognized the seriousness of the situation. |
| 1:49.9 | They ran a series of tests, kept him there for six or seven hours, and ultimately sent Marlena home with her sick little kitten. |
... |
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