Soaring into the triple digit temperatures recently brought quite a scare. Three of my free roaming, ferals, I found open mouth panting in the yard, barely able to move. At the time it was 106°F. I quickly fetched carriers and remarkably was able to pick each kitty up. They were so hot. They were all my senior boys, but they offered no resistance. As I was carrying two of the carriers  into the house, I noticed another cat flat on the grass. This kitty turned out to be my Bentley! I quickly put the remaining feral into my bathroom. I grabbed one more cat carrier and returned to find Bentley just flat as a pancake. When I picked him up, he was so hot. His ears were burning. His tummy was hot. His paws were hot. He was open mouth, panting rapidly.

He quickly joined the others. I. turned the fan on low turned off the light and shut the door so they could at least cool down a bit. Thankfully, I have supportive fluids on hand. However, what I couldn’t find were the proper size syringes. I had to stick these poor kitties at least seven times each to get enough fluids into them to bring them back around. Not one kitty resisted. I also gave each kitty a tepid bath, and put rubbing alcohol on their ear flaps and the bottom of their paws. I do not remember it ever being this hot that so many cats were succumbing to the heat at the same time.

Thankfully , all kitties are now back to normal. I had taken some empty water bottles and filled them. I put them into my freezer for 24 hours and then laid them out around where I know the cats were sleeping and hanging out. I covered each one of the bottles with a thin  pillowcase. I’m sure it wasn’t very comfortable for them to lay on these plastic bottles just to get some coolness and relief.

Then I remembered that I had upstairs all of these snuggle pads. They are made of pure plastic. Yes, they are a heating element, but they’re completely sealed. I ended up substituting the water bottles for these flat round plastic discs. I know I won’t be able to ever use them again for a heating element, but for what I needed during that time for them, it’s worked out quite well. Just running the discs under the cold water and then putting them into the freezer they froze fairly quickly.The kitties were more prone to except them as a bed because they were flat and they didn’t make noise when they laid on them.

I have to admit that Bentley scared me the worst, he was so reactive to the heat. He’s 15 years old, he lives outside either in one of the cat enclosures coming and going at will.  I wondered if he had an underlying health issue because he was the last one to come around. I found out that his stomatitis was extremely active, plus for the first time since I’ve had him he had ear mites in his ears. Generally, he gets yeast infections in his ears, but this time he had ear mites. I dosed him with Revolutions because that also kills ear mites. He is doing fine now and we are back down into the 80s and the 90s. Hoping we don’t get more triple digit weather anytime soon.

While they were all in the bathroom and I had the fan going for them-Of course we had a power outage. It went out at 8 PM and it didn’t come back on until 9 AM the next day. I ended up just putting them outside in the carriers under the shady trees and thanking God that we had a little bit of wind to keep them cooler. For Bentley, I just sat outside on my deck with him in my lap all night. He just slept there didn’t move an inch. I didn’t close my eyes because I didn’t want the raccoons to come up and harass me or him. He was just plum exhausted.

I am still coughing, but I am not infectious anymore. However, I am staying away from people just in case. I was told there was just a little residual fluid left in one lung. An annoying visitor, who just won’t leave yet. There are a lot of people in town that are sick right now. The hospitals are full up once again with people fighting upper respiratory infections. So grateful that I was able to stay out of the hospital. I don’t know what would’ve happened to my cats otherwise.