This morning, Patience showed at feeding and her leg was just hanging up. It looked quite swollen (on the pad) and she looked miserable. Without thinking, I scruffed her and picked her up supporting her rear and walked her quickly toward the house. The closer we got to the house, I could feel her tense up, but feeling that I was pretty protected from all the layers I was wearing (It was 16 degrees this morning) I kept walking.
Suddenly, as we neared the door, she went ballistic and nailed me but good. She sailed out of my hands, latched on to my shoulder and bolted behind me and disappeared. Great Mary Anne, way to go, I know how she identifies houses and it isn’t pretty. I should have just medicated and treated her without catching her and now I have destroyed the trust she had in me and she is loose, scared and injured. From what I could see she has part of her pad torn off so either she got in a fight with a predator or a car and either way she came out on the bad side.
I hope she comes back, but i Have my doubts. All that work destroyed in seconds when I get in the moment and react to what I believe is best and forget about how a cat sees things, sometimes it just doesn’t work. This is one of those times.
You did what you thought best, Mary Anne. Sometimes things just don’t work out.
You still have food and shelter for Patience, and she knows that. She may well have come back to you in the first place because her foot was hurting.
Hi Mary Anne,
I am new to your blog and haven’t had a chance to review all your past postings…but I wanted to ask you for some pointers, since you seem to know a LOT about feral cats 🙂
1) Ear issues – we feed a feral cat (cute tuxedo male) every night, he leans on and head butts us, but won’t allow us to pet him 🙁 Anyway, he scratches his ear from time to time…do you know of any remedies that would help? We can’t catch him or afford to take him to the vet.
2) BM – he also seems to be constipated. Does canned pumpkin help?
Thanks for taking the time to read my post. Will take a look at your past posts today. Take care, and bless you for taking such good care of all those cats!
Generally ear issues stem from two things; ear mites or yeast. If the cat’s ears are showing dark, thick type of crud- it’s earmites and you need earmite medicine from a vet (not a store) to clear it up. There is one medicine for ears that you use just once, but it is more expensive than the normal earmite liquid. I wish there was just a powder or a pill you could give a cat to take care of earmites but their aren’t. If the ears are waxy looking then it is yeast and there are drops you need to give. The problem is the kitty needs to have the drops for at least 5 days and have the ears cleaned. You can’t do that when they are showing feral tendencies and aim to hurt you when you a just trying to help them. You would have to trap and keep this cat and work with him and take him to a vet to get it under control.
If he is constipated then yes, canned pumpkin or mashed sweet potatoes or cooked green beans will help move his bowels. Make sure the canned pumpkin is pure and not the pie mixture.
Regarding Patience… We can’t be on top of our game every moment of every day. Heaven knows you do the best job possible. And you do it every day, regardless. Hopefully Patience will calm down and come back. Don’t be so hard on yourself. I know that’s easy for me to say, but I am sure you are playing those moments over again in your head and well, it can’t be changed now. Let go and let God.
Thanks so much, appreciate the information and help!!
On the earmite issue, forgot to say that untreated, if the invasion is severe enough, the cat can go deaf. My vet who is long retired had a mixture he concocted of a bunch of different meds to internally treat earmites. It was his own brew and it worked well. I looked to see if I had any left, but I don’t maybe you can find an older vet who had the same mindset as Dr. Blackwell did- but again you have to get ahold of the cat to adminster either.
I think Patience will be back, though she will probably be very wary of you for a while. She knows where to get food, though, and that should lure her.