I was unable to give Hope fluids tonight, so I placed a call to my feline specialist who allowed me to bring this newest arrival up to her home. I am so glad I did, because Hope needed fluids so badly and she was not a happy camper when we started the process. We ended up having to put a muzzle (or as Dr. Vicki calls it) a “party hat,” on her. She got it off before we were done giving her fluids via IV and she tried to take both of  us on. There would have been no way I could have given her fluids by myself.

I am calling her Hope, because I hope she gets better. I hope she isn’t terminal and I hope she will like me in the morning. After what we just went through-she is hissing and slashing at me and I can’t blame her. No one likes getting IV’s-

She is hammered, she is exhausted and now, she is mad. I am going to leave her with food until the morning and we will take this new day on and see where it goes.

Just got a call from an elderly woman about an “emancipated” kitten that wandered into her yard. I smiled to myself thinking, I would take an emancipated kitten over an emaciated kitten any day of the week! I told her that I couldn’t help her, our sanctuary was full. Then she whispered: “My dear, you don’t understand, if you don’t come and get it than the dogs will have or we would shoot it in the head!”  Cripes sake! Who does this chit?

So off I went to get the kitten before it lost it’s life in a horrible fashion. She is not a kitten, she is an older girl. She is so bad off folks, needs prayer. I dropped her at the vet and they just called. She tested negative, she ate three cans of food (she was ravenous) She is full of fleas so they gave her a capstar. She is drinking but she is so dehydrated that they gave her fluids.

She is pure white with a black head. I am on my way to go and get her now. They don’t want to start the vaccinations on her right now as she is to weak. Poor girl- I will do all I can for her to get her back to health

Poor girl, she is pretty rough shape. I tried to put a flea comb through her and all I ran into were her bones. Even the Zoom Groom wasn’t kind enough for this cat. They think she is around 10 years old.

There is so much for her to get into at the gallery- and she was loving every minute of her exploration. Customers would walk in and she would prance over to them, rub their ankles and if they ignored her, they got an indignant MEOW! LOL  It was a long drive but worth every moment of her howling to get out of the carrier. I couldn’t get any volunteer to go with me, so she traveled in the large, padded soft-sided carrier with litter box food and water inside. She was not a happy girl during that 2 hour drive.

Here she is in her new shop- for some reason, she just loved the drums. She growled at the huge elephant God though- LOL  Her new mama is absolutely delightful. It was a great trip for me. She didn’t enjoy it until I let her out into her NEW home.

We will leave in the morning to investigate this potential home (which sounds like a wonderful place for this beautiful kitten to grow up in. An added plus is the woman is also considering at a future date, adopting Jordan! She has one old Siamese boy, 2 chow dogs and a home on the coast. Crossing my fingers that this all works out for both cats (eventually).

I have prayed and thought hard about the treatment the Himalayan received (or lack of I should say). I talked to my vet about it this afternoon and he was really upset about the “exit interview” and said that all vets are vaccinated against rabies and IF they do get bit (God forbid) they have a big enough window to be able to start the rabies protocol and he would have never given this cat such a lack of respect under any circumstances.

So I am going to report her to the licensing board and also write a letter to the editor of the local paper in the town she practices in and we will see how that all goes.

Update

The results just came in at 2:30 this afternoon he was negative for rabies. The tech said he was an old, old guy with a lot of lipofusion granulars in his brain. These are released, she said at the very end of the life of a cat. It is some sort of protein the brain needs in order to stay alive.

First off, I am just really angry right now. I took the cat to another clinic, not my regular one- because this new clinic, they open an hour earlier for emergencies. They wouldn’t even take him out of the carrier! They looked and saw he was blind, and when I told them about his jerky leg movements and snapping at the air, they said they were treating him as a rabid cat!  They called the Health Department and were advised that they needed to put him down and I was to take the body to OSU and pay $95.00 for the test for rabies. They said that the deputy should have followed this protocol and never got me involved with it.

When I questioned their opinion they said the only other option for this old guy was for me to quarantine him for 10 days to see if he presents for rabies. BUT they would not give me any pain medication, no antibiotics, steroids nothing! I was just supposed to stuff this cat into isolation and let him suffer for 10 days! That is not what we are about! I told them to euthanize him, I would pay the fee but I said that I wanted to look him over (with the vet’s help and heavy gloves) to see if he might have been hit by a car after he was gone- or what.

There was no evidence of a car hit- claws all intact, no compressions of the body cavity. He was so flea-ridden and emaciated, they couldn’t even find a vein to put the final solution in. They had to heart stick him!

He was old, he was emaciated, he was completely blind, full of mats, he was miserable and I’ll be damned if I was going to put him through 10 days of suffering to prove he didn’t have rabies. There’s something wrong with a vet who would just walk away like that and not even touch the cat to make him comfortable. If he had been younger, I might have fought for him to live- but he was just not there anymore and there was no point in asking him to continue.

I am waiting for them to call on the results of the rabies test. I suspect it will be negative. I think he is a bad survivor of distemper but I will let you all know what they find. Oh they did check for  a chip (AFTER he died) No chip. 🙁 What a lousy, lousy morning. Before he died, I whispered to him that I hoped sometime in his life, he had bright spots and memories of people loving him,

Thanks for letting me vent-

I have him- I suspect it is a male. He is in pretty bad shape and he looks like he may be blind in one eye. Not sure, my feline specialist is out of state so I will take him in tomorrow morning to my vet and hope they don’t throw a shoe at me or something. He is matted, incapable of swallowing, unable to walk and he tried to bite the syringe when I went to give him fluids- so I am going to just leave him alone and get him in first thing in the morning. (If you click on the photo it will enlarge)

here he is- poor guy

Just got a call from a deputy at Animal Control. Apparently, when they went on a call for something, they found a cat who has been injured in some way. They say it is a Himalayan and it can’t stand up very long- keeps circling around and falling over. It also has cloudy eyes. 🙁 They asked me if I would take it if they can capture it- right now I guess it is hiding under a woodpile. Sucker that I am, I told them yes, I will take it if someone can capture it- as I am unable to leave at the moment. They are going to turn their animal control officers loose on this cat to try and get it and so please if you read this- please pray that they can capture this poor kitty. I’m quite baffled at the call because most of the animal controls around here don’t do cats? Then, there is the added pressure of an already out of sight vet bill and will the clinic open their hearts and treat this kitty IF it is indeed treatable?

At any rate, no cat deserves to suffer so however I got this phone call routed to me- please just pray that the kitty gets captured and we can help it- I’m still a bit stunned by all of this, because if you take a cat to animal control, the only thing they will do is euthanize it. Not sure what to make of all of this-

He has been reunited with his owner! He is now NOT a tomcat, but his owner Ralph couldn’t afford the surgery. He is homeless and he has had Sweety since he was a kitten- but his name is Blackie. Blackie slipped his harness a few days ago and Ralph has been frantically looking for him since. I stopped into a small local café this morning to pick up a donut and they were talking about Sweety boy’s disappearance. When I told one of the locals that I had the cat and he was being neutered, he got all excited and we took a walk over to the park where the homeless hang out. I met Ralph (sweet man) and I told him I had his cat but not yet, then told him about the surgery being done today.

At 5:00 p.m. Sweety I mean Blackie, was returned to Ralph along with a figure 8 cat harness I picked up at Petco, so he can’t slip out of it again. It was clear there is love between these two- Blackie climbed up on Ralph’s bicycle and settled down in a wicker basket. Last I saw the two of them, they were headed down the highway!

So today, Lake, Blackie, Darby and Darcie all got neutered. When I got home, the doctors had called and they have determined that Mike had a bad skin infection NOT a bone infection as first feared! His blood levels are good, he is responding to the oral antibiotics and he is coming home tomorrow. Glory can now hop down off the railing and Taylor can crawl back on the bed to welcome him home.

I put him on so many prayer chains. It didn’t look good there for awhile, but he has a second chance now. ALSO- he now weighs 295 pounds!  His five kids told me tonight that this is the first time their dad has weighed under 300 pounds!  I just want to keep going with the meal plan- both of us are losing weight. I want him to get to be about 210 but don’t know if it is possible- but then, I went to sleep last night thinking he was going to come home without his legs- so with God all things are possible.

“Goodnight Ralph and Blackie wherever you are- be safe-“

Yesterday I had to make a late run to the hospital mid afternoon. I checked on all the cats before I left- everyone was fine. It was 85 when I left. While I was gone this incredible (unpredicted heat wave hit). I got home and rushed out to the barn to find Aurora in full hyperthermia. She had pulled herself out of the nest, she was open mouth panting and flat. Her respirations were off the chart. I grabbed the bottle of rubbing alcohol and a washrag- the subcu fluids and an hour later, she was back with her babies nursing.  The enclosure is in full sun and not insulated so I have moved her to a cooler spot into the Introduction cage inside the main enclosure. All the kittens are fine- their eyes opened yesterday! She ate a full meal twice last night, and I stayed up most of the night checking on her to see if she was really okay. I didn’t bother to take her temp. I knew she was high and in trouble. I put the rubbing alcohol on her head, ears and paws and set fans on her being careful not to get the air on the kittens. She had 150 ml of fluid and I made sure to mix some feline pedialyte into the mixture of canned food. Lesson learned, stall enclosure off limits until we can find a way to insulate it and not make it an unsafe place for cats in the high summer heat-

Last night quite late, I made a run into town for some supplies. I was passing over the bridge that rolls over Sweet Home Creek and I noticed a group of boys throwing stones. They weren’t throwing them into the creek- but into the bushes instead. I stopped my car and challenged them and they split quite quickly I might add and by the time I got down to where they were- they were gone.

I stood in the darkness and cursed that I did not have a flashlight, but I went back up to my car and got a can of cat food (I just had an idea it involved a cat!) I sat down on the ground, snapped open the lid and out of the darkness I hear this rustling of bushes. This soft shape brushes against me and I hear a soft meow. (Thank you God!) It could have been so many different animals they were throwing stones at.

But this time, it was a young black cat, clearly belonging to someone because he is so loving. I was able to pick him up and carry him back to the car and put him inside. Girlcat went home yesterday, so I even had a space for this cat. He is pitch black, he is a tomcat (will NOT be tomorrow) He looks to be around 7-8 months old. I will take him in with the other three neuters and see if they can work him in. I call him Sweety- I know sounds pretty corny- but he is so loving. I have ads up that he has been found- but who knows if anyone will claim him? There is only one house near the creek and it has been abandoned for years.

Then this morning, the one torbie going in for a spay tomorrow- she has been hiding under my bed since she arrived in March- when I went into the bedroom, she was asleep on the bed! Before she knew what happened- I scooped her up quickly and hustled her to the waiting cage where she will stay till I take her to the vet.

I had to get tough on Girlcat’s owner, but apparently it worked. GC was picked up late last night. The couple said I inspired them to create an outdoor cat enclosure for her behind their home they are renting. It sounds like it is large enough (it is an old outdoor dog kennel) they have places she can hide and go get warm until the day comes when the one roommate leaves and she can come inside. For my four months of care for her- they left me $20.00. But, I am just grateful she is gone and there was a place for Sweety boy. I looked up to heaven this morning and thanked God for the timing of all the events, and I know He smiled.