He went back in distress and I have taken him to the vet. They suspect something else besides the heat 114 degrees today! is going on here and will keep him through the weekend and run some tests on him. He had 104.2 temp at 3:00 today and even after 40 ml of fluids the temp did not budge. 🙁 Please just keep praying for him. He’s a fighter

I’ve change his name to Popeye because he is such a character, but right now, whatever you want to call him, he needs prayer. It got really hot here today- triple digits which it never hardly gets that hot. I had to go and pick up the food for the cats and there is an event in town The Jamboree and traffic was maddening. By the time I got back home, he hadn’t been checked on in about four hours. It was 102 in his cage and that was with 3 fans on him! He was open mouth panting, weak and trembling. I rushed him inside, took his temp 104.4 yikes! I gave him fluids, put rubbing alcohol on his paws, his ears, the pads of his feet. I tried to put an ice pack between his legs- not successful with that at all. I wrapped him in a damp towel, but an indirect fan on him and put him in an inside cage (sorry Porter) I had to toss Porter out of that cage. I have the AC going out there and I gave him a bath in lukewarm water. His temp is now 103.6- I couldn’t give him water orally- he spit it out, so I tricked him and got some KFC chicken and put in in water and gave him that. He ate it right up which is a good sign!

Now the danger is tonight when it starts dropping in temperature, I have to be careful he doesn’t get to cold to fast or he will go into shock and possibly die. I sure don’t want to lose him- but he isn’t open mouth panting anymore and his gums and tongue never turned bright red so I think I caught it in time. But it was a scary hour that’s for dang sure. Please pray for him and for me that I can continue to do right by him when he has so much going wrong before he got here.

He isn’t a happy boy at the moment, but he has been through so much. He is eating and drinking and they gave him a long-term antibiotic shot because I was right, he is a master pill spitter-outter!

We also have another tomcat who showed up with a pregnant female (haven’t been able to trap her. They both look like they have Abyssinian in them. Dillon the tomcat has now been neutered and will be back home tonight. Like most of the strays that “magically” show up here- he is pencil thin and could eat a horse!

It’s almost 3:00 and just called the clinic and One Eye is still in surgery. Hoping the vet calls soon to tell me how it went. I know the eye was heavily infected and that can be a bit of a hot mess surgically. 🙁

4:11 p.m. I just called and Jack came through the surgery well but it went long so they are going to keep him overnight. I will be able to bring him home in the morning. Thank you to those of you who made all this possible for One-Eyed. You have our gratitude and our love.

6:19 p.m. Vet just called and Jack came through surgery just fine. The infection was only contained in the globe of the eye (thank you God) so the entire eye has been removed. The wound was deep going almost through the entire eye so the vet didn’t think it was done by a cat claw. He also has pulled out four of his claws (the cat NOT the vet) maybe in trying to scratch and get out of the carrier. I wondered because when I got him home from the vet initially, the bottom of the carrier was nasty. At first, I thought he had pooped, but when I was cleaning the carrier, the stains looked like blood. I checked for body wounds (But didn’t check the pads of the feet) The vet said the pads looked really traumatized so they cleaned them up as well.

Thank you for your prayers of support. I know they helped Jack see this through- no pun intended!

This morning, we moved One-Eyed Jack into the cage in the living room. For a tomcat, he has the softest meow I have ever heard! Thank You God, and although he is a bit ill at ease at the moment, I am sure he will be settling down soon. I just pray he won’t spray Put up some deflector boards (corkboard) around the cage to catch any overspray.

They changed his meds yesterday, putting him on Baytril, and giving him a pain med that you rub on the gums (lessening the stomach distress) For a tomcat being handled by a stranger, he is strangely accommodating to all these changes. I used a toothbrush to apply the pain ointment as I have an unnatural desire to retain all my fingers! But he was very cool about the whole ordeal. Even getting him to swallow a pill was fairly easy. I know this boy arrived here on a mission. Once he is healthy, we will get him on his way to his new adventure in a new, loving home.

Later update: That was a bust. He was clearly uncomfortable being in the house, so he was put back outside in the large cage that he is used to. I hope after the surgery, I will be able to keep him in the same cage. I think he considers it home, but being tri-level it could prove dangerous at first to a one-eyed kitty on drugs. 🙂

Either due to the stress of confinement (although he is in a cage big enough I can stand up in it) or the stress of the vet visit or his introduction into food arriving in a timely manner, and I can’t rule out all the meds he is taking- this poor boy was up all night heaving and having projectile diarrhea. I know TMI but when you take a cat who has been living on the streets for a period of time, and bring him inside to get him healthy, you have to take all he can give. I have to say- One-Eyed, he’s a giver! LOL

I finally was able to cuddle him on my lap, wrapped in an old bathrobe and we both fell asleep in the easy chair in the cage. Told you it was a big cage! 🙂 He slept huddled to my neck, kneading his claws softly into the old terry cloth robe who has held many a sick kitty all these years. He did not purr though, he would softly meow through the night, but no purring. Since we have to put drops in his eye every hour round the clock, I found a way to do this without disturbing him much. I drop the liquid through a small coffee straw poised over his eye and the liquid just drips in.

I kept telling him over and over that he is now safe. No one will hurt him and he can relax and get better. This morning, he was able to keep his small breakfast down (so far) and my fingers are crossed. He really is a lovely boy.

He has suffered a deep penetrating wound to the eye. There is so much scar tissue surrounding the eye, that the eye is almost nonexistent. It is very infected and very painful. Without knowing his history it is hard to say what happened and when, but one vet feels this is an old almost chronic injury. I know they told me he was feral, but I have to say, he was wonderful and loving the whole time he was being poked, prodded, giving blood, getting fluids. If he is feral someone needs to tell him so!

He is back with me, he is on antibiotics (cepha drops) painkiller (metacam) and drops to his eye every hour. On Monday, I will bring him back to the vet clinic where they will remove his eye and neuter him. What was odd to me is the side of his mouth with the injury- his teeth are crap(sorry but they are) blackened and full of tarter- smells bad. On the other side, his teeth are perfectly white- no tarter, nothing at all. Putting him at about just over a year old on the one side of his mouth and a senior kitty age on the other!  They wanted to do a dental but said it needed to wait for the infection in his eye to go away.  One obstacle at a time. We need to raise $712.00 which will cover the neuter and the removal of his eye. Although he is “just” another black stray, there is something different about this boy, He was a perfect gentleman, just really sweet and loving. No feral in this boy!

Please those of you who can- put his story and photo on social media for us. He deserves to have a life after all he has been through and a chance at a loving home after all the wounds have healed.

He is probably just about a year old tomcat. His one eye is completely blown and when I flashed his eye with a small light, I did see his pupil. It is rotating crazily around the orb. I would suspect someone threw something like a blunt object at him as he came from out of one of the local trailer parks.

I almost said No, but it sounded like he needed our help so I went to fetch him. The lady who captured him told me she had been able to put Neosporin in his eye! OUCH. Although he is unsocialized, I was able to with help to flush out his eye and put in some safer eye ointment. I also started him on antibiotics just in case. he was open mouth panting by the time I got him home and he was really trying to get out of that cat carrier I put him in. Thank God it held!

He needs prayer- we call him One-Eyed Jack. He will go to my vet tomorrow-

This morning, received a call from a park ranger about a kitten he had found on one of the walking trails. I went over to the pod station and met this beautiful Siamese male about a year old. He was clean, no fleas, no worms, claws clipped. Beautiful blue eyes, coat not oily and he was so friendly. Near where he was found there is a path that leads to homes down into a neighborhood. I told the ranger that I would bet this cat wandered away from a house and came into the park investigating the mice and other rodents. I told him, I would take the cat to the vet and have him scanned for a chip- which he had one and an hour later, he was placed back into the worried arms of his 16 year old owner. He had been missing for a week- not surprisingly his name was Prince.

Wish they all turned out so well, and I was sighing a breath of relief because we have no room for even one paw-print around here right now.

The four “boarders”are turning out to have some major health issues. I cannot legally treat them with a vet’s assistance for another 15 days- but three of the four cats their eyes are imploding with scads of discharge. I have put them on antibiotics and eye ointment- Sinatra is getting a bit better out of all of them, but I can still see the bulge of infection around the lining of his eyes. I have no idea if this a cold, conjunctivitis or feline herpes. Can’t get ahold of anyone regarding their past life- very frustrating. I set myself up for that I guess, for being such a sucker.

Also wish to thank those of you who dug  deep and helped me trim down the vet bill- now standing at $812.00 I am trying to get a few local businesses to agree to do a fund raiser but it doesn’t look like that is going to happen. People are so fast to give us cats and their problems but not so quick to help us out when the funds have dwindled down to almost nothing.

We still have nine babies to spay and neuter- that is going to cost us just under $500.00 and until that happens, I have told everyone that we aren’t accepting any more kittens or cats. I have even contacted a few local rescues to see if they would take 7 of the 9 kittens from us, but they too are totally swamped with kittens. As Vicki told me last night- this year has just been nuts when it comes to baby kittens.

It is always the funding that holds us back from really making a huge difference around here. So we will continue to make small differences when we can.

This morning quite early (4:00 a.m.) I put Quincy outside to do his business. He knows that barking is frowned on. My neighbors work odd hours and sleep during the day and he doesn’t always bark anyway. But this morning, I heard him yipping excitedly. I turned on the outside light and saw him running circles around a mass in the grass. I had such a bad feeling and flew out the door to see what he had found.

Turns out, it was a fledging, a flicker. It was under the walnut tree and unable to fly. How it avoided detection from 12 outside sanctuary cats and was found by this goofy dog is beyond me. But I grabbed a towel and a carrier and brought it inside.

Using a brand new artists paintbrush and painting its beak with water, I was able to give it a drink. He could hop, spread his wings but he couldn’t fly. I called the wildlife sanctuary when they opened and I was told that I needed to put him back in the walnut tree (as high as I possibly could!) I explained to the person that I ran a cat sanctuary and putting this baby back in the tree was a really bad idea. I was told that they didn’t want to “split up the family” and the baby had better chances with the parents then with their assistance. I wonder if it had been a owl, a perrigrine falcon or an eagle if I would have been told the same thing. I was told “Put it in the tree and if it falls out again, bring it to us.” I told them IF this baby did fall out of the tree it was going to end up in some cat’s lunchbox. I have several good hunters here. Didn’t matter, they still told me to put the bird in the tree.

I waited until a friend got here and was feeding the outside cats for distraction before I put the baby bird back in the tree. I used a boat hook to encourage it to climb higher than I could climb and it was snug up between two limbs.

I climbed down, said a prayer and walked away. Before I got very far, for whatever reason it started squawking and hopping around. I did not see any parents flying in- what I did see is Bentley streaking up the tree- grabbing the baby bird and jumping down to the ground. By the time I followed Bent, he had already done what nature programmed him to do and the bird had been quickly dispatched.

I wish it had gone differently but I had a feeling that this baby’s days were numbered from the beginning-

Here it is after Quincy found it in the grass