One of the black kitties who had the bad diarrhea is now losing most of her fur on the back of her legs and her belly. I took her in this morning- I didn’t want to, but she reminded me when Mike was in chemo and his beard was falling out! I’d never seen such a thing on a kitten before, so off we went.

Turns out that some of the bacteria in her urine and stool settled on her back legs and spread out. I have been given some special medicated shampoo to give her a bath twice a day and I am to be sure she is completely dry (so I have to use the blow dryer on her) She is also on Cepha Drops for a week. It is a fairly nasty bacterial infection right now so hopefully in a few day’s time it will reverse and stop spreading. I had to laugh when my vet commented on how much my cats and kittens continue to challenge him. Does he have any idea how they challenge me as well and add to my frustration of not wanting to raise up the vet debt any higher?

I didn’t think it was ringworm- didn’t act or look like ringworm but in the kitten world- you can never tell.

Here is Armstrong’s brother Raleigh:

Over three weeks when four older cats arrived here to be “boarded” I had a feeling that all was not right in their world. One of the cats has developed a bad infection in her eye and I have been trying to get ahold of the owner but the cell phone # does not go through. So last night, I took a ride over to the address I was given where they were supposedly staying and it is a vacant lot. Looks like yet another case of cats being abandoned because they are in the way. I am a bit angry that the woman was not up-front with me about the cats and the situation. I have opened up the tunnel gates so all the cats are now integrated together. No fights as of  yet. I suspect Sinatra has a bad eye because her ear is invested with ear mites and she has been scratching ever since I applied Revolution to her. I think one of her claws snagged her eye. I have cleaned it out and put ointment on it and put her on antibiotics just to be safe. I just can’t afford yet another vet visit especially for a cat that is not supposed to technically be mine at this time. They are beautiful cats- one of them just looks like she is pissed off at the world and who can blame her really?

The vet said the lab shows nothing remarkable in the stool samples. When I questioned where all this diarrhea and wet tail is coming from then- he told me that he believes the lab did not properly test the sample (wet it down enough) to show the protozoas. I don’t know why those instructions weren’t included in the send?

But at any rate, they seem to be responding well to the meds and we celebrated formed stool in the pans yesterday for the first time!  I have to give Brambles, the biggest female kitty props- she finds amazing hiding places in the room when it comes to giving her the meds! The first time I couldn’t find her and I tore apart the isolation room looking for her- I finally found her inside an opened box of cat litter! The second time, she was in the pocket of my lab coat that I wear when I am out there and the third time, she was inside the dust bin! She has lost most of her fur from under her tail, on the back of her legs and on her belly and I am not sure why? They get butt baths with just drops of DAWN liquid dishwashing soap and warm water and then I put a non-petroleum based ointment on the red rears. I am not sure why out of all the kittens she shows this problem but I have stopped doing her baths and use a soft comb to clean her up instead.

I got two of the four healthy babies neutered and they have been placed into loving homes with seniors. They both live side by side to each other and I hear their new owners are meeting daily for “playdates.” I adopted out the little tuxedo boy and the snowshoe girl.

May I please eat your toes?”

Quincy has come a long way since arriving here

Riley and Ripley are now home- still quite sick but on meds and we are waiting for the lab results to come in- should be here on Tuesday

Ripley and Riley two of the five feral litter are not doing well. They have what I call wet tail from all the diarrhea that they have been fighting. The two babies have gone through one round of Albon and starting another round today but the diarrhea has intensified to the point that Riley cannot put her bum down flat on any surface unless it is heavily cushioned.

CATS Inc is in need to money to make this vet visit happen. If we can at least raise $200.00 I can get in the door to see my vet. We have taken the bill down to $1,200.00 so little by little it is being hit. I just hate for these kitties to suffer because we suck right now in asking for donations-

5:25 p.m. update- large amounts of protozoans were found in their stool. Both kittens found to still be emaciated, dehydrated despite eating and getting fluids. Both had fevers- vet suspects toxomoplasmosis along with the giardia,coccidia and trichomonasis- these babies were a mess. They are on an overnight stay so that they can give a bit more stool for an outside analysis of their waste. He is starting them on panacur, clindymycin and albon. We almost put Riley down just because she is suffering the worst of all of them but decided to give the meds a try and see if she can actually keep some nutrition in her body this time.

The three newcomers kept me up all night. They weren’t sick, they were just going stir crazy being in a small cage, custom made though it is it doesn’t have all that much room for the three of them to romp and play. So this morning, Mike and I got our heads together and took two cages and redid them into a two-story kitty house. All I can say is God Bless Duct tape otherwise, I don’t think this would have worked out the way it did.

Now, Bogey, Briar and Medora have a new home. You’ll never see this in the pages of Cat Fancy but my stray kittens don’t mind that-

Zulu was neutered this morning and soon will be on his way to a new loving home with a family willing and able to do whatever it takes to keep him healthy. I believe it was the heat making him sick because as the heat let up, so did the sick piles. I’m just glad he wasn’t here all that long, we were getting attached to him fairly quickly.

These two babies were found inside of a golfer’s golf bag on a nearby golf course. Apparently they crawled inside to get out of the heat. I got the call and went to go and pick them up. They are unsocialized and I am calling the black kitty Bogey and the Snowshoe kitty Sky (tried to stay with golf terms). They are owned by someone as they are both neutered (YAY!) So I have notices up online and in town to see if the owners might be looking for them. No microchips though. I have to keep them for 30 days to see if the owner steps up after that- at least the snowshoe, he should go to a home fairly quickly

.

This little one lost his mom when she got hit by a car this morning. He has two other littermates- a grey and white female and a tuxedo brother.

Here are Sky’s littermates:

The dump kitty is unable to keep anything down for a long period of time. I am concerned that he was poisoned while trying to stay alive at the dump and eating God knows what in the process. But, it is so unbelievably hot right now here, I am hopeful that it might just be the heat. 103 yesterday in the shade. There is a fan where he right now as I moved him yesterday to a larger area. I will keep my eye on him and I see that he still does have an appetite. I can’t take him to the vet right now. It just isn’t in the budget. I just keep giving him fluids and watching him and praying it is only the heat affecting him.

The five feral kittens are so unsocialized. George said the biggest male should be called Bullet because he runs like the wind when we are trying to medicate him. I can’t put them in the smaller cages in isolation- coccidia is so stinky, it wouldn’t be fair to ask them to inhale that air for even a half of minute. They are in the larger room off the back where there is room for them to run. So what if I have to scrub the floors twice a day? It’s just catching them right now that is the biggest issue so I can give them the medicine they have decided is probably going to kill them after all!