Bent just returned from his recheck on his stomatitis. It has not resolved itself completely , but it is a tad bit better since his last depo shot, so he got another one. The vet said that the pain level is down in his mouth as well and there are only two lesions in the back of his mouth instead of seven. I am hoping that the second shot will take hold and he will be good to go with only taking oral prednisone here at home. He huddled in my lap the entire time- poor scared boy. He’s not crying anymore when he eats and the vet was on-board with the slippery elm bark mixture he is getting five times a day. (Thanks again Pat!)

I wish we could resolve this vet bill- but as Mike likes to say: “If wishes were fishes, the creeks would be full!”  Right now, our creek is just trickling along. There were a few comments made about the $900.00 still owing. I am doing the best I can.

They will call me in three weeks to see how Bent is doing and go from there. I know how he shows pain, so I will be on guard against him losing a lot of weight suddenly, pawing at his mouth, or crying when he eats. I also will pray he doesn’t get that skanky brown drool that Shimmer got which is a sign of more severe lesions forming in his mouth. I was given some Advant-guard which is basically a probiotic for the mouth. I am to give him this four times a day and not worry if he swallows it or spits it out. It just has to get in his mouth to do its work.

For now, he is home. Of course in true cat fashion,  he serenaded me the entire ride up and back to the vet’s office.

First thing Bentley did when I brought him home was dart outside and hide in the pine limbs that came down in the storm last night! I think he is hoping I wouldn’t notice his handsomeness among the branches.

She finishes her medicine today and she is doing so much better now. She is miserable being confined, so we talked it over and decided when she gets her last dose of antibiotics that we will just open the door and let her back outside. Her feline buddies have been clustered around the catio when she is out there and keeping her confined could mean that she could slip back into sickness just from the stress. She will live out her life on her terms and not ours. Some cats are just that way.

I have managed to establish a bond with her which I hope will continue after she is released. Time will tell.

This girl has been with  us a long time- she has lived under the house for over ten years following being dumped here in a canvas bag on our porch. I took her in, got her spayed and when I came home with her, she managed to escape the carrier and duck under our home. Never been able to successfully capture her until Friday night. She didn’t look right and wasn’t eating and was matted to beat heck!

As you can tell, she is partly Persian. It took us about three hours to remove all the intrusive mats on her:

Knowing that the clippers would get hot if we used them and I risked cutting her with scissors to remove this, we opted to use a seam ripper to take out these mats. It works great, and once you loosen up the root of the mat, you can easily just pull the whole thing up without injury to the cat.

She has been to the vet. She weighs 19 pounds, he puts her age over 20 and except for a lot of constipation and parasites, an URI and a small conjuctivitus battle, she is doing good. She did really well at the vet- although her hiss can be quite intimidating! Someone who I rescued a few cats from in the past was over at the clinic when I was there and she put some money down on our account! After bloodwork, exam, x-rays and medicine we only owe $38.00 on the bill. I was so grateful beyond words. Allura is on vera-flux for four more days and was given an enema and some Profender. Hopefully in a few days, she will start eating on her own and I can integrate her into the house with the others.

I won the battle of the bloodwork and it came back, that in addition to all of her other problems, Shimmer’s kidneys were also shutting down. We decided ending her pain was the only humane way to help her out.

In celebration of her life with us- here are just a few of the hundreds that did make it despite early trauma, abuse, neglect. I hope you enjoy the photos below:

Madison

Hurricane Charlie before

Hurricane Charlie after

Bibbens

Darby

Dickens (the kitty with the missing femur)

Bram (thrown on the freeway) before

Bram (after)

Jazzy and Serena (left in a box in a local park)

Glade and River (left by the river to die)

So today, in honor of Shimmer, a kitten found in a wild patch of blackberry bushes with her brother and mom, we choose to honor her by remembering those who did survive the ordeal of being abandoned or being victims of abuse or neglect living on in this world.

I also wanted to share a recent moment with Shimmer that was nothing short of a miracle.

We had just returned from the last vet visit, and she was so stressed, she retreated to the bathroom and laid down behind the toilet. She didn’t move all that day or the night, so the next morning, I went in and just sat down on the floor and talked to her. I knew, being with her 24/7, that something more than what we were seeing was going on with her. I told her to hang in there and as soon as possible, her pain would end.

In the five years that we have had her, Shimmer has never sought out either one of our laps. If we even DARED to put her on our lap, she let us know by teeth and claw this was not a GOOD idea. She preferred to remain by herself in the bedroom or in a cabinet alongside the stairwell converted into a cat bed. Medicating her was almost impossible.

I had gone to sit on my recliner after talking to her, when suddenly, I see her coming into the room. She headed straight for my recliner and jumped on my lap! She had this really nasty sticky brown drool dribbling out her mouth but I didn’t care. She was on my lap, head-bumping, purring, kneading me. She stayed on my lap for five hours. I ignored the dirty dishes needing my attention, the rug needing to be vacuumed, the needs of my bladder. Not until Mike asked about  dinner, did I even move as Shim and I shared this final moment together.

After I got up, she went back to the bathroom and laid down behind the toilet, staying there until the vet called with the results. I will hold this challenging girl  strong in my heart and she will be missed. RIP my girl.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so at this point, I will just stop typing and say: “Enjoy Pita, settled at last!”

She is still fighting a bad case of oral mouth ulcers, goopy eye and poor appetite. The vet was disappointed that the depo shot didn’t do much for what is going on with her. He did give her one more convinia shot and we got more eye medicine for her. Since her last visit, she is down 2 pounds. Although she is one cat who can afford to loose weight, he wants me to monitor her weight for the next two weeks then bring her back. I won’t be taking her back. She is so stressed from all these vet visits she has been peeing all over herself since she got home. It’s not worth it, especially knowing that what they are doing for her doesn’t work.

We pulled her health file and looked it over, searching for answers and he has determined that the covenia shot does not work on her in the past, and he hopes that now that she is older it might. She’s had several of these shots in the past with no results. Bummer. I am going to increase the L-Lysine that I am feeding all the cats including her and looking into holistic ways to heal her ulcers (perhaps unprocessed honey?) I don’t know the answer- but hope for her sake, we find it and soon.

Shim is due for her recheck in under an  hour from now. She has steadily been progressing downhill since her first visit. She is barely eating, but she is drinking water almost continually all day with no pee showing in the pan. Her clear discharge is now goopy and her third eyelid of her other eye is showing. She’s also taken to sleeping in the bathroom way back in the corner behind the toilet. She has never visited the bathroom that I know of so I am quite concerned as None of these are good signs. Part of me wonders if some of this is because of the stress she is under when we take her in to the vets office- or if there is something more than just stomatitis she is fighting. I remember when she and Benson first arrived here, anything that changed in their environment threw both of them into health issues all URI related. Take the changes away from their environment and in less than 24 hours they were both fine again. It’s been two weeks since she has been in to see the vet and instead of getting better, she has worsened. I hope he can tell us why.

Thank you to those of you who donated to the vet debt. We were able to put $143.00 towards the debt and we are grateful you opened up your hearts and your wallets to the cats here.

Please pray for Shim and I as we seek answers to what is going on.

PITA has been returned to us as of today. He was found to have some off-putting behavior (hissing) Just once, he never bit, scratched or struck out with his claws. Just one hiss as he considered his new caregivers and if they were worthy of his trust. I think they were worthy- but I know they have the kids to protect and when you get a new kitten in your care and he hisses at you- yes, it can be off-putting.

He was a bit stressed upon his return. His two brothers are still with us and he yowled so loudly when I confined him to the bedroom, that to save my eardrums, I let him out. No fights so far, but Molly, the one kitty he scuffled with from time-to-time is still outside. She will come back by dusk as she always does, so if there is going to be a confrontation, it will be after dark.

I had to take Bentley to the vet and Mike said while I was gone, PITA leaped upon him, headbumped his face one time and took off again. So hopefully, he is as glad to be home as we are to have him home.

Mr B- is in a bad way. Like Shimmer, bad stomatitis- one infected eye and lots of gingivitis on this 11 year old boy. I felt so bad for him- so we did the antibiotic, he got a pain shot and a depo shot. He is pretty unpredictable in his behavior thanks to the after-effects of surviving distemper when he was such a baby. They were so nice, they did everything for him with me holding him in my arms seated in a chair! I told them my knee was giving me fits and what happened as to why it was giving me such a fit and they just said, “Hang on to Mr. Bentley- we will work with him that way!” I love my vet.

He’s only been there a few times after his initial two week stay fighting distemper. He was there with pancreatitis that almost took his life, then he came back with massive diarrhea unstoppable until he got The Recipe and then got better. Then he came back with massive bite wounds when Mr. Gnarly got ahold of him before MG was neutered. He was there for two days on that stint. So he has been through it and they admire him for his strength and his character.

Our vet debt is now at $1,300.00 so if anyone has loose change rattling around in their car or inside the sofa in the living room- we SURE could use it. Just sayin-:)

Here is one of my favorite photos of my boy Bentley

Many thanks to those of you who are gifting us your Fresh Step Paw Points. Through these donations, we are able to buy trash bags, scoops litter and other items necessary to keep us going. If you enter our unique shelter code SHELTERBONUS914 they will gift us 250 points immediately. We are again in need of 13 gallon trash bags and another outdoor water fountain now that the weather is getting warmer (although last night it was 22 degrees here!) But it is April now and warmer weather is just around the corner.

Chandler and Bronson have become best buds. They are sleeping inside Mike’s shop which sadly, he hasn’t been in for three years now. He’s decided it might be time to sell some of his heavy shop equipment like his mill-drill-lathe which weighs well over 1,200 pounds as well as his contractors table saw (which is pretty much an antique as he has had it a long time. I set up some cat carriers with heated cat beds in the back of his shop and that’s where Bronson and Chandler have settled in.

Shimmer’s mouth has simmered down a bit, I am hoping just a few more shots and she will be right as rain. I have to take Bentley in next- he stopped eating a few days ago and he also looks like he might have stomatitis starting- although right now, his red patches are located in the back of his throat and none of his gums are bleeding. He goes in Monday- he’s my boy, my distemper survivor and vet visits with him can be pretty unpredictable. The disease left him neurologically challenged- so we will just have to see how it goes.

We had a minor flood in the kitchen of late. Our dishwasher sprung a leak and unknown to us, it leaked underneath the tile and ended up leaving a stain on the living room carpet that at first I attributed to the dog or the cat- but it kept appearing and never had an odor like pee- so it was a matter of elimination to figure out we had a leak somewhere. The plumber came out and fixed it and now we have to tear up the tiles and linoleum in the kitchen and dry the floor out. We are going to try and do it ourselves- and then if we find that doesn’t work- we will call in a professional. But the insurance didn’t cover much for repair work. I’m not sure why we have insurance in the first place? They seem to always find a way NOT to cover damages in older houses. The people who lived her prior to us, instead of tearing off old tile or linoleum they just covered it with new- so this is going to be quite the mess I think. But there was a lot of water damage and Oregon is known for mold and dry rot. Next week, we will get to work.

Speaking of work, I best get going. It’s time to get the cats fed as well as the husband. Everyone please have a peaceful day today and hug those around you who you love and who love you-

After getting bit to the degree of ending up in urgent care and losing my left thumb’s use for a few days, I decided to corral Chandler into a carrier and transfer her out to the enclosure where she has access to the outdoors as well as the enclosure 24/7. She has been out there a few days and this morning when I went to feed

, she came flying into the cat door and skidded to a stop when she saw me. Then as calm as toast, she came up to me and head-bumped and rubbed me! She doesn’t want to be inside- she was kept inside that bedroom all her life and treated feral and although she is not feral, she is also not a cat that wants to be confined if given the choice. With the cold weather over soon- her lack of hair won’t interfere with her being outside. I see her out in the yard when I am doing the laundry or out on the porch and she has made a new friend with Bronson who is also back here and hanging around the feeders. They both look 100% better and happy for the first time since their arrival here.