FELINE RESCUE JOURNAL started 5/10/2007
MAY 11
Am now trapping feral again since Fluffy seems to be able to hold his own While driving through town, noticed a thin adult cat weakly walking across street nearly getting hit by cars.Cars on both sides stopped to let her pass. I pulled over to investigate and found small colony of approx 15 adults and a dozen kittens ( feral) living under the home of an elderly woman. Received permission to feed/water which I did right away.Plan to trap and neuter each adult and release
Poor Karen continues week after week to trap a cat with a fox tail in its eye. She says the last two days the cat hasn't shown up for food. How miserable it must be to have a sharp object in your eye and be unable to remove it.
Placement of kittens, only after they are tamed, if I can even catch those little critters. Anyone interested in these kittens please email me.
Please do not take kittens you find to the pound as they are not "no kill" shelters. The kittens you take in will will be killed in a few days. Take the time to care for an find homes for your kittens. Place ads in the paper, put up fliers at the Vet offices.Call and join your local rescue and help them out.
MAY 11-8 am Trapped and caught two adults. One nursing mom and one orange male. WIll have them fixed and release back. them
MAY12th Caught one tiny silver tabby about 6 weeks. Two hour later caught his orange tabby brother. Will work to get the rest of the litter who hide under a woman's home.A few other adults need to be trapped and fixed as well.
MAY 10 My Fluffy continues to eat some raw foods daily, also Chicken cat food and show signs of recovery.He has had 7 days of Baytril..I would never use Baytril on a cat because of possible retinal damage and blindness except in a cat near death and I feel that is Fluffy's case here .When using Baytril in a cat NEVER give injectable,but only pill form only and in a lower dose and no more then 7 days.If cat has renal failure then the Baytril can build up to toxic levels and hurt the eyesight so you may need to split the one dose between morning and night or use another broad spectrum antibiotic and hope it works.. I will do more blood testing on him to check his kidney function. Let's hope that his counts are down although I feel he will always now have kidney troubles.We will see.
MAY 13th - 16th
Have trapped a few more feral kittens. Should have about 12 of them by end of May. Also trapped another orange adult male who will be fixed and released back tomorrow. Have a few Petshops who will let us set up adoption centers on the week-ends. Kittens will have first shots and gift bags with goodies, as well as spay/neuter coupons.
The tiny kittens are all taming up so no more cute hissing or spits which is good news but I miss it.So cute when they spit, their whole body jumps an inch backwards like a gun firing,I just love it.
The feral with the foxtail in the eye, the one by the river, showed up this morning so Karen has new hopes in trapping it.She is fearful the foxtail can go further back into the eye and into the brain.Poor cat, I hope she can trap it soon.
MAY 17th through the 20th
Have trapped a few more adult males , fixed and released them.One urinated in my car and had to remove floor mats.Got lucky the pee was on a mat :) New ones will cost 250.00.Forget it! Have laid blankets down now so no biggie. Easy solution.Of all the cats trapped, the one who peed a little bit was still hung over from the surgery meds.
Caught the last kitten from the elderly ladies home. A little calico, spit ball of fire. WOW can she hiss and spit.Poor baby acts that way as she shakes violently from fear. The life of a feral cat must include alot of fear.The siblings of the calico are tame now and they look at the new arrival no longer understanding all the fear and drama .It will take extra love and attention to tame the calico as she is the most fearful of the bunch.
May 21st through 27th Caught two approx 7 week old black male kittens in the same trap at 7:30 in the morning. I set the trap at 6:30 in the morning. No nighttime trapping where I live as I end up with skunks and raccoons! You have to walk up on a skunk hidden behind a sheet you hold out in front of you, and you hope for the best as you work from behind the sheet to open the trap and release. The raccoons scare me more as they seem ready to bite as I open the trap door to release them.
Anyway, the little black twin brothers just hissing and spitting .The calico kitten has finally stopped hissing and starting to play as of the 24th.It doesn't help her to see the new feral boys at all. All kittens received their first shots. Melanie was able to adopt out 4 kittens over the last two week-ends. I sat at the Petshop for 5 hours and not on person adopted one of mine.This was my second time out in two weeks sitting for hours and no one adopted. I feel frustrated and scared about it all. On top of no one adopting from me I still went and took four more feral about 5 weeks old and two tiny babies about 3 1/2 weeks old ( one very very sick) So I am insane of course , and dreamed all night of getting stuck with a dozen more cats . I am so afraid and yet I go take more.Good Lord..
Both of the 3 week olds were literally covered from head to toes with flea poop,gums white from lost of blood. One kitten so drained from loss of blood that he laid on his side and passed away. The other I gave IV poultice under the nap of the neck and sugar water, heat and stabilized him. Hours later I had to sit him in hot soapy water to drown the fleas and pull them off one by one .Sometimes with one finger swipe several fleas at one time. Dozens of fleas ran into his ears and eyes .It was simply awful and it took me at least 20 minutes to remove hundreds if not thousands of fleas. The kitten was literally being eaten by fleas.I knew there was a chance that the kitten may not survive the washing and picking, but I had to remove the blanket of fleas.He did survive the long tedious flea removal, is on antibiotics, fluids, milk and liquid vitamins. Here is a picture of him after his bath, all clean and white. I did not take a before picture as it wasn't on my mind as I was only thinking of getting him through the washing alive. His left eye was sealed shut with pus.
PS Today i was able to adopt out FOUR KITTENS to very nice families ! Thank-you God ! I will sleep good tonight! Plus Joni is taking one too! Way to go Joni !!!
This will give you a glimse , but many days will go undocumented as we are much too busy to write daily.
Pic I took of him May 26th 2007.Skin and bones, too weak to walk
Picture taken May 29th. Filling out, eye infection clearing, still not very active, but eats well and walks around.
May 28th - June 1st Same ol thing. Kitten found on freeway- we will call Freeway another 1 week old kitten found next to its dead mother . These babies cry every 3 hours for bottles and we have three other siblings found off the freeway that demand bottles.
Also went to Petshop with four kittens to place up for adoption and someone had abandoned four kittens ( two tiny ones- orange and a creamy orange + larger blue /wht and Siamese) ) at the pet shop so we ended up with 8.That is not how it is suppose to work! Anyway of the 4 left at the petshop we found homes for two of them (the blue and white as well as the Siamese) plus also placed two of our own! Plus Melanie placed at least two of her own !! So off to the pound to get a few more babies- We give the babies vaccines when old enough. Karen trapped two 4 month olds near a farm and had them fixed. She will release them back to the farm and work to trap others .This is called TNR. I have to go back to the Walnut and Center home to trap 4 more adults. I already trapped 5 adults, fixed and released, plus 5 kittens we kept for adoption. You cannot TNR kittens under 4 months. Need to keep and find homes.Need to trap several cats and 9 kittens near my home.Sometimes it all seems so overwhelming.Please everyone. pitch in and fix the cats in and around your neighborhoods. Call together a neighborhood meeting to address this issue. One female can produce kittens every 4 or 5 months and her daughters can start producing at 5 months of age.Hundreds of stray cats from one mother within a short period of time.
JUNE 4nth
Have a kitten attacked by pitbull in my care. Will take him in for xrays and treatment today. Was rescued from Stockton emergency as they were going to turn him over to animal control.We.received a phone call from a concerned party at a Stockton animal hospital.The caller whispered into the phone that the hospital wasn't doing anything to help a kitten mangled by a pitbull. The kitten has chest punctures and it appears a shattered leg. The caller stated that the hospital was going to hand him over to animal control
I couldn't wait to get my hands on him.First thing I did was give him pain medication and wrap his leg. They couldn't even wrap his leg! Arghhh~ I put him on two types of antibiotics.Clindamycin and Clavmox. His leg is purple and swollen and front first 2 inches from joint just hangs. I pray that instead being a break that the ligament is torn. The kitten has a deep puncture wound to the chest but breathes okay and is actually purring when held, and trying to play with another kitten. I am most upset that 48 hours passed without the hospital giving any antibiotics or pain medications
I will take him in first thing tomorrow to Dr Raj for x-rays.He is my Vet in Manteca
What a lucky little kitty to have survived such a bite. I hear the pitbull owner wasn't doing anything to get his dog to release the hold on the kitten until some people yelled they would call the police. Then he hit his dog and pried open the mouth. The pit owner ran with his dog. Well, just spent 1 hour taking care of puppies. Time to fall into bed.It is 10:30 and I am beat. Night!
JUNE 5th. two new kittens today. Also Karen set appts for the parents to get fixed.I have the two new kittens. I took the kitten attacked by the pitbull to the Vet and the news was bad. He has a temporary cast on until tomorrow. He had full body x-rays which showed lungs and heart not damaged by the puncture wounds to his chest but his front leg is snapped in two peices which lay side by side. We will discuss surgery and other options tomorrow. We can't afford the surgery that could be 2000.00- 3,000.00 with the specialist. Dr Raj said he will do the surgery himself and use titatium pins at a fraction of the cost.One of the nurses at the clinic says she will take a few of my hursing babies so i will drop them off to her tomorrow.Carriers with blankets, heat pads, bottles and milk. I will appreciate the help.One of Melanies kittens was adopted today from the Petshop :)
As of June 10th
Lost a kitten and so had the three littermates disease tested. They came out negative, so do not know why she died.Tiny babies under 5 weeks are just weaker.They need to nurse but the litter was brought to us and no one knows where mom was.We give kitten milk, warmth,food and antibiotics and the rest is up to nature.
I have trapped another adult and four older ferral kittens.The adult was fixed and released, One longcoat simaese kitten tamed fast and has already been placed. The other three kittens are so aggressive that I could only hold them with oven mitts. If we cannot tame them they may have to be fixed and released back to where we found them. We have set up a feeding station for the elderly womans house. No less then 10 adults and 12 kittens at this one ONE home in town.We have caught 10 kittens so far from the home and 7 of the adults. Once I finish this home I will move on to another.
PITBULL KITTEN STORY STARTS IN JUNE-BELOW
NOVEMBER UPDATE ON "SINBAD". It was a long hard journey over the last several months. SInbad finally got his surgery and pins were put into the two broken bones.Over a course of months his leg had to be re wrapped daily ( many times 2 or 3 times aday due to his stepping into water) While in the light cast the first few weeks The leg had started to turn bad under the cast and had developed a off black darkening to the skin
( despite antibiotics) Thank-goodness I had made a check up appointment when I did and inssited and asked to have the cast removed and leg checked.It was touch and go for many weeks.In the end he lost a toe, but to this day he uses his leg entire leg , despite a limp. Thanks Dr Raj!
As SPRING OF 2008 approaches, I am faced with a reality that is not easy to accept. It makes me sick inside, but I cannot continue to foster several dozens of kittens and get stuck with the few who have health So if I find kittens I have no choice but to place them with large rescues and make donations.
Karen. Melanie and I placed more then 300 or more kittens and cats in 2007 I sat at PetSmart with every week-end spring, summer and fall.
I will continue to monitor the colonies where I feed each week for felines that are not neutered and for new babies to trap and find home( now I will pass the kittens on to others, sad to say)
If only I was a millionare .......What is wrong with all those multi millionaires! They should all open non kill shelters and pay for workers to care for the strays while homes are found
I sure wouldn't be an millionaire long would I? Can you imagine how much suffering the super wealthy people could put an end to? of course starving and ill children world wide are already cared for by so many charities and that is more important then anything............but
lets get more non kill shelters open .Gates can put several billions of dollars into it. Why let that kind of money just sit when it can put an end to so much pain
today using his leg
