I will pick her up late afternoon (Pita has to get his drains out at 3:00) so I will be bringing everyone home tonight. The babies are now completely on canned kitten food- which is relief for Mattie I am sure. Please if you can send us some canned kitten food- I just updated our wish list

Mattie has taken a turn for the worst. She had only about a 24 hour reprieve from her vomiting, thanks to a shot of Serenia, but this morning when I went in there to feed, she had coated the floor with her emesis. 🙁

They are suspicious of a bacterial or parasitical infection so they are keeping her and the kittens until Monday to chase this. She has been getting regular fluids here- but she runs through them so fast. She had 200 ml at 8:00 last night, and this morning, she is once again super dehydrated. They did run an x-ray and other than a lot of gas in her colin and an empty stomach- nothing jumped out at them. They are waiting for a fecal from her- plus they want to see how quickly she vomits after eating.

Through  it all, she was the sweetest of kitties with them. As long as her kittens are close, she is temperament wise, loving and forgiving. Please send prayers that they find answers as to why she can’t keep nutrition down.

12:21 p.m.

The vet just called, they did a barium study and it revealed something stuck in the esophagus. The vet said it had the pattern of a herring bone. I don’t feed cats bones at all, and the vet said that it even could possibly be a snake? They are looking for the right tool that is long enough to reach down and take this item out, if not, they will put her under and open her up to take it out. Poor Mama kitty

Oh My Heavens! The vet just sent me this- this is what is inside her esophagus! No wonder she can’t keep anything down!

Yesterday, I saw Baker laying the grass and he just looked “off.” I couldn’t put my finger on it, just a feeling. I went over to him and he raised his head, but he didn’t move at all. I petted him and he meowed his hello to me. I thought maybe he was just taking advantage of the sunshine. Turns out he wasn’t.

Then today, around late afternoon, we receive a call from an elderly woman about a stray cat severely injured. She said she had gone online and gotten all the names of local rescues and called them all. No one had gotten back to her. She said she was panicked because this stray cat was so injured and he smelled horribly. Said his neck looked like it had been ripped open or something. She was in another town about 25 minutes away and she was crying. So off I went.

When I got there, she had put the stray into a carrier for me and when I went to lift off the towel, I reeled back. The stench of necrotic tissue was so strong. It is an older tomcat (shorthair tuxedo) I couldn’t really tell until I got him home, but he had been in a fight and a huge abscess had formed and split open from one ear to the next. His whole throat and neck was covered in wounds. Poor kitty-

Too late in the day to get him to my vet, and to take him to an ER you have to have $300.00 before you get to the door, so I laid a warm damp cloth gently on his neck to lift off any debris and crud. He didn’t tolerate that very well, so I finally just ended up spraying him with diluted Betadine, giving him an antibiotic, feeding him and giving him fluids. He will be at the vet first thing in the morning. Thankfully he isn’t feral. He only growled at me twice, so I gave him a pain pill and left him alone in the deck enclosure to decompress.

When I went back in the house, I had to feed the outside kitties, but I couldn’t find Baker. Unusual; because always at food times, he is inside the one enclosure waiting to eat. I called and called and nothing- everybody came but him.

Next to the feeding area, there is a covered cat condo. I happened to look over into the hole in the bottom and I saw him lying there. Then I saw the blood covering his rear legs! A lot of blood. You can reach into the top of this condo and remove cats, which is what I did. I picked him up, wrapped a towel around him and laid him on the couch. He tried to get up but his legs collapsed under him and he couldn’t move.:) It was 9:00 p.m. by this time, so I called another vet and he agreed to meet me at the clinic.

Turns out, Baker had been attacked by something. He had a 105.6 fever, his limbs were weak and he had lost a lot of blood. He was also leaking stool and bloody urine. He was a real mess. What the heck is attacking our cats all of a sudden? They have all gotten along until that new stray appeared recently, now they are getting torn up.

Baker is home after getting a pain shot, an anti-inflammatory shot, an antibiotic shot and his abscesses drained and left open. I had to chase the other cats out of the patio enclosure, because he is supposed to be quiet and to himself for at least 4 days. He can’t come in the house because he sprays like a firehose. That’s why he has never been successfully adopted out. Even neutered, he has sprayed ever since the operation.

I’m going to have to do something I detest and catch that tom with a catch pole. Nothing else seems to be working to get him captured. Our cats don’t deserve to be torn up like this- the wounds on both Baker and Pita are deep and infected.

Tomorrow is another day, when I will drop Glover in the morning to be evaluated and treated accordingly. I hope it isn’t as bad as it looks- but there is so much blood and tissue torn on this poor boy- in the photo below you can see the swelling on the one side of his face- the abscess is in the center of his neck and worked from one ear to the next. Never seen anything quite like it before. Just looking at it breaks my heart. He’s been a in pain for a long time.

12:40 SAD UPDATE- Glover could not withstand his injuries. He was put to sleep an hour ago. At least, now, he is out of pain. RIP Sweet Gent-

Graphic Image click at your own risk:

Much to  my dismay this morning, when I went into the bedroom to check on everybody, I discovered four big piles of emesis, courtesy of Mattie. I decided not to feed her and because she has been vomiting since the beginning of her time here (just little bits not like her offerings this morning) I placed a call to the vet and was told to bring her in. I took her babies with me and off we went.

She has a motility problem so she got a shot, we de-wormed her and they gave me a shot to go in case her stomach upheaves again. The anti-emetic we gave her was said to be safe for lactating and nursing moms but I am still keeping a sharp eye on her kittens for any warning signs that it has emoted through her milk.

I was so proud of her though. She was so easy to handle, she is almost 8 pounds now and one of the vets (I think) flipped for Mack Dabby and wants him badly. She has to talk to her husband, because they already have five cats. I think the selling point came when she lifted him up and held him to her face and he lightly bit her nose. LOL  He has such purrsonality for one so young. She agrees Mattie is around 5 months old and the kittens barely over three weeks.

Mattie is on a special diet now IE canned from Royal Canin with a bit of cooked white rice thrown in. They did not find anything majorly wrong with her other than she is way too thin. We will see how it goes- but everyone is  home now and safe.

We need a major miracle to occur on this vet bill that is  swallowing us whole right now.. Adding to the already over-the-top bill was the fact they had to sedate Pita because he was such a handful (so scared and terrified) they couldn’t even handle him. He has new bling now out the side of his face- a drain that is supposed to stay in place for five days.

I am supposed to keep him quiet, but he is rushing around the house right now like a whirling dervish. I wonder if it is just the release from the stress of being in a cage, or a reaction to the reversal shot? He also got outside- scooted out underneath the wheelchair but I managed to coax him back in within the hour. Silly, scared boy.

Wish I could report a calm weekend, but it didn’t happen. Saturday morning, I took our tractor out to the field to pick up a pile of limbs that came down in a recent storm. As the bucket started to lift the massive pile, all these yellow jackets come roiling out of the ground under the limbs. Holy smokes, tiny and aggressive! Kota was with me and he stepped into the whirlwind and got stung as I ran the heck away from them as fast as my leg would let me. (I am allergic to these insects.) Kota got stung enough times he headed to the creek and jumped in. Smart dog!

When I got back a few hours later- all was quiet. Kota had been called to the house and given some Benedryl just in case before I pulled the stingers out of his tail. I ended up piling hay and straw all over the piled wood, dousing it in gas and torching it. I hope I destroyed all the yellow jackets (wouldn’t have done it if they were honeybees).

Then when I get into the house to rest, PITA jumps on me and his face is so swollen on the left side. I thought at first he had gotten stung, but when I took out the clippers to shave his hair, I saw he had gotten into a fight and a nasty abcess was forming. He was running a high fever and unwilling or unable to eat. I took him to the vet first thing this morning, because treating him for anything, even though he is a lap cat is next to impossible. Especially when he doesn’t feel well.

The vet just called and they had to sedate PITA, lance the wound and put a drain in it. I have to take Mike back to the hospital in a few, so I will be picking PITA up later today to bring him home. I did tell the vet that PITA is terrified of being in a cage, so the sooner they can put him back into his carrier, the calmer he will become. Vet said PITA was scared to death. Poor Kitty- as for me, no rest for the weary I guess. LOL

When the kittens first arrived, they were barely moving. Now, they can’t sit still. Over the course of the day in between catching up on sleep and doing chores, I will try and get decent pictures of the lil’ darlins-

Not easy to do when all they want is to explore. But this is Flash.

It’s like Fort Knox now, trying to get into the bedroom to be with the new family! Although there are three latches on the screened door, we have had to be a bit more inventive and there are now two heavy boxes of litter on sentry guard! (That’s how hard she hits the screen!) They are braced against the door to protect if from her body slams.

Mattie came in here weighing just under 5 pds. She would growl at us anytime we were near her of the babies. I was touched that she allowed me to remove all those mats off her while growling the entire time. She never once struck out at me or tried to bite me.

She is now 7pds14.7 ozs. Also, her milk is coming back slowly. She only two viable nipples, now there are three!

*Smokey Joe, the smallest boy came here under 3 ounces. He now weighs…      wait for  it…….    15.4 ounces!
*Flash is now 10.9 ozs
*Mack Dabby is 12.3 ozs  and
*Foggy is 13 ozs.

Yay Team! And go goats milk/baby food and nutrical which is what the babies are getting..

Here is Solo now

And here is NAO

Here is Mattie, with her four little ones and YES! My emails have been resurrected from the dead! So I can finally show you the family. Pigeon decided that this family needed further investigation and went up the screen door on our bedroom (cat proof screen) and crept over the wooden barrier and Mattie hit that door so hard, Pidgeon flew over the top of the barrier and scattered down the hall!   I was in the room at the time and told Mattie that she may not be able to produce much milk for her babies, but she sure can produce the love and protection. I thought she was going to fly right through the screen itself.

Mattie’s two boys are Mack Dabby, and Smokey Joe, they are both mackeral tabbies. Her females are Siamese mixes Flash and Foggy. The babies are quickly gaining weight, and Mattie’s coat is less oily then it was on arrival and she has gained one pound. We are feeding her five times a day a variety of different foods because she is way undernourished and so young to be having to deal with the babies. But she is a fierce mama!

On a much sadder note, Tripp died this morning.  he was under the couch and didn’t move when I did my food call. I thought he was just asleep, so I let him be- but than Kota started whining and scratching right where Tripp was laying. I put Kota in his cage and laid down on the floor, reached under the couch and pulled Tripp out. He was warm- but he was gone. I have no clue what happened. I had the difficult task of having to tell Mike that Tripp was gone and then I went and laid Tripp back in the forest and covered him with ferns and fronds.

I came back to the house and Pigeon (his brother) jumped on my lap and wrapped his paws around my neck, I told him about Tripp’s passing as well. Right after I stopped crying into his fur, he stepped off my lap and laid down on the armrest. People tell me all the time, that cat’s don’t feel emotion. I totally disagree- this is a sad kitty, mourning the passing of his brother.

This morning, there wasn’t good news on the kitten front. Mom had only three kittens in with her and “Mack Dabby”, this gorgeous boy with gray and white striped paws was off in the corner all by himself. 🙁 The good news is, we had prepared for that possibility and I had put out several blankets with heating pads under them. Thankfully, he was stretched out on one of them. I wish they were eating better though. Pulling out all our tricks to make that happen.

Mom is sweet and I finally got to really look at her. She has one nipple that might be producing, I notice a tug of war going on with the babies when they get close to her belly over that one spot. But she has nothing left in her except love. Normally, we would take her away from the babies to build her back up nutritionally, but in this case, that’s not the plan. She loves these babies and has given her all to them. She has places she can get to away from them in the area, and she panics when we take one into the other room to feed them. She’s so young too, this just breaks my heart that she has had to deal with being a mom. Will try to remove her mats today- there are so many especially under her legs. She’s a long-hair tuxedo girl.

Will try to keep you updated, but right now, our battle is in keeping the family healthy and getting the babies to take in more food.

Update: the second male is now home after his neuter. We decided to name him NAO- stands for “Not Another One!” LOL The golden, mellow sweet boy is named Solo in honor of another orange ginger who passed last year.