Jet-Eye is headed for the vet. He started having difficulty breathing last night and went into small spasms (not sure what else to call it) They weren’t seizures just the stiffening up of his limbs then he would relax, start open mouth panting and do it again. Not sure what’s going on but taking him to my veteran vet who I used to use long ago. Ben’s the best and I need a second opinion about this heart murmur issue as well. Two homes were offered for Jet Eye this weekend, but both didn’t feel right to me so I declined them. Now, I know why- Jet-Eye is still trying to figure out if he is a fighter or not. Plus he eats wet food like it is going out of style- at least 5 cans a day and he has been dewormed twice!

Update: The vet believes the spasms are related to the heart murmur and not much can be done about them. He completely fell in love with this kitty who is so laid back and friendly. I tried to give Jet-Eye to Ben but there were no takers. 🙂 He said the eye was likely injured a long time ago and doesn’t need to come out. He did send home new eye ointment for it though. He is a good vet but waiting in line for over 2 hours to see him reminds me of why I don’t go there anymore. And I had an appointment!

The new product I mentioned before Suro-Kitty, I finally got the schematics of it in my email. This is a warming bed that will support up to 6-8 kittens at one time to nurse! The kittens snap down into comfortable pouches and stay nursing until they are full. It is genius but it costs $175.00 which our kitty doesn’t have at the moment. This is something I wish I had invented and have over the years tried to come up with something like it- but all tries failed. If you could send a few dollars to CATS Inc so we can get the pre-order price- next kitten season it will be a breeze to nurse these babies!

Thank you very much. My fingers also thank you as they get bitten a lot when I am nursing the very young. They may be just born, but their tiny teeth do hurt!

Update:I wanted to say thank you to the special blog follower who has ordered this product for us! I have high hopes that this will work out in the long run to be a very good addition to CATS Inc.,

He is at the vet’s as I type. He is getting rechecked for his heart murmur and if all goes well, they will neuter him either late today or tomorrow. He was starting to spray. His URI has resolved and his hot spots have calmed down a lot. He is the sweetest. mellowest tomcat I have ever met. I can’t imagine what the neuter will do to him- he is sweet enough already. But I can’t have a sprayer not after trying to resolve the situation here already with rampant cat pee.

12:19 p.m. The vet just called and said the heart murmur is very distinct. Although there is a chance he won’t make it through the surgery, I gave the go-ahead. He may be a sweet tomcat at a young age, but keeping him intact is not something I can do. Please say a prayer he makes it through- if not, at least he had almost a week of someone who actually cared about what happened to him.

3:52 p.m. Jet-Eye has made it through the neuter and is home and a bit loopy but he is eating and drinking. Sue it would be a long road trip to get him to you and with his heart murmur I don’t wish to risk it, otherwise I would contact Guardians of the Road to do a long-haul for me. The vet said he could live 7 days, 7 months, or 7 years. So I am probably just going to hang on to him until the right person comes along that wants him. I will run an ad for him this weekend but he is black that’s one strike, he has a heart murmur (strike two) and he is one-eyed (strike three). Sometimes, the people who go towards the special needs cats are a bit loopy themselves so I have to be careful.

Here is the skin problem he is having. This growth is only appearing under all four of his legs.

That’s what Jet-Eye said this morning when I went in to scrub his wounds and greet him. The affliction on his skin seems to be growing under his legs. The vet says it’s not ringworm- hopefully today the results will be in and we will find out what it is.

Last night, late I got a phone call. The woman said the cat had cruised into their life about 2 weeks ago and was now trying to get into her home. Her husband a daughter were highly allergic and they had small dogs and a dog door that had to stay open 24/7. She said she had called everyone, but no one would take this black cat and now he had a really bad eye that looked gooey and nasty.

He is in isolation and I have a bad feeling about this beautiful, friendly boy. I think his eye is the least of his problems, and I hope I am wrong but I suspect either FeLV or FIV onboard of this young tom because of his appearance and he is riddled with ringworm.

Ringworm in the cat world is an opportunistic disease, generally preying on the weak and immune compromised and the young. He is (I would guess) about 7-8 months old and I will take him in this morning to be tested. I suspect, I won’t be bringing him back  home. You do this so long, sometimes you just know that something isn’t quite right.

But I am not a vet and truthfully not in a good positive place in my life at the moment, so I will hold onto the hope that this is just a nasty case of calici  or felineherpes and go from there. Time will tell. At least he is anything but feral! I am calling him Jet-

Update 1:42- Just got back with Jet-eye. This poor sweet kitty has been put through the wringer! He tested negative to the nasties which was a pleasant surprise for me BUT he has a raging URI a fungal infection that is NOT ringworm- a bacterial skin condition on his belly of unknown source (tests still pending) and he only has one good eye. They also detected a heart murmur but are hoping this is just a result of the high fevers he has been running, the stress he has been under and the upper respiratory. He also has a really bad case of ear mites that rival the ones Pan had. Poor kitty. He is almost a year old and not neutered. …and won’t be for two weeks or so once the URI is under control.

Through it all, even being a tom, he was a perfect angel. He is home now and kind of grumbling at me (can’t blame him there). I would grumble too. He’s been de-flead and de-wormed no vaccinations, they say he isn’t strong enough yet. I was going to call him Jet but finding out he only has one eye- I added to it- Jet-eye.

He was given a shot of covenia, they used the one-time treatment for ear mites on  him (even though I did put Revolution on him last night). They cleaned and shaved his fungal patches and washed him down with special soaps, clipped his nails (he was digging at his eye) dewormed him gave him fluids to help the fever come down further and sent him home. I have to be very careful handling him because his fungal infection and bacterial infection on his skin might be contagious to people as well as other cats. Won’t know until Monday when the results come back- but to transfer that to Mike would be devastating. I have gloves, scrubs, shoe covers and mask ready at the door for every time I have to go in there to take care of him.

Here he is after the vet visit. Totally exhausted but keeping his good eye on me. (I think he feels I might snatch him up again and put him into the carrier) for another go-around.

The other morning, I went out to the enclosure to feed Morgan and found her lying so still, I thought she was gone already. I ran into the house and grabbed my fluids and pumped them into her and for a cat who would have rather run 100 yard dash over my head then to ever let me touch her- she barely moved. Damn I hate FIP.

I called a friend, and gathered her in my lap and we raced to the vet. She died on the way. Anne if you are by chance reading this, I am so sorry for this final outcome. My feline specialist when I reached out to her to help me get through all of this said she was sad, but not surprised. Just my early emails to her made her fear that the kittens were fighting an infectious disease or something worse. I know Anne, when you dropped them at my door you did tell me that they weren’t very healthy kittens and we did all we could to try and bump up their immune systems and reduce stress.

I received the family in November and was really hoping that at least one would beat the odds. I need to share the tunnel they managed to build in their spare time before they got sick. The way that the catio was built, George left a space of about 9 inches between the catio and the wall. The cats were dropping into the space and tunneling to freedom- and the only way to stop them was to block the access to the catio itself. It is a clever tunnel, I have to give them that- but they never actually tunneled which they could have done. It was just where they went to hide.

So Sweet Morgan, you could hide from the eyes of people who loved you but not from the disease coursing through your veins. You are now with your mom and your sister in a glorious place where there are now no walls, no tunnels, no barriers- just peace with no pain.

I went in this morning to talk to Mike’s PC and it was the most frustrating conversation I have had in a long time. I explained how my husband is now twitching, moaning, groaning,  mumbling and complaining about pain in his leg for the first time in years. How when he falls asleep in his lift chair, he has such deep spasms that he almost falls out of his chair and his pain keeps me  up till about 4:00 a.m. when his body finally succumbs to exhaustion and he falls asleep. I asked them to please give him some sort of muscle relaxer, and new pain med anything and this is what was relayed to me:

They do not believe that what I am describing is pain. Therefore, they want to explore this new development before describing any new medication so I have to take him in on Monday to be seen and “explored.” I believe I know my husband well enough to know when he is in pain and now when I am carefully washing his leg, he is almost in tears because he feels the pain. His leg is now like a snake shedding skin- but it’s not skin according to the “experts” but a wall of bacteria that builds up within 24 hours. He’s never complained before now so it is all pretty unsettling.

So for right now, when it comes to new rescues, I am going to be a bit selective for awhile and only take one instead of four- or try to help the caller out in other ways without taking any. Too much on my plate right now- too much sadness in my heart at all the recent departures. I just need to step back and figure out how to breathe again-

Haven’t been blogging lately. Different issues in the background have made focusing on tasks hard. Mike’s leg is in crisis mode, George broke my trust in probably the worst way and a good friend is now in Stage 4 COPD fighting for her life in a Texas hospital. I know everyone has issues and this isn’t posted to have anyone feel badly for me. Mainly to try and explain my absence lately. Because, not only do I have God to lean on, but I have a Molly Cat as well!

She knows I am upset and that my thoughts aren’t staying connected and when I am inside the house, she never leaves my side. She sleeps on my arm at night and will bite (lightly) my hand every now and then. She doesn’t draw blood- and she makes sure that her head is right by my ear so she can purr me to sleep. Often at night, I will wake up and just see her sitting there staring at me. She’s not resting, she is watchful. She also chases off the other cats who wish to share the bed at night- something she has never done before. She is my great comfort right now.

On the kitty front- Morgan is holding her own. Showing no signs of FIP at this time. Solo, the big orange female who has lived outside her entire life is now inside one enclosure all by herself. I had taken her to the vet because her fur suddenly showed signs of massive matting and she is a shorthair! We didn’t find anything alarming wrong with her even after the bloodwork. She is about 12 years old. I have had her about 4 years. So I put her inside an empty enclosure where she can stay warm and safe and have been introducing her to grooming tools. Her tail will twitch the entire time I am brushing or combing her- and yet, I think she might like it a bit more than she appears to be showing me. She is at least less matted these days. Seam rippers work really good to get out tight mats and they don’t hurt the cat as much as a comb will.

Quinn is now in the house and has made friends with Cooper. They sleep together at night in Coopers open cage. Benson, the Siamese that was so sensitive to changes in his life, now is fully into the home life and he will creep into Coops cage and sleep as well. His sister Shimmer is also in the house but she isn’t an easy one to socialize. She will still take time.

We had a skunk get in the house a few days ago and spray. The wind had blown the outside door open without our knowledge and she came in and made herself comfortable and us very uncomfortable! Whew! I am in the process of ripping up the flooring where the spray settled and will have to replace it with all new flooring as well as pet proof vinyl flooring. I am in the process of interviewing contractors to see who is brave enough for the job! The smell thanks to nature miracle has dissipated over time, but is not fully gone. I also replaced the lock on the door so that doesn’t happen again. The person who installed the door originally, installed it incorrectly. The cats were fit to be tied trying to escape the smell- even Molly was out-of-sorts for a few days, but she still, never left my side. As I type this-she is sitting on my lap watching me.

Pearl left us this morning. It is suspected (although not proven) that she and her sister have FIP. She stopped eating a few days ago and this morning when I went in to see her, she let me pet her (she is full feral) she also let me pick her up and she was flat. She was gone before the medicine even reached her vein once we got to the vet. Her sister seems to be doing okay (knock on wood) but then about a week ago Pearl was doing okay as well.

FIP is such a frustration. There is no correct test for it, there is no cure and it is always fatal. It seems to accelerate under stress and once it was suspected these cats might be affected (based on their rapid dehydration rate) all attempts at socializing them stopped. Keeping them on a routine, no surprises I hoped to prolong their lives but Pearl was clearly suffering. Now she is not- she is running the grasses and playing with others who have gone before her.

Sometimes, when you believe wholeheartedly that something is so right. God steps in and says- “Wait a minute, not this one, not this time.” I am speaking of Kirby who was so perfect in many ways except one. I have only had him 8 days, and he has gotten away from me 4 times! He comes back, but not when I call him- when he wants to. I don’t think he is being deliberately a bad dog. I think he just loves to run. But yesterday, when in two shakes of his head, he was out of his collar. He ran into the highway and came so close to becoming road kill! I was screaming his name, and he didn’t get hit- but then he took off- headed to Sweet Home in a dead run! I jumped in my truck and as I reached the edge of the driveway, the mail lady came flying in honking her horn! Unknown to me, Kirby had come back and was under my truck tire. I would have killed it had not it been for the alert from the mail lady.

I gathered him in my arms and realized how bad I was shaking- so last night, I rehomed him to a lady who swears she can keep him safe. I’m betting not (because we are not careless dog owners) but if he does die, it won’t be on my watch. I couldn’t bear it.

When I took him there last night, she was waiting anxiously at her door and I had him on a tight, tight collar and leash. I had forgotten something of his in the truck and I went back to get it. I felt one tug on the leash and thought OMG NO! He was gone! I had squeaky frog in my pocket and I squeaked it and back he came- tail wagging- wanting to play! I looked at Frankie watching all of this from her porch and said “This is what I was talking about. This dog is a runner.

She works in a locked facility- memory care and she is going to take him to work with her- she is admin there. I know he will love the people and I told her how he alerts to people who are sick. So maybe, although it was meant for me to rescue him- it was meant for HER to be the true owner. I am sad but it would have destroyed me to watch this dog die.

On the Hanna front, her new family is on their way to us now. The woman has adopted from me in the past, so a home check is not necessary. I am so astounded she wants another cat from me- because she had the misfortune of adopting Sterling (the Russian blue mix from that horrible hoarding situation in Albany). Sterling died from FIP according to the necropsy and he wasn’t even a year old! Robin did everything she could to keep this kitten alive while vets scrambled to find out what was wrong with him. I am thrilled she wants to take a chance, and Hanna has been given an excellent bill of health from the vet. I took her in and had everything done I could think of to be sure I wasn’t giving Robin another potential timebomb waiting to explode! Hanna is lucky- so much love and care is waiting for her today.

Here are some photos of Shimmer the calico that I still haven’t been able to find a home for- Cooper my amazing three legged buddy and his new friend Kirby the dog that I recently rescued.

Kirby (the little dog) alerted to a kitten this morning. Turns out, kitty is sick with a UTI. I have to wonder if Brandy had a paw in this rescue-