Beth goes home

On August 15th, the shelter I foster for had a kitten-adopt-a-thon event to try and adopt out some of the many kittens that were ready to come out of foster to find new homes. There were over 25 kittens ready to find new homes and I am happy to say that Beth was scheduled to be one of them. I was also supposed to bring 2 other foster kittens in with her, but that was not to be.

Daisy, I kitten I had for just a little while in order for her to gain weight, started showing signs of a bad form of upper respiratory infection that causes mouth ulcers. And Thin Mint, a kitten I was watching for our foster coordinator was having trouble with her lungs. Beth, however was doing well. Her eye was finally healed and she was over her upper respiratory infection. So to be safe, I sent Beth to the home of another of our foster homes who took wonderful care of her and brought her to the event for me. And I am glad to say that she found a wonderful home with a loving couple and is now happily settled into her forever home.

Here she is all grown up and ready to go!


Daisy is still with me. She is recovering and will hopefully be able to go up for adoption on Friday. Thin Mint, I am sad to say, has found her forever home at the Rainbow Bridge. A vet exam confirmed what we feared. She had a birth defect that would make it harder and harder for her to breathe as she got older and so we had to make the hard decision to euthanize her. We all wished for a different outcome for her, but at least we were able to give her five months of loving care and happiness.

The medical care that these three foster alone have recieved in the short time they have been in the shelter's care is amazing. The shelter does not give up on animals without a fight even though all their funding comes from private donations. It is because of this attitude and how much they truly care for animals that I am participating in their annual Walk for Animals.

And this year, I am making it a family event. My five year old niece Paige is our team captain and she is thrilled to be learning how to raise money for a cause she cares about. And my niece Katy who is 13 has also joined our team, along with some staff and foster people.

We are walking in honor of all the little fighters that come through our lives, both the success stories like Beth, and the sad outcomes like Thin Mint. Please consider making a donation to our team to help this wonderful shelter continue the essential work it does every day. You can make a donation to our team, or to individual team members. Thanks in advance for your generosity. Michelle.

http://support.mspca.org/site/TR/WalkforAnimals/General?team_id=11471&pg=team&fr_id=1300

Cones and Strep Throat

Beth is still recovering well. She is doing well enough and the pain has settled down enough that the incision is getting itchy. Which means that she is trying to scratch at it. That meant an after hours trip to the shelter for a surgical cone. She was NOT happy about it. It was wat too big (because she is so small) and heavier than her.

Just overnight she got her foot caught in it about six times and then managed to pull it off, scraping it along her eye in the process. After that I just left it off and watched her for the rest of the night to try and stop her from messing with her eye. But since we were up all night with Paige (who is 5) because she has a mouth full of strep blisters, it was not that bad to be up with Beth too.

I went back to the shelter in the AM when the surgical team was in and they were able to make the cone small enough to fit her. It required cutting new holes in it and shortening it a lot because she was already wearing the smallest size. She still hates it, but at least it is safe now. Here is Beth a few days after surgery.

Bailey is also doing well recovering from his pneumonia. He is active and playing and being a typical 12 weeks old kitten. I am really hoping he will be well enough by his vet check next week to go back up for adoption.

Beth is Awake!

Beth is awake! Well, actually she is asleep right now, but the important thing is that she woke up from her eye removal surgery. The very skilled vet and surgery team at the shelter were able to successfully remove her damaged eye.

There was concern that she might not wake up from the surgery because she was so little, but the damaged eye was bad enough that the surgery just could not wait and we had to take the chance.

It was a stressful day for me, especially since 5 of my other fosters were having routine spay / neuter surgeries the same day, but thankfully everyone came through surgery just fine. Buffy, Batty, Bubbles, Eric and Quinn stayed at the shelter and went up for adoption and Beth return home with me to recover. As of today, Batty, Eric and Quinn were already adopted!

Comings and Goings

So it has been a bit since I posted. Things have just been a little crazy. But here is what has been going on. Bubbles and Quinn became well enough to come back home with us, but on that same day their brother Eric had to go to stay at the shelter because he was sick with a bad upper respiratory infection. Thankfully he only had to stay a few days.

However, all the kittens were exhibiting slightly odd symptoms. As a result I had Batty and Buffy (who seemed healthy) in my bedroom, Bailey and Eric (who had URI signs) in the spare bathroom and Bubbles and Quinn (dehydration) in the foster room. It was a little crazy.

Eventually, all the kittens but Bailey started having the same odd symptoms: lack of eating and dehydration for now known reason. So we decided to have Bailey go back to the shelter (they are all old enough) and go up for adoption so that he would not get sick being with the other kittens.

A few days later I was volunteering at the shelter manning an informational table on fostering when one of the volunteers came out of the cat adoption area to tell me that she thought Bailey was wheezing. So I went in to check him out. He was visiting with potential adopters and was active and playing so I was not initially too concerned. The potential adopters had some questions about him and decided that they wanted to adopt him so they gave him back to me to go fill out the adoption paperwork and talk with staff.

Unfortunately when I actually got my hands on Bailey I could tell that he was really struggling to breathe and that it was more than the mild URI symptoms that he had shown in my home. I immediately took him back to a staff member to be evaluated and more than one agreed that his breathing was not right and there was no way he could be adopted that day. I felt bad disappointing his potential adopters but we could not send them home with a sick kitten.

I took Bailey home hoping that he was breathing heavy because he had been visited with a lot that day and it was very hot in the shelter since the air system was being repaired and he spent his whole life in my air conditioned home. But after 24 hours back in my home his breathing had not improved so he went in to see the vet that Monday. The vet said that he either had pneumonia or a partially collapsed lung and he would need to stay in foster with me for a least a month to receive treatment. She also looked at his brother Quinn who I brought in for some fluids since he was still dehydrated. When she learned that the whole litter was having problems and that their mother had had mastitis, she put them all on medication for two weeks.

I am happy to report that the medications were just "what the doctor ordered" and everyone is doing well. Two weeks after being put on medications all the kittens except for Bailey are healthy enough to go up for adoption and will be leaving tomorrow. Bailey is improving well, but to be safe we are going to keep him on the medication for the full month since lung problems like this one can be really hard to beat.

So as of tomorrow morning I will be going from having 6 foster kittens to having just one. Although if fate is on my side and a special new little kitten named Beth manages to survive her life saving surgery I will have two. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Where are we now

I am happy to report that Nemo has completely recovered and been adopted into a loving forever home. His name is now Darwin and he is being loved and spoiled as he deserves. We miss him, but are happy to see him doing so well.

April has also returned to the shelter to hopefully find her forever home real soon. She has developed mastitis which happens sometimes when a mom cat stops nursing her kittens. I am hopeful she will recover soon since this is a relatively common thing for a mom cat that was producing as much milk as she was to feed all six kittens.

As for her kittens, we have had our ups and downs. Unfortunately we are in a down swing right now. They are 8 weeks now and should be able to go up for adoption, but are not healthy enough. At first they were just showing mild signs of an upper respiratory infection which will just take time to pass. But on Monday night one of the kittens, Bubbles was very suddenly lethargic and very dehydrated. I quickly gave her some subcutaneous fluids to help her hydration. Subcutaneous fluids (or SubQ fluids) are give by using a needle placed under the skin at the scruff of the neck. The fluid is then quickly absorbed by the kitten.

Bubbles was dehydrated again in the morning when I brought her into the shelter for evaluation. She got more fluids to try to help her out since there did not seem to be any obvious reason for her to be feeling badly. By the time I got her home, she had started having liquid diarrhea almost non-stop and did not want to eat anymore. I force fed her through out the night and cuddled her to make her feel more comfortable. This continued the next day.

Right before bed, I gave Bubbles her SubQ fluids and then went downstairs to the foster room to feed her siblings and was dismayed to see that her brother Quinn was showing all the same signs that Bubbles had shown two days ago. I got him fluids as well and since I was going to be away from the house all day today, I brought the whole litter to the shelter to be observed by the staff because I was very concerned that Bubbles was no better and Quinn was now starting to be sick.

Bubbles and Quinn are now staying at the shelter because they need fluids twice a day and they are not easy to give fluids to. It is also the beginning of Summer Vacation for the 5 year old in my home, which makes it hard to find the time to give the kittens the fluids without her seeing it and potentially scaring her by how they meow and fight when it is being given. So we decided it was best for them to stay at the shelter for a few days.

The rest of the litter, Buffy, Batty, Bailey and Eric came back home with me. I will be watching them closely and crossing my finger that they do not start to feel sick as well. Wish us luck. I will post an update on all of them when I have one.

Nemo - a fighter

Nemo is another foster that we took in right before I ended up with a Kidney stone. He was a failure to thrive kitten from another litter and he just needed more care than he could get in his current foster home. His wonderful foster mother was doing everything that she could for him, but he was still going down hill. He reached the point that he needed Sub-Q (IV) fluids multiple times a day, along with force feeding and multiple medications. She had already been driving him to the shelter once a day for fluids and had his mom and siblings to care for at home.

Since I can do the fluids at home, I offered to take him home and see if I could get him stabilized. We were all very worried that he was not going to make it for even 24 hours after I took him home because he was having massive diarrhea and pooping neon green bile. He was a fighter though and so we were not giving up.

I carried him around with me for days, wrapped up in various blankets that we changed constantly because he as always covered in poop. He got fluids 2 or 3 times a day and a high calorie food mixed with pedialyte to replace the electrolytes he was losing due to the diarrhea, that I was syringe feeding him. After about a week, he was doing a little better and had actually gained some weight, going from 15 oz to 1 lb. 5 oz.

By the time I was in the midst of my medical issues, he was much better, but I was concerned that he might go down hill without me being able to be so one on one with him. Since I was doing everything I could just to feed him, I decided that he needed to go back to the shelter for a while. Thankfully, the wonderful shelter staff and foster coordinators took him back and took wonderful care of him while I could not. And all my friends and other volunteers checked in with him and kept him company. In fact, he went home over a weekend with one volunteer and a friend fell in love with him and plans to adopt him!

I took him back at the beginning of last week and he is now healthy and happy and just about two pounds. He will be heading to a forever home, probably sometime next week!

Nemo day one (a very sick baby)



Kidney stones and force feedings

So Tiny


Cuddling with Sadie and Doyle




Feeling better


Nurse Nemo (right after my surgery)



Ready for a Forever Home

Kidney Stones and Growing Kittens

Hello again from the animal house. Things have been a little crazy here lately because I ended up in the ER with a kidney stone. Just in case anyone was wondering, I do not recommend it, it is very painful. And me, being me, things did not go normally. 4 ER visits, 2 surgeries, 1 severe allergic reaction, 1 ambulance ride, 2 shots of epinephrine, and 2 stents later, I am finally kidney stone free and (knock on wood) on the mends.

Of course, during all of this, April's babies have been growing like weeds. They are now about five weeks old and finally all have names. We have the girls, Batty, Buffy and Bubbles and the boys, Bailey, Quinn and Eric.

We have also had a few health issues. April, the mom, had an upper respiratory infection and was dehydrated. I tried to supplement the kittens with formula to help her out, but they would not have it. Thankfully, April LOVED the formula and just drank it herself. So I started adding it to her food everyday and between that and the meds, she is doing fine. Batty and Bubbles were born with some sort of eye infections and each had one eye that would not open and had puss coming out of it. Bubbles' eye responded quickly to meds, but Batty's just finally cleared up. Bailey, looks like he might be coming down with something so I will have to keep an eye on him over the next few days, but over all they are growing and developing like normal. They are now starting to eat solid food - although mom is not that keen on sharing. Here are some photos of them growing:

Mom, April resting with Buffy


Quinn and Bailey at about a week


Sibling Love. I love how they are hugging each other

More Cute Kitten Photos

Here are some more photos from the past month with April and her babies:

Batty with a half closed eye due to infection

Bubbles (her eye had healed by this point)

Bailey

Quinn

Buffy

Eric


The kittens one month birthday cake. With a 5 year old foster mom in the house, you celebrate a lot of birthdays.



Bucket of Kittens (first trip upstairs without Mom)

Meeting foster brother, Doyle. And no, they are not that tiny, he is that big.

Lucky Day

April Fool's Day is usually a day for jokes and pranks but here in the Animal House it was one lucky day.

After days of setting humane traps in my yard in an attempt to recapture my missing pregnant foster cat, I was ready to give up. I had managed to capture 6 of the various neighborhood outdoor cats and scarily enough, one opossum. But on Thursday morning, I checked the trap in the front yard and there was my missing foster cat.

She appeared to still be pregnant, but I was not sure how to tell so I called the shelter. We decided that it was likely that she was still pregnant and that I should watch her. That night at around 10PM she went into labor and had her first kitten at 10:50PM!

Not only did I manage to be lucky enough to find her, I was lucky enough to get her inside to have her kittens! Throughout the course of the night she had six kittens. She was very tired after her days outside and going through labor when she was underweight. Because of this, after she delivered her third kitten, she stopped taking care of the cord cutting and other disgusting stuff.

After a late night (1AM) phone call to our wonderful always on call foster coordinator for some over the phone instructions on cutting an umbilical cord, I was able to help her safely deliver and get all six kittens settled in and nursing.

I have two orange tigers, one buff (lite orange), one brown tiger, one black and one orange and white kitten. Right now they are all happy, healthy and doing well. And thankfully so is Mom. She is a wonderful Mom. She is protective, but very tolerant of me handling the kittens to weigh them and check them over each day. This is an important thing to do to be sure the kittens are growing well and especially important with these little ones since she is a small underweight cat who is trying to feed six kittens. If they start not growing quickly enough, I will have to help her out by doing supplemental bottle feeding on the smaller kittens, but so far so good.

Here is the new family:

Missing in Action

Well things are not going as planned in the Animal House. I brought home a pregnant female flame point Siamese cat on Sunday so she could give birth in foster rather than the shelter. Unfortunately, she was an outdoor cat before she was surrendered to the shelter and she got frightened on the way into the house. She managed to break open the carrier she was in and bolted into the neighborhood.

Somehow she was strong enough to actually bend the door latch away from the carrier so when I set it down to unlock the door to the house she bolted and was gone before I turned back to pick up the carrier. So I spent quite a bit of Sunday evening searching the neighborhood for her with no luck.

Yesterday I got some humane traps from the shelter and have been setting them in my front and back yard. So far I have caught (and released) one really annoyed neighborhood cat and had an intelligent animal eat the food out of the trap in the backyard twice without getting caught in it.

Wish me luck that my missing foster turns up real soon and is either still pregnant or has her babies in tow.

Four down one to go

Of my recent litter of five, four are now in forever homes. Nora, Ranger, Riley and Panda have gone in to be spayed and neutered and have already been adopted. They went in on Wednesday for surgery. When I went back on Friday for a check up on my other fosters, everyone except Riley had already gone to forever homes. Riley was adopted thought and just not being picked up until Saturday. It was great news, but not surprising because there are no kittens in the shelter at this time of the year.

Their brother Neko, the kitten with a problem leg, was seen by the vet on Friday and is doing really well. He will need to stay on his medication for another two weeks and he has some muscle atrophy that he will have to work on. Muscle atrophy is muscle weakness that is caused when a muscle is not used for a while due to illness or injury. His muscle will get stronger the more he uses it, so it is just a matter of time. This is all great news because he was so sick and was in danger of not surviving when he first showed symptoms. Now he is full of life and personality. I do not know how much longer he will be with me in foster. The foster coordinator, vets and shelter manager will have to talk about him and decide if he will stay with me until he is completely better or if he will go up for adoption so that he can be living with his forever family while his leg gets stronger.

Monkey and Tiana are doing well too. Although I did confirm at their check-up on Friday that Tiana is a boy, not a girl, so we are going to have to talk about a name change for him. They are socializing well, but are very afraid of strangers and children, which is normal for kittens like them. They will probably go in for surgery in the next week of so, and come back to me to recover and then soon go up for adoption. I am very glad that everyone is doing well.

Time Flies - Happy Birthday Doyle

My baby Doyle is one year old today. For those of you who are new to this blog, Doyle was a kitten from my second foster mom cat, Muffin. He is also my first (but probably not last) foster failure. I could not bear to let him go and he is still with me now and celebrating his first birthday.

It is somewhat unusual to know the exact birth date of a cat or kitten you rescue from the shelter, but Doyle's mom was surrendered pregnant and gave birth in the shelter so we know what day his birthday is. He and his brother Domino, along with their mom came home to me for foster when the boys were only three days old. It amazes me how much he has grown in the relatively short span of time that has passed. It also amazes me how much he has stayed the same. He is still the same sweet, loving, tolerant, beautiful boy he was when I decided to adopt him at 8 weeks.

Of course, he is not very happy with me at the moment because we just got back from his check up and he did NOT like driving in the rain. He also out grew his carrier in the six months since his last vet visit. Thankfully, he checked out OK and is nice and healthy. I told the vet that I wanted to be sure that I was not over feeding him so he would not get fat now that he was basically full grown. (He is a big boy). She said that since appears to be part Maine Coon, he might still grow a little bit more and that I was feeding him just fine since he was nice and lean.

Lean! Twelve pounds is lean! Just how big is he going to get? ;o)

Anyway, no matter his size, I love him to death. Even when he gets nervous at the vet and tries to curl up on my chest and hide like he did when he was a baby. Of course, breathing becomes an issue then, but hey, you do what you gotta do to make your baby feel safe right?

In honor of his first birthday, here are some of my favorite shots of him:

Limping Along

Neko is improving slowly now that we know what is actually going on and he is on the right medication. He saw the vet again on Monday and the improvement in the swelling was promising.

He is now allowed to stay just in the bathroom rather than locked up in a crate all the time. He is also allowed outside the bathroom to roam the house in short intervals of time as long as there are no other kittens loose. If there are other kittens around he wants to jump and play with them and that is not good for him just yet.

He is trying to use the leg more and more each day. He puts it down and tries to walk on it, although it is still too weak to hold all his weight. But I have hopes that it will continue to improve as the days go one.

His siblings, Nora, Ranger, Riley and Panda are all almost big enough and old enough to go back to the shelter and be adopted out soon. Although Panda, being the runt is still the smallest and may have to stick around with us a little while longer than the rest of them. All of them miss Neko and meow at the door to the bathroom trying to get me to let him out, but I just can't let them play because Neko can not resist jumping and wrestling with them.

When ever they go up for adoption, they will all find homes in a heart beat. Not only are they adorable and really fun to play with, there are also not a lot of kittens to be found at this time of year.

Poor Neko :o(

This is Neko. He is one of the 5 young kittens I brought home recently. Last Thursday I went down to the foster room around 5 pm to give the kittens their dinner and noticed that Neko seemed unsteady when he was in the litter box. When he crawled out of the litter box I saw that he was not using his right hind leg at all and that the leg was swollen to about two times its normal size. I immediately scooped him up and called the shelter foster coordinator to let her know I was on my way in with Neko. I was very concerned that he had somehow broken his leg.

The foster coordinator and the vet of staff and the time looked at his leg, but we were not really sure what had happened. It was obviously painful to the touch and to use even though he had been fine at about 2pm that same day. The vet prescribed pain medication for the next three days and told me to keep him confined to a cat carrier in the hopes that the swelling would go down. So I took him home with the instructions that if he got any worse at all, or the swelling did not improve over the next few days, to bring him right back in for an x-ray.

I brought him back the next day because it was Friday and there was no improvement. Both the foster coordinator and I were concerned about waiting any longer for x-rays. The vet on staff that day agreed and I took him to a local animal hospital for x-rays. As our vet had thought, the leg was not broken. She was concerned that what he had was a septic joint, so she sedated him and withdrew fluid from the swollen leg to send out for testing. He was also put on multiple antibiotics.

Saturday morning I woke up and got ready to head to the shelter to do an orientation for a new foster family. After checking on Neko, I called in to the shelter and said I was bringing him with me, because I was not comfortable leaving him home alone. His paw was now swollen three times its normal size and I wanted him where I could check on him throughout the day. And it was a good thing I did because midway through the day, he started shaking and breathing hard and stopped eating. We tried to drain the fluid from the foot, but nothing came out. We gave him fluids to help with the fever and the shelter manager called the vet on call who said to give him a shot of prednisone which thankfully seemed to help somewhat.

By Sunday morning the foot was no smaller, but he appeared to be feeling better and acting more normal and was eating again. He still needed to stay in his carrier though. (Just an FYI, a Siamese kitten unhappily confined to a small cat carrier equals sleepless meow filled nights for his foster mom). He went with me to the shelter again that day since I had another orientation to do. Everyone checked on him throughout the day. We repeated the fluids to control the temp again. He appeared in good spirits, but had no improvement in the swelling. The shelter manager told me to bring him back first thing in the morning on Monday to be re-examined by the vet even though they were doing a feral cat spay clinic that day and were not doing exam appointments. He felt that it could not wait until the next day.

The vet looked at him again on Monday and decided to repeat the prednisone shot since it seemed to be helping, at least until the results of the joint tap came back. He continued to feel good and want out of the crate for the next two days. The swelling even seemed to go down just a little bit. And I was so happy because I was really concerned I was going to lose him over the weekend.

Yesterday, the results of the joint tap came back and it turns out that he has a bacterial infection in his leg. His medication has been changed to a different antibiotic and he will be weaned off the prednisone over the next few days. The vet told me that we will probably not be able to figure out how he got this infection. The most likely reason is that he was bitten by one of his litter mates during play, but she had not found a puncture or bite wound when she examined him. So we may never know how this happened, but at least we know what is wrong and how to treat it.

He will been seen by the vet again tomorrow as a follow up to be sure that he is continuing to improve. And hopefully as time goes on he will start to move the leg and regain function. I am just glad that he is feeling well and wanting to run and jump and play even if I can not let him.

So that was my week. How was yours?

Oh, and somewhere during this stressful week, I brought home two new semi-social foster kittens (Yes I know I am crazy). They are named Spider Monkey (just Monkey in our house because Paige does not like spiders) and Tiana (after Tatiana from Disney's Princess and the Frog). They are cute but scared. I will have more on them later, but for now I think I need a nap.

The kittens are coming, the kittens are coming!

That's right folks, kitten season is bearing down on us with alarming speed. If you haven't done so yet, please get your pets spayed or neutered right away since breeding season is upon us. Even though it is still cold out, the shelter is starting to take in quite a few pregnant cats and even some young kittens. I know of at least two foster homes that have just recently had a mother cat give birth, the shelter has a dog that just had puppies and I myself currently have 5 kittens that are about 7 weeks old right now. And boy are they cute!

I took these kittens home the first week in February. They were born to a feral mother and caught by a good Samaritan who brought them to us. That person also arranged for a feral cat rescue to trap, spay and release the mom cat to avoid any more kittens in the future. Since they were so young, they needed to learn to eat solid food which they have done, although they are quite messy about it. I have one girl and four boys and they are all part Siamese. There colorings are black, black and white, and cream colored with chocolate points. There names are Ranger, Riley, Panda, Neko, and Nora.

Of course, we apparently can't have a foster without at least some drama and this litter is no exception. This time it was our fault and an accident. Riley, one of the black and white kittens is very social and wants to be with you at all times. Unfortunately, this led to him jumping up underneath my roommate as she was sitting down. So Riley got sat on. I rushed him right to the shelter because he appeared to be bleeding from the mouth and I was concerned about internal injuries. Thankfully, it turns out it was most likely a bloody nose and other than being sore for a day or two he had no lasting effects from being sat on. (Except for getting the nickname of "Splat" from my roommate's husband).

So here are our current babies:


This is Riley right after he came back from the shelter to get checked out after being sat on. Doesn't he look so small? But don't let this picture fool you. Once he recovered from this incident, he became a high energy, feisty kitten who is in to every thing.


This is Neko. He climbed into Paige's dollhouse one day and sat down like he was coming over for tea. He is one of the most timid of the kittens. He tends to hang back and let the more outgoing ones check things out before he ventures near. He is also the most vocal, with the typical Siamese meow.


This is Nora. She is the only girl in the group and she likes to sit in my laundry basket. She may be the only girl, but she is a tough chick who definitely holds her own with her brothers. She, like Neko, has kept her blue eyes as she has gotten older and looks very Siamese.


This is Panda. He is the smallest of the group and very clingy. He is at the top of a cat climbing tower in my room in this picture. Even though he is the smallest, he was one of the first to figure out how to get down from the climbing tree because as soon as a person comes in the room, he wants to rush down to climb on the person and either sit on their lap or on their shoulder. He also needs lost of cuddles and foster "mom cat" attention.

The other kitten is named Ranger. He is often off on his own and is the bravest in the bunch. When the other four were just deciding if it was safe to step out of the room they spent the first week in, Ranger was already off exploring the bottom floor of the house. He seems to have no fear, gets into everything and seems to be able to handle himself in most situations. And for those of you who are fans, he is named after a character in Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels. The Ranger from the books is the mystery man, always dressed in black, often off on his own and eating healthy food while everyone else is eating junk. My Ranger is all black, often off on his own, does not sit still long enough to get a picture that is more than just a blur of long black hair and eats the healthy dry kibble while all the others chow on the high calorie wet food. He is a bit of a bad boy, but does like to cuddle from time to time and I must admit I have a bit of a soft spot for my little bad boy (and the Ranger from the books too)!

And for those of you who are wondering, so far so good with Hope's relaunch into her forever home. She is eating this time and slowly adjusting. I will keep my fingers crossed that her good luck continues. Here she is right before she left for her second attempt at moving to her forever home.

Hope Returns

Normally having hope return to your home is a good thing. Every body needs hope right? I would agree - except for when Hope is a foster cat that you sent on her way to a forever home. That is right folks...Hope is now back in my foster room.

She went to her forever home and for some reason stopped eating - at all. At first we thought it was because she was accidentally sent home with the wrong type of food. (And I learned not to use certain abbreviations). But I got a call from the shelter foster coordinator yesterday to say that Hope had been returned to the shelter the day before because she would not eat anything and had not eaten anything in the 24 hours she was at the shelter either. We were all kind of mystified.

So I said that I would come in and visit with her and see if I could interest her in food. When I got there she was terrified and curled up in my arms, stuck her head in my sweatshirt and shivered. I decided to take her back into foster to see if I could get her to eat again in the hopes that it was a reaction to stress. She was also started on some antibiotics in case there was an illness brewing that we could not yet see.

After about an hour at my home she started eating. Not well, but at least she did at least try to eat something which is more than she had done since she went to her forever home. We are all still a little mystified because she went home with wonderful people, but we will just keep her here with us and try to get her to eat more regularly so she can return to her forever home who is anxious to have her back. I will keep you posted on her progress.

Of course, because she is back and does not care for other cats, I now have five 6 week old kittens running around my house like crazy. More on them later.

A Return to Home

I am happy to say that as I type this Hope is probably on her way to her forever home. I took her in for a check up with the shelter recently and although she was doing well health wise, she still looked funny with her skinny legs and missing hair. So we decided to keep her in foster for a little while longer. While I was there, the people who rescued her emailed one of the supervisors to see if they could visit her.

These people were very nice people who found Hope hiding under their porch who, even though they were dealing with a terminally ill cat of their own and it was a few days before a holiday, took the time to catch her and bring her to us for the care she needed. So, I was happy to say that they could pick a time and I would bring Hope in to the shelter so they could see how she was doing. I know that if I had brought a sick cat some where I would want to see how she was doing.

They came to see her last Saturday and were thrilled with how well she was doing. Hope seemed to love them right away. And since they saw her at her worst, they did not think she looked bad at all. I mentioned to them that Hope occasionally poops over the side of the litter box and they said that their cat had done that most of its life and it was no big deal. By the time the visit was over, they had decided to bring Hope back into their home permanently. It seemed like Fate had a hand in Hope's life.

So, Hope was spayed yesterday and will go home with her new forever parents sometime today and I am thrilled for them all.

Hope is a big word (and a little cat)

Hope is a big word in animal shelters and in fostering. We use it all the time in many different situations and for many reasons. I can't count the number of times I have heard that word while volunteering at a local shelter or when talking with other foster families. We hope for many things like:

• We hope that no new cats will be surrendered that day
• We hope that our many talks about spaying and neutering cuts down on unwanted litters of kittens
• We hope that our words against declawing don't fall on deaf ears
  
• We hope our fosters will not get sick.
• We hope that the medicines we are forcing on them will get them through their illnesses.
• We hope that they will know how to use the litter box.
  
• We hope that the crate training will teach them how to use the litter box.
  
• We hope that they will eat to gain back their lost weight.
  
• We hope that their hair will grow back and that the hair loss is not permanent.
  
• We hope that they will overcome the abuse or neglect they have suffered
• We hope they will learn to trust us and long for our attention.
• And most of all, we hope that they will find loving forever homes.

That is why I find it appropriate that my newest foster is named Hope. The staff at the shelter named her Hope when she was brought in on Christmas Eve, probably because she looked so bad. Normally we rename our fosters, but the name seemed so right that we have kept it. This is Hope.



She is a dilute tortoiseshell kitten who we are guessing is about a year old. I was actually volunteering on Christmas Eve when she was brought in to the shelter by a good samaritan who found her under a porch in the cold and I was the one to put her in her cage in holding. She was skin and bones and missing patches of fur. Being the sucker that I am, my heart went right out to her.



After about a week in the shelter she was doing better but really needed to be in a home to rest, recover from a mild cold and gain whole lot of weight. She was slightly less than four pounds when she was surrendered to us and should have been a whole lot more. Her hair was thin or missing in parts, most likely due to lack of nutrition. By this date I had been without a foster for slightly less than a week. But when she curled into a little ball in my arms, I just could not walk away from her. Thankfully, by that time, I had been without Simon just long enough to let him go and be emotionally ready for another foster.

Since Hope just needs TLC and to gain weight and I was looking for a slightly easier foster than last time, we were a good fit. And the staff was glad to send her home with someone who could give her lots of love, but would know what to do if she suddenly took a turn for the worse especially since I still had the supplies and knowledge on how to give her IV fluids if she suddenly needed it.

She is still doing well here with me. I brought her in today for a check up because she was scratching at her ears. Her ears are clean and mite free so we are trying her on a prescription allergy diet, just in case her hair loss and ear scratching is an allergy. Other than that, she is happy to be back at home with us and settled into the foster room again. And we are happy to have her.