Jude's Story

So I have talked about Jude in a previous post in this blog, but I wanted to provide an update. Jude was a feral kitten I took into foster around October. When she was surrendered to the shelter all the cages were full which in many shelters might mean she would be euthanized. Bu the staff knew that they would be likely to find a place for her in the morning so they decided to put her in a wire dog crate for the night.

She has been found running in the traffic at a local shopping mall and the surrender brought her to us so she would not be hit by a car. She was bout 2 months old and wet and terrified. I saw her and decided she needed another blanket and a heating disk for the night. When I came back into the holding room to give them to her she was not in the cage. I checked with the staff to see if they had moved her and that was when we realized that she had managed to squeeze herself between the bars of the crate and was hiding somewhere in the holding room. After a long search, we found that she had climbed behind the fridge so I had to get up on the counter while a staff member tipped the fridge so I could scruff her and move her to a different style of crate. I told the staff person I would be back for her in the morning and she would be my foster. She was my type of kitty.

For while I was concerned that she would not be able to be socialized and we considered that she might need to be euthanized at one point, but we decided to give her more time. Then she developed odd health problems. Throughout the course of her foster she had a genital infection that almost caused her to be euthanized because she was too small for a catheter, concern that she might be a hermaphrodite and the fact that she just did not grow.

By the time she was 4 months old she was still only 2#7oz. At that point I knew there was something seriously wrong with her. She was social to me and me alone, but we were not concerned about her socialization because her lack of growing indicated a serious issue with her health. Unfortunately, there were no symptoms that our vets could use to pinpoint a diagnosis. Then the fever started. She had a temp of at least 103 for over a month that did not respond to any treatment we threw at it. And her official diagnosis because fever of unknown origin.

During all of this, she was the sweetest kitten I could ask for. She tolerated anything we did to her as long as she had me with her and I became more and more attached to her. The thought of giving her up was really hard to bear, but I pushed it aside because I knew in my heart that she was unlikely to ever be healthy enough for adoption.

Finally our vet decided to do an exploratory surgery on her, which was risky because of her temp, but was the only way we might get a answer as to what was wrong with her. And the results of the surgery was unfortunately what I expected for some time. She had FIP.

FIP is a condition that is untreatable, difficult to diagnose because there is not test for it and it is always fatal. If a kitten has the wet form, they will need to be euthanized at the time of diagnosis because they only have around a week before they begin to suffer. If it is the dry form of the condition, they can have a little more time. Jude had the dry form.

I asked the shelter for permission to not euthanize her right at diagnosis and instead keep her until her quality of life started to suffer. They were very supportive of this and I took her home. I had another three weeks with my baby before her kidneys started to fail and I knew it was time to let her go.

This was all very difficult for me and my family, but she was such a special kitten that I knew I had to give her as long a life and as good a life as I could. And as hard as it was, I do not regret it. I miss her terribly. Even though I only had her for a short time, she became a member of my family. And the wonderful foster coordinator I work with supported me throughout the process even understanding why it was important to me that I officially adopt her before she was euthanized.

Here is my baby Jude:

I have been taking a break since then so I will be back when I start fostering again which will probably be sometime in March or April. But I just want to say that if you ever get a chance to give an animal with a limited life span (either because of age or illness) a good home for however long they have - do it. It will break your heart and change your life in so many good ways.

Still Here - Part Four

Well the other fosters we had for 2010 were many and varied. They came and went because many of them were sick and I can only handle just so much at one time. Two that did stay with me their entire foster time and go up for adoption were Zinni and Char.

Zinni and Char were surrendered along with their sister Savvi the night of a wine tasting fundraiser at the shelter. They were from a litter of six, but the litter somehow ended up in some one's garage and three of the litter did not survive the cold night. The person rushed the three remaining kittens to us as soon as they discovered this. The three remaining kittens spent the day in our incubator and I took over their care, syringe feeding them every hour or so, trying to help them pull through.

Since we had quiet a few visitors in for the wine tasting event, many people stopped by the office door to watch me care for these little guys and we had a lot of volunteers asking about them after I took them home that night. They became known as my wine tasting kittens.

In honor of the event, I named them after wines. Zinfandel (Zinni), Chardonnay (Char) and Savignoun (Savvi). Sadly Savvi only made it a few days before she passed away quiet suddenly and dramatically. We think she may have had a twisted intestine which puts means that if you feed them it can kill them, but if you do not feed them they will starve. So there was really not much that can be done about a birth defect about this. Her sisters Zinni and Char had a difficult road and grew much slower that normal kittens, but finally at about 5 months of age they were big enough to put up for adoption and are both in homes that are great for them.

I also had some additional feral fosters that went up for adoption including a sweet girl named Gwen and a half blind long haired cutie named Merlin who was afraid to be picked up. They both found people willing to work with their personalities and give them the home they needed.

Still Here - part three

Next I brought home three feral kittens from various places. Two are still with me. One is now at the rainbow bridge.

Charlie
He is a sweet black and white boy who got very sick with an upper respiratory infection right after he came to us. I moved him into my room to better monitor him. He struggled with his URI, but very quickly became a very sweet and social boy. He was just about over his URI and living loose in my house with my two cats and we were all getting very attached to him. Then late one night he just stopped moving. I rushed him to the shelter the next day and he had a temp of 104 (very high) and still would not move. The vets were very concerned about his survival. They sent out blood work and his levels raised concern about a condition known as FIP. There is no known cause of FIP, other than that is it a mutation of a common cat virus, there is no real way to test to be sure if a cat has it and it is always fatal.

We decided to go ahead and try and injectible antibotic for a week and see it helped. He had no improvement for almost a week and I was preparing myself for the vets to recommended euthanasia when I brought him in for his vet check at the end of the week when he suddenly was fine. All his symptoms were just gone one afternoon. Everyone is baffled, but very pleased. He is now perfectly fine. In fact, he is sitting on me right now making typing this difficult because he chases the cursor. The vets have cleared him to go up for adoption, but we have no plans to bring him into the shelter to go on the adoption floor. He is not going anywhere. We were so devastated when we thought we would lose him, we realized that he had become a member of our family and decided that he needs to stay with us forever. So on Christmas morning we gave Paige a tag with his name and our phone number on it. That was one happy 5 year old. :o)

Glory
Glory was another feral girl I brought home at the same time as Charlie. She was a little tortie girl whose brother was hit by a car in front of her. One of our foster families saw this happen and scooped her up to bring her to the shelter. I am sad to say that I was not able to socialize her. After over three weeks in my home, I was still in danger on being bitten every day when I cleaned her cage and changed her food and litter. She became more dangerous the bigger she got and it was breaking my heart to watch her live in such terror. I brought her to the shelter to have the staff evaluate her to see if moving to another foster home might help her, but she was just as aggressive with them. It was really not safe for her to be in a foster home anymore and she was not likely to ever be an animal we could place in a home no matter how long we worked with her. We tried to find a feral rescue who could take her and let her live out her life in a feral cat colony, but given the time of year, there was no room. It was a horrible decision to make, and I felt like I had failed her, but she was so unhappy and flat out terrified, euthanasia was really our kindest option for her.

Jude
She is a feral that was actually in the same cage as Glory and came to me at the same time as Glory and Charlie. Jude was also acting aggressively and I brought her in to the shelter for evaluation at the same time as Glory. We almost decided to euthanize her too. But while I was heartbroken about Glory, I knew it was the right thing for her. I was not entirely sure about Jude, so I asked the staff to give me a few more days with her to see if she would be as aggressive once she was no longer with Glory. I was please to be able to report that after just two days alone, I was able to pick her up and she purred very quietly at me. Then the medical issues started. First she had a large mound a poop caked on her butt to the point that she could not go the bathroom. I had to soak her in the sink to clean her up which was not easy given how feral she was. The next morning I could tell that she had signs of infection coming from her genital area which is probably what caused the problem in the first place.

I rushed her to the shelter and the vet looked at her and told me "she" had an infection in her penis and might not be peeing at all. So it appeared that Jude was a boy. We started treatment for the infection, but "he" went downhill quick and a brought him back to the vet a few days later. The vet said that she felt he needed a catheter put in in order to survive, but was so small that might not be possible. We almost had to euthanize Jude that night, but it turned out that we had an emergency vet coming in to volunteer the next day so we decided to wait and see if that vet had any options for treatment that we did not have. The emergency vet said that Jude had to be leaking urine or he would already be dead and gave me strong pain meds and a different treatment plan and said to recheck in a week.

Jude was doing somewhat better at the recheck in a week and I was able to stop the pain meds, but the vet who did the recheck was confused because according to her Jude was a girl, not a boy. We were all confused. Well, it turns out that Jude visually appears to be a girl, but when the vets palpate her abdomen, they can feel undescended testicles. Yup - Jude might be a hermaphrodite. They told me to bring her back when she was two pounds and they would spay her and see what they found.

Unfortunately, she just did not grow normally and over a month passed with her still not being over two pounds. Then one morning two and a half weeks ago she felt heavier so I weighed her. She had gained 7 ounces in 3 days. That was way to much in such a short time and it was all in her belly. This is another sign of FIP. After another rushed trip to the shelter vets, it turned out that she had a temp of 103. And despite multiple different antibotics and treatments, she still has a temp two and a half weeks later and we do not know why. Her temp right now is 102.6 which is high normal and otherwise she appears fine. She is the sweetest little girl who has helped me socialize many other feral kittens and many people at the shelter have fallen in love with her, but her long term survival is not looking great right now. If her temp comes down anytime soon, we will attempt a spay surgery and see if we can figure out what is going on with her. Here is my baby Jude with the sweet soul.



I have had more fosters and lost another little baby, but I will post more on that later. I these three post are more than enough for now.

Still Here - part two

Later in September, a very sick mother cat named Miracle gave birth to four tiny babies. She was in no condition to care for them, so the foster team at the shelter took over their care. This meant keeping them in an incubator and feeding them with a feeding tube every hour around the clock. It was my first introduction to tube feeding and they were so tiny and weak. We all knew it was unlikely they would survive, but had to try. We passed them back and forth between us until a foster home who could bottle feed them opened up. We lost one of the kittens very early in because he was just too small, but against all odds, not only did their mother survive her life threatening illness, the remaining three kittens also survived and found wonderful homes.

Here is my cat Doyle investigating his tiny new foster brother.

And here are the four of them snuggling with me for a bit to get that mom feeling before they went back into the incubator. They are so tiny, they kind of blend into my shirt design.

Since October, things have gotten rough in the Animal House. I had a little of three very sick compromised kittens that had already gone through two foster homes. They were constantly covered in food and poop. They could not keep themselves clean, were dehydrated and had diarrhea. They were adorable and when they came to me did not have names. We temporarily named them stinky, skanky and yuk because the smell that came off them daily was like nothing I had ever smelled before. I also did not want to name them because they were potentially going back to their previous foster person when she returned from vacation. She told me before she left that she did not know what to do with them because nothing she did was helping them improve. After just a few days with them, I went to the foster coordianator and told her that I felt like I was torturing these kittens. They needed multiple medications, force feeding, fluids and daily baths just to survive. They also had to be kept crated because I could not take the chance of whatever they had spreading to my other fosters. I do not mind doing this sort of treament as long as I am seeing some improvement, but I was seeing nothing out of them.

We consulted with our vets and they ran tests which did not tell us much. These kittens were not improving despite our best efforts and there quality of life was terrible. After talking with the vets, the foster coordinator and the shelter director, we all came to the hard decision that the kindest for them was to humanely euthanize them. It was devestating to lose an entire litter like that, but I truly felt that we were doing what was best for them by letting them go while they were still somewhat happy rather than forcing them to continue to go downhill and likely die a slow death. I was later comforted by the knowledge that our instincts were right. The vet did a necropsy (animal autospy) on them and they were all suffering from various birth defects and diseases that are fatal so they never had any chance of long term survival. We gave them the best life they could have while we had them and let them go before they began to suffer. Here is the only photo I have of one of the litter right after his bath.

Still Here - Part One

It has been quite a while since I posted, so I thought I would check in to let you know that I am still here and still fostering. It has been a rough couple of months here in the Animal House and I have been so busy just trying to take care of my fosters, and just did not have time left over to post and update here. So here is a summary of what has been going on since August.

In late August, for the first time we foster some puppies. Just overnight until they could be reunited with their mother, but they were awfully cute and a nice experience for Paige. And reaffirmed to me that I prefer cats - puppies are much more high maintenance.

Then, I had a litter of kittens that were initially known as the "skanky kittens" at the shelter because they were in such bad shape. They were suffering from a very bad case of an internal parasite called coccidia. Initially there were 4 of them and then I brought home two more from another litter that had similar issues. They immediately got along like they had been separated at birth. We named them Lily, Rose, Violet, Briar, Bramble, and Bumble. It was a long fight to get them over the coccidia and adopted into forever homes, but worth it. They were all loving, snuggly kittens who would come running the minute they saw me so they could climb in my lap to snuggle. My whole family was very attached to the entire litter, but I was especially attached to my little long haired orange boy, Bumble. I had the hardest time letting him go up for adoption and almost cried the day he went to his forever home. I might have kept him, but it just was not the right time to add another member to our permanent family and he really would do better in a quiet home.

Here he is shortly after he came to us when he was still "skanky" but cute.

In September I brought home a little kitten who came in with the name Ace and who we thought was semi-feral. After a very short time in my house he was trying to sleep with me and cuddle with me and purring up a storm but would flinch and hide the minute I reached toward him. I began to suspect that he was not feral. He knew humans, he was just afraid of them. Which probably means that someone treated him unkindly in his young life. I decided that my noisy house full of active people, a young child and other cats was not the place for him. I transferred him to a much quieter foster home where he, at my request, he was given a new name (they chose Huckleberry) and a fresh start at learning that some humans would treat him kindly. I am happy to report that he did wonderfully in his new foster home and ended up not only getting adopted, but going home with a nice couple who also adopted another kitten from the same foster home who Huckleberry had become really attached to while in foster.

Daisy, who I mention is my last post in August, recovered completely and was adopted into a home with three little boys who actually had enough energy to keep up with her. She and my baby Doyle became fast friends while she was with us and actually looked a lot alike.

September was also when we also participated in Paige's first fundraiser for the shelter, the Walk for Animals. She had a great time and I am proud to say that this amazing 5 year old managed (with a little help from us) to raise over $800 to help the homeless animals we both care so much about. Here she is walking with me. We were so proud of her that day, and the next day when she started kindergarten.