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.