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To read in chronological order, go to bottom and read up.
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March 18, 2002
We are housing a blind feral. We originally named her Helen (after Helen Keller) but changed it to
Otter since we are guessing the word "Otter" would be easier for her to recognize than Helen.
Otter came from the colony below. She is about 8-10 months old, was emaciated and dehydrated,
and had an upper respiratory infection. We hoped that the apparent sight problem was due to the URI
(eyes crusted) and not permanent. The first night she did not eat or drink, and morning found her
with eyes glued shut and much discharge from the nose. We made a veterinary appointment and
proceeded with phone guidance. Little Otter has her face gently washed (emerging with a wet little
gray face and small little eyes; therefore the name), eyes rinsed with saline, and was syringe fed
wet kitten food run through a food processor, as well as much water as we could get into her. She
hissed up a storm, but did not offer to bite or strike out. Once her nose was cleared of junk, she began
inhaling food and water herself within 24 hours, so subcutaneous fluids, luckily, began unnecessary.
Blind or not, I am not sure a fully conscious feral cat would sit still for that! The vet had placed her
on amoxicillan, and the URI (which apparently was bacterial) immediately began to clear up. The
improvement was amazing. Within three days, one eye had a bit of membrane up, and she had a
tiny bit of clear discharge from the nose, but she was fully hydrated and putting on weight. She had
groomed the scruffy look away. (TBA...got called away from the computer!)
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March 4, 2002
Well, a busy Monday! Got a call from the caretaker below and she found two feral kittens running around
with eyes crusted closed. I've emailed her for more information to find out if they can be captured
quickly or not. At least it is Monday so a vet should be able to squeeze them in this week.
In addition, someone who adopted a kitten this summer must return him due to allergies. He had been
declawed and is now ten months old.
The young man who adopted TwoSpot and Snuffles was helping on a bottle drive for the local
Boy Scouts and....you guessed it....found a stray cat! His parents brought "Bottles" over and I can see why their son
couldn't pass this cat by. What a sad meow! Our vet came out and neutered and vaccinated him. It now looks like Bottles will go back to his rescuer---apparently this family
is willing to go from zero cats to three! I wish there were more people this caring and responsible. Certainly not
every person can adopt three cats, but to take on a stray after just adopted two cats takes a special something.
The yogurt experiment is failing. After two weeks of loving that stuff, the clan is now bored with it
and only three cats of eleven bother to eat it. However, it did appear to improve the stools of the nervous ones.
We will try mixing a little yogurt in with their wet food treat. If this doesn't appeal to them, I'll likely
just make yogurt a once-a-week treat.
Two cats exhibited signs of tapeworms, so everyone in the colony room received a dose of Drontal on veterinary
guidance. Drontal treats hookworms, roundworms, and tapeworms. Hooks and rounds are always a concern in a colony
room due to the possibility of reinfection so we used Drontal instead of Cestex (which treats only
tapeworms). Even the shy cats were fairly cooperative (Drontal tastes awful; Cestex is coated and therefore
has no taste) except poor friendly Lynxie who made the mistake of chomping down on a pill. That was one very unhappy, frothing, drooling cat. Then of course, after it was all over I
found a pill on the floor. Fortunately, I had a very good idea it was Osceola who spit his out, since
I pilled each cat in a different location just in case this happened.
For cats that are uncooperative about swallowing a pill,I kneel on the floor and have the pill and a syringe with a cc of water
sitting in front of me. The cat goes between my legs, facing out. Chin is tipped up, mouth opened, and
pilled popped in. Mouth is held closed (with chin still up) and I syringe the cc of water into the corner
of the mouth, then stroke the throat. This takes a bit of coordination but helps that pill go down. Don't
administer the water if you haven't gotten the pill correctly placed in the back of the throat. If the pill
is between teeth and gum, the cat will still spit it out and the water will have done nothing more than
wet the pill and release a (usually bad) taste. Let the cat spit the pill out, and try again.
Eleven formerly-feral young cats to be pilled and we and didn't have to towel a single one! I think that's a record at our
place.
February 21, 2002
Well, spring trapping season has begun. The SPCA is helping out a woman who has been
slowly neutering the stray cats at her apartment complex. Someone opened up an access door to
the crawlspace of one building and the cats all took shelter there. They had to all be gotten out
(at once!) so the crawlspace could be closed up again. She has trapped out six, one of whom has
been neutered/returned, one pregnant cat close to popping (SPCA is fostering), and we are boarding four here at Wildrun
--two that need altering, and two that were altered
last year and need to have their vaccinations boosted. So much for the myth that you can't retrap
cats for booster shots! It's a gorgeous group of cats: lilac and flame-point Siamese types.
Hopefully she has her whole clan now, and won't have to worry about kittens or sickness at all this year.
*****
Monday, February 18, 2002
Two young cats found homes last week, Two-Spot and Snuffles. This was wonderful, since these
two are extremely friendly and clearly wanted more human attention than they were getting.
About six months ago we tried introducing plain yogurt to the cats as a "treat" to promote healthy
digestion. Yogurt has live cultures that promote the healthy growth of microflora in the gut. However, the cats hated it. We
decided this weekend to try a taste test: strawberry, peach, and vanilla on different days. Strawberry
won (we spooned off and threw away the large pieces of fruit and served the yogurt in tablespoon
dabs on paper plates), and we will give each cat access to one tablespoon per day for a week, then every three days from then on, unless we notice digestion problems.
