I adopted Lucy, a black DSH, from a shelter last week. She isn't my first cat, but she is my first black cat. I always wanted a black cat as a kid, but my mom was a Siamese fan who wouldn't budge (until I grew up and started fostering kittens; her three current cats are all rescued foster "mutts"
). The last of our Siamese from my childhood are gone (they both lived to be 22 - the last one PTS almost a year ago). In adulthood, I took "my" Siamese with me and later took in a very preggo dilute tortie. My Siamese finally had to be PTS due to CRF combined with CHF, and the dilute tortie fell madly in love with my ex-husband, so I have been cat-less since the divorce (way too long).
No one ever told me how hard it is to photograph an all black cat! I have been unable to get many decent pictures of Lucy. She generally looks like a black 2D object with an eyeball somewhere. If I can get her in direct sunlight, you can sometimes make out her features.
She was spayed after I put in the adoption application, but before we took her home. After I brought her home, her incision seemed very "fresh" and started leaking a pretty good amount the first night. I called the e-vet and was advised to apply a compress, and if it didn't stop, got worse, or started again, to bring her in. It stopped for the night, but the next morning, started up again. The e-vet said she had a seroma, didn't look like there was any infection, but prescribed Clavamox, an e-collar, and confinement. The incision just didn't seem to want to close up, so our regular vet tried some tissue glue on the worst part of it and advised us to keep a close eye on it over the holiday weekend. Luckily, it seems to be healing (slowly!), so I don't think we're going to need to do surgery. Surgery would have meant more e-collar time and, most likely, confinement in a dog crate. I am just glad to have been spared a miserable, screeching cat. Lucy is very talkative even when nothing is going on, so I don't even want to know how much racket she would make in a dog crate.
In all, she's adapted very well to her new home life. The shelter didn't have any info on her former life; she was listed as a stray. She is quickly taking over around here. When you can get the velcro cat off your lap long enough, she likes to sit in the window and yell at all the people going in and out of the market below (we're in a sixth floor apartment).
You can see the few pics I was able to take here:
http://s242.photobucket.com/albums/ff118/jenc511/
No one ever told me how hard it is to photograph an all black cat! I have been unable to get many decent pictures of Lucy. She generally looks like a black 2D object with an eyeball somewhere. If I can get her in direct sunlight, you can sometimes make out her features.
She was spayed after I put in the adoption application, but before we took her home. After I brought her home, her incision seemed very "fresh" and started leaking a pretty good amount the first night. I called the e-vet and was advised to apply a compress, and if it didn't stop, got worse, or started again, to bring her in. It stopped for the night, but the next morning, started up again. The e-vet said she had a seroma, didn't look like there was any infection, but prescribed Clavamox, an e-collar, and confinement. The incision just didn't seem to want to close up, so our regular vet tried some tissue glue on the worst part of it and advised us to keep a close eye on it over the holiday weekend. Luckily, it seems to be healing (slowly!), so I don't think we're going to need to do surgery. Surgery would have meant more e-collar time and, most likely, confinement in a dog crate. I am just glad to have been spared a miserable, screeching cat. Lucy is very talkative even when nothing is going on, so I don't even want to know how much racket she would make in a dog crate.
In all, she's adapted very well to her new home life. The shelter didn't have any info on her former life; she was listed as a stray. She is quickly taking over around here. When you can get the velcro cat off your lap long enough, she likes to sit in the window and yell at all the people going in and out of the market below (we're in a sixth floor apartment).
You can see the few pics I was able to take here:
http://s242.photobucket.com/albums/ff118/jenc511/
