Hi there everyone!
Just joined the forum for help with a fairly specific issue I'm having with our newest kitty. As my username suggests, I'm much more familiar with pooches than kitties when it comes to behavior.
My name's Cathi, and I live in Angels Camp, Ca with my husband Jeff and a small menagerie or critters. We live on 20 oak-wooded acres where we are building a home, barn and studios.
We share the property with 4 horses, a small dairy goat herd, 3 dogs and, currently, 6 kitties.
I've been very active in purebred boxer rescue for about 15 years, though the current house-building has curtailed that at the moment.
We have a very strong belief that animals should either be acquired from responsible, ethical breeders, or should be rescues. To that end, we have 6 kitties LOL! Our standard policy on stray/feral kitties is that they are free to hang around and eat the food, but they will have to forfeit their reproductive rights.
Our cats are:
The Gimp - so called because he came to us with a fused elbow joint. He showed up in the barn, skinny and terrified one day. I would give him some goats milk each day when I went out to milk, and eventually he became trusting of us. He's aprox 5 years old. The Gimp is an orange tabby DSH, neutered and indoor/outdoor.
Splatter - We initially mistook her for a bit of road kill. as we drove by her on the highway, she lifted her little head and we realized she was alive. She was all of 4 weeks old (apparently dropped in the road by her mama while being moved), and had a broken femur and was hypoglycemic. She's a petite 3yo spayed tortoise shell DSH, indoor/outdoor kitty
Kitty Too- was one of a litter of feral kittens dumped at our feed store. He was 6 weeks when we trapped him and his sister Thomasina and brought them home, 4 months ago. They were tough to socialize at first and we handled them with welding gloves the first few weeks, but they are loving indoor kitties now. Kitty Too is a neutered black and white DSH, marked like a cow
Thomasina - shares Kitty Too's story. She is a tuxedo marked DLH, very loving and calm. She too is an indoor kitty, scheduled for spay next month.
Tubby - showed up as a feral kitten under our house 3 weeks after we adopted KT and Thomasina. He was about 5 weeks old, very feral. It took 2 weeks of feeding him and the purchase of a Hav-a-Heart trap to capture him. With some good groceries and wormings, and the examples of KT and Thomasina, Tubby has become very social and outgoing. He is a stocky (tubby if you will) gray and white DSH who will be neutered in Dec.
That brings us to Kimmy, the reason I'm here.
The day I took Kitty Too to be neutered I noticed a scraggly gray tabby wandering around the road near our house. On the way home that evening after picking KT up from his neuter, I saw the cat again in the road and realized something was wrong. I stopped and called "kitty?" out the window and when she turned around, I could see she had one eye completely blown. It was bulging from the socket and the whole side of her face was a swollen, bloody mess. I parked, and followed her up the hill a bit and finally she just lay down and let me walk up to her. She was so thin you could see the vertebrae of her tail and covered with burrs and mats.
I picked her up - she was limp and listless - and put her in a small duffel bag in the car. Took her home and stuck her in a dog crate with some food and water and a small litter box and left her alone for a few hours.
Over the next few days, she ate well, gained some strength, began urinating (after some 50 ccs of sub-Q fluids) and having bowel movements. I brushed her fur out, bought her an e-collar and just sort of nursed her along, with steady improvement.
After about a week, we took her in to the vet, who insisted she either had to have the eye removed or be put down. Apparently such an injury is not only very painful and prone to infection, but if they *do* heal on their own, with the eye left in, tumors frequently develop.
Surgery however, was $450.
We could afford $200 tops (I have other cats to S/N, a rescue mare with melanoma and a geriatric boxer). We told the vet as much and asked to be sent home with some antibiotics and pain meds. We thought that would give us time to brainstorm with some of my boxer rescue and boxer community folks to see if there was something we could do. Kimmy is a very sweet and affectionate kitty who definitely deserved a chance!
As we were getting ready to leave the vet, the head vet came out. Seems a mad had brought an injured stray cat in earlier that day. The cat had to be PTS, but the man wanted to help a cat so he gave the hospital a $200 donation and asked that they use it to help a stray cat should one come in. The staff all agreed that Kimmy fit the bill, so between our money and the donation, Kimmy had her surgery last Wed. The vet also spayed her for free, as we were afraid she might be pregnant.
Kimmy is named after a dear boxer rescue friend who passed away suddenly in Sept. She is a gray tabby DSH, obviously indoor only.
I'll write a separate post in a more appropriate place about the issue we are having with Kimmy, but wanted to introduce myself first.
2 final things...
We just got a Litter Robot (I call it RoboKitty 2000)! We love it! Does anyone else have one?
Also, and I hope this is not a rule violation, we keep a streaming webcam trained on the cats' favorite chair - we got it from a thrift store, and I swear its stuffed with catnip - they treat it as their own personal jungle gym! The webcam is on my personal website, http://www.Box-R.net under the "watch" link.
Anyway, its great to be hear, and I look forward to everyone's insight and advice regarding Kimmy!
Just joined the forum for help with a fairly specific issue I'm having with our newest kitty. As my username suggests, I'm much more familiar with pooches than kitties when it comes to behavior.
My name's Cathi, and I live in Angels Camp, Ca with my husband Jeff and a small menagerie or critters. We live on 20 oak-wooded acres where we are building a home, barn and studios.
We share the property with 4 horses, a small dairy goat herd, 3 dogs and, currently, 6 kitties.
I've been very active in purebred boxer rescue for about 15 years, though the current house-building has curtailed that at the moment.
We have a very strong belief that animals should either be acquired from responsible, ethical breeders, or should be rescues. To that end, we have 6 kitties LOL! Our standard policy on stray/feral kitties is that they are free to hang around and eat the food, but they will have to forfeit their reproductive rights.
Our cats are:
The Gimp - so called because he came to us with a fused elbow joint. He showed up in the barn, skinny and terrified one day. I would give him some goats milk each day when I went out to milk, and eventually he became trusting of us. He's aprox 5 years old. The Gimp is an orange tabby DSH, neutered and indoor/outdoor.
Splatter - We initially mistook her for a bit of road kill. as we drove by her on the highway, she lifted her little head and we realized she was alive. She was all of 4 weeks old (apparently dropped in the road by her mama while being moved), and had a broken femur and was hypoglycemic. She's a petite 3yo spayed tortoise shell DSH, indoor/outdoor kitty
Kitty Too- was one of a litter of feral kittens dumped at our feed store. He was 6 weeks when we trapped him and his sister Thomasina and brought them home, 4 months ago. They were tough to socialize at first and we handled them with welding gloves the first few weeks, but they are loving indoor kitties now. Kitty Too is a neutered black and white DSH, marked like a cow
Thomasina - shares Kitty Too's story. She is a tuxedo marked DLH, very loving and calm. She too is an indoor kitty, scheduled for spay next month.
Tubby - showed up as a feral kitten under our house 3 weeks after we adopted KT and Thomasina. He was about 5 weeks old, very feral. It took 2 weeks of feeding him and the purchase of a Hav-a-Heart trap to capture him. With some good groceries and wormings, and the examples of KT and Thomasina, Tubby has become very social and outgoing. He is a stocky (tubby if you will) gray and white DSH who will be neutered in Dec.
That brings us to Kimmy, the reason I'm here.
The day I took Kitty Too to be neutered I noticed a scraggly gray tabby wandering around the road near our house. On the way home that evening after picking KT up from his neuter, I saw the cat again in the road and realized something was wrong. I stopped and called "kitty?" out the window and when she turned around, I could see she had one eye completely blown. It was bulging from the socket and the whole side of her face was a swollen, bloody mess. I parked, and followed her up the hill a bit and finally she just lay down and let me walk up to her. She was so thin you could see the vertebrae of her tail and covered with burrs and mats.
I picked her up - she was limp and listless - and put her in a small duffel bag in the car. Took her home and stuck her in a dog crate with some food and water and a small litter box and left her alone for a few hours.
Over the next few days, she ate well, gained some strength, began urinating (after some 50 ccs of sub-Q fluids) and having bowel movements. I brushed her fur out, bought her an e-collar and just sort of nursed her along, with steady improvement.
After about a week, we took her in to the vet, who insisted she either had to have the eye removed or be put down. Apparently such an injury is not only very painful and prone to infection, but if they *do* heal on their own, with the eye left in, tumors frequently develop.
Surgery however, was $450.
We could afford $200 tops (I have other cats to S/N, a rescue mare with melanoma and a geriatric boxer). We told the vet as much and asked to be sent home with some antibiotics and pain meds. We thought that would give us time to brainstorm with some of my boxer rescue and boxer community folks to see if there was something we could do. Kimmy is a very sweet and affectionate kitty who definitely deserved a chance!
As we were getting ready to leave the vet, the head vet came out. Seems a mad had brought an injured stray cat in earlier that day. The cat had to be PTS, but the man wanted to help a cat so he gave the hospital a $200 donation and asked that they use it to help a stray cat should one come in. The staff all agreed that Kimmy fit the bill, so between our money and the donation, Kimmy had her surgery last Wed. The vet also spayed her for free, as we were afraid she might be pregnant.
Kimmy is named after a dear boxer rescue friend who passed away suddenly in Sept. She is a gray tabby DSH, obviously indoor only.
I'll write a separate post in a more appropriate place about the issue we are having with Kimmy, but wanted to introduce myself first.
2 final things...
We just got a Litter Robot (I call it RoboKitty 2000)! We love it! Does anyone else have one?
Also, and I hope this is not a rule violation, we keep a streaming webcam trained on the cats' favorite chair - we got it from a thrift store, and I swear its stuffed with catnip - they treat it as their own personal jungle gym! The webcam is on my personal website, http://www.Box-R.net under the "watch" link.
Anyway, its great to be hear, and I look forward to everyone's insight and advice regarding Kimmy!
