The 2010 clinic season begins....

I used to be in the theater, and the conventional wisdom there meant that a bad dress rehearsal meant a good run for the actual show. I sure hope that bleeds over, because last Saturday's spay/neuter clinic was not a dress rehearsal.

It started out well enough, with a vet and a vet tech doing the relatively easy job of neutering the male cats, but then they got into an argument and both left The Cube. We stood around for two hours while the chief veterinarian, Dr. Muraka, sorted things out and finally arrived with his team.

In the interim, a raid was conducted on a really tragic hoarder house--29 cats and an old woman with no money and no food for her or the cats. The house was unheated--and it's been damned cold here lately--and the cats were hidden all throughout the house.

From what I could gather regular police officers as well as animal control officers were involved, and pepper spray was used to flush the cats out to be caught--bad idea, especially in a hoarder house full of all kinds of nasty odors and ammonia. The cats were all at least semi-feral and three or four officers were bitten badly enough to go to the ER (I don't have to tell most of you about cat bites), and two SPCA vet techs also joined them after being bitten.

Once the clinic was restarted (after a few volunteers gave up and left), things went normally but with a few ugly twists. We had to euthanize four cats, an unusually large number for us. One was a kitten that had been exposed to panleukemia and was symptomatic and highly infectuous--its littermates were already dead. Another was an older feral with a significant fluid build-up in its abdomen, a sign of a probably serious condition that would have been fatal without aggressive treatment. The third was another older feral that was both FIV/FELV positive. Buth the fourth was by far the worst I've ever seen.

This was a red tabby male who had been severely burned after having hot roofing tar thrown onto him. He was outside in single digit temperatures with his face practically burned away for at least a day or two. There was nothing we could do for him except to euthanize him, and he almost got lost in the shuffle when the hoarder cats came in.

The bright spot was a grey longhair with really badly matted fur. A tool we had purchased experimentally worked really well in combing out the mats that did not have to be cut off by scissors, and she's recovering with a trapper experienced in evaluating and socializing strays and ferals. Well, next week will be another clinic.

We saw quite a few abcesses caused by fight wounds, so we know what that means--kitten season is coming....

It seems like all the unspayed females at our shelter are either suspected of being pregnant, or in heat. Yes, kitten season hits here just after the first flowers bloom, about the end of February.

If I didn't start swearing out loud I would be swearing all through this post. Hot roofing tar? That makes me so mad. Whoever the pathetic excuse for a person who did that deserves to be euthanized themselves.

Seriously what is wrong with people?

I don't know how you do it.

for all the kitties and people who help them.

As a rule, shelter volunteers don't last too long unless they're really dedicated for one reason or another. The local animal shelter is the front line, and the volunteers are the infantry. Some sectors are worse than others, but all take their toll on the volunteers. Philadelphia is a pretty rough sector. But I've been at this for almost five years now.

I started as a trapper/foster when my neighborhood was practically overrun with stray and feral cats and kittens. What made matters worse was that we had a crazy feeder in our neighborhood who had never heard of and later disagreed with the ideas of TNR and managed colonies.

My first rescue was an accident--I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. That little abandoned kitten that fit inside my shirt pocket when I pulled him from a next door back yard is now a fat, happy red tabby tom living with a couple of dentists and a companion cat. But what really got me going was the day-old kitten my neighbor brought me.

He still had the dried remnants of his umbilical cord attached to him, and he died after about 48 hours. That's really when I decided to get involved, after digging that little grave.

I've always been interested in medicine but didn't go into it because I'm rather a poor mathematician--but I do have a relatively quick mind and can learn hands-on clinical skills. I'm not unreasonably afraid of even scared animals and have the bite wounds to prove it. Once I found an organization dedicated to TNRM I immediately signed on and moved into the clinical realm; I do still trap and feed in my own area.

I like doing the clinical work because even if you can't see the cat getting better you know if you did it right that's what will happen. It isn't always easy--I work with people who can't bear to smell burning hair when we eartip cats and would probably throw up if they had to actually do the procedure. Some people are uncomfortable just giving a cat injections or are afraid to scruff a fighting feral cat (the latter is a reasonable fear). I guess that because I really like the clinical work and have the old Army discipline to get over the tough parts of it is the reason I've lasted. Saturday's another clinic, and I'll be there....

85 cats yesterday, and my feet still hurt. Three had to be put down yesterday, but that was because they were too ill to be saved--two positive cats (one FIV and one FELV) were relatively healthy and will be relocated to special colonies near Harrisburg for such cats.

Three of the female cats we spayed were pregnant--we suspect that they got pregnant before the prolonged cold snap here. The usual procedure is a spay/abortion--the kittens either die when the mother is anesthetized or upon removal; sometimes the fetal kittens do need to be euthanized post-surgery. But this time it didn't quite happen that way.

The Philadelphia Community Cats Council--my group--uses the physical assets and some of the personnel from the Philadelphia SPCA when we conduct our spay/neuter clinics, but we're independent of the PSPCA organizationally. This does not mean that there isn't spontaneous cross-over.

One cat was literally 24 hours or less away from delivering her kittens; when removed the three fetal kittens were breathing on their own and moving. The PSPCA crew in their ICU immediately volunteered to rescue and treat those kittens and adopted the mother so that they could nurse naturally; they have a good chance of making it.

Ironically, the trapper who brought the mother cat in was the winner of our spay/neuter raffle and the unfortunate who brought in last week's tar-burned cat.

Another fetal litter of four was subjected to similar measures but died--they were about a week premature. There does appear to be only a small window in which fetal kittens can be saved after spay surgery....

Only fifty cats, no pregnancies and no euthanasias, but one cat did die in recovery after an adverse reaction to the anesthesia. This happens sometimes, but not very often.

Low cost spay/neuter clinics like ours tend to be high-volume and are done in animal shelters with limited resources, so there is no pre-surgical testing for conditions that might cause complications. We do test cats for FIV/FELV prior to surgery--if a positive cat is to be euthanized we do not want to subject it to the stress of surgery. But that's the extent of our testing other than a simple "eyeball" examination of the cat.

We use a "snap test" to check for FIV/FELV when either the trapper/customer requests it or if we spot a cat that appears ill and it isn't something as obvious as a kitten with a URI and goopy eyes or worms. This involves drawing a blood sample from the cat, something more easily done after it has been knocked out while being prepared for surgery. As of today we began using a newer snap test that also alerts us to an antigen indicating that a cat may have heartworms.

I had always associated heartworms with dogs, and even the vet we had with us today had never encountered feline heartworms. I'll have to remember to ask Dr. Muraka about that next week, but for now it's something new that I've learned--an additional benefit to our clinics.

Follow-up: the cat that was burned with the hot tar was not euthanized--he died within seconds of being sedated prior to being euthanized. I can't speak for others, but we will not euthanize a cat unless it has been sedated. The same goes for eartipping--microchipping is bad enough, trust me.

All four of the second litter of preemies died within hours. Two of the three original preemies died within the week, but the third is hanging on.

We spayed/neutered nine very feral cats from another shelter and were dismayed to find that all of them were badly dehydrated. They were trapped and brought to that shelter, which has a high volunteer turnover and very few if any volunteers or staff who understand feral cats. In my opinion, out of fear the volunteers kept the cats in small carriers and did not give them food or water for a prolonged period. They turned them over to us only after an unfavorable newspaper story embarrassed them. One of the cats is now recovering in my home following spay surgery in a cage she must think is the Hilton....

only fifty cats

BRAVO!! According to statistics, you've prevented several million from being born. With 6 million in homes worldwide, I hate to think about all the unaccounted for kitties.

A group I work with has started a once-a-month clinic for people in Gloucester, Atlantic, Cumberland and other rural south Jersey counties. We did 42 cats (27 females) yesterday. One at a time, one at a time...

Ever work with any Philadelphia groups...?

No, I live too far away to be effective.

I was reading your posts and must admit I am as squeamish as some people you've described. That's why I work the recovery room at our clinic. The mess doesn't bother me - it's that crunching sounds when they ear tip!

Thank God we haven't had any cats that were deliberately hurt. Not sure what I'd do. We did have a little three-legged girl this week. Her caregiver said she was born that way and that she'd seen a few kittens who apparently didn't make it with the same condition. May be inbreeding, which hopefully will stop now that the colony has a caregiver.

That little cat apparently gets around fine and is one of the alphas, according to her caregiver. I thnk the caregivers of the world are the people who deserve medals BTW)

We did approximately 70 cats, and about 60% of them were females--I counted at least four spay/abort surgeries. We lost four cats, all of them belonging to the same trapper. One died in the OR; an adult cat with a head wound that apparently caused complications, two kittens that had to be euthanized due to an infection caused by a genetic defect, and one kitten that died shortly after returning home, apparently from surgical complications.

On a positive note, a vet who was refurbishing his office donated four new holding cage units to us--the first occupants were the surviving fetal kitten we rescued and it's mother.

Ondine, the way the Cube is set up recovery is right next to the OR, which is separated by glass walls. We see everything that happens in there and are allowed to walk in and observe the surgery. Spay surgeries only are done in the OR; neuters are done on the pre-op prep tables next to the recovery tables. Eartips are done in recovery, as is microchipping. The place is too small for the truely squeamish to avoid unpleasant sights and sounds. If you can see inside the OR you can pretty much see everything.

I'll admit there are certain things I'm squeamish about, primarily eye injures and defects. Sometimes I can't bear to eat for a day or two from seeing them. Two of the kittens put down yesterday were born without upper eyelids and got infected--that was an ugly sight. They were feral and our volunteer not only treated but partially socialized them, but in the end nothing could be done--the infection was too far gone and she really feels like crap today. And she's our "kitten expert".

The Cube has only been operational since October of 2008, and it is subject to the political infighting both within the PSPCA and the City of Philadelphia in general. We're improving things as we go along and reaching out to other rescue/TNRM organizations as we go. It's exciting to be a part of it, but sometimes it is frustrating....

Sorry, ipw533 - I didn't see this until just now. I had heard about the Cube's program and in fact gave the info to my niece, who lives in Philly. I believe she TNR'd some of the alley cats near her.

Our small clinic is set up in a private vet's office, so everything is in separate rooms. Good for avoiding unpleasant sights/smells; bad for efficiency.

We did have a torti about 8 years old who had been kicked out of her house when her human was taken to a nursing home. She had such bad teeth she was drooling. Covered with fleas, I think she would have been dead in a week if not for her rescuer. A shot of Covenia and she's like a whole new cat. As it turned out, she was such a sweetheart, her rescuer adopted her.

Long day today, and since I did it in my snow boots instead of my usual shoes my feet really hurt. This really should have been a sort day, since there wasn't much trapping done last week due to the weather and many of the cats were in for minor things like suture removal, shots and FIV/FELV testing, and most of the surgeries were neuters. But once we got a good pace going we hit some snags--two of the males were monorchids--only one descended testicle.

This isn't all that unusual but it's rare that we get two on the same day. One needed extensive exploratory abdominal surgery and the vet still couldn't locate the missing testicle--that cat was in serious pain and was sent to be recovered with a three-day course of pretty powerful pain medication. The pace slowed down as it always does when we started to do the spay surgeries, but our OR team disappeared for two hours when they had to respond to an emergency at the ACCT shelter.

While they were gone a cat died on the recovery table, presumably from a bad reaction to anesthesia since he was a neuter patient who took an unusually long time to even show signs of waking up. One minute he was breathing, the next he wasn't--it happened that fast.

It doesn't happen often but it's not unusual. We cannot do pre-surgical blood testing or EKGS and we know little or nothing of any given cat's medical history. All efforts were made to save the cat, but I've yet to see a cat that stopped breathing in either the OR or recovery be successfully revived. This was a particularly sad case, as the cat had been rescued from underneath a car hood after the Christmas snowstorm by one of our regular volunteers who became quite attached to him.

We had two pregnant female spays, only one of which was either pregnant or female. The female, who we thought was an advanced pregnancy, was actually mid-term so the surgery was routine. The other, upon being shaved in pre-op, was discovered to be a male with a distended belly--probably worms. Dr. Muraka described once operating on a pregnant hermaphrodite cat, but with his dry sense of humor it's hard to tell if he was joking or not.

Three cats tested positive--two for FIV and one for FELV--but none of them were sick so none were euthanized. In all, a long, tiring but good day, all things considered....

Good job! At our last clinic, the vet opened a female who we thought was about 9 months old. Her trapper thought it curious that she had never been pregnant.

The vet found out why - she had no ovaries or uterus. She had not been spayed, either and was definitely female. I told the vet to take some blood, so we could figure out the gene and try to develop a vaccine from it!

Our next clinic is the 21st. By then, hopefully, some of our snow will be gone (we got 17") and our trappers will be successful.

Some really good news. We have a lady who traps every cat she sees in her low-income trailer park. We work with her to s/n whoever she brings in. One female she's been feeding and trying to trap for THREE years (and five litters), simply walked into he house the other day (as the second round of snow was falling). She's apparently a real love bug and she is going to be spayed on the 21st! Yay!

That's a new one on me--never seen that before. That said, the idea of a vaccine against a genetic defect seems implausible and improbable to me. Vaccines as I understand them involve either dead or weakened bacteria and/or viruses which prompt the body to strengthen or develop defenses against those bodies and the diseases they create. How would one innoculate a creature not yet born against a defect in its own genetic make-up? Prenatally, perhaps, but nothing like that would be done in a shelter medical environment. It might be done experimentally at an advanced research facility, but I'd guess it would be done for the purpose of combatting human genetic defects. Animals would be used as initial research subjects and could be spin-off beneficiaries but the ultimate beneficiaries would have to be humans for that kind of effort to be expended.

Funny story: when I first started working in recovery the surgery was done by fourth-year veterinary students under the supervision of licensed vets. One cat was brought from the OR with a shaved belly, a spay incision and a note on the paperwork stating that a uterus could not be found. Directly under the shaved area was a very obvious penis; not to mention that this cat had a rather healthy set of testicles. He was sent back to the OR and was "spayed" and neutered the same day.

Our clinics were biweekly at that time, and I volunteered to recover the cat. He was decidedly feral and had to return to the clinic for vaccines and testing before being released (I insist upon testing). I had to keep him in a large dog crate for two weeks--by the time I could release him he was probably ready to kill me if he could! Haven't seen him since, not that I'd blame him for that--he'd had quite enough of humans....

I didn't realize I sounded serious! Sometimes it's hard to make a joke with just typing. I need to learn how to use the emicons more. Sorry.

I guess other than TNRM, there's not much else we can do. I know there's a product (feral-stat???) that was touted for awhile but I don't believe it worked well in the long run. At least I haven't heard that much about it lately.

The idea of a vaccine/genetic manipulation is appealing but once they start that with animals, they'll probably try it on humans, too. So maybe it's not such a good idea.

"I didn't realize I sounded serious! Sometimes it's hard to make a joke with just typing. I need to learn how to use the emicons more. Sorry."

I'm still not sure if Dr. Muraka was serious or not about spaying a circus elephant, and I'm afraid to ask about penguins....

I'm still not sure if Dr. Muraka was serious or not about spaying a circus elephant, and I'm afraid to ask about penguins....

One thing about this enterprise - it is never boring! Thanks for all your updates.

48 cats today, but only forty of them were spayed or neutered. Two were found to have been previously spayed and one was too ill to be stressed by surgery; the rest were brought for shots, tests or post-operative complications. Four were pregnant and two tested positive for FELV but none were lost; we're trying to move away from euthanizing FIV/FELV positive cats unless they're either untameably feral or already showing symptoms of the opportunistic infections that attack such cats, and so far it seems to be working.

We had a group of new volunteers from a new group join us today to see just how the Cube operates, and things got a bit tight physically but I think some of them will want to return. Good, reliable volunteers are hard to come by and a valuable asset, especially if they have an aptitude for organization and paperwork or can be taught clinical skills.

We had a few cats that were absolute demons to work with and volunteers were clawed and bitten by them. This happens pretty often, and it usually happens more with otherwise friendly cats rather than with the ferals. The friendlies tend to be more freaked out by the sounds and smells in the Cube (think of a nice housecat turning nasty at the vet's office), and they also tend to have bad reactions to the anesthesia. One was so wild it seemed posessed--good thing we didn't have Holy Water or it might have burst into flames while shrieking in backwards Latin while its head spun!

On the other hand we had five absolutely adorable kittens too young for anything other than initial FVRCP shots that had adoptive homes before they even reached the Cube, and our "kitten expert" is making significant progress in socializing three of the erstwhile "ferals" she took from ACCT last week.

Two interesting stories: The autoclave at the Cube had to be repaired at a cost of over $700.00. For those unfamiliar with it, an autoclave is a machine used to sterilize surgical instruments; those instruments are then assembled into "spay packs". A spay pack goes with each female cat into the OR so that the vet can operate without an assistant. The reason the repair was needed was that four mice managed to get into the machine, unbeknownst to the PSPCA staff, and ended up being cooked along with the instruments. Mice in the equipment at a cat clinic--go figure, but the PSPCA does in fact have a problem with mice. We see at least one per clinic in the Cube.

Dr. Muraka, the PSPCA's chief veterinarian, also has his own private practice but works on feral cats there as well, and had a very interesting recent case. A feral cat brought to him had what appeared to be an unusual growth on its tail. When he shaved the tail to examine it he found the skeletal remains of another unknown animal's mandible lodged in the tail. A partial jawbone with teeth, and the cat's own tissues were beginning to grow around it. Apparently the cat got into a fight with something that bit its tail; the cat escaped and took part of the other animal's jaw with it.

Like you said, Ondine, this is never boring....