Tag: adoption

Debugging Norton

Long story short: we have 6 new kittens and one of them had a botfly.  A what? A botfly.  A nasty bug that lives under some mammals’ skin.  It’s gross. It’s repulsive.  It’s disgusting.

One of the kittens we got two weeks ago, at two weeks of age, started having some blood around its neck. I thought it was from its collar, so I removed the collar.  The wound did not disappear.  After a closer look, I saw a hole in the skin.  An absolutely round hole.  Strange. Whatever.  A couple of days later, the hole is still a perfect circle.  I google “hole in kitten skin”.  As it happens often when you google stuff, you find the worst.  And the worst it was: a thing living under the skin in my baby’s neck. 

Off to the shelter we go. They look at it, confirm it’s a botfly, but reassure me that they looked and it’s not there anymore.  Gone.  Matured and went away.  We just need to keep it clean.

Home we go.  And wait.  And wait a few more days.  And clean the hole.  And the hole is still there, still round, and growing.  Stuff is oozing out of it.  Kitten doesn’t want to eat.  One day. Two days.  I go back on google and get the flashlight out (the mega flashlight). And right there, the bug is staring me in the face.  I swear. That thing had two beady eyes and looked at me, and rolled onto itself back into the hole.  But the vet staff at the clinic told me it is gone.  I am seeing things.  I don’t know what I am talking about.  Yet I have this nagging feeling that there’s a monster in my kitten’s neck.

Off to our vet we go. The one we pay for!  The one who’s super awesome.  Of course we arrive not long before they close, because emergencies (or what my nerves convinced me by then was an emergency) never happen at convenient times. 

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You gonna put that thing where?

And I was right. There was a bug there.  Dr. Karen Burlone, veterinarian extraordinaire, got the monster out.  After removing it, she came into the room and asked us, with a glitter of pride and disgust at the same time “wanna see it? It’s huge!”.  She brought the thing back into a little cup.  The nastiest thing you have ever seen.  A black bug, about the size of a normal olive, still wriggling in the formaldehyde.  With two little beady eyes at one end of it.  Yuck.  Yuck. Yucky.

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The monster. The botfly. GROSSSSSSS.

My baby is saved.  And he (we now believe it’s a male kitten) fell asleep on my shoulder.

Back to home we go. And like a champ he ate.  We call him Norton.  Because he got debugged!

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Lost peanuts and a hug

Henry lost his little peanuts yesterday (aka his testicles).  He got microchipped also.  He’s ready to go.  Both kittens are ready for adoption.  We, however, are not ready to let him go.  But we cannot have another foster fail.

Rockie is a very affectionate cat.  She’s difficult to photograph because she pouts when I get the camera out.  And Henry moves too fast for my portrait lens!  Except when he’s asleep.

So here is Henry de la Floof (Second Generation) and his foster brother, Sir Kodi of the Stinky Butt!

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Rocky’s a girl!

Rocky’s a Rockette!  A little girl in pink!  A sweet pea.  And here we thought she was a tough little tumbling boy, the little bitty aggressor, always winning the wresting matches with her brother.  

I had her neutering scheduled for Monday and we took both kittens to the shelter clinic for their shots.  I mentioned tomorrow is “loose your nuts” day, and the vet tech looks at me funny and says “You know Rocky’s a girl, right?”  Oh boy, we felt dumb!

So, on Monday I dropped off a kitten for spaying instead of neutering, and paid the fee for spaying, and not neutering.  Ouch!

She couldn’t care less either way. The surgery didn’t affect her one bit.  She’s alert, running around, and does not seem to be in pain.

And just like that, Rocky became Rockie. 

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Deworming nightmare

Deworming is a must.  But it comes with side effects that we were not prepared for.  We took our babies to the shelter for their preventative care, and the vet (overwhelmed after having performed 50 surgeries that morning without her full staff on board) casually mentioned the kittens may have diarrhea and be tired.

What we didn’t know is that “tired” would mean Rocky would suffer temporary paralysis of his front paws for about 24 hours.  It was scary.  It was heartbreaking.  He was trying to get up, but his body would fall forward.  And of course we realized what was going on in the middle of the night, on a weekend.  He was alert, bright eyed and ate well if you brought the food right under his chin.  He would roll on his back and play with Henry.  If I pinched his paws (not hard), he would yelp a bit.  Googling the symptoms was actually reassuring since we figured out the probable cause, but we couldn’t find how long it would last.  He spent all that time cuddling up next to us, nestled in the bed blankets.

All is fine now.  But be warned in case this happens to your kittens. 

Doesn’t he look like the most happiest kitten in the whole wide world?

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Soft Rocky, Little Ball of Purr
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Meet Henry

Rocky needed a playmate.  He loves playing with Kodi but I, a human who is fairly new to orphan kitten behavior, decided he could benefit from having a buddy his age to wrestle with.  Kittens are aplenty in the shelters, and after a few days of placing the request, I got a photo of a tuxedo cat.  And off to the shelter I go.  But not without first asking my big guy if he agrees.  He does of course.

They handed me a wild little thing!  It screeched all the way back home, trying to claw its way out of the carrier.  Not a happy camper! 

I let him roam around a bit in the bathroom before giving it a bath.  Have you ever given a cat a bath?  That in itself should be its own reality show.  Cats do NOT like water.  And cats have claws, which explains why I now sport all kinds of injuries on my wrists!  But I think I got 90% of the fleas out. 

It’s a rather big kitten, bigger than Rocky, yet its teeth are less developed.  It’s a boy. And he hisses and screams like a feral cat when he’s not happy.  But over the course of one evening, he became a very loving, happy, free kitten.  

His name is Henry, to be pronounced with a stiff upper lip.  He’s black and white.   My relative Henry was colorblind.  Hence Henry.  More specifically, Henry Of the Poisonous Claws.  Yes, we think that’s funny!

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Rocky on the road

Travelling with kids is no picnic.  Traveling with a 5-week old kitten is worse.  Why you ask?  Because children are welcome in hotels.  Kittens are not.  You either have to find a hotel that claims to be animal friendly (“Sorry, only dogs are allowed”), or sneak the kitty in.  We are good people and opted for the first, not wanting to transform into kitty smugglers!

Rocky came with us on a road trip last week.  We had to go to Austin and then San Antonio.  Our big cats can stay home alone for a night without problems, but the little one still needs constant care.  Should we sleep in Austin the first night or drive to San Antonio after his meeting?  We pondered that question for a few hours until, duh, I am not staying with the kitten in a hot car for several hours while Daddy is in a business meeting!  While Daddy was closing business deals, I had a photoshoot with the little one. 

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The next day, Rocky got his first public outing.  We took him inside the restaurant with us, snug into his carrier.  He didn’t meow a word and drank a bit of water out of a bowl, and had his first taste of meat: fajita beef.  He likes it!

He’s a wonderful traveler.  And we didn’t realize how much he would eat so we ran out of food.  I know, I know…  So we stopped at Petco, brought the carrier inside and fed him paté right there.  There was a huge enclosed area inside the store where they have the training sessions for dogs and we asked if we could let our kitten loose in there.  Rocky loved it.  He went running around, sniffing all those new smells and ran away from us when it was time to get back on the road. That little one runs so fast now!

All in all, he spent about 10 hours in his carrier over 2 days.  We love him so much!

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Rocky the Rock Star

Meet Rocky, our little RockaPoo, RockaDoddle, RockaRama and many others.

As can be expected, we love our new baby.  He’s been through a lot (and so have we).  He’s a fighter, a mighty cat, a survivor.  Hence his name: Rocky.  Because you know, the Survivor song, theme of the movie Rocky.

He’s a bit small for 5 weeks old, but has a ton of oomph in him.  He has never learned to suck on a bottle, preferring instead to chew on the nipple to get the milk to come.  Lately, he’s simply chewed the nipples off.  So, he’s pretty much off the bottle now.  It’s a bit early but he’s lapping the milk out of a bowl, which, in turn, is a bit early for a kitten to do.  He also uses his litter box and eats wet food out of the can.  He’s a big boy. He rocks.

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He doesn’t have a litter mate obviously, but Kodi is a great big brother.  Whenever we take Rocky out of the playpen, Kodi comes running, and proceeds to annoy him.  He knocks him down, paws at him, bites him, wrestles with him, and then gives him a tongue bath…  We were a tad concerned when we heard some pitiful meows, but then saw the tiny one attacking his brother’s tail, so it can’t be too bad!  We now let Rocky loose in the house for an hour or so, and if we lose sight of him (he’s so fast and tiny and climbs into crevices), all we have to do is look for Kodi, who, inevitably will be staring at that mini fur ball.

He’s the best.  He’s simply the best.  Better than all the rest…

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Losing Linus

Little Linus died on Saturday, a day after his brother, Boo.  We took him to the vet again, even though he had seen one on Friday and got some treatment then.  But his life was to be short.  An hour after leaving the clinic, he too died in my hands.  

No one really knows what happened, what killed my kittens.  It was comforting to look at the vet going through a mental list of, not only what could be making the kitten sick, but more importantly, which of these diseases or conditions could be cured.  It could be a bacteria, a virus, something they got from their Mom.  We won’t know.  She mentioned something about an IV in the baby’s bones.  We said no.

We did everything we could.  I swear, we did everything we could.  

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Bye Bye Fuzzies

Duchess and her kittens have found a new foster home.  We will be traveling too much in the next few weeks to be able to care for them correctly.  They have been “handed over” to a rescue organization, and now have a full room to themselves, that they share with two black feline siblings.

It’s all quiet in here.  And it no longer smells of poo!  I miss getting up in the morning, checking on them, and being welcomed by five balls of fuzz.  But my job is to get them out of the danger zone (ta ta tammmmm!) and onto their new life.

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Bye bye Duchess, Leia, Gracie, Gino, Cali and MiniDee.  Have a great life.

 

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