Pet and Animal Thread

[DannyBeane]

[DannyBeane]

I upgraded the thermostat to Frankie's heat pad and now he's loving it.

[Benjamin Haines]

So, this past Tuesday morning, Hershey, the oldest of our two living cats, had a vet appointment and afterward he managed to escape from the car in the parking lot and run into a thicket. He's fearful by nature and he hates car rides and vet trips so when he bolted he just kept panicking and wouldn't come back when called. The thicket he escaped into has a busy highway at the bottom of the hill to the east and a lot of mountainous, coyote-inhabited woodland in every other direction.

We spent four days searching for Hershey, clearing the thicket, knocking on doors, putting up flyers and canvassing the woods. Someone finally called to report sighting him Friday night near their apartment complex up the street from the vet's office. We found Hershey hiding in the middle of a long drainage pipe beneath a driveway on undeveloped property.

Working with the caller, his neighbor and an Animal Control worker, it took us two hours to get Hershey out of that tunnel and into a little cage so we could bring him home safely. He was exhausted and terrified but once we coaxed him close enough to one end of the tunnel for Tab to grab him, he didn't resist or try to flee. He whined in his little cage during the car ride and I thought he would be traumatized and reclusive when we got home but it only took him about ten minutes to get his bearings from walking around the apartment. Then he was purring, eating, drinking water and gratefully lounging about his home, acting like himself.





Never give up!

[Benjamin Haines]

About a month ago, I volunteered at a local cat shelter for the first time. Among the residents there was a 17-year-old female named Star, who had recently been diagnosed with diabetes and had just gotten her first insulin injection earlier that day. Star had lived there for most of her life from 2010 to 2018, until she was finally adopted by a family at age 13, but they just returned her to that shelter at the start of September because their other cats were attacking her, causing the fur around her neck and the base of her tail to start falling out. Star was being kept isolated in her own room there at the shelter, away from any other cats. She had some obvious respiratory issues with how loud and congested her breathing sounded, as well as a yeast infection in her ears, and she also seemed like she really had to force herself to move around as though she was experiencing joint pain. She was desperate for human contact and all she wanted to do was lie on my lap when I was there in her room.

My lady and I knew that Star belonged in our home, so we adopted her later that week. Her name at the shelter for all those years had been Star but we learned that the people who adopted her for the past four years had called her Niblet, so we’ve opted to call her Star-Niblet for double the familiarity. After giving her injections of just one unit of insulin every 24 hours for a couple of weeks, we took her to our regular animal hospital last week so they could run a glucose curve panel throughout the day along with a urinalysis, and they found that she is not diabetic. Her blood glucose was on the low side when she was on insulin and there was no glucose in her urine, so she hasn’t needed an insulin injection for a week now. We’re going to run another urinalysis early next week to make sure that her levels are still good without the insulin.

Star-Niblet's diet now consists entirely of low-fat canned food without any high-carb dry food. To help with her congested breathing, the vet prescribed her an oral antibiotic liquid which we gave her twice a day for ten days. We’re also giving her a daily joint health supplement and we’re cleaning her ears with medication every other day. It has all made a tremendous difference. Her breathing quickly improved once she started getting that antibiotic and I’d say the sounds of her nasal congestion are now 90% gone. The fur around her neck and the base of her tail is growing back and she’s already putting more mass on her slender body, as the vertebrae of her back protruded noticeably when we adopted her but that has gotten much better.

This cat loves to play! I didn’t think she would when I first saw her at the shelter but now that she’s feeling better, breathing better, having more energy and muscle mass, she has shown an affinity for playing with strings, scratching posts and catnip. We’re certainly taking care not to over-exert her because she is 17 but she straight-up demands to be played with. She also just randomly runs at top speed through the apartment whenever she feels like it. It’s amazing to see this cat be so spry at her age.

Our biggest concern when we adopted Star-Niblet was how she would get along with our other two cats, Mercury (female, 10) and Casper (male, ~6), since the purported reason why her previous family returned her to that shelter was because their other cats had recently taken to attacking her. We’re keen to avoid anything like that here but so far neither of them have shown any hostility toward her. Star-Niblet demonstrated an immediate dislike of Mercury and Casper, which is understandable. She growls a warning at them whenever they walk near her and she still doesn’t seem to want any contact or interaction with them but they haven’t made any effort to attack her at all. Casper is the most eager to try to make friends with her, frequently rolling around and playing within her eyeline to show her how much fun he can be, but he is also the most terrified of this little old lady cat who is less than half his weight. He’ll sneak up behind her to sniff at her until she swivels around and hisses at him as he runs away hissing. Mercury just seems bewildered by her but she doesn’t mind when Star-Niblet lies down nearby, nor is Mercury afraid to go near her. That’s funny because Mercury has always been very hostile toward other cats aside from our two late male cats with whom she grew up (KC and Hershey) and she was extremely averse to Casper moving in with us last Fall because she had spent months hating him through the window when he was a stray. Star-Niblet has likewise shown more of a tolerance for Mercury’s presence than she has for Casper, probably because she has more in common with Mercury since they’re both small senior females. I’m sure that Star-Niblet will get along with both of them as time goes on.

Photos of Star-Niblet:
https://i.imgur.com/yUO1uBr.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/WKZUEme.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/O9PA2d7.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/fVuRESS.jpg

Star-Niblet and Casper: https://i.imgur.com/X0PKrsm.jpg

Mercury and Star-Niblet: https://i.imgur.com/4iRSTkc.jpg
Star-Niblet and Mercury resting near each other: https://i.imgur.com/tmyUE6N.jpg
Mercury at the window while Star-Niblet sleeps: https://i.imgur.com/zhjOjH2.jpg

[DannyBeane]

Awww she looks like a sweatheart

[Benjamin Haines]

On December 30, I took Star-Niblet to the vet for a checkup and they found a swollen, reddened mass on her skin between her right rear thigh and her mammary glands. It wasn't there during her previous checkup in November and it didn't seem to hurt her when they touched it but we didn't want to take any chances and opted to have them remove it as soon as possible. They were able to squeeze her in for a surgery appointment on January 4. Because of her age and the risk of her kidneys not handling anesthesia, they just gave her a mild sedative and administered a localized numbing agent so they could quickly cut it off and stitch her up. The procedure went smoothly and she handled it very well.

They sent the mass to be analyzed and I got the results yesterday. It was indeed a mammary carcinoma. Every millimeter of what they removed showed traces of cancer, so it's quite possible that the cancer went deeper than they were able to cut due to her not being fully sedated. I've booked the next available surgery appointment, which is currently February 3 and I'll be calling every day to see if any slots have opened. The doctor wasn't in today but I'll talk to her tomorrow about any other vets further out she would recommend who might have an earlier date available.


This SUCKS. Seriously, she lives in a cat shelter from age 5 to age 13, then she finally gets adopted in old age and four years later she gets brought back to that shelter at age 17, and then she gets adopted by us and four months later she gets cancer?!? She doesn't deserve this at all.

[Benjamin Haines]

Thankfully an appointment slot became available on Friday, so Star-Niblet will not have to wait until next month. We're taking her back to the vet tomorrow. I know anesthesia is risky but we have to get any deeper trace of that carcinoma out of her. I really hope that we caught this soon enough to stop it from spreading.

[Benjamin Haines]

Everything went smoothly with Star-Niblet's surgery yesterday and they ended up not needing to anesthetize her. They just used a sedative and a local numbing agent again and they were still able to make a larger incision at the site of that mass. Her blood work came back looking really good, so now we're just waiting on the analysis of her removed skin and a sample from her lymph nodes to determine whether the cancer has spread.

She handled everything really well and she was immediately glad to be back home in the afternoon. She didn't like having to fast since 10 PM the night before and so she has been eating eagerly ever since she got home. She also doesn't like having to wear a soft cone on her head overnight to keep her from biting at her stitches but right now she's sleeping happily coneless next to me.

[Benjamin Haines]

The analysis results showed no trace of cancer cells in Star-Niblet's lymph nodes or in the additional skin they removed from around the site of that carcinoma. We caught it in time. We still need to keep checking her regularly but as of now she is cancer-free, which is a huge relief.

She is eating well, sleeping well and healing well. She gets her stitches removed on Thursday morning. We don't know exactly when Star-Niblet was born in the first part of 2005 but she'll be 18 in the coming months. I am very glad that she's with us.

[lhb412]

^ Great to hear!

[Benjamin Haines]

^ Thanks. She had her stitches removed on Thursday morning. She is as happy as can be now that she no longer needs to wear that soft cone on her head and she can groom herself freely.

[Benjamin Haines]

I haven't had much time to post here in the past few months because, on April 1, a stray cat chose our front porch as the place to give birth to her litter of kittens! Then, the very next day, that cat’s mother had a litter of kittens in the nearby woods!

Ever since early 2021, the only stray cats that we saw regularly in our neighborhood were a pair of gray, short-haired males, whom we named Ninja and Sheba. Their similar appearance and the way they stick together indicated that they are brothers, and they both have the tips of their left ears clipped off, indicating that they had been trapped, neutered and released by local Humane Society volunteers who do that at free clinics for strays every month. At first, Ninja and Sheba were both totally afraid of humans and wouldn't let us get near them. We would put cat food on our porch for them and it took until the middle of 2022 just to get them to trust us enough to not immediately run away from us when we stepped outside. By early 2023, Ninja had grown to fully trust us and he began letting us pet him, although Sheba remains afraid of being touched to this day. Amusingly, Ninja is a cat who still rarely uses his voice even after he became social with us, whereas Sheba very vocally begs us for food despite being totally afraid of interacting with us.

It was in late May 2023 when another stray cat appeared with Ninja and Sheba in our driveway, a very skittish, short-haired, female tabby whom we eventually named Misty. We were concerned about her getting pregnant but we soon discovered that she had already had a recent litter, as she first showed up with her three little kittens on June 16 last year. They had to have already been at least eight weeks old by that point, as she was bringing them to our porch to show them where the food was because she was done nursing them, and they were still tiny but they were very fast and able to keep up with their mother and run away from us. Sadly, my attempts to capture them with a live trap that weekend were unsuccessful, and one of Misty's kittens disappeared overnight soon thereafter. As the year went on, Misty would irregularly show up at our place with her two kittens, a gray shorthair and a long-haired tabby. We concluded that the long-haired tabby was a female and we named her Rika, while we concluded that the gray shorthair was a male and we named him Dash. Being younger and more curious, Misty's kittens were willing to get closer to us, eventually showing up more often without their mother. Rika soon took after Ninja to become very affectionate with us, demanding to be petted, while Dash remained more skittish and apprehensive about being touched but still hung out close to us, and Dash was always much more vocal than Rika about begging for food, mirroring that amusing sibling dynamic of Ninja and Sheba. We had scheduled Rika and Dash for one of those free spay/neuter clinics back in February but we failed in our attempts to capture them by hand that morning, although we thankfully didn't cause them to stop trusting us in the process.

We turned out to be wrong about Dash being a male, because it was Dash who gave birth to a litter of kittens on our front porch on April 1 this year, even though she didn't look visibly pregnant before then. She chose a spot under a blanket-covered chair and then moved her kittens over the next day into one of our two homemade cat shelter totes filled with straw and insulation. She moved four newborn kittens into that shelter tote, and only after that did we realize that her litter was actually five kittens but, tragically, one of them had been stillborn, as we found its body under the chair with the umbilical cord still attached. We buried that kitten in the garden next to our apartment.

Dash kept her kittens in that shelter tote on our porch during the first part of April, spending most of her time in there with them and nursing them as they were still too young to open their eyes or walk, while we kept Dash well-fed and got her to trust us enough to let us pet her. She soon became very relaxed and affectionate around us. We had been planning to move Dash and her kittens from the porch into our spare bedroom when they were 3 weeks old, before they could really start walking around, but Dash got ahead of us a few days early and moved them from the shelter tote to an unknown location in the nearby woods while we were away from home. I guess she felt that her kittens were getting too big to remain in that shelter tote and she was trying to find a larger den. Fortunately, Dash brought them back to our porch that night and we found her kittens under the blanketed chair the next morning, so we took that opportunity to capture Dash and her kittens together and bring them all indoors. We put them in our spare bedroom to keep them secluded from our own three cats, with the kittens nestled on a blanket under a small wooden coffee table against the middle of the back wall below the window. Dash spent most of her first day in that room whining loudly at the window but she eventually calmed down and realized that her kittens were in there with her and they were all safe together. By the next day, Dash was acting like her normal affectionate self, actively wanting us to pet her. She initially growled at us a few times when she felt that we were moving too quickly around her kittens but she trusted us to interact with them and she quickly learned that we mean them no harm.

The kittens were 20 days old when we moved them indoors, so their eyes were open but their vision was still coming together and their legs were still very wobbly as they stumbled around. Like Dash, they all have gray fur but one of them has longer fur than the others, one of them has darker fur than the others, one of them has a faint striped pattern and one of them is almost completely solid gray like Dash. The kittens grew with each passing day, gradually learning how to walk and run and jump, requiring us to keep adding more pillows and other cushioning to the room in a widening radius to protect the kittens as they kept reaching new heights from which to fall to the floor. Because we brought them indoors and socialized them when they were so young, their transition from being born as strays to becoming fully domesticated kittens was seamless. They are all extremely playful, energetic and friendly and they don't fear human interaction at all.

We took Dash's sister, Rika, to a free Humane Society clinic to be spayed on May 13. When we picked Rika up the next day, we turned out to be wrong again as we learned that Rika is actually a male, and they successfully neutered him without any issues. They also vaccinated him against rabies and distemper. We returned him to our apartment and he spent hours hiding on the chairs under our kitchen table before he finally decided to walk out the open front door. With the revelation that Rika is a male came the realization that he very likely fathered Dash's kittens himself, because Ninja and Sheba have been neutered for years and Dash had no problem with Rika's presence when she was outside with her kittens.

Dash and Rika's mother, Misty, has been the most flighty of stray cats since she first appeared last year. I've wanted to take her to one of those free spay/neuter clinics but she rarely hangs around for long and she often disappears for days or weeks at a time. Although we had no idea that Dash was pregnant before she gave birth on our porch, Misty was visibly pregnant when she appeared in the days prior to that, so we knew that she would have another litter this spring. We saw Misty on April 1 and she was still pregnant, then she didn't show up the next day, then she reappeared the day after that and she was visibly not pregnant anymore, so we knew that she gave birth to her litter on April 2, the day after Dash. We also concluded that the father of Misty's kittens this year must have been this other gray male who started appearing earlier this year, whom we named Sinter. Although Dash was very defensive and unfriendly toward Sinter whenever he showed up while her kittens were on our porch, and Sinter was likewise hostile toward Dash, we saw Misty and Sinter nuzzling against each other affectionately. While Dash trusted us enough to deliver her kittens on our porch, Misty once again chose to deliver her kittens in a secret location in the surrounding woods. We didn't want to search for them and risk scaring Misty away, because she might have abandoned them and we would have then had to bottle-feed them if we could even find them, so we just had to let Misty raise them in the wild and hope that they survived long enough for us to get a chance to catch them.

Misty finally brought her kittens to our porch on the morning of May 26, when they were a couple days shy of 8 weeks old, to show them where to find cat food because she was weaning them off of nursing. At first we weren't sure how many kittens she had, because they were quick to vanish into the woods when we turned the doorknob, but we could see three of them on our porch through the window. Regrettably, later that same day, when I was driving to the laundromat, I unknowingly drove my car over one of Misty's kittens at the end of my driveway, a kitten with a tabby fur pattern like Misty. I didn't even realize it when I did it, I only saw it when I returned home a few minutes later, but it was already too late. That kitten wasn't in the driveway when I was driving to the end of it, so it must have emerged from the tall grass and run under my car when I was stopped at the end of the driveway, but I'm still the human who was driving that vehicle so it was my fault. This is something that I have to live with every day now, like an anchor around my neck. We saw Misty standing nearby after that happened but we still haven't seen her again since that day. Her kittens kept showing up to our porch for food that week but Misty hasn't reappeared since May 26. I don't know if she went looking for that kitten and got lost or if she intentionally left her surviving kittens to fend for themselves but her disappearance seems unusual and I hope she's safe.

With her kittens still coming to our porch for food but Misty nowhere in sight, we decided later that week on May 31 to go ahead and capture her kittens and bring them indoors to protect them from outdoor dangers. At dusk, I set a small live trap on the porch with a bowl of wet cat food inside it, so when a kitten would walk inside the trap to reach the food, it would step on a metal plate that unlatched the trap door, causing the door to fall shut and trap the kitten inside. One by one, I caught each of Misty's kittens and carried the trap indoors to release the kitten in the bathroom, then I set the trap on the porch again to catch the next kitten. With Dash and her kittens still occupying our spare bedroom, we had no choice but to keep Misty's kittens in the bathroom at first. Two of them have tabby fur patterns like Misty while the other two have gray fur like their father, Sinter. Having spent their first 8 weeks outdoors in the wild, unlike Dash's kittens, Misty's kittens were very afraid of us at first, with the smaller tabby being extremely fearful and quick to reflexively hiss at us. That tabby was the last to be caught in the trap and took by far the longest time to go for the bait. Misty's kittens were also noticeably tinier when we caught them than Dash's kittens were at that point, despite being born only a day later than Dash's kittens. Misty's kittens initially spent most of their time huddled together in the corner behind the toilet but within a day they were running all over our cushioned bathroom and wrestling with each other, although they were still afraid of us when we went in there. The other tabby kitten, who had been the first one caught in the trap, quickly proved to be the bravest of them by not fleeing from me and even letting me pet it. The others seemed to follow that tabby's lead, as the two gray kittens soon let me pet them too, and even the fearful tabby ended up crawling onto my lap before it looked up at my face and hissed as it realized where it was sitting and jumped away.

We took Dash to a free Humane Society clinic for her to be spayed and get her rabies and distemper vaccines on June 3, so she won't be having any more kittens after the litter she delivered on our porch. She had to stay there overnight, so that was the first night that her kittens spent without her, which they handled well. The clinic staff rated Dash's level of cooperation as "super spicy." Before we picked Dash up the following afternoon, we took all of Dash's kittens and Misty's kittens (eight in total, in two separate carriers) to our usual animal hospital that morning for their first vet exams and deworming medicine, when they were 9 weeks old. Each of Dash's kittens weighed just over 2 pounds while each of Misty's kittens weighed just under 2 pounds. Dash's kittens were quite calm about being handled by the vet and the staff, while Misty's kittens were expectedly more of an uncooperative handful, especially the fearful tabby, given that they had only been indoor kittens for three days at that point. We learned that Dash's long-haired, dark-haired and faintly-striped kittens are all males while her mostly solid gray kitten is a female. Of Misty's kittens, we learned that both of the gray-haired kittens and the brave tabby are females, while the fearful tabby is a male. We returned home with all of the kittens before we brought Dash back, so she returned to our spare bedroom after being spayed to find her kittens waiting for her, and they were very happy to see each other again.

Dash's long-haired male kitten was the first to be adopted on June 7 by one of my co-workers, who named him Raleigh. Dash's striped male and gray female kittens were next, and they got adopted together on June 15 by one of my lady's longtime friends, who named them Maynard and Mewsette. Dash didn't seem bothered at all as her kittens gradually went away without returning. I suppose mother cats in the wild expect that to happen sooner or later. We spent the prior month thinking that we had an adoption lined up for Dash's dark-haired male kitten but that arrangement ended up falling through. We've had another adoption lined up for Dash all summer, and we knew that Misty's kittens would require much more socialization before they could be adopted, but Dash's last kitten suddenly had none of his siblings around and no adoption lined up. Given this change in circumstances, and after testing the waters by letting Dash out of the spare bedroom to interact with our cats, we decided to let Dash and her dark-haired male kitten move freely around the rest of our apartment with us, thereby letting Misty's kittens move into the spare bedroom after spending two weeks confined to the bathroom. They all appreciated their increased space in which to run around.

I posted fliers around town and Dash's dark-haired male kitten was finally adopted on July 10, when he was 14 weeks old. The couple who adopted him named him Silver, because even though he looked noticeably dark-haired next to Dash and all of his gray siblings, they already have a female black cat named Shadow and he looks noticeably silver next to her! With all of her kittens adopted and her motherhood duties completed, Dash was then able to just be a young indoor cat living with us awaiting her own adoption. We started letting Misty's kittens out of our spare bedroom to run around freely whenever we were home and awake, although we still kept them sequestered in the spare bedroom at night and while we were away. Dash always had a negative attitude toward those younger siblings of hers while her own kittens were here. After we let Misty's kittens out of the spare bedroom, Dash still hissed at them at first but it didn't take long for them to get along with her. I don't know if Dash could tell that they were her younger siblings, whether by scent or some other sense, but Dash certainly acted like a big sister to them, noticeably different from how she acted as a mother to her own kittens. Dash had started wrestling with Silver when he was her last remaining kitten but she went all-out when she wrestled with Misty's kittens. They really brought out Dash's playful side. She also groomed them intently and they all liked to snuggle together when they slept.

Even with all of the posted filers and us asking around, the rest of July went by without any adoptions for Misty's kittens. We took the four of them back to our usual animal hospital on August 1 for their second vet exams, their first one-year rabies vaccines, their first-series distemper vaccines and a second precautionary round of deworming medicine. The vet was very happy about their healthy growth and how calmly they accepted being handled compared to their first exam. They each weighed just under 2 pounds on June 4 but as of August 1 the smaller gray female weighed 3.5, the tabby female weighed 3.7, the bigger gray female weighed 3.9 and the tabby male weighed 4.6 pounds. That male went from being the tiniest of those kittens to quickly outgrowing all of his sisters! As August went on, we kept trying to find homes for these kittens but we certainly enjoyed having them in our home in the meantime. The kittens all formed a close bond with their big sister Dash, especially the tabby male, and they also learned to get along with our three cats, which meant quickly learning to just leave our 19-year-old grumpy lady Star-Niblet alone. Our nearly 12-year-old female Mercury wouldn't hesitate to hiss at the kittens when they got too close to her food but she was otherwise mellow toward them. The kittens all loved to follow Casper, our big male whom we estimate to be 8 years old. Casper is such a gentle giant of a 14-pound cat that he restrained himself from roughhousing with the kittens or reacting harshly when they followed him. I'm glad that we got to socialize those kittens not just with us humans but with adult cats too.

Two of Misty's kittens were finally adopted together on August 18 by a lady who saw the flier that I posted at our usual animal hospital. The tabby female and the smaller gray female were adopted into a family with two young kids as well as an 11-year-old cat and an older dog. They named the tabby female Luna, while the smaller gray female's name was still undecided last I heard. I have seen photos and a video of them playing and looking very happy in their new home. The last two kittens were adopted together on September 1 by another of my co-workers. He and his partner named the tabby male and the larger gray female King and Queen, respectively, and he kept me updated on their transition progress every day this week. King and Queen were initially too afraid to come out of hiding but they got over that and now they're not afraid to sleep out in the open in the same room as their owners. Queen has allowed herself to be held, albeit nervously, while King is still too fearful to be handled, but they've both walked calmly down the hallway past their owners without panicking or running. They've made good progress in less than a week and I'm sure they'll grow to love their new family and their new home. We're really glad that Misty's kittens were adopted in pairs, allowing each of the kittens to maintain a close bond with one of their siblings and have them there to support each other.

Thus concludes our five-month saga of finding homes for the stray kittens born around our apartment. That just leaves us with Dash, the cat who began this saga by delivering her litter on our porch. We thought we had an adoption lined up with a friend who was moving into a new place in August but the circumstances of that move seem to have put those plans on ice, so I'm not sure that Dash will be adopted into that home at this point. She's still living here with us and our three cats, so it's still slightly crowded here but we're happy to have Dash around because she's awesome and she has grown into such a social and talkative cat. With there suddenly being no kittens in this apartment for the first time since April, this past week has seen Dash and Casper chasing each other around at top speed, with Mercury even initiating play sometimes. We're going to try to domesticate Rika too, with the hope that maybe we can find a home for Dash and Rika to be adopted together. Misty still hasn't appeared since May 26 but if she ever does then I'll immediately try to catch her in a live trap and I'll take her to the next free clinic to get her spayed. Sinter stopped showing up in the middle of June, a couple of weeks after Misty vanished, although Sinter has since reappeared just one time on August 4. I couldn't try to catch him at that time because we still had Misty's kittens, and even though I was able to feed him before he wandered off, I still haven't seen him return since then. The saga of trying to spay and neuter the stray adult cats in this neighborhood won't be complete until Misty and Sinter are fixed, lest they create another litter within the next year. There is no freaking way I am letting a cat colony form in the woods around here. I am not going to have dozens of kittens and cats come swarming out of the woods to my porch looking for food. Help control the pet population, have your pets spayed or neutered, and do the same for any strays living in your neighborhood.