Some updates on the yard cats for today.
We had eyeball baby inside for the night again, and she got her eye drops in the evening, after and eye wash. This morning, another eye wash and more drops. This time, I was able to get the eyelids open more, and she didn’t seem to be too bothered by the drops, which is good. I’m pretty sure she’s going to loose one eye, though. It’s hard to say, since the lids are still so swollen. On the plus side – I think – there is no oozing infection like before. The eyes are still leaking, for sure, but not the gunk like she had before.
After her eye drops, she went back into the carrier to hopefully eat and drink some more, before letting her outside again. I put her in the cage in the sunroom, as far onto their favourite cat bed on the bottom as I could reach. She went right onto the bed, and settled into a corner. I set a plushie beside her, but she didn’t go near it. The outside cats had already been fed, and the orange and white kitten had gotten his eyes washed, too. He was loafed in front of the sunroom door, so I picked him up, cuddled him a bit, then set him into the cat cage, too. He went straight for eyeball baby and snuggled with her!
The photo above was taken just a little while ago. Eyeball baby may not be able to see, but she can still find her way out of the cat cage and make her way around, so she must be able to at least see something.
Meanwhile, I got an update on how Button is doing.
When the folks at the clinic first saw him, they were convinces he was only three weeks old. The Cat Lady said, no way – I would have told her if he was born just three weeks ago! They ended up aging him at 11 weeks, but he weighed only half a kilogram – about a pound. Also:
Panleuk test: negative
feline leukemia test: negative
He has URD (upper respiratory), but I expected that.
Grade 3 heart murmur
Earmites are so bad, they believe his hearing is permanently damaged, but he was definitely born hearing.
To quote the Cat Lady “they have seen a lot of tiny kittens but this takes the cake.” She sent me a picture of her youngest daughter as she took Button outside for some exercise, and he looked even smaller than ever – barely the size of her foot!
The vet was saying they think he has failure to thrive.
Uhm… yeah. That’s really obvious.
One visit, and they’re already saying that this kitten has already really beaten the odds. My thought it, there was probably a reason he was abandoned by the mother, whoever it was. He’s a feisty little one, though.
They’ll be seeing him in two weeks, and hope to be able to vaccinate him then.
Which means, I guess, that he won’t be going to his forever home in one week, as originally planned!
I hope the woman that said she would adopt him doesn’t back out.
Since the folks at the vet clinic had been so sure Button was much younger, I went looking up my posts and photos to confirm when we found him. It was on July 4, and it’s August 16, now. So we’ve been tending him for 6 weeks, as of yesterday. When I found him, I was pretty sure he was close to weaning age, based on his behaviour and eating habits, which would typically be 6-8 weeks old. So them aging him at 11 weeks adds up.
Well, he is in excellent hands now. I just hate that we ended up passing another sicker-than-expected cat to the rescue!
I have to admit, I’m honestly starting to think seriously of culling the outside cats. Maybe not all of them – we did manage to get some of the dudes neutered – but most. They seem to have way too many health problems. We seem to have an unusually bad strain of feline herpes that seems to be resulting in life long URD, even after they’ve been taken indoors or adopted out. Cats from other colonies around us that got adopted out have been recovering, then never having problems again, so this is unusual. However, we’ve found several of them have had heart problems, several of the ladies that got spayed turned out to have uterine abnormalities. These are things that can’t be treated by simply getting them fixed, vaccinated or adding immune boosting supplements to their foods. We do the best we can for them, but it may be that our good intentions are actually causing more problems.
It’s an unpleasant line of thinking, but we just may not have a choice. Not just about the ongoing health problems, but the sheer cost of taking care of them – and that’s with help from the rescue and donations! We’ll never be completely without yard cats. They earn their keep and keep the rodent population down. But to have so many is something else entirely. We don’t even know how many we have right now, since they come and go, this time of year.
Meanwhile, we’re doing things like bringing in a sick kitty to tend to and medicate it that nature probably would have taken care of some time ago, if we weren’t such sucks for the cats!
Speaking of which, I got more progress on the isolation shelter. I will write about that in my next post.
Yeah. We’re such terrible sucks for the cats!
The Re-Farmer.
The Re-Farmer 