Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Sweet Home Snow Night

Last night I drove up to Sweet Home, to pick up the logger boys cats. Just east of Lebanon, I got caught in a blizzard. Snow fell so hard, I couldn't see a thing. I slowed way down as did the other two or three cars I saw the trip up. Not many out in that last night.

By the time I reached the last hill and corners, the snow was blinding. I was a little on edge driving in that. But I made it to the logger boys cat house. They did not have the cats in carriers already, as I had expected. They didn't know if I'd come, because of the heavy snow.

Not rain, nor snow, nor dead of night, will keep the cat trapper from filling her appointed spay surgery appointments.

These folks were paying for the cats' fixes, which is why I went up. I am currently over my Poppa budget limit, so unless I find cats with caretakers who will pay or make some fixing money somehow, I have to cut back on the fixing. Sad. Man I wish I was better at making fixing money.

Anyhow, the men had a hard time getting two of the brown tabby girls into the carriers. They had three of their females inside but the Lynx Point Siamese slipped behind the water heater. I heard a thump and said "There's a hole back of that heater, isn't there?" They said there was and that the cats enter and exit from under the house there. So she was gone. I settled for another brown tabby male. I briefly set the trap out back. There was cat action galore. But, the wrong kind of action---breeding and fighting.

Inside, I had asked about a young unneutered male. "Oh, he's dying," they said. The grandmother was craddling him. His brother died a week ago they said. They are about a year old. The man said he thought they must have mad cow, because they stumble around, shake, turn in circles, lose weight, then die. I examined the dying young male. His ears were packed in earmite debris. I worked it loose with vegetable oil. He shook a lot out, and I gently flicked more out with a Q-tip.

I called Vicki from KATA, who lives only a couple blocks from these folks, hoping she'd be home. I was hoping she had test kits and could test this cat for leukemia. After I left with the three tabbies in my car, I began to worry about what that could be that the one brother died of and that this one soon will die of. Could be distemper. Could be leukemia, but what are the odds, if they were infected at birth of both brothers dying of leukemia within a week of one another, at a year old? The odds don't make that a credible cause of death. But what else could cause such symptoms? Maybe distemper, but I"ve never seen those neurological symptoms go along with distemper. My mind wandered to rabies, and then I became nervous over that possibility. No excess salivation, however. No change in personality. No high fever. But the possibility still tugs at me.

They were inseperable, always grooming one another, sleeping together, playing together. What could make them die within a week of one another if not something they either both caught, one from the other, or got into, ingested or otherwise?

What could cause these symptoms: lethargy, stiffness of the muscles and joints, neurolical trembling, shaking, vertigo, seizures, anorexia, swollen gonads, lack of appetite, dehydration (severe) and ultimately, death?

The cat will likely be dead tonight when I return the other three. I let the vet fixing the other three know about the boys symptoms, just in case there is a possibility of severe contagious viral infection, and to handle the other three with caution.

It is to me a curiosity also, to see such strange symptoms with accompanying death--the puzzle of it, the mystery, intrigues me and makes me want to figure it out.

I am, however, thinking of one certain toxin, that can cause such symptoms and death, even taking a week to ten days to kill, if a cat ingests the toxin in a very small dilute amount. Do you know what I am suspecting?

I drove home in even thicker snow. This morning I also picked up three feral kittens trapped at an Albany complex by a very cool man. That complex has long had a stray cat problem. He's up to take care of it, with the managers live trap. He wrote out a check, also, to cover the fixes of two female kittens and one male kitten. Yahoo!

So, there are four females and two males up being fixed today.

1 comment:

  1. be careful in that snow!!OMG i would have had panic attacks so bad i couldn't have gone anywhere. that's the resultof all my car accidents though (none my fault) -panic attacks now.
    i'll send the blanket up this week and let you know how it goes with meeko on satuday. my fingers are crossed. stay warm!
    do you think it's anit-freeze or something like that with the cats?

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