Thursday, December 17, 2009

Record Mess Up

Black Pearl is supposed to go to a home on Monday. The people adopting both her and Toby wanted her records, to be sure she has been fixed, vaccinated and tested. All those things were done on October 16, the same Friday Tiny Tim went to the vet initially.

However, she is down in their records as a brown tabby female, who was tested (negative) and got a rabies vaccination along with spay. She is certainly not a brown tabby. How in the world did she get written into the clinic's records as a brown tabby? I don't have any idea, but they say they cannot change that now.

The adoptors will think I'm making it up if I hand them a record from a clinic on a brown tabby. I will need to pay now to have her belly shaved, to prove spay, a rabies vaccine and testing redone. It sucks, let me tell you.

I have been holding my breath waiting for this adoption to go through, because the pair takes up the entire spare bedroom, cramming the rest of the cats here into very little available space.

I am so anxious to get Pearl into this home because it is so hard for me to find even one cat a home these days and black adults are especially difficult. While Toby loves to be out mingling with the rest of the cats, Pearl, still in kitten protective mode, goes after the other cats very loudly, screaming fiercely at them. This has been very very hard here in this limited space.

I don't want this adoption to fall through because somebody wrote down the wrong color on a cat at a clinic even if now I have to pay to get accurate records on her.

I do not understand how this could have happened. Tiny Tim and Black Pearl were the only two cats I took in that day.

The next day, on Saturday, late, she went to that fosterer, up in Wilsonville, that turned out badly, along with her three kittens. That day also Tiny Tim's leg was amputated. I was going to take Pearl back to be fed as a stray, unless I came up with a foster home for her that day, that Friday. I got her tested because I would not take the kittens back to such a life, and the cheapest way to test the kittens is to test the mother cat. Mid day I got the foster offer from Wilsonville, so I called to ask she also have a rabies shot.

Black Pearl was returned to me on October 30 by same fosterer, the night before I took Tiny Tim down to his new home. There's no way to forget that. This caused me immense stress in trying to get rest that night before flying to CA with Tiny Tim.

That night, after flying back into Portland very late and exhausted, despite the late hour, or rather early into the next morning hour, I stopped by the Wilsonville foster woman's place and picked up Shimmer and Toby.

Black Pearl had been a screaming terror that Friday night she was brought back. I got no sleep due to her total anxiety over all she'd been through. That's why I got back two of her kittens the next night, to help her. Shimmer got a home with a Salem family after she acheived spay weight. Tiger Lily, the kitten kept by the fosterer, also was spayed and got a home.

I purposely kept Toby, her little boy, hoping to adopt them out together. Otherwise, Pearl's fate would not have been an easy one for me or the other cats here already. She had the best chance of adoption if paired with her little boy.

It's not like I don't keep records. I know she was fixed, tested and vaccinated on October 16. But, because she is not listed with a name in clinic records, (she had no name then), and only a color, the wrong color, the record is now useless and unbelievable to give to an adoptor.

Since the record is messed up like that, I don't even know if she really was tested and vaccinated. I was charged for it, but I don't know it happened. Maybe they had another cat going through surgery that day someone else brought in, a brown tabby. Maybe she got the shot and testing Black Pearl was supposed to have received. There's no way to know.

But a brown tabby Black Pearl is not and she could in no way be mistaken for a brown tabby.

If she possibly wasn't tested, I better have that done. I'll have to go clear to Wilsonville and it is not cheap there but it is cheaper than anywhere around here.

The clinic will not admit an error, and implied I must have brought her in at some other time and this must be some other cat I brought in the day I brought in Tiny Tim. That is not true. I rarely get a cat vaccinated and tested that I bring in. Only ones I intend to adopt out. Because I have to pay personally for shots and testing and that is not something I can afford.

Maybe one would think I should raise holy hell over this, go into the clinic screaming bloody murder. The only thing I would go into that clinic screaming is bloody thanks. They have been good to me and helped me help a lot of cats over the years. This is a very minor thing by comparison.

Mistakes are made every day everywhere by everyone. I will recover financially from this one day and it will be forgetable by next week or maybe even by tomorrow, when she will be retested and revaccinated at a cost of about $65 which, yes, will come out of my pocket. But maybe because of this, she will get that home Monday with Toby and there will be no hitch ups or complicated shady sounding explanations necessary.

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