Zorro and Flower

Ok, I've named those darn struggling kittens.

I hope giving them names will seal their survival. I hope.

Flower wants to live. She is precocious and curious and shows off to me and wants to please me. She really went into desperate show off mode, when her brother died. She was stressed, didn't understand, worried something bad was going to happen to her, too, and that maybe it was her fault and if she tried harder she'd be ok.

Zorro, the surviving brother, went downhill fast, and Flower became even more frantic for love, touching my face with her paws, curling up in my hair, and yes I got their sickness, been gut sick for two days.

Worth it, ok. Worth it. They're kittens. One has died. They need comforting. I won't apologize for getting sick myself.

I've kept their area clean, clean as a lab. Shit happens. Bacteria are teensy. Easy to miss one. Or two somewhere.

They are eating. Their poop is solidifying. I fight them at night to get the metro down. I know they hate it. I hate trying to give it to them. But its helping.

I have Cattyhop contained again. She's so skinny, but she eats and poops normally. No vomiting. No fever and maybe she just hasn't made up for the time earlier this fall when she wasn't eating. She's gained almost a pound since then, but still too skinny. She could have cancer, but I had feared she had dry FIP. She couldn't have that. She'd be dead already. Been too long. Not too long for slow growing lymphoma, hidden away somewhere, in her digestive system. USually there's vomiting with that, off and on.

Hopi would vomit. Then she would get these terribly pale almost white stools. I'd find them in the litterbox and show the vet. It was a different vet then I used. That was almost two or three years before she started losing weight. And it was another year after that before she died, maybe a year and a half. Like maybe she had cancer her entire life and it finally got her in the end by growing across boundaries that blocked essential services provided by her system.

So I don't think Cattyhop is out of the woods. She has energy. She actually doesn't mind being confined because it means lots of attention which she likes. She mainly otherwise spends her time in the garage and cat yard, rarely coming in, until the rains hit for the winter. This is why I didn't notice her drastic weight loss until early summer, then it got even worse mid summer. She was terribly terribly clogged with hair, however and even when she started pooping, her poop was like rubber, matted in hair. So she's getting further lubed now, for good measure, although she seems to be pooping normally.

My eye is on her now.

I got to let Hairy out. I have tried. He is so scared to come out. He likes me, though. See, when I picked him up, as an eartipped feral, at Heartland, he was starved nearly to death. I was headed straight up to Wilsonville with him from there, because that woman was going to relocate him, and, before I drove out of Heartland's parking lot, I fed him three cans of food, inside the trap, which he gulped. Ever since then, he likies me.

I brought him back from up there once I got varying stories regarding the relocation. First it was some old woman who fed table scraps, then it was a man and two of the five she'd taken there had already been killed by coyotes. And when I went to see Hairy, he was sicker than a dog, and she hadn't noticed, so he came back with me. So, what to do with one single feral, without friends. You can't really relocate single ferals. They have to buddy up for it to be successful. Well, think about it. Taking a cat who's scared of people to some completely unfamiliar location, man alive, no friends, no family, nothing to attach to, to cling to, to cuddle up to for reassurance when times are bad--that is cold! I won't do it.

He's in the garage in one huge cage, which I leave open during the day, but not at night because I don't want cat fights or any bullying while I sleep. I had a home I thought, for him and for Meesa, but then I never heard from the woman again. I had gone over to her place and she had asked assistance catching a male she fed, then, she said, we'd relocate them to this great place friend of hers owns, with all sorts of cat rooms to house ferals for relocation confinement. She was going to come over that next day, at 2:00 p.m., and we'd go for a walk, then go catch that male, and she didn't come. I tried calling twice, no answer, went to message and gave up.

Zorro and Flower, you hear me--you got names now. And you better live. I wonder how Hairy would like a couple of kittens for company, once they're well. He's long hair and he rumbles and that long hair would be perfect for those kittens to cuddle into.

So the woman who first took Zorro, the day I trapped him, then asked me to hold him for me while she was gone to eastern Oregon, well I never heard from her again. She met me with him in her carrier. I've been trying to call her, so she can take back her carrier. I can't get ahold of her. Her message box is full too. I can't figure it out. I saw her truck back at her place when I drove by on my way to Corvallis that Monday, so I know she came back. I hope she's ok. I'm not mad about her dumping him back on me, because he was so sick. It's sleazy, sure, to not even call. But I just want to get her carrier back to her. I don't know how long a person has to try to do that. Or even if I should. It's up to her, really. I have no idea what is going on with that woman.