Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Too Many Kittens

Well it was quite the day.

And now my bathroom is chock full of kittens.  Little tiny kittens.

The first jolt I got when I woke up was two photos sent me by an Albany woman.  She'd picked up a stray cat, fed in down town, who had a disfigured face.   It is still unknown if the cat suffered trauma to cause this or whether it is cancer or something else, like rodent ulcer.  Yeah, rodent ulcer.  But rodent ulcer has nothing to do with rodents.  It's so named because of the "ratty" edges to an upper lip inflammation that can really end up disfiguring the face. 

She took the cat to the vet today.  She turned out to be an otherwise healthy already spayed young female.  So the vet is convinced her upper lip disfigurement is from a trauma injury combined with infection but a biopsy has been sent off.  Poor kitty.

Here is the fundraiser Monica is running for vet care help with her.

There are photos on the fundraiser.  I won't post them here as they are disturbing.

Second jolt of the day, an email from a Lebanon woman.  She has to be out of her rental or house, I don't know which, on Friday (in three days) and wanted me to take four outside semi feral cats.  I said "no".  I can't do that.  I suggested she find them homes herself.

That was all I could do there.  Anger bit at me when replying that someone would wait until three days before they must be out to think of their cats.

Third jolt of the day was from one of the pair of Sweet Home women who have in the past pointed me to myraids of unfixed cats in their area.  This time I was told she had a friend with 10 kittens, six weeks old, who needed a place to go.  I said I'd ask around.

I did.  Karen did her thing, up in Portland, and did find somewhere that could take them.  I went up to get them.  Only things went south.  I was told the kittens were now in Holly but the woman had driven her mom to Albany so wasn't there currently.  I finally just drove on up since by the time I heard the woman wasn't home, I was already halfway there.

I went to the woman's place who contacted me, and then we both drove to Holly.  I assumed she knew where the place was at, where the kittens were, but she didn't.  So we sat in a church parking lot waiting on the woman to bring them.  She claimed she had to bathe them first as they were stinky and covered in poop.

I was shocked when she arrived in her car and had not ten but 14 kittens inside.  Most were orange, all were soaking wet and shivering violently.  And they were nowhere near 6 weeks of age. Closer to four weeks.  They would all need bottle fed.  Shoot!

They pulled out two they wanted to keep.  I begged her to be sure to get them fixed and gave her my card for her mother to call me, about getting the ferals fixed who had these kittens.

Then I took off, took the other woman home, and headed home myself, frantic over their state of health and the fact they were soaking wet and cold.  Way too young to be left wet.

Once home I saw that one little buff boy was on his side, back arching and "swimming" with his paws.  They do this often right before death. He could not even stand or walk.  So I set to work warming him first, with a blow dryer on low and gave him sub cu fluids too since he was so dehydrated.  I didn't know if he'd live or not.  I gave him Karo syrup too, to get his blood sugar up.   Then I tried to dry and warm 11 more kittens, all screaming, some with crusted eyes and all needed real baths. Want to talk stress?

In the end, I took that weakest one up to a friend in Salem, since she's an expert on caring for bottle babes.

I was also told by the Sweet Home woman this wasn't the original situation she was going to take me to, that she got mixed up and there were ten more kittens at another house, with two tame moms.  Oh holy kitten season.

But Karen goes big instead of small on her request to the Portland shelter and asks if she can bring 22 kittens in instead of 10 on Friday.  I would never have had the nerve, but boy howdy she did and they said "yes" and glory be!  Although now its 21, since the buff boy went to Salem.

I won't pick up the ten til Thursday though.  I'll also pick up those two moms and they'll be fixed Friday.  There are still the six or eight needing caught and fixed from the other place the 12 kittens came from, but that will be done.  I was supposed to trap a couple girls at a wrecking yard, but the kitten moms will take precendence now.

So that was my day and I'm up again feeding the little brats in the bathroom so I thought I'd write about it.






This last video is of the little struggling buff boy, before I took him to Salem.

I didn't get very many cute pictures of them.  It's hard to take pictures of moving kittens. 

Well that's today's kitten adventure.  And it is ongoing. 

I'll just add:  boy do kittens make a mess, over and over again.

12 comments:

  1. Oh, my! A scene from 101 dalmatians comes to mind only with kittens. Do they fix kittens that young?

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    Replies
    1. That's a good scene to describe my bathroom about now. No, they don't fix this young. They have weeks and weeks to go before that, but are leaving here Friday.

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  2. What an adventure! As cute as kittens are I know you'll be glad when this one is over.

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  3. Oh, poor babies! Thank you thank you thank you for your tremendous efforts. ~hugs~ I hope all these precious animals survive and thrive. And thanks for the warning on the fundraising link before I click.

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  4. Wow...There are sure darling. Don't they have some type of organization that helps with sterilization of animals there?
    The one hear does it by income base. And some are actual free

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well I do help by taking them off to be fixed myself but in this county in Oregon, no we don't have anything, other than me carting cats off to other counties to be fixed. I'm not so sure people would use it if we had a clinic like that here. Many people here are just plain lazy in that regard (and many others).

      Delete
  5. Hooly dooly.
    Huge thanks.
    And hiss and spit at rather a lot of other unhelpful people.
    Good luck.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yeah I don't know what is wrong with people around here. So many don't fix their pets or help in any way.

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  6. Anonymous3:47 PM

    What a terrific job you do. I can only imagine the clamouring to be fed.

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    Replies
    1. There is a lot of that. They will only be here one more day and I'll probably miss them.

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