Spoke too soon...

So yesterday, I was just thinking to myself, "Gee, we sure haven't gotten many bottle baby litters in this year. I've only had two litters. (granted, my second litter consisted of 16 kittens on death's door, 3 of which died of pneumonia, they took 5 weeks to recover to the point where I wasn't afraid of anyone dying, and they still to this day get sick!) Still, I hadn't even gotten to my "airplane" litter I was so looking forward to naming.

Well, today somebody called from out in the county, with 6 screaming kittens they found on Sunday, and there was a female cat hit on the highway on Friday. So, I now have bottle babies!

Update on Stumpy

He's doing great now, playing, eating, demanding cuddles, just like any normal kitten. Only one thing I'm worried about. The stump that he tore open during his tantrum. Everything including the nice padding of tissue and the callous shifted slightly, and now when he stretches that leg out, the skin seems stretched kinda thin over the end of the bone. The other stump is nice and padded at the end of the bone, and the callous is in the right spot. I'm afraid that if we don't move the padding and callous back over the end of the bone, the skin will be too thin there and he won't be able to walk on that stump comfortably, or that it will be more likely to tear the skin. It doesn't seem to be bothering him in the least right now, so it's probably nothing to worry about. I just remember a rottie puppy that somebody abandoned at a park last year. His tail dock had been botched, they cut tail in the middle of a vertebrae instead of in between two, and didn't leave enough skin over the end. The result was that his tail hurt all the time, and we had to re-dock the tail, taking the partial bone out and redistributing the skin. So I'm worried about something similar with the kitten's leg stump.

We really need to come up with a new name for him as well. We've been calling him Ebeneezer, but it really doesn't fit at all. The vet clinic staff suggested Lieutenant Dan from Forrest Gump. The best I can come up with is Popoki Pe'elua, which is Hawaiian for "caterpillar cat."

Edit:  We eventually settled on PJ, because he looks like he's wearing footie pajamas.

New Shelter Cat

A couple weeks ago, a woman called in about a kitten that she either needed to get rid of or put to sleep. He was born with deformed back legs, and the way he was walking was making open sores on the walking surface. We discussed it for a while among the staff, and decided to simply take the kitten, even if it meant euthanizing him ourselves, just to make sure it got done.

So the kitten came in, and sure enough, his little hind feet were way off. The foot was actually twisted completely around so that the paw pads were facing up. And the hock was permanantly bent such that he was walking on the outside corner of the hock. This lady had been letting this kitten OUTSIDE, where he had to bounce down 4 wooden steps to get to the gravel, dirt, and what-have-you that typically makes up trailer park yards. He had open, infected wounds on both hocks.

Well, the playful little guy stole our hearts in about an hour, and we decided to try to save him. First thing was to get those open wounds healed up and get some radiographs to see what was going on in there to make plans for future surgery. To make a long story a little less long, he had his surgery today.

The tibia never grew. It was the size of a little leg bone in a newborn kitten. The fibula, which is the other bone in that part of the leg, grew normally. Since both ends of both bones are attached in the same joint, the only way the fibula could grow was in a circle. It also pushed the tarsal bones out kinda sideways, and dislocated the end of the tibia. So basically, what they did was amputate the foot at the end of the tibia, and cut the fibula off as close to the knee joint as possible. The purpose of leaving the long stumps being to retain the nice big callouses he had developed there for walking purposes. In addition, we are going to try to fashion an orthopedic shoe/bootie type device, if he'll keep them on.

The surgery itself went well, but they used more drugs to keep him down than they did on the Boston Terrier we took down yesterday for a dental! In addition, when he woke up, he threw a 4 hour tantrum, re-opening one of his incisions, and bleeding all over the damn place. They had to sedate him AGAIN to put in additional sutures. When he woke up from that, he resumed his tantrum, and finally one of the techs resorted to simply packing him around for the rest of the day, and keeping him mellowed out on opiates. They told us they wanted someone to take him home tonight and keep an eye on him, drugging him as neccessary, and I'm elected!

So now he's here, and the drugs are wearing off and I can't give him another dose until 10:00. He was screaming bloody murder for a while, but finally seems to have settled down again. I didn't really expect him to eat, but offered him some canned food anyway, he ate it, and settled right in for a nap. He's so darn cute. He sleeps propped up in a corner of the cage on top of his stuffed animal, recliner style, with all four feet (or what remain of them) pointed up. It's sad, I know he's only laying that way because his little stumps hurt, but it's still cute.

People are heartless

We had to euthanize a dog yesterday. He was a big, sweet black lab, older than dirt, and there was not one inch of his chest or abdomen that wasn't a mass of lumps. The poor boy laid in the pool all day every day, presumably to help lessen the pressure on his tumors while laying down. He ate a little the first few days, then vomited every night the next two, and hadn't eaten a single bite the last 3 days. This dog came in as a stray from the city, so we were required to keep him for the 10 day holding period. During that time, nobody called looking for him or asking if he'd been found. An old, sweet, relatively well cared for dog. Abandoned in his time of greatest need. And his family cares so little about his comfort and well-being that they leave him on a street somewhere to be found by strangers, cared for by strangers, and held by strangers as he died.

I hope someday they know what it feels like to to be sick, miserable, alone, and abandoned.