December 08 2020
Friday before last, I noticed that Shimmer was acting a little quiet. By that Sunday the best way to describe her was lethargic. I called the vet first thing the next morning but there were no openings until the next day. I took her in and dropped her off. When they checked her out, they found she had a temp of 105.5. They ultra-sounded her and took an x-ray and found that her chest cavity had fluid in it. It sounded a lot like what Friendly had when I lost him. They consulted an internal specialist and were advised to lavage her chest and of course start her on an antibiotic IV. Her temp started to come down but later spiked again. They lavaged her chest again but only got a small amount of liquid. Her temperature finally came down and she started eating again. They keep her over the weekend and she continued to do fine. I brought her home yesterday and will continue giving her 2 kinds of antibiotics for the next 2 weeks. I’ll take her back for a recheck and to get her chest tube stitches out on the 14th. She’s happy to be home and is running around like nothing happened. It was a systemic infection and they think was either caused by trauma or pneumonia. The good news is that it’s not contagious and won’t affect my other cats. I hope they’re right. At any rate, things are back to normal, though my bank account is considerably lighter.
December 10 2021
It’s a busy month for vet visits. I’ve got 9 cats going in for their yearly checkup and as needed shots. Also the last 4 kittens are going in for their spay or neuter operations. So I had all these visits scheduled well ahead of time, then the vet who they were scheduled with went out on maternity leave. Luckily I got right on it and managed to get them rescheduled with other vets at the same clinic.
The cats and kittens are all doing well. With the cold weather, they’re spending a lot more time inside but they’re getting along surprisingly well with only a few disagreements. There have been quite a few stampedes. Something would spook one or two of the cats and when they take off, that would spook more of them and in seconds you have a full on stampede. Luckily that only involves a dozen or so at a time. Imagine if all 36 were in the same place and that happened.
There’ve been no new additions, which is a good thing because I’m pretty well maxed out. Trying to buy cat food locally is now very hit or miss with a lot of empty shelves. I’ve been getting shipments from Chewy.com an average of 3 times a week but even they have a lot of flavors out of stock. Right now I’ve probably got at least 50 cases of various flavors of canned food and about 10 big bags of dry food. That sounds like a lot but it’s amazing how fast I go through it.
The funny thing is, though I’m very busy taking care of all these furkids, I really enjoy having them around.
March 02 2022
Way last year, around the beginning of summer, Foxy Girl went out for the night and never came back. I did all the usual things to find her, including constantly checking the website of the local animal shelter. Month after month, no luck. Then this morning I got a call from the shelter saying they had Foxy Girl who they identified with her microchip. I went right down there to pick her up. They said for a few weeks they had been seeing a little gray longhaired cat hanging around the shelter where they leave food out for the feral cats that are around there. They decided to trap her and discovered the microchip. Everyone at the shelter was so happy to get Foxy Girl back to her home. I can’t tell you happy I am. She’s settled down and was purring up a storm while I took off the tangles she had behind her ears. She really went after the food I set out. I’m keeping her inside for a while so she can get reacquainted with all the other cats. I’ll also hit her with an application of Revolution to kill any fleas or ear mites she might have and then an application of Profender for any internal parasites she might have picked up. Overall though, she looks to be in pretty good shape. I’m so happy to have her home.
This Foxy Girl before she disappeared…
May 11 2022
This last month has been busy.
As you know, I got a call from the local shelter that they had Foxy Girl. She’s home and doing great. About a week later they called again, saying that they had another of my cats. They had Destiny, the mamma of the nine kittens from 2020. She had run off a couple of days after I let her outside. The bad news was that she had been hit by a car and had died. They cremated her for free. Then, before I had a chance to pick up Destiny’s ashes, they called again saying they had another of my cats. This time it was Sparkle who had been missing for about a week. Sparkle is back home and staying a little closer to home. All three were completely separate incidents.
When I got the winter mats and tangles off of Little Sweety, one of the barn kitties, I was shocked to see how skinny she was. She was eating like a horse and always wanting more. I took her in to the vet and found that she has hyperthyroidism which had kicked her metabolism into overdrive. So now she’s getting a pill twice a day. She’ll get checked again in 6 weeks.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, my water heater sprung a leak. It took awhile but I managed to replace it myself. That saved me about a thousand dollars instead of hiring it done. Good times.
June 12 2022
It’s been so nice having Foxy Girl home again and then she got sick. I was worried enough to take her in to the emergency vet. She had a high temperature of 104.8. They ran all sorts of tests in including blood chemistry, FeLV and FIV. The two last tests were negative and the bloodwork just showed she was sick. She got fluids and an antibiotic shot. I took her to my regular vet the next day where they took blood samples to send off for more tests, the most worrisome being an FIP test. Her fever was still high so she got a shot to reduce that and more fluids. After about 24 hours, her fever broke and she started eating again and was soon back to playing like a kitten. Later that week all the test results came back negative. That was a couple of weeks ago and she’s still doing fine.
As far as general happenings around the ranch, there’s been no new kittens. A single raccoon has move back into the area. He might be one of the young ones from last year. He comes by every night to eat the dry food that I leave out for the cats. He looks healthy and hasn’t caused any problems. The cats don’t seem too worried about him and he doesn’t bother them, so that’s good.
Little Sweety goes back to the vet in a couple of weeks, to see if her meds for hyper thyroidism are doing any good. Other than that it’s just the regular vet visits for yearly exams and shots for the rest of the kitties.
Oh yeah, there is one more cat hanging around. He’s a big white Persian who belongs to the neighbors to the north. They had been keeping him inside but he got out a few times and just loves being around all my kitties so they let him go outside whenever he wants now. His name is Darryl, named after Bigfoot in that TV commercial.
At night my big deck looks like a carnival with all the cats, raccoon and Darryl. And of course Silkie still comes by to growl at me and get fed.