Monday, October 8, 2012

Thumbelina

It's been a heartbreaking week for cat lovers at the animal shelter. I went to work on Saturday and found out that my favorite cat, Ratchet, had been euthanized because he got sick and the treatment room was full, as it always is. I guess I didn't think to put my name on his profile to keep him safe because we haven't been fostering since we adopted Zsasz and it's horribly inconvenient.

Which, I suspect, is how we got in our current situation.

On Thursday, when the vets came around I was cleaning Thumbelina's cage. She'd been there almost a month, which was weird because she's a beautiful, sweet Maine Coon mix, almost 6 months old. I asked the vets why she hadn't been spayed as a Highly Adoptable animal, and they said that they aren't doing HA kittens anymore because they get sick so easily after surgery. I started talking to Thumbelina and told her that maybe I would talk to my husband and she could come stay with us and play with our kitty while she waits to be spayed.

As luck would have it, she got sick Friday. So it's good that I didn't take her because she probably would have gotten Zsasz sick. Bad news is, I got a text from the foster coordinator because the vet tech remembered me talking about/to Thumbelina. So this is what's in our bedroom now:

The photo really doesn't do her justice, but she's also not feeling well. Zsasz has been kicked out of the bedroom and she spends most of her time in that crate. First night we had her, she was like this all the time:

(video)

I must have woken up a dozen times that night. Each sniff and snortle would have me suddenly awake, heart racing. I even tried sleeping on the futon, but Zsasz was being an ass.

Since the first night, she's gotten significantly better and I think she gets more sleep. This morning I woke up to the most amazing sound: cat food being crunched. Since we got her, the only food she would eat was force fed to her. Her eating on her own is amazing. So happy about that.

It may be due in part to my husband clearing out her nose, which was an ordeal. Some of the spray ran down into her mouth and had her foaming for a good few minutes. Poor girl.

A family visited with her before she got sick and decided to put a deposit on her Friday. Her meds will be done on Sunday, so she can be checked out on Monday. If she passes, I expect she'll be put on Wednesday's surgery list. That would give her and Zsasz a couple days to play together before he loses his foster sister so soon.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Bad kitties

My job is mildly hazardous. I work with caustic chemicals and sometimes psychotic animals on a daily basis. I'm a very cautious person, though, so I tend to have less incidences than my coworkers.

Yesterday, though, was particularly nasty. Bad nasty, not feces nasty. Though, there was that, too.

Cats give me more trouble than dogs. They're less predictable and have easier access to you through the kennels. A dog can't bite you through its cage, while a cat can easily grab your shirt or anything within a foot of the bars.

My first encounter with a bad cat yesterday was Sassy Susie.

She did the fresh, short scratch. I let it go, assuming that it was a play grab and not an aggressive attack. It happens a lot, especially with younger cats and kittens. I was cleaning a different cage, so I wasn't looking at her. When I was cleaning the kennel below her, though, she attacked my head through the bars, and as I stood up she had that crazy cat face: ears back, mouth open and hissing. She was pulled from the public room. She had given other staff members problems before, and this was her final strike.

the faded crossing line is from where my arm rests on the laptop
Later on, in the same room, there was a kitten who played very rough. He was nice, but his easy play was worse than Zsasz's rough play, which is pretty bad. I was worried about him scratching a customer, so I was in the process of taking him to get his nails cut. As soon as the door opened, though, he spazzed out and scratched me. It bled for a good while. Hopefully he'll be taken by a rescue because he's too much for the adoption floor.

Zsasz, however, is the source of most of my scratches. For example:
The red line is one from a few days ago. My arms and legs are covered in small scratches.

The white arrow is pointing to a scar, my first one I got at work. That was Horvath, who I wrote about in May. In that first photo above, you can see another old scar, from a kitten that I believe is back in the sick room. That was an accident; it was just really excited to get out of the kennel. Like, leapt-from-the-cage-right-at-my-face excited.

I've been stealthily cutting Zsasz's nails while he's sleeping in my lap. If he scratches me, I try to make a mental note of which paw to target when he zonks out. It's not perfect, but it works. He won't sit still long enough to get all of his nails done at once.

We also had an ear infection scare with him, but it turns out he just has dirty ears. We (I) have to clean them about once a week. As if I don't have enough ears to clean.