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Apr. 3rd, 2009 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
javacatLast June or July, I spotted a small black and white cat sticking its head out from under a parked car in residential Chinatown. I made it my goal to help the feline family living under the car and in the driveway/empty lot. On Tuesday, I finally trapped the matriarch. She's probably the cat that caught my eye. She came home with me last night after surgery and treatment. She has to be treated as feral by vets because, well, she is/we don't know how she'll react to anything. Getting her home was fraught; because of my history of hand surgery & 5-day hospitalization from a cat bite, I tend to get freaked out, even as I carry on.
I had a chance to talk to the vet personally late yesterday afternoon and all is not as dire as I had heard on Wed. night (re an abnormally high liver enzyme count). She had endrometitis, and as I suspected, if she hadn't been caught, it would have killed her.
Her liver enzyme count was ~400 where normal is 0-100. The vet emphasized that her liver is dysfunctional, not destroyed, and that with good food and tender loving care, she may well pull out of it. He said if she starts eating Friskies wet food, and keeps it up, it will go a long way to helping end the chronic malnourishment from too many kittens, too many parasites, and a harsh environment. (The liver gets clogged up with fatty cells from her body breaking down, but if she has good food and is getting adequate nourishment, the fats will come from the food, not her body... or something like that. Her body is saved, not sure if the liver count can be reversed or not. )
She also had a broken, abscessed canine tooth, which was removed, and the rest of her teeth cleaned as best as they could. She's still filthy - a bath was nixed when they saw how bad off she was, because they didn't want to lower her body temperature any more than they had too, but she'll get cleaned up when she feels better.
She's resting comfortably in a small dog carrier on top of a copy paper box containing my sister's Ginny doll wardrobe on top of counter chair, all of which are literally lashed together and open-door-to-open-door to a plastic-bottomed rabbit hutch that I'd been using for the kittens. She has a bedroom wing!
She had 1.5 cans of food for breakfast along, and when I overcame my fear of a cat bite and put my ungloved hand in there, she pushed her head into my hand for an ear rub and purred and purred. NOT EVEN A HINT OF DEFENSIVE BEHAVIOR. She couldn't have been any sweeter, which is just the way she was in the empty lot. YAY!!
I wonder how long it will take her and Lily to remember each other? She is the last of this little family. Next: catch/neuter/release the true ferals in Mrs. Zhang's back yard.
I had a chance to talk to the vet personally late yesterday afternoon and all is not as dire as I had heard on Wed. night (re an abnormally high liver enzyme count). She had endrometitis, and as I suspected, if she hadn't been caught, it would have killed her.
Her liver enzyme count was ~400 where normal is 0-100. The vet emphasized that her liver is dysfunctional, not destroyed, and that with good food and tender loving care, she may well pull out of it. He said if she starts eating Friskies wet food, and keeps it up, it will go a long way to helping end the chronic malnourishment from too many kittens, too many parasites, and a harsh environment. (The liver gets clogged up with fatty cells from her body breaking down, but if she has good food and is getting adequate nourishment, the fats will come from the food, not her body... or something like that. Her body is saved, not sure if the liver count can be reversed or not. )
She also had a broken, abscessed canine tooth, which was removed, and the rest of her teeth cleaned as best as they could. She's still filthy - a bath was nixed when they saw how bad off she was, because they didn't want to lower her body temperature any more than they had too, but she'll get cleaned up when she feels better.
She's resting comfortably in a small dog carrier on top of a copy paper box containing my sister's Ginny doll wardrobe on top of counter chair, all of which are literally lashed together and open-door-to-open-door to a plastic-bottomed rabbit hutch that I'd been using for the kittens. She has a bedroom wing!
She had 1.5 cans of food for breakfast along, and when I overcame my fear of a cat bite and put my ungloved hand in there, she pushed her head into my hand for an ear rub and purred and purred. NOT EVEN A HINT OF DEFENSIVE BEHAVIOR. She couldn't have been any sweeter, which is just the way she was in the empty lot. YAY!!
I wonder how long it will take her and Lily to remember each other? She is the last of this little family. Next: catch/neuter/release the true ferals in Mrs. Zhang's back yard.