Baby showed up at our house one morning late in June, 2009.  She was all head and ribs and she was also obviously ill.   Hubby-Honey (H-H) and I talked about whether or not we should just take her to the Humane Society, but we both felt that in her physical condition taking her there would be a sure death sentence. 

We both think we are chosen to take care of these little friends.  They come into our lives for a reason.  She was sent to us and we intend to ensure she has a good life with sufficient food and good medical care. 

It was obvious she had been living rough for quite some time, but she was incredibly friendly.  Hubby-Honey sat outside with her several evenings petting her and just talking to her.  Now she follows him around just like a dog.  It’s wonderful to watch her sitting on the boat while he’s cleaning it.  He talks to her constantly and she looks like she understands.  When H-H comes home from work and Baby is on the bed with me, she walks back and forth rubbing up against his waist. 

 She looks at him the same way a teenage girl looks at any of the Jonas Brothers and she can’t get enough of his scratches and loves.  (I know the feeling – LOL.)

When H-H told our son about Baby, he told H-H he and his wife had gotten their last two cats at the Salem (Oregon) Friends of Felines (SFOF).  SFOF guarantees they do not euthanize the cats in their care.  They keep some animals at the store/vet area but they are always looking for foster families to give temporary homes while they are looking for permanent homes.

I went to visit this amazing place.  They have a very nice gift shop and several cats of all ages in various sized cages and they all look very well cared for.  I was incredibly impressed with the cleanliness of the place and the amazing friendliness of all the caretakers.  They gave me a coupon I could take to a participating vet giving me $25 off spaying or neutering.   The gal also told me about a vet close to where we live who would give us a discount to give Baby a checkup.  In fact, when I called the clinic, the receptionist told me they would waive the office fees. 

As it happened, Baby had a temperature of 103 and she was suffering from a very nasty gum infection. The emergency vet tested her to ensure she didn’t have feline leukemia or feline HIV.  Most fortunately, she had neither so the vet proceeded to give her a shot of prednisone and some antibiotics to take home.   Although the vet waived her fee, we still had to pay over $100 for tests and medications.

I couldn’t believe how much food she needed.  She ate every three hours around the clock.  At first, I got up twice during the night to ensure she had food.  I think at that point, her starvation was over-riding her very painful gums.  A week later, I took her to our vet and he said she had gingivitis.  She needed to have her gums scraped, her shots and spaying (or so we thought). 

By the time she had the oral work, she was not running a temperature and she had gained quite a bit of weight.   She’ll always be one of those tall skinny cats but at least her ribs had stopped showing.  Along with the oral work, the vet also cut her front nails (lethal weapons) and gave her a preliminary immunization shot but she didn’t need to be spayed because someone else already done that.  (I’m very curious about her past but I’m sure I’d be very angry if I ever knew how she’d been abused.  You can see by the pictures she’s pretty small but the vet thinks she’s about seven years old.  I think she must have had a very difficult life indeed.  The first few times we put her into the cat carrier, she literally went nuts.  She was biting at it and literally attacking it the whole time she was in it.  I kept wondering if she hadn’t been locked into something similar for long periods.  Thanks goodness, she has settled down.  She’ll never really like it but she doesn’t go crazy now which makes trips to the vet more easily accomplished.)

Unfortunately for her, I was very naive about the nature of her gingivitis.  I thought once she had the operation, she would be fine.  When she came home, she seemed to prefer the hard food I bought which was suppose to be specifically for keeping her teeth clean.  She seemed to be doing fine ten days later, she was vomiting and not eating very well.  She was also starting to lose weight which she could hardly afford.

The vet looked at her gums and they were really bleeding quite bit.  He gave her the booster immunization shot so couldn’t give her the prednisone shot but he did give her another course of antibiotics.  Ten days later, her gums looked much, much better but she still had one place that was still showing a little bleeding so the doctor gave her yet another prednisone shot and some more antibiotics.  After another ten days on medication, her gums were clean and the vet and I were high fiving each other.

Three days later, she stopped eating.  I tried everything I could think of.  My husband thought I’d lost my mind because I had gotten one of everything and tried them all out.  She turned down all cat foods and even tuna.  Our vet was out of the office but one of his partners was able to see us.  She was flummoxed.  She said the gums looked a little sore but she really didn’t understand why Baby had stopped eating and had started vomiting again.  She decided to give her another shot and more medication.  She also thought that we should have more in-depth blood work done to determine why Baby was continually having gum problems. 

Currently, she is still on the medication.  I have another appointment with the vet next Friday, September 25th.  In a conversation with him, he said he didn’t think we needed to do more blood work but he did think she had some form of bacterial infection and we would need to do a “biopsy” of a scraping from Baby’s gums to better determine which medication she would need for the specific type of bacteria she’s having problems with.  I wish we had thought about it at the time we were getting her gums cleaned.  Our vet is wonderful about keeping costs low but his costs are rising too.  Anesthesia is expensive and I’m thinking Baby will have to be asleep when they do the biopsy.

She’s still sucking down an incredible amount of food.  Right now, she prefers the Fancy Feast Yellowfin Tuna in Delicate Sauces. I thought she was eating so much because she had worms but we’ve had her wormed too and she’s still really hungry all the time.  While she isn’t eating every three hours, she still eats very frequently.  I usually wake up between midnight and 1:00 a.m. so I feed her then and she’s always waiting for me at the door more ready to eat.  

We’ll keep you posted.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 20th, 2009 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Baby, She Found Us. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.