Lots has happened here in Foster Land. First, a few days after the Fairy Sisters, Ryan and I welcomed Dexter the Deployment Cat.
Dexter's mom is in the Air Force and her plans for her big boy during a deployment fell through at the last minute (less than 2 days before her scheduled leave date!). Ryan volunteered and Dexter joined us for a while here.
Last weekend, I had the opportunity to go and volunteer at one of the free spay and neuter clinics that is offered by OPP for Reservation residents. It was a LONG few days (12 hours each!). The vet that volunteers her time is amazing, and her family joins her to help with all other aspects. We had a small team working intakes, surgery recovery, discharge, and wellness. I learned how to vaccinate and de-worm cats and dogs, and we offered lots and lots of Frontline treatments. Total counts for the two days: 64 spay and neuters (seriously, vet is a rock star), 55 wellness treatments, and 12 intakes for adoption. I've always heard rumors about how when you volunteer at these clinics, you should really bring a kennel. I laughed along with the others when one of the volunteers was sent home with four dogs the first day (they went to foster care shortly thereafter!). What I wasn't prepared for was this:
Our director was standing outside helping load some animals, and someone drove up. They handed her this kitten, said "We found this in a ditch", and drove away. The day before, we had a really sad case of a little kitty that I helped care for that ended up not making it. This baby was handed to me, someone said to find some milk for it, and there I was, a kitten surrogate.
(Ryan doesn't always read this blog, right?)... there was an opportunity to send the kitten to someone else. One of the volunteers was leaving to return home to Colorado and had offered transport, but she already had a handful of puppies (read: HUGE PUPPIES) in her car, as well as a very, very sick puppy. Kitten was sort of stable (she was breathing), and before I knew it, I heard myself saying "I've got this one. You can go ahead home."
And so began, the bottle kitten experience. I was given all kinds of milk and syringes and warm things for her, and the director and I basically said "We'll see if she survives these next few weeks and then we'll reassess what to do with her." With this baby, we were up to 7 cats and Pepper the Corgi at our house. Oops. Crazy cat lady status? Check.
Pepper loves cats, so she was excited.
We estimated that the kitten was about 2-3 weeks old. She weighed less than a half pound. And I had no idea what I was doing. I started reading everything I could, but, like the ringworm, there wasn't a whole lot of information that was informal or that reallllly helped. The first few days I was scared I was doing everything wrong!!
We followed the directions on the milk replacement, picked up a bottle, and kept the baby clean and warm as much as possible. I used warm water and soft clothes and helped her go to the bathroom before each feeding. We weighed her a few times each day to make sure she was gaining.
My boss was very supportive. I took her to work with me and fed her at all my breaks. My coworkers were/are in love, and noticed how much she yelled when she was hungry. Someone said "Feed me Seymour!!!!!", and I realized that Audrey, like the plant in Little Shop of Horrors, would make a GREAT name for her.
So everyone, a week later, meet Audrey.
Full disclosure, this was after I gave her a good wash-down and she spent some time under the heat lamp, so she's very fluffy looking. She's gained 75 grams since Monday, and has started to play. Her eyes, which were crusted over when we got her, look better and better each day. Here's some more pictures of our lives since Audrey entered them.
In other news, Merriweather was adopted yesterday!! Her sisters were on the news yesterday as Pets of the Week, so we are hoping someone is moved to want a kitten or two in their lives. I'll try to get more pictures of them for the Facebook page (and for up here). We'll keep on feeding and cleaning Audrey, hopefully helping her learn how to "cat" as time goes on.
So I'm off to start a warm dinner and to button down the hatches for the storm. Cheers!
No comments:
Post a Comment