Ed Stoffel

Missy & Cleo are starting to get used to each other, but most of the time, they’re fighting… or is it playing? It’s hard to tell. I caught them in a moment, both sleeping next to each other. But when I took this picture, the flash woke them both, and they were at it again. Cleo (black Manx kitten on left) reminds me of those hooded Star Wars creatures with light-up eyes.

After spending a fair amount of money trying to save him, we had to have my favorite cat put to sleep this week. I knew something was wrong when he stayed by my side all day, every day for a week. He lost a lot of weight, didn’t seem to be eating, and wouldn’t keep anything down that I fed him. We tried a round of antibiotics, but whether liquid or pill, he wouldn’t keep it down. X-rays showed his liver had shrunk to less than half its normal size, indicating end-stage liver disease. I didn’t want to loose him, but was watching him die, so on Wednesday, we took him to the vet for the last time.

I keep looking for him at his favorite place on the steps, just out of habit. We have two cats left — Missy, our 12 year old cat, and Cleo, the new Manx kitten.

We received a sympathy card “for the loss of your cat” today… they make cards for everything.

We gave away one of the kittens to a friend who plans to surprise her family. The girls got that kitten shampooed and ready to go Monday. Meanwhile, Scruffy (the sick kitten) seemed to be doing much better, becoming more active and eating on his own. He would play with Cleo (the remaining female). But Darcy woke up Thursday to find he had died overnight. I confirmed he was dead, and buried him in a special place in the yard.

Charlene and Darcy took Cleo to the veterinarian to get checked out. The vet believes that Scruffy probably died of distemper or a bowel obstruction, a common plight of Manx kitties. Meanwhile, Cleo was cleared of feline leukemia and FIV, but it will take a few more weeks to rule out feline distemper (panleukopenia). She seems to exhibit the symptoms of worms, and will be tested for that as soon as we bring in a sample to the office. If worm eggs are found, she’ll start a treatment for that. As soon as she’s old enough, she’ll also receive her first series of inoculations. Otherwise, the doctor says Cleo seems to be in good shape. In this picture, she’s found a friend… in the mirror.

Three of the four kitties are at our house this weekend. (The one with a tail runs away, so we haven’t caught him yet.) The sick one (left) seems to be recovering. His left eye was completely crusted over, but after working on it for awhile, it was cleaned up, and he was able to open it. He seems to have responded well to the antibiotic, and is gaining strength. He was allergic to the kitten formula, so we’ve switched him to a soy-based, lactose-free product, and he’s drinking that. This morning, he was even starting to eat dry food.

The other kittens are doing well, and we’ve found a home for one of them (middle), and now plan to keep one (right). I had one in my room for a few hours and lost it. I tore apart the room looking for it, and couldn’t find it. In the middle of the night, Darcy heard meowing in the hall bathroom, and that gave me an idea where it might be. In the closet, I had done some electrical work, cutting a small access hatch to run the wires. It turns out I forgot to close up the hole in the wall, and the kitten climbed through it, and was under the hall bathroom’s tub. When I shined my flashlight into the wall, the kitty meowed and jumped right out.

The girls are at home, tickled that one of the stray cats in the neighborhood has given birth to kittens. Among the four kittens, two have gunk in their eyes. I worked with them trying to clear their eyes with saline and Q-tips. One kitten’s eyes are now clear, but the other is crusted over. A worker at our county’s animal shelter says we should continue working on it, using cotton balls and saline or hydrogen peroxide. That kitten is also sick, sneezing, sleeping most of the time, and not eating. So the girls brought it home.

I’m concerned because the kitten probably has a virus which we don’t want our two housecats to get. So that kitten is quarantined. I determined a course of antibiotic treatment, based on 50-100 mg/kg/qid, divided into 3 or 4 doses per day, which work out to 5-10 mg… awful small piles of crushed powder to put into formula and squirt down a kitten’s throat.

The mother is all black without a tail; three of the four kittens have no tail, and one has a tail. So now we know mama didn’t loose her tail in a cat fight.