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(Our pets have been to the vet!) |
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What Ever Did Happen to that Cat you
Abandoned? The difference between a feral cat (a cat born in the wild and untouched by man) and that of an abandoned cat can readily be spotted. The feral, if seen at all, is the one lurking under the shrub, ears lying like aeroplane wings, the one, although starving, who won't eat until you are out of sight. The cast off, the abandoned cat, although shy and initially untrusting because of the heartless act of being abandoned, is the one that will sit out in the open waiting for hand outs. The feral cat definitely does not come declawed. The feral has a lot going for it – fear and wildness - whereas the abandoned one is extraordinarily vulnerable allowing just about anybody with food to approach it. Below are a few tales about some of our obviously abandoned rescues. Five year old Dad never stopped sleeping on the porch of the house that must have been his home at one time, even when the new owner expressed his intense dislike of cats. As time went along his sons would join him on this porch. He was top tom and the beloved of the kitten set. And yet, with all that feline adoration, he was still waiting for you to come back. Fortunately
this house was not too far from an established, maintained colony in In the end Dad went blind. When he became disoriented Veronika would call to him and he, having an uncanny awareness of everything's position, would come at a run and jump onto the couch next to her. Veronika had Dad for 5 and a half years. He died April 2006. Veronika's only regret was not having caught his son before he died. He did love his children. God Bless You Dad – Veronika Elizabeth
Birchall discovered that her friend Deborah had
been feeding this part Persian bedraggled skinny cat throughout a
winter. They called the cat Rocky One day it was noticed that the tip of her
ears had started to crust. Eventually
the upper part of her ears fell off leaving only the small ridge just before
her ear canal. It was also discovered
that she was declawed. This is Rocky and I arranged to pick Rocky up from Deborah’s and bring her to her new home. She was very frightened when she finally emerged from the cat basket and it took her a few days before she would allow me to pet her. She was still full of mats that I could not remove and she smelled bad. I thought that the smell might have been coming from her skin under the matting so I took the poor little girl to the vet to have the mats removed. The matting was so bad that they had to shave all of her fur except for her head, feet and tail. She looked very odd; an earless, furless, skinny, angry black cat. I could tell she felt better but embarrassed to be so naked. Unfortunately Rocky continued to smell. She also began to eat only small amounts of food and as I watched her eat I noticed that she seemed to have trouble swallowing. The dear skinny cat allowed me to look into her mouth but I could see not obstruction. I took her back to the vet who used a special light to look into her mouth and throat. He noticed that she had something lodged in the roof of her mouth near the back of her throat. She underwent surgery the next day. When I returned to pick her up the vet presented me with a piece of rotting chicken bone the size of a quarter that had sliced its way into Rocky’s upper palate. We assumed that she had been eating food from garbage bins and had come across someone’s discarded chicken dinner. It was during this time that the vet informed me that Rocky’s blood work had come back positive for FIV. We assumed she contracted this from her months of living outdoors. So after all her ordeals; loosing her first family, suffering the pain of frost bite and losing the outer portion of her ears, having a chicken bone pierce the back of her throat and begin to rot, contracting FIV, being covered with painful mats and then being shaved naked – she became what she had once been, a beautiful, soft, fluffy, loving cat with whom I am proud to have shared my life. Rocky lived with us for over 6 happy years…….Elizabeth Birchall The There was Ma, an eight month old very lovely black and
white female cat. The owner of the
business said she had been there for a
few weeks now. It was quite sad since
she looked like she had been well cared for by someone once……I trapped her but
had to put her back because she was nursing the first two of the twelve
kittens she eventually gave birth to.
I lived to regret that decision. Ma was just too clever for her own good. l think she could read your mind and she
knew what you were up too whenever we tried to trap her. Ma plowed through the snow in the winter and withstood all
the elements of the weather. I was sad to see her in the snow each year and l
really wanted to get her in from the cold.
Ma suffers from arthritis now and will live with it for the rest of
her life. People in the factory were feeding her as well. I discovered
a factory worker giving Ma chicken on the bone. I asked her not to do this because the bones could break her teeth. The
bones did eventually break her teeth and she was in considerable pain. Time passed.
Between the 12 kittens and the pain of her teeth, it was an easily reached decision that Ma made to "come
in". She sat on the driveway and wrapped her tail around her body one
day and looked closely at us. We knew
it was time. Into the trap she went
and off to the vet for the spay. I was on the floor at her level one day and l noticed as
she hissed at me that her teeth where in bad shape. I took her to the vet and
got Ma's teeth fixed. Ma appreciated
this. She is now 10 years old and is
in good health. There is only on rule to Ma - you can talk to her and she
will acknowledge you but hands off. This is fine with me as l have other cats who want petting and Ma and I to this
day respect each other…….Veronika Hering In
May of 2004, one of the Animal Welfare groups of Whatever
they ate to survive haunts AVA to this day.
So many of them have died succumbing to intestinal cancer and exotic
gastro-intestinal ailments and so many are being barely maintained on
prednisone to combat inflammatory bowel problems, their fosters dealing with
diarrhea on an hourly basis. So many
of them ended up with FIV and therefore had to have major dental work
done. The FIV cats are in limbo –
wonderful cats - but not allowed in the adoption centres. Tending
to one of her colonies an AVA member encountered a The
"First of the Month" effect struck another AVA colony in April 2008. One of the three abandoned cats was so
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frightened that he ended up perched for days on end, atop the roof of a
government building, inaccessible to the colony caretakers because of the
feline intolerant staff within.
You
forgot me.