I just brought our 4 month old foster kitten, Spitfire, back to the shelter for spay surgery and to go to the adoption floor. We had her for a couple weeks for socialization and while she recovered from an upper respiratory infection. Spitfire came from an overcrowded living situation and while she was used to having her owner around the house, she wasn't handled at all. She was a spitting, hissing ball of fluff. She's the fluffiest kitten we'd ever had and looked over twice her 4 pounds. Under all the fur, she was very skinny. She gained a whole pound while she was with us and is no longer underweight. She's also probably the most beautiful kitten we've had with her white bib and paws, brown tabby stripes on her legs and tail and tortie coloring elsewhere. She's officially a torbie in our computer system but I prefer tortie-tabby. She should be appearing on the AHS website later this afternoon and she can go home tomorrow.


I knew we'd be fine because while she hissed and growled, she never did anything else, so you could pick her up. The first few days, she mostly hid in her box with her ears flattened. She came out occasionally to rub against Alan's legs and would alternate hissing, growling and purring. I knew we'd be fine when I saw that and heard the squeaking of the bungee mouse hanging on the door of her room in the middle of the night. Alan wanted to call her "Sink" because she spent a lot of the first week hiding in there. We had to move our toothbrushes into the kitchen. This last week, she's been pretty much a normal kitten, chatty like many torties, and even trying to escape out of the room to see our dogs. Despite occasional hissing when she's caught by surprise, she's the most gentle and good natured kitten we've ever had. I never once had to deal with her playing with claws or teeth. Growing up with a big group of cats must have really trained her well!

I'll be working the Walk for Animals this year but am raising money with the Woodbury staff team. Please consider making a donation! http://events.animalhumanesociety.org/site/TR/Walk/General?px=1007393&pg=personal&fr_id=1150

I brought two of the four kittens back to the shelter today for spay and neuter surgeries and to the adoption floor. We've had this group for a few weeks and have been through round and now lung worms with them. These two were the healthier and better body conditioned of the two.
The bigger female black one, Kerrigan, hit surgery weight last week by a hair and we decided to keep her until the grey one, Mulligan, caught up. They are now 1.78 pounds and 1.53 pounds. 1.5 pounds and good body condition are the minimum requirements for surgery. They will be available to be put on hold this afternoon (we close at 6:00 pm) and will be available to go home on Tuesday after the MLK holiday.


We had a great day today with the little, skinny male, Morgan, finally getting completely over his diarrhea and starting to put on body mass. The other one, Callaghan, is filling out nicely. I'm guessing I'll still have a couple weeks at least with them as they finish the de-worming treatment and their little bodies finish recovering. (Sorry about the photo--I'm not doing this from home and I can't seem to get the photo to display the other way.)

I'll have a post about the new book shortly but in the meantime, here are foster kitten pics!

We've had this group about 2 weeks now. The solid grey and black kittens are doing pretty good and should be at spay and neuter surgery weight by next week. The two grey tabbies aren't doing so hot and will take a little longer. They've gotten the normal de-wormers and some extra panacur. Partway through we found roundworms. They got their second round of de-wormer and we hoped that was that.



The little ones still weren't gaining weight so we retested and today we found... lungworms! I hoping another, longer round of panacur (de-wormer) will take care of them, so we can get them onto the adoption floor and into their new homes.

So, Ben just went back to the shelter today for neuter surgery and the adoption floor. Last night, he left me with some pictures I had to share. I'll post them in sequence, so you can see the developing fun.

I came into the bathroom last night and this is what I found. Someone discovered the toilet paper roll and holder!


What's this?
























Now, like many of my kitten predecessors, I will help you remove the icky mauve plastic wall tile, too!

FOSTER KITTEN (AND CAT) UPDATES:

Foster kitten Smoke, who was still sitting at the shelter alone after his sister was adopted, was put on hold yesterday and taken home today. I got to say good-bye to him and meet his adopter.

Yahya went back to the shelter on Tuesday for neuter surgery after getting the go ahead from our vet. While I wouldn't say he is nice and plump, he is a slim but healthy weight. It was amazing to watch how quickly his wounds healed up. We were thinking the largest one would need stitches once the infection cleared but it closed up nicely on its own. It was about the size of a quarter when I brought him home and within two days it was dime sized and when I returned him it was a dot. Today, it's completely healed and his fur is already growing back. He has white, light orange and dark orange fur all in that area and it looks really cool growing back. There are still 3 small scars where the bot flies were removed which are bigger than anything left by the large wound. When I left today, he was curled up on his fleece blanket with his green hippo stuffed toy.

I brought Ben (in the photos!) home that same night I returned Yahya. He lagged behind his siblings in his prior foster home and they had to return him before going on vacation. He was steadily gaining weight in the shelter again so I have him for a while for weight gain. He's a tiny little thing compared to our last few but very loud.

The oldest of our classic editions, as Alan calls them, Tora the 14 year old brown and white tabby is really sick. We have him separated from everyone else in our bedroom, mainly to give him space from the crazy dogs. He kept up us the first couple nights because his breathing was so awful. His lungs are full of fluid. He sounds better after a few days of meds which brought his temperature down. The emergency clinic diagnosed an upper respiratory infection but it's much worse and without the nasal and eye symptoms we usually see with URI. We're not totally sure what is happening but he does have some kind of respiratory infection as well as a UTI and asthma. The x-rays showed a lot of fluid around his lungs and possibly his heart. I'm worried about how congested his lungs still sound but he's eating well and trying to escape the room, so he must be feeling better. It's crazy how quickly cats can go downhill. One day he's getting a little matted, which was new and worrisome, and the next he's agonal breathing. It must be their small body size. We will probably be going back in sometime this week if he continues to sound so horrible. He is a house cat but did manage to sneak out an accidentally left open door and was out for a few hours earlier in the week. He's looking a little scraggly in this photo and I think this is the first time ever that he's actually looked like an elderly cat. He's starting to get old cat skinny hips. After kidney stones 5 years ago and a small cancerous tumor removed 4 years ago, he's had a pretty awesome run of health. The cancer was most likely injection site located cancer which has a very high recurrence. We've been very lucky up until now.


Needless to say we are being very careful to practice good hygiene to protect both the kitten and the sick cat from each other. We always keep the fosters in a separate room that is well-cleaned between uses. So far, neither of the other two classics are showing any signs of illness.

Yesterday, I brought two kittens back to the shelter for spay and neuter surgery, a full week after their sister, the little fatty, Rosie, was adopted. Ember and Smoke http://tiny.cc/zt96c, as of close time tonight, were both still available and showing up on the website. Ember has some of the most beautiful tortie coloring I've ever seen. Smoke is a huge cuddler and is also very pretty with black fur sprinkled with wisps of white. I kept them a little longer than I had planned because our surgery list was very long and crammed with other kittens earlier this week and I found out they both had roundworms.

WARNING: THE NEXT PART OF THIS POST IS VERY GROSS BUT ENDS WELL.

I had hoped to get them back on Saturday so I could take Yahya home sooner. Yahya, a male orange and white tabby kitten came into the shelter a mess. Staff pulled 3 bot flies (cuterebra) out of his neck. (Don't google cuterebra if you are squeamish--they are the closest thing to Aliens I've ever seen!) He also had a large, wide open wound on his neck that was surrounded by necrotic tissue and infested in maggots. It may have been a bot fly hole that got torn and/or infected. He was skinny and scraggly and the most pathetic kitten I've ever seen. The bots were some of the largest we've ever pulled out of an animal and were probably making it difficult for him to swallow. I washed the wounds--Yahya was amazingly well behaved in what was basically a very intrusive and long bath with lots of probing of sore places--and the vet gave him something for parasites and prescribed an antibiotic. I learned that I'm really not that bothered by the creepy crawlies in the wounds especially since I told myself the maggots only attack dead tissue. (I found out later that that wasn't necessarily true but they did seem to be only around the dead tissue in this case.) Over the next week, the bot fly wounds healed quickly--it's amazing how quickly they heal--and Yahya had to put up with the vet debriding the large wound and daily cleaning.
By this past weekend, we were able to stop debriding. The scab is only about the size of a nickel now and it's surrounded by pretty new pink skin. He's still sloughing some of the dead skin but is looking like a kitten and not a walking wound now. During all of this, he was a trooper but he got a little scared of people since the treatment was probably painful. He's home with us now to gain some weight and learn to trust again. The vet thinks he only will need about a week before he can return for neuter surgery. We're hoping his testicles will deign to drop by then as he's now cryptorchid. (We originally thought he was a she because of that and who really wanted to subject him to more probing after everything he'd been through that first day?)

FOSTER PARENTS NEEDED!
Three out of the five in the litter of foster kittens reached spay and neuter surgery weight on Monday and went through surgery on Tuesday. Here's a picture of Meg that we didn't use for the shelter website for obvious reasons. I chose to use names of characters from Dickens's novels, probably because I recently finished reading Dan Simmons's book Drood which has Dickens as a character. I realized that Dickens has awesome male character names but the female names and characters leave something to be desired. The litter was named Pip, Nicholas, Oliver, Bella and Meg. Bella and Nicholas are awaiting another foster home to get up to surgery weight while I have a new litter of 5 much more at risk foster kittens at home. The litter I have was with their mom waiting for foster for over a week and while waiting the mom got sick with upper respiratory infection. The kittens were at a healthy weight and were eating on their own so we separated them and so far they are doing fine. Mom can focus on getting better herself now. In the meantime, I will worry about Bella and Nicholas until they are out into a new foster home.

So, this brings me to the purpose of this post. Pretty much every shelter in the country is inundated with kittens and cats at this time of year. Foster parents are crucial to keeping these animals healthy until they are able to be adopted. Foster families are also needed for animals recovering from illness or injuries and other special circumstances like pregnancy watches in guinea pigs. Many rescues use foster families instead of having shelter space. I haven't ever heard of any shelter saying they have enough foster volunteers. Foster volunteering is one of the most flexible of volunteer positions at AHS. You choose who you want to foster including what type of animal and what situations and when you want to do it and how long. To stay active you only have to foster a few times a year. You do have to apply and go through a training, but all of that is set up to be very convenient. It is one of the most emotionally satisfying volunteer experiences I've ever had, it's great fun, and you can cuddle kittens all you want. As someone who loves her three cats but doesn't have a single lap cat amongt them, I can tell you that cuddling kittens is one of the great stress relievers of this world. Fostering can be tough at times but if you look back at my experiences, you have to remember that in the past I was taking kittens that I wasn't comfortable sending out with regular foster families. All of the kittens we send out for foster here are healthy body weights and if they don't have mom with them are doing fine on their own. Fostering a litter with a mom is a nice break as mom does most of the work for you. All you need is patience, an open heart and a room you can clean and where you keep them separate from your resident pets. If you live in the Twin Cities are and would like to explore becoming a foster volunteer, please visit the Animal Humane Society website at http://www.animalhumanesociety.org/help/volunteer/gettingstarted. Make sure you note that you are looking to be a foster volunteer as that process is a little different from our regular on-site volunteer opportunities. If you live in another area, you can find local rescues and shelters at Petfinder. There are shelters to match any animal lover's philosophy, so if the first one you find isn't a good match, you should be able to find one that's better.

Why it took me four nights to finish the last 20 pages of Ben Parzybok's Couch! (What you aren't seeing is one of the grey kittens attacking the hand holding the book every time I started to read.)

Now I'm trying to read Holly Black's The Poison Eaters and finding the kittens are fascinated by the shiny cover.

Here are photos of a new litter of five foster kittens that I brought home for socialization and a little weight gain. We have one buff tabby, one orange tabby, a solid grey spitfire and two other grey ones with white paws and bellies. They were hissing and spitting on Thursday night when I brought them home. I'm keeping them in a large dog kennel to get them used to being handled and being around people.

A couple of the kittens launched themselves at the closed door of the kennel when they spotted the dogs, spitting and hissing. It scared the dogs so much I had to walk them past the kennel to get them out of the room again. I wore leather gardening gloves at first but during the first day was already able to stop using them.

Most of the kittens are already purring up a storm when they are held. All of them startle easily and sometimes still hiss when surprised.

The solid grey kitten is the hold out and still hisses when you reach in to pick him up. Alan spent some extra time with him today. When given the choice of moving off our laps, though, he prefers to stay put rather than moving back into his safe kennel space and he does seem to enjoy being petted.

I'm sitting with the littlest of the foster kittens on my lap with Kachina the dog tucked up next to us. Kachina is fascinated by the foster kittens and is steadily staring at her. The little one has her paw curled over her eyes and has rolled over on her side so I can pet both her back and tummy. We're both worried about her, I think. (I would take a picture but I don't want to disturb either other of them.) We've lost little ones before and I admit I'm nervous. I was trying to fatten all of them up pre-surgery and thought they might be coming down with upper respiratory infections, so I gave them free access to canned food. This resulted in liquid diarrhea for everybody. I removed the canned and am supplementing the dry kitten food with some that is watered down, boiled and mushed. Everyone including the little one were eating the canned food. Now, this one has decided she'll be finicky and I'm not sure how much she's eating. Everyone else is still pigging out whenever I'm around. The diarrhea is much better but with five of them, it's hard to tell for everyone. She's easily half the size of the next smallest and isn't as active as the others. So, I worry and wonder if I'm being paranoid or not being worried enough. She hasn't lost any weight but she hasn't gained any, yet. She's the first kitten in a long time who sat on my lap nicely while I've been writing. I worry that that is a sign she's getting sick, although she did climb around a lot when Alan first brought her out. We lost the last kitten to "failure to thrive" which is a way of saying we don't know what happened. I really don't want to go through that again so soon. She's loooking at me now and made a litte complaining mew because I'm typing too much and not petting her! Maybe she's just being lazy and wants a warm lap and cuddles!

Now we have the obligatory foster kitten post...

Three kittens suddenly became five the next day as a couple more showed minor upper respiratory infection symptoms. An assortment of sizes and colors--all from the same home with three possible mothers and at least two, likely three, litters. We have three grey ones with an assortment of white paws in a couple cases and one with a stub of a tail (all different sizes), a siamese mix, and a larger sleek and slim tuxedo girl.

They all seem to be fine now so the symptoms may have been related to their living conditions or a vaccine reaction. We'll have them until Monday. Five really isn't any harder than three. Right?

New Foster Kitten (Not So Good Photos)

We have a new foster kitten. His name is currently up in the air. I wanted to name him Rumble because he's such a purr machine. Alan wanted to name him Chester (which makes me think of old men.) He has an upper respiratory infection and a very runny nose but is otherwise acting like a normal kitten. He wouldn't hold still for the photos I took tonight.
We'll try again tomorrow when the light is better and after we've had a big meal and he's sleepy.

Alan says he smells fresh like fabric softener (usually our fosters are a little stinky, especially if they are sick) and that he is pound for pound the cutest kitten we've foster. I'm not so sure about that (just look at the anime cute trio we had a few back) but people really do seem to like orange tabbies, so Alan's in good company.



He likes to knead when he's being petted and is obviously missing his brothers who are probably already adopted by today.

New Addition to the Household I'm sitting on the couch with the two dogs sleeping next me which is not the normal state of things the last two weeks. We had a pretty wild 1 year old Aussie Cattle Dog (Blue Heeler), Kachina, at work who had been sitting for quite a while despite her cuteness. At a year old, she had too much energy and no training and was a chore to handle despite a basically sweet nature. She was a pointy eared and nosed dog about the same size as our dog Gambit and their energy levels were close, so I remember thinking she might be a good match for him. Gambit's the type of dog who gets into trouble if he doesn't have enough mental stimulation and physical exercise. For instance, if I have work to do on the computer after a day at work and he hasn't gotten enough attention, he'll start pulling things off the tables and throwing them around or terrorize the cats or, if he goes out, will bark incessantly at squirrels and crows in the neighborhood. We were waiting for our new backyard fence to be installed and were talking about getting Gambit a companion. I never thought that Kachina would still be at the shelter but mentioned to Alan that if she was, we should take a look at her. We also had a tough litter of foster kittens that had been home with us for over a month. I didn't blog at all about them because we weren't sure they were going to make it. The litter of four had been eating canned food when I took them home but it quickly became obvious that they weren't getting enough nutrition and I started bottle feeding them milk replacer. Pretty quickly there became a size difference within the group and two stayed pretty small. Within a short while, we lost one of them. It followed a familiar pattern of the kitten doing fine up to a day before and then eating only a little and then none at all and then crashing suddenly. We tried another de-wormer, Fenbendazole (panacur), and they all seemed to be doing better. We had to leave them in the care of one of my co-workers (and wonderful pet sitter) for a few days for World Fantasy Convention and when we got back a third kitten declined. This was one of the bigger kittens and it was really hard--I hate how helpless it makes you feel. At this point, we hadn't named any of them. I think we knew from the very beginning that this would be a tough litter and naming them seemed too hard this time. We are at a very different place than we were a little over a year ago when we were just starting fostering and felt it was important to name all of them, even if they died before we could find the right name. I want to point out that most of the time fostering isn't this hard. I tend to take home the tough cases I don't feel comfortable sending with our regular foster parents. We lost that one, too, and were down to one little grey female and one slightly larger little black female kitten. They should have been up to 1.5-2 lbs but were hovering around 1 lb.

Finally, the panacur seemed to kick in and they started gaining weight. I was able to start mixing the milk replacer with boiled Royal Canin Babycat 34 and thicken the formula. The Royal Canin Babycat 34 is kind of a miracle food. Many kittens will skip right to it from nursing with their mother bypassing canned and other options. It makes weaning much easier in a lot of cases. It took forever for these two to start eating a thicker mixture out of the bowl. The little grey one started three days earlier than the black one. Once they could eat out of the bowl, things sped up and they didn't need the bottle any more after a few days. The key is to always have both the dry and the mixture available until they start eating it. The Royal Canin really packed on the pounds and pretty soon, Morgan and Merlyn were at surgery weight. We named them around the time I was laying out Cat Valente's Under in the Mere, hence the Arthurian inspired names! The two of them were bonded pretty closely but were also very independent and human focused. It was a nice balance where they could entertain themselves (mostly wrestling) and yet checked in often with us for attention and affection. I had the happy opportunity to see them go home together. I don't always think litter mates make the best adoption choice since they can be bonded more to each other than their human housemates, but in this case, I think they will be fine. The woman who adopted them said they decided they couldn't separate them when they were being held by different people, saw each other, and reached out towards each other. We had such a long haul with these two, I almost bust into tears when I saw they were beging adopted as a pair. So, we had a fence installed, the house was clear of foster kittens and Kachina was still sitting in a kennel at the shelter. Alan came to visit and loved her, so we took her home for a trial stay. She is a huge handful, very jumpy and often mouthy, but very affectionate and it's obvious she loves Gambit. Gambit seems to love her most of the time but is also sometimes overwhelmed. They have already passed some bad habits to each other but they're workable. We're going to start training classes at my work on Monday with both dogs and see what happens. I have to finalize the adoption this week, so I think we've made our decision.

Books to read to foster kittens (and other small beings)

#1 The Underneath by Kathi Appelt

No kitten blogging for a while as this was a difficult litter with 2 doing pretty well and 2 not so well even with a foster mom. While we were in California for Liz's wedding, the smallest one died, despite getting great care with fluids given and hand feeding. My poor pet sitter. The other little one, who is now named Mouse, is still way behind size-wise but is doing much better and eating on her own. At this point, bigger siblings Fox and Wolf are ready for spay and neuter surgery and we are just waiting for Mouse to gain a few more ounces.

My new favorite, geeky animal thing is to read out loud to the kittens while laying on my back on the rug in Alan's office. The kittens start out running around and attacking and playing with each other and me and then by the end of the three chapters we are reading each night, lay purring on my lap and knees. I am only 12 chapters into the book and love it so far--it's wonderfully scary and heart-warming at the same time. I am expecting the scariness to increase. Here's the first paragraph for an idea of why this is such a good book:

"There is nothing lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for a while, and then abandoned on the side of the road. A small calico cat. Her family, the one she lived with, has left her in this old and forgotten forest, this forest where the rain is soaking into her soft fur."

Nominations for other books to read out loud to these and future fosters would be very welcome.

Another week, more foster pictures: One, Two, Three