There has been so little time over the last few months to write this blog, but that does not mean that little has happened in the butterflycat world!
Starting backwards, I took a gorgeous feral female in for neutering yesterday. She was quite a handful and determined to escape at one point, but common sense prevailed and now she will have a much better life. She is one of a barn-full of cats we have been slowly chipping away at over the last year. She’d been pregnant a couple of times but no kittens came to light. Here she is with her wonderful facial markings and an alert expression that is communicating a firm intention to escape! She doesn’t have a name but perhaps it should be TortiStripe. I took her back to her barn and her brothers and sisters this morning.
Starting backwards, I took a gorgeous feral female in for neutering yesterday. She was quite a handful and determined to escape at one point, but common sense prevailed and now she will have a much better life. She is one of a barn-full of cats we have been slowly chipping away at over the last year. She’d been pregnant a couple of times but no kittens came to light. Here she is with her wonderful facial markings and an alert expression that is communicating a firm intention to escape! She doesn’t have a name but perhaps it should be TortiStripe. I took her back to her barn and her brothers and sisters this morning.
Then there is 2CC (that’s Chubby Chops II) who we think - by the chops - is Chubby Chops’ son. He is quite a character. He’s young and could be described as cocky, and appears to have decided that he’d quite like to join the gang. ‘The gang’ would be those regulars, pets and ferals, who hang around the courtyard, and 2CC’s problem is that they are not quite so keen!! They may be happier with the prospect once he’s neutered so we’ll need to schedule that in. More on neutering males later. In the meantime here is 2CC taking up a tactical position near the cat door in the gate, close to where we feed him (away from the others!).
This next story has the longest list of ailments I think I have ever encountered in a cat, but a happy ending. You might remember the little ginger female from the village near us who I mentioned in an earlier blog. Last month we happened to be in the village and she was hanging about on the pavement and seemed to be in a state. Her breathing sounded like she had a cold and her fur was matted and had a nasty patch of what looked like mange. There was no collar - although I did think I’d seen one on her before - and I asked a couple of people if they knew her and no one did. Anyway, we decided to take her to the vet and bundled her into the car. She had a nice evening in the bathroom and some lovely wet food. On the way to the vet the next day we stopped at the shop where Luisa had been putting food out for her, and I went in and told her what had happened. Luisa said ‘but she has owners!’ and told me where to find them, in a house nearby .... so, off I went to speak to them. They said Masi (the cat) was never home, preferring to be on the street because their other cat chased her off. They said she was 15 and they didn’t know what to do about her skin problem. They seemed a bit overwhelmed by Masi’s issues and were happy for me to take her to the vet. So off we went! Here's Masi at the vet:
To cut a long story short, Masi had terrible fleas (and that was causing the dermatitis on her back as she tried to scratch it), she has a lump on her side that is breast cancer, she has a misaligned jaw from an accident, she had gingivitis and she had worms in her eyes (thelazia). All this at the age of 15! Blimey!! The thelazia, gingivitis and dermatitis were all treatable and we started her on antibiotics. We kept her for around 10 days treating her and brushing her. She really is a gorgeous girl and very affectionate. In the end we took her home and we have shown her owners the flea treatment she needs monthly to avoid the dermatitis happening again. Now we see her in the village occasionally and she is so much better! And she has a new collar:
It was so lovely to have been able to have such a visible impact on a cat.
That experience was followed by a far sadder one in the form of Zorro, one of the musketeers. He died about three weeks ago after losing a huge amount of weight due to either feline FEV or FELV or both. We trapped him and took him to the vet twice but there was nothing to be done but palliative care. The other musketeers helped, Clem and Husky grooming Zorro as we nursed him, to the extent that you can nurse a feral cat. We all miss him hugely, and this event has underlined the importance of neutering males, as these untreatable viruses are passed on by fighting. Yes, males do become more social and less aggressive when they’re neutered - that’s a good thing! Zorro was neutered but it may have been too late in his life, or he was bitten more recently by another male who was highly likely to be unneutered.
RIP Zorro the Magnificent, 10 August 2019.
That experience was followed by a far sadder one in the form of Zorro, one of the musketeers. He died about three weeks ago after losing a huge amount of weight due to either feline FEV or FELV or both. We trapped him and took him to the vet twice but there was nothing to be done but palliative care. The other musketeers helped, Clem and Husky grooming Zorro as we nursed him, to the extent that you can nurse a feral cat. We all miss him hugely, and this event has underlined the importance of neutering males, as these untreatable viruses are passed on by fighting. Yes, males do become more social and less aggressive when they’re neutered - that’s a good thing! Zorro was neutered but it may have been too late in his life, or he was bitten more recently by another male who was highly likely to be unneutered.
RIP Zorro the Magnificent, 10 August 2019.
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