It’s hard to believe that that summer is almost unofficially over already. It’s been three months since our last entry. Life itself has kept us busy, as it usually has. It’s not easy working two jobs – amazing how the amount of free time just withers away once you get in that set routine. But now it as good a time as any for an update on the gang.
First up, I guess the bad news is that we haven’t seen any of the outdoor cats since we brought Patch into the house back in March. Scruff has remained missing in action all this time. There was one evening back in late June or early July where all the cats were getting rammy and running around the house, looking out of the various windows. Turns out a cat was passing by the house, heading towards the neighbor where Patch, Scruff and Tiger used to take up residence. Shannon heard the meowing, but we never saw who it was. I set out a bowl of food near grove separating our properties, but no one came to eat overnight – not even the wildlife. That was the last indication of anyone coming around. We don’t set the bowl out any more as the raccoons and possum make the most of the meal (and our recycling cans) a few times a week, so it’s really just a waste unless we get some sign that the ferals are still coming around. It still chokes me up that I wasn’t able to get Scruff, or the other neighbor’s lost cat – Catlyn. I wish I had just a little more time, then we could have made sure that everyone got inside and was safe and sound. It just wasn’t meant to be, I guess. We can only hope that they are still out there – or that someone else was able to take them in. Fortunately, we weren’t the only ones leaving out food, water, and shelter around the area. But it’s hard to be optimistic when there are known predators out there, as well as being near a busy truck driven street.
The good news though, is that the members of the gang that we have managed to rescue have all settled in nicely. Oreo and Patch are still finding their ways a bit. Oreo has had the roughest time, as Tux has not taken a liking to him, and will go after the big boy on occasion. Amazingly enough, it seems Oreo has turned out to be the most timid of the bunch. He was quite the bully outside, but can be afraid of his own shadow at times now. But he has turned into quite the love bug – demanding pets whenever he is not taking his extended naps out in the sun room. He’s still quite the pig, however, so we need to watch him carefully at feeding time, otherwise he will get spurts of bravery and head right for everyone else’s bowl, no matter who may be there. Other than his weight, he seems to be pretty healthy at this point, so we can stave off any trips to the vet until next year, when he comes due again for his annual shots. Fortunately, the local rescue we were able to work with in getting him squared away during the Spring, took care of that, so now we just have to work on getting him used to having the entire house as his stomping ground. He’s has just claimed the basement and the sun room at this point, which Tux hasn’t helped with obviously.
Patch has fared a little better on that front. Tux kind of avoids him for the most part, like he avoided Cookie. Patch still is wary of most of us, but his health issues haven’t helped with that. He does like to explore the house more, but that also is partly attributed to us needing to have kept him contained to the upstairs after we brought Oreo in, and then again in July when we had his first dental procedure. We got him to the vet for his initial check-up back in April along with Hershey, who was due for her annual check-up. Obviously Patch was none too pleased, but at least we were able to get blood work and an initial go around with him. We’ve been pretty lucky all around that most everybody has had good health, with the exception of Cookie. Turns out Patch is another hard luck case in regards to his mouth. He’s been healthy otherwise, but his mouth turned out to be in worse shape than I thought. Even the doctor said it was pretty bad, and he was putting it mildly. His gums were filled with infection, and he was missing a lot of teeth. The doctor recommended a dental specialist, but we made an appointment for our vet to do some of the basic dental work to buy us, and Patch some time. We finally got him in for an early July appointment, after our June vacation, and it went downhill from there pretty quickly.
The procedure itself went as well as it could go under the circumstances, but the doctor noticed some swelling near Patch’s tongue when he came in to do the extractions (he needed to remove 4 teeth that day), after the initial cleaning procedure. So we got some antibiotics and were told to bring him back the next day or the day after to check on the swelling. Well the next 24 hours was brutal. By the end of the night one side of Patch’s face showed signs of swelling. So we kept him in one of the downstairs bedrooms to keep the other cats away from him, and to make it easier to get him in the carrier and back to the vet the next day. Unfortunately, he managed to get out of the room without us knowing, so I spent the better part of a couple of hours after work the next day trying to find him. Turned out he was hiding up in the rafters in the basement near the stairs where the beams and the duct work for the air conditioning make an effective hiding hole. The swelling was much worse at this point. It was nearly his whole face. He was also bleeding from the mouth (a little of which was expected), but also drooling quite a bit, with more discharge from his nose, like he had a severe cold. He was obviously very stressed at this point, and trying to get him into the carrier did not help the situation. I had to close off a lot of the house and chase him a bit before I finally got him cornered and into the carrier. I never felt so bad in my life. All I wanted to do was comfort him and take away his pain, and there was nothing I could do.
Getting to the vet didn’t make me feel any better. Even the doctor was extremely concerned about the reaction Patch was having to the procedure. He gave Patch a steroid shot to try to get the swelling down, as well as additional steroids to give him orally at home. He also was going to call us daily to check on Patch’s status and have us bring in back in a week if things seemed to be getting better. The steroids seemed to help with the swelling, but now Patch wasn’t eating, and of course trying to get him to take medicine was an ordeal as he wanted nothing to do with me. So we had to quarantine him in the upstairs spare bedroom. We tried to block off all the few hiding places there were, but he somehow managed to get under the bed the first night, so that turned out to be an ordeal getting him out from under there, which resulted in me essentially taking the mattress and box spring off the bed – in a relatively small room. The next night he managed to find a way under the dresser, after I ensured that the bed was no longer an option for him. After that, it seems our cat proofing worked as his only recourse was a box we left up there for him to hide in, but made it much easier to get to him in the least stressful way.
Unfortunately, when we got him back to the vet, he had lost nearly two pounds from not eating all but two or three times in the course of the week. The swelling was more manageable at that point, but during that time, it seemed he had an issue with his left eye (not unironically the same eye that Scruff had the infection in), but that appeared to resolve on it’s own after a few days. So it may only have been an irritation, or a result of the facial swelling. At any rate, we got additional medicine for him, and the doctor made a call to a dental specialist to see what else could be going on. Of course I should mention that during the dental procedure, the doctor discovered that Patch had a fungal infection in both of his ears (which we suspected anyway), so in addition to the steroids, we were giving him ear drops – or at least trying anyway. We did get some good news from the dental specialist in that Patch’s reaction wasn’t very unusual, though it was the first time our vet encountered it), and there is a condition that can cause it – the name of which escapes me now because I’m just not good with things like that. But we got medicine to stimulate his appetite, and another oral drug to give him instead of the steroids. After that, it was just another waiting game. But at least at this point, after a couple of days, we finally began to see some noticeable improvement. The appetite stimulant worked like a charm, and the new medicine seemed to continue to reduce the swelling and reaction. Patch had two more trips to the vet for the rest of the month, and gained some weight back both those times. The second and final time showed a complete reduction in the swelling, to the point that the doctor was even surprised how good he turned out to be. So the month of hell was finally over, for all of us.
The bad news is that Patch’s mouth is still not in great condition and he will need more extractions (at this point I don’t know that he will have any teeth left). He will need to see a dental specialist no later than this fall to prevent his condition from worsening, and that terrible reaction from blowing up like it did this time around. But we have at least got a couple of months to decompress and work on getting his trust back. He at least has the run of the house again, and seems to have gotten back to his normal self at this point. All medicine is done, and it seems we even managed to get rid of the ear infections.
Thank God the rest of the gang have turned out to be OK. Tux and Tiger are due for their annual check-ups at the end of this month, but everyone has been happy and healthy so far. Heck, we even get some times we every single one of them is actually coexisting in the same room peacefully! Can’t ask much more than that. Tux and Tiger still take turns chasing each other off the bed at night, but have also turned into the biggest (not in size mind you) two lap cats we’ve had since Willy and Gandalf. Tux and Midnight still get into sibling tussles on a regular basis. Hershey and Oreo still try to eat everyone else’s food if we don’t pick the bowls up. Midnight gets jealous whenever we give someone else attention. Tux needs hugs and nuzzles for at least 15 minutes every day when I get home. And everyone loves staring down the rabbit that has made the back yard home from their various spots in the sun room. Outside of Patch’s health issue, and Tux’s resentment of Oreo, I don’t think we could’ve have gotten luckier in having six cats able to coexist as peacefully as they do under one roof. It’s been stressful at times, and plenty expensive when the food bill comes around, but nothing gets me more emotional than knowing that we have (hopefully) made the lives of six strays (plus our old boy Cookie in Heaven) better than they would have had outside. And the love they give in return makes it all worthwhile.
