Proof that I'm really just a big pussycat ...
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- Ragdata
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Not exactly sure why I'm sharing this ... I've been hanging around a short while now and have made a few friends / it's a slow night, and the insomnia has kicked in as usual - so, yeah, I guess I'm just bored.
My daughter recently started working as a Vetinary Assistant, and in helping her to prepare for that we thought it might be a good idea to do some volunteer work with animals. We put the feelers out and registered with the appropriate organisations and it wasn't long before we had our first patient.
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We were asked to care for an orphaned kitten - she was 3 days old when she arrived. The people who surrendered her to us named her 'Tiger'. Now, taking care of such a young animal is quite a task. 4-hourly feeds, medications, and a particularly difficult-to-manage and little-understood problem with Hypoglycemia that is suffered by young cats (they can't store glucose in their bodies well) made this experience all the more interesing. She tried very hard to die on us in those first few weeks, and there's nothing quite like the experience of trying to inject life-saving fluids into a crashed kitten at 3am with a needle that's larger than she is (even those 1ml, 29-guage insulin jobbies seemed too big).
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I suppose the strangest thing that happened was when, during her roughest rough patch, I took her to a meeting with a potential client and had to take a break in the middle of it all when Tiger crashed and needed another life-saving injection.
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Please log in or register to see it. - Last Edit: 15 years 9 months ago by Ragdata.
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- Ragdata
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I had to share these 2 as well:
Tiger survived and is thriving with us:
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And her favourite playmate is my old tomcat, Hobbes (a great mate):
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Please log in or register to see it. - Ragdata's Rubber Duck
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- Jamesso
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It's always nice to see a happy ending.
A few years ago my family adopted a lab/pitbull mix pup. She was 2 weeks old and barely the size of my hand. She had been rescued from a drug house and had worms and severe malnutrition. The vet gave us these tubes of edible medicine that the puppy just loved. It wasn't long before she was running around with her older brother and sister (who were bigger at the time but are now smaller than her). -
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- Ragdata
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- Lab / Pitbull ... wow ... that seems like an odd mix - not one I've seen running around here often anyways. How is she emotionally? Several years ago now I rescued an older dog - a staffie/boxer cross who's no longer with us - from a similar situation. It was 2 YEARS before I heard him bark ... and even then he needed to be convinced that it was a perfectly natural and OK thing for him to do. Poor old 'Dexter' was terribly head-shy and had obviously been beaten often during his life. I honestly think that there's no more loyal companion than a rescued animal though.
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- Jamesso
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- Yea, she has quite a temper sometimes but mainly when she's feeling territorial. Otherwise she is extremely friendly and plays well with people (except those wearing hats). She's a bit smaller than she should be and seems slightly awkward sometimes. For example, she doesn't always know when someone is playing with her and so she will hide. But you always know when she's happy because she starts making sounds like Chewbacca. I still get a kick out of it.
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- JEM
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About eleven years ago we adopted a kitten from one of our friends that has found it abandoned in a park.
Nine years ago, one Sunday morning the doorbell rang and two junior high school kids has a box with four newborn kittens in it, their eyes still closed.
Someone had put them in a box and dumped it in the woods near our house, the kids found them while taking a walk.
We told them we already had a cat and they should keep looking for someone who might want one but if they had any left over at the end of the day, we'd try to help out.
Ten hours later, the doorbell rang, same two girls, same four kittens....
We took them all.
The all had to be bottle fed, and needed special treatment for going to the bathroom, etc.
We had them for several month and were able to get three adopted, leaving us two.
Four years ago, one of our neighbors moved out of our neighborhood to the city.
Afraid their cat would meet some terrible fate in the city, they simply left it behind.
It survived outside for a few weeks by itself but as the weather started getting colder, it started looking for a home.... and then there were three.
Towards the end of my wife's 'cat project' (long story) which helped spay, house, and feed the feral cats in the area, just a few remained.
Pressure from the locals to 'get rid of' the remaining cats..... and then there were four. - Thanks,
jim
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- Ragdata
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That's marvelous JEM - thanks for sharing. :cheesy:
Don't you ust love the way they end up wearing their food for the first few months? - Ragdata's Rubber Duck
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- JEM
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Especially this guy, Marvin, he wore more than he ate most of the time....
Also attached, part of the 'cat hotel' we built, the 'wild boar proof restaurant'.
Lots of them around our house, happy to eat cat food when they can find it, and cats if they can't. - Thanks,
jim
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- Ragdata
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You're joking!! Wild boars ?!!?
The organisation that sent us Tiger (I just checked) is set up to do exactly the same thing here that your wife was doing with her 'cat project'. I didn't know it was happening elsewhere - but it's a great idea.
After our success with Tiger, they sent us another litter - these seven were only 24 hours old and apparently came from a VERY sickly mother. They were all under normal birthweight (average of 64 grams - normal is 80). We gave the 3 biggest to another carer in the network - unfortunately 6 of them died within 3 weeks. The last one ("Biscuit" - the smallest of them all when she arrived) survived until she was 8 weeks old - but it was a battle for her and us, and one she finally lost.
The idea was that we were to get them to 12 weeks, spay and vaccinate them then advertise them for adoption - but we've grown pretty attatched to little Tiger (our only real success out of the exercise) ... she's gonna stick around with us.
Was it the same with your wife's project - or was it something she organised to do herself?
Thanks heaps for sharing your experiences too - nice to talk something other than 'shop' once in a while :cheesy: - Ragdata's Rubber Duck
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- Ragdata
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- Here we go - finally found some shots of the wee-uns:
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