kitty update

[rivendellrose]

The kitty whose arrival was described in my previous entry is doing pretty well this morning. He started crying a little after we woke up, and has eaten all his food and I think used his litter box as well. As soon as we have the 3 hour window in which our furniture is arriving from Ikea, I'll call the vet and see if we can get him in for a check-up. I don't have immensely high hopes of availability on such short notice, but it's worth a shot. And either way, I've decided the little guy's getting a bath today. He's so dirty it's hard to pet him.

The update to our plan is that we're going to temporarily give up on the idea of turning him in to a shelter in favor of trying to find a home for him ourselves. So if anybody knows anyone in the area who wants a cat, please let me know!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

On a side note, before you guys start setting him up for a home, you'll definitely want to make sure he doesn't have FIV, feline leukemia, upper respiratory, or any of those other unfortunate (and spreadable) diseases that homeless cats tend to get. If he does, getting him placed may be harder, but I do know that the shelter I used to volunteer at is one of the few places... well, anywhere, that will take FIV and leukemia cats.

[shadawyn.livejournal.com]

Ack, that was me. LJ keeps logging me out lately -_-

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Ah yes. Yeah, don't worry - the above comment about how he'll get a bath even if we can't get him into the vet is more of a "today" thing. Sunday vets are hard to come by, and we've got some other engagements today that aren't in our control (furniture delivery), so the vet may not happen today, but it will happen. And we've been very cautious about hand-washing every time we touch him, and keeping him away from the boys, until then.

[shadawyn.livejournal.com]

Okay :) My time at the shelter has me paranoid about these things, so I wanted to make sure you had the infos.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Yup, that's why we're taking him to a vet before we give him to anybody. I've been around the block a few times on this whole cat thing, believe me. ;)

[paranoidangel]

Just to check, you are planning on ringing shelters and vets etc to check he isn't anyones and has gone missing? Not all cats tolerate collars and even if they do have collars they can slip out of them.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

We'll give it a go, yeah, but this little guy has been on his own for a while, and I haven't seen any missing cat signs matching his description, so I don't have a whole lot of hope on that count.

[narsilion.livejournal.com]

How did the bath go?

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

There was some upset and running around and hiding behind the toilet involved, but I was eventually able to just put him in the bowl of the sink and hold him there while I poured water over him with my cupped hand and rubbed him down with a washcloth with baby-shampoo on it, and then cup the water over him again.

He was significantly unimpressed by my efforts to dry him off until I just sat down with him on my lap and started rubbing him down with the towel, at which point he decided it was just like petting and went with it.

Vet visit today (The Boy's taking him). With any luck he won't turn up with anything worse than the nearly-inevitable ear mites and worms.

[narsilion.livejournal.com]

So how did the vet visit go?

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Vet went well. She's a girl, not a boy (I'm not terribly surprised I got that wrong - she was wiggling a lot when I tried to look), she's spayed, she's healthy apart from malnutrition, and one of her back legs has broken and healed a bit oddly. Nothing that will do her damage, she's just going to run funny always. We let her out for a little bit last night (with the boys locked in the office), and sure enough her right back leg has a really odd bend in it. Reminds me of Grey. So, we're still waiting on lab-work for a few parasite type things, but otherwise she's a healthy little girl. She just needs to eat.