Once upon a time, years ago I fostered kittens for the SPCA. I was the person in my area that the SPCA brought those kittens that were in need of special care to. Special care? This meant I got the ones kissed by death....
Fizz was older than he looked. He might have been 6 weeks old, maybe 8 weeks, but he was the size of a 2 week old kitten. He was that odd combination of pot belly and emaciation that goes with terrible neglect. He was brown, not black- that is where he had hair. His hindquarters were covered with fecal and urine burns and were a mass of pink, wet sores clotted with dead skin and feces. he looked for all the world like some little alien cat, with huge eyes, a wrinkled head and bat ears. He wanted to eat 'real' food, but was too weak to do anything but drink kitten milk mixed with baby food in a bottle.
Fizz was taken on a 'raid'. A 'rescue' person had collected kittens and had them housed in cages, one stacked on the other. Urine and feces fell through to the bottom, covering the cats in the lower cages. Kitten and cats in cages filled this person's house. There were dead cats and kittens as well.
Fizz was one. Just one. I do not know where the others went. All I know is that this person was forbidden to have pets in my area, and moved away....
But on to Fizz. Fizz was so little that the SPCA thought he should have company, and they sent over a 10 day old kitten (who was the same size as Fizz) to keep him company. This was Puff. Puff and Fizz. Fizz and Puff.
Things did not go well. Fizz was incubating distemper. Distemper kills cats, just like that. There are very very few survivors.
My adult cats are vaccinated, and I boosted everyone's vaccines prior to taking on foster kittens.
Puff and Fizz had distemper. I made an isolation ward out of my kitchen. Their kennel was draped in plastic, I had bleach, gloves, a gown, a mask a cap, and no other animals were allowed near them. They had meds every 2 hours round the clock.... They vomited, had yellow diarrhea, cried pathetically, cramped with gas, and sat huddled together on heat, their stool running out of them like water.
I will be honest. I prayed every night that they would pass gently. I would get up at midnight, at 2 am , and at 4 am, hoping they had gone..... as distemper is horrible, but I had promised I would try....
Puff died. Fizz survived. Puff's post mortem labs confirmed distemper. You have to post them and confirm distemper out of kindness to those who are in your care... otherwise you blindly infect and kill others who come your way.
Fizz slowly got through distemper. He began to grow. His wounds sloughed and healed bright pink sheets of scars that bound his rear legs and tail. The scars stretched, and sometimes cracked and bled. Fur tried to grow over them and made black peach fuzz. Fizz shed his sickly brown fur and grew glossy black...
Today Fizz is about 11 or 12 years old. He never left to be adopted out because the scars he had as a kitten took several years to ease and heal. You can still find them if you part his hair and look.
I find what the worst part of Fizz's story is that someone claimed to be a cat rescue person, passed around a business card that looked legit, took on litters of kittens and subjected them to concentration camp torture, all in the name of misguided love. It's called 'hording' or 'collecting' and if you google it you can see what cat collecting and hording looks like.
It's not having lots of cats. Many people have more cats than you would be comfortable with and provide them excellent care and comfort. It's having more cats than you can care for, and not recognising that you can not give them even marginal care...and believing only you can save them all. All.....
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