Wheel Chairs

Alright, this question comes up. How do you build a cart, because they are NOT cheap!

First, check on ebay and on the handicapped pets websites, sometimes you will see one given away or sold.

The patterns is allot llike a horse drawn cart, except instead of the cart behind the animal, the wheels go straight down from the hips. I can say I do not use a cart with Boogar anymore, he crashed into so many things in my house and got stuck...he loved it outside though.

What it did for him is taught him proper walking position, enough so that he figured out how he was supposed to move. His spine did the rest. Mammals have the ability to form a thickened area in the spine below the injury, much like a dinosaurs 'hindbrain'. This becomes a second, not very smart walking brain. Singals from the legs go to the spine, but instead of going to the brain for processing, then head right back down to the feet. There is no 'feeling' because the brian isn't recieving it. But the spine is receiving signals.

This creates reflex or spinal cord walking.

Take a good look at the picture. The frame is light aluminim rods. The wheels are toy wheels or light tool wheels. Around Boogars hips are two bars that have been bent into circles for his legs to go through, padded and wrapped in tape and joined together underneath him ( you can't see that) so that they are like a 'V'.

The wheels have a bar between them, and they connect to a frame that goes up and over. Think of a square of wire rod or rectangle, the bottom bar holds the wheels and the top bar makes sor tof a 'handle' above the hips...and I used it as a handle to grab hin when he took off after bugs...

What holds this all in place is padded straps over his shoulders (1) and under his belly (2)...a well fitted pet harness might also work.

Look around online at the different styles out there. Some of the sites have detailed pictures. Hardware stores have most of the parts. Print a photo and take it in and ask the guys that work there...

Anyone who has a photo of a home made cart, if you want to share photos and plans, let me know....I'll post them.

cool links for carts
http://www.k9cartswest.com/
http://handicappedpets.com/www/index.php/help-pets-walk.html
http://www.webvet.com/main/article?id=2012

boogars cart is by k9carts, made in 2000

Maggot!

OK, so he has two names...Spider Man ( his grown up name) and Maggot, which if you knew him you'd 'get it'... This is the very first 'baby' photo of Spider Man Maggot, -who was this little shriveled kitten 2 teenage girls brought to my work in tears.

Their mom told them they had 2 hours to 'get rid' of the kitten or he was going to the pound.

I shrugged and took him, he was all of 5 weeks old, and tiny. Someone had done a really good job raising him though, because the little guy was SWEET, and very sociable. So, into Boogar's cage he went. Boogar loves kittens.

Now, Boogar was sick at the time with a nasty bladder infection, which we were waiting on lab results for... Normally bladder infections have no outside contagion, but lucky me and lucky everybody (note sarcasm) this infection was MRSA.

I can not foster or adopt a cat that is healthy...the cat gods will not let me. So a few days into Maggot's stay with me he starts vomiting and looking...crappy. A quick ultrasound later and...he has kidney stones blocking one ureter, and that kidney is beginning to swell with retained urine.

This means death, untreated.

So here I am with this 6 week old kitten, putting an IV in, taking home an IV pump system, setting up and micro emergency room AGAIN in my house (any local contractors want to donate time to do a custom bathroom sized hospital ward in my house?) and filling this little kitten up with meds...

Stoned on sedatives to relax his ureters, Maggot passes the stones, and embarks of several months of meds and fluids. OK, so he never got put up for adoption. Exposed to MRSA, bonded with Boogar and needing medical care....

Go figure....

He's grown up very beautiful now, bonded to Boogar and Jackals best friend. He's had his stupid kitten emergencies (he got a fine spine of glass stuck through his side in his gut that we found on a random xray and we had to go fishing,,,go figure, how he did that I'll never know- he didn't eat it) and works very hard to stay ADD busy, very very busy....

It's hard work to be the biggest lil' maggot in the world...

Abby- who is not a cat

Once upon a time there was a high wind in the trees, and this palm sized fat ball of black pin feather and blue eyes took a header and fell SPLAT!!! into the parking lot.

Kind souls delivered her to me, and I spent a spring and summer raising a crow baby with the cats.

Abby was cool. She was intelligent, affectionate and very attentive. She followed me hopping (as she could not fly- busted collar bone) around the garden. The chickens HATED her, and thought that although she made 'feed me I'm a baby' noises at them, that she was really plotting to eat her. We avoided the chickens.

Abby had a huge, bathroom sized cage in the house. It had perches, stuff to do a bath and lots of interesting food. It had a window outside and for several years she was content to live there, coming out to chase the lazer pointer with the cats and steal silverware.

Last year Abby turned 5 I think, and she began to call to the outside crows. So I moved her and her entire house into the cat porch, a huge outdoor structure that runs the legnth of my house. It is screened completely in, has a pond and lots of plants... It lets the cats go inside and out without actualy every being outdoors exposed to danger.

Abby lived on the cat porch, learning to leave her house and fly. She grew stronger, more skilled. She began to forage for food in flower pots and although ate her bird pellets, began to mimic the behaviors of wild crows.

She got bigger.

Last week 2 young adult crows came to her and began to talk through the wire. Every day they would come and call to her. Every day she would call back and try to reach them.

This moring I shooed all the cats insdie and opened up the porch for Abby. She went out for the first time, explored, played, screamed at the wind...and flew away, free.

I can hear her in the neighboorhood.

I will watch for her of course, and put out food. I will call her at night and if she comes home, take her in, of course.

I hope the wild crows are good to her, and that she has many babies.

Good Bye Abby. I will miss you.

Free to choose to come or go is really free....

48 hours later...

Abby showed up this morning in the back yard happily calling. She was using the crow 'this is my house' call. I went outside and called her & she called back, watched me for a little, circled around me and returned to her friends.

I hope she keeps showing up.

Update 2/2010

Abby has returned consistantly. She is not 'tame', so she will not come right to me, but I can call her, and she will come to the street. She has chosen a mate, and joined the large local 'murder' (which is what a crow flock is called) of crows. I do miss her, but she needed the right to choose, and she did. I hope she raises many pretty babies and I hope she visits for years.

Grief....

Focus. The world has gone grey and I have lost the incredible dedicated focus I had with Pumpkin.
Clarity, focus, dedication, the willingness to do anything it took, and to be there, every step of the way…gone in a matter of hours.
Death does that.

I knew from day one that Pumpkin would not be a long lived cat. Although he was younger than Boogar, and his break was in a better place, Boogar would outlive him.
Why and how did I know this?

I see things. I see shadows on bodies and things other people do not. I saw a shadow on Pumpkin. It was in his middle, right where his kidneys overlay the edge of his liver. His pancreas. A shadow.
Of course, this was not a shadow others could see, but none the less it was there. Black, murky, like smoke from a candle wick.

So I knew not to expect him to live a long life.

But what I didn’t expect was to have him be hit with so many different things all at once, and I didn’t expect to wrap my life so completely intertwined with his. My heart kept his heart beating (metaphorically). My lungs kept him breathing. My focus kept him alive.
I didn’t expect it to be so ugly.
I expected some nasty cancer where I’d recognize his last good day and send him on… but not so quick. A few more years….

I didn’t get that. It was harsh, ugly and I stepped up to the plate and built my home into an emergency hospital.

Up at 5, blood sugar, insulin, program the guardian. Feed him, love him, pet him. Antibiotics, enzymes, fluids. Pain meds. Empty his bladder. Go to work. Noon, check him, check sugars, empty bladder. 6 pm, repeat the 5 am dance, midnight repeat noon’s treatment. Never miss a time, never miss a day, never miss a treatment, never be late…

Did I sleep? Yes, a few hours on the couch next to him, listening for his monitor. But it was fine, I was good with that. So what my blood was laced with caffeine, and I was samurai laughing in the face of the unendurable. I was OK with that, the clarity, the focus the dedication…

Death caught me unaware, by surprise. I had worked so hard, done everything… and no matter what, I could not stop death.

I didn’t expect death to come sudden, although I knew death was watching us. I figured I’d get more ‘notice’.

But no. I got enough time to call dad and have him come, got enough time to call his vet and check in with her, enough time to compose myself and be strong for Pumpkin, for Boogar and for his dad…

But no time for myself.

No one to be strong for me, strong enough to accept my tears, my heartbreak, my feelings of utter exhaustion and failure as something I am not... a doctor.

Now I sleep. I have lost Pumpkin, and lost focus. I have been hit by devastating depression, where the tears of exhaustion, grief and loss that never fell threaten to fall all the time.

So there you are. Delayed grief, shock, depression and …just a wretched empty hole in my heart where focus, clarity and Pumpkin lived….

Is there anybody out there?