Letting Go. When one of our own must be sent on...

Letting Go
 When comes the day when our feet guide us down weary paths dark and hard, that no more can our foot tread, the path must change. On this path we find at it’s end a bright glade. All of us meet there, and we greet each other with heart and hope. Our families are there, two foot and four foot…and we go on into world unknown.


On this path we meet.


One of the most terrible decisions a pet care taker has to make it to let an animal go that feels healthy and feels good, but has a medical problem that can not be fixed, or a problem they can not provide care for.


Each person who attempt to care for a cat with severe spinal cord injuries is going to face these moments. There will be times when your cat is happy, purring, playing…and in your heart of hearts you know that this story will not turn out well. It may be that your cat can not be emptied by hand. It may be that your cat can not pass stool. It may be that your cat has injured its paralyzed hindquarters and repair is not on option.


Or hardest on the heart…money has run out, medical expenses are looming over your head, your cat needs a huge procedure and you can’t, you just can’t.


I have faced that. It is terrible. Sorrow, loss, guilt, anger, depression…all the emotions of loss become your bedfellows, and the hope you may have had seems like a candy coated lie.


On this path we meet…. And those of us who touch here, who converse, each of us can become support and care for the other.


That too is part of my ‘job’. To offer understanding, solace and support when it is time to let go.


It is always OK to write. Always.


Kadeth & Boogar's Email
 

Dear Ellen DeGeneres

Dear Ellen
I have a story to tell of love, compassion, courage and heart. This story begins with one and extends now to increasing hearts, spirits and lives.

Bear with me please, while I craft the journey. In order to see and feel the story, I must start at the beginning.

I am a veterinary nurse, and have been so for 30 years. I have worked with the finest veterinary neurosurgeon on the west coast, the best emergency vets and fine feline and exotic doctors.
March back in time 12 years. I had crossed paths with a kitten, tiny, feral and injured. Caught by a dog at 4 weeks old, the rest of his litter killed. He was brought to a veterinary hospital by a good Samaritan, and one of the technicians their had been caring for him. He was paralyzed from the bottom of his ribcage down. In the real world for a cat this means he could not walk, and more importantly had no ability to empty his own bladder. The lifespan of these cats with this sort of injury traditionally is 2 months.
I had dropped by this clinic to give a friend a ride and the technician who was caring for this kitten was sitting on the doorstep sobbing her heart out. I asked her why and she said she was putting her kitten to sleep after her shift, because he would never recover.
The world stopped. The sounds of the cars and her voice fell away. Birdsong grew louder and the sky grew brighter. I heard a sound, like thunder in the mountains, but I understood this sound to be a voice. This voice (within myself or some cat guardian spirit I can not say) said “Kadeth, take him. He will bring you great gifts.”
I offered to take the kitten if she so chose and she said to come back at the end of her shirt, she’d think about it. Many veterinary technicians are very honorable and ethical people, and passing on a doomed kitten to another is in a way ‘not right’.

I returned, and she was gone. But the kitten was sitting in his cage with a note saying ‘thank you thank you thank you!” Beside the cage the syringe with the euthanasia solution was drawn up, she had decided at the last minute to give him up.

Once again, traditionally these cats live about 2 months, dyeing of complications such as ascending bladder infections, limb damage from dragging and so on, or so I was told over and over.
I thought, people who are paralyzed do not die in 2 months why must a cat?

So began my journey with ‘Boogar’.

On April 1st he turns 13. I have for 13 years emptied (expressed) his bladder by hand 3 or more times a day, wrapped his feet, loved him and taken him everywhere.

Boogar is on the internet.

4 years ago I met ‘Pumpkin’, who was shot off his fence by a cruel person with a pellet gun. The commitment of his owner was such that he hunted for anything that could help his cat, as the surgeons who removed the pellet from his spine said he would never recover.

]Pumpkin’s dad heard of me through the veterinary surgeons and searched until he found me. He has become my best friend, my adopted big brother…

2 years ago I built a website, and put a page on care of spinal cord injured cats up.

Slowly letters came in begging for help. My cat was hit by a car, my vet says put him to sleep but I do not want to, what can I do? My vet says you can not express a cats bladder long term, but you have done it for more than 10 years, can you tell me how? Please help. Over and over. Canada. West Africa. India. Texas, Minnesota, Oregon, Ohio. Over and over, please help us.

So I did. I do. I write long emails to people. I coach them one on one over the internet on every aspect of cat care that I can that applies to their situation. I promise to be there for them, and I am. Please be assured this is a ‘free’ service, when people have a newly paralyzed cat they have vet bills that break them. I can not ad to that.

And I have a dream.

I dream of having a rescue/ learning center for spinal cord injured cats and their owners. These are pets with extraordinary medical needs and the people who choose to care for them are extraordinary owners. Lives are restructured to care for these pets.

I dream of a center, where these cats can come to for care, with their owners. Where owners can be taught hands on to care for them, where a vet can asses them who has a positive outlook, who can give heart and hope. Where referrals can be made to local specialists that will provide positive assistance rather than the chant ‘these cats don’t recover, euthanize’ that so many vets with their innocent lack of experience with these cases say in good faith.

I have the vet. I work with her. She is my associate and friend and has worked with Boogar and Pumpkin, the 2 paralyzed cats who began this journey for years. She is willing to work with others. I have the specialists locally to refer to, the surgeons who know of me, who worked on Pumpkin and Boogar. I have the skill, I have the heart. I even have a small handful of dedicated animal lovers who would come to staff such a place.

And I have people who need it. ‘Stick’, paralyzed 1 month ago, his two 19 year old owners have taken out loans, taken on extra work and have both learned to express his bladder, but they may need more help than I can give online.

This is where I come to you. I do not know what to ask for, I do not know the path of your heart. I ask you though to look at the links, read the blog, and think.

I can build this place. I need a patron. I have everything else.

Boogar turns 13 years old this April. He is paralyzed from T-8 down. All around the country he has brothers and sister, all around the world he has brothers and sisters. These people are my family of heart in their commitment to their pets.

Please consider my story, and consider talking to me and choosing to participate.

Kadeth Pozzesi, RVT.

http://ellen.warnerbros.com/

Please, those of you who come to this site, write Ellen at the link above. Send her your stories, your photos, let her know you need a patron saint, patron goddess a good person to help fund a research and rescue place for our pets. I have the people. I have the heart, and I have all of you who need it. Write her!

Love to all of you

Kadeth

Trudy, who had an abcess.....

There are many things that can paralyze a cat. Most people think of cars, guns, dogs, accidents and so on, but what many do not realize is that a bad tail base abcess can do the same thing.

What happens is that the infection invades the nerves that branch off of the spine and send signals to the bladder, bowel, rear legs and tail. This shuts down the nerve signals.

Typicaly this does NOT invade and enter the spinal cord itself, neither does it ascend up the spine. It hits the nerve roots.

This sort of abcess requires immediate and agressive treatment. In an ideal world, the abcess is opened under anesthetic, drained, debrided of infected and dead flesh, and closed bask up as much as the injured skin permits, with drains in place to allow infected matter to still come out. Cats are put on antibiotics, and the wound is flushed and hot packed several times a day. The would also may be cultured to identify the infecting organisims.

Well, not every cat gets agressive treatment. Not every vet will look at a cat, see the infection and resulting paralysis and think 'I can fix this for this cat and these people'. This is what happened to Trudy. Paralyzed from an infection, her vet suggested minimal treatment to see 'how she did'.

OK, these cats do not do OK with minimal treatment. An infection that affects feeling and mobility is a huge infection. Trudys mom persisted and insisted on more agressive treatment.

Slowly Trudy healed.  She relearned how to stand and walk, and her mom learned how to empty her bladder and take care of her colon. When I last checked in, Trudy was beginning to use her litter box some...

Beautiful Trudy...

So, can my cat feel his bladder or not? At least right now....

Can my cat feel his bladder?
The difference between reflex and overflow urination vs ‘I can feel & I need to pee’ and what that all means.

The bladder has several systems in place to insure that it empties. The one we all know about is the pressure sensors on the inside of the bladder that signal ‘gotta pee!’, and that signal goes from the bladder to the spine, up to the brain and tells you to start looking for a bathroom, or if you are a cat, a litter box or other convenient cat pee place.

When this is working right, we all have an idea of how much is in our bladder and sorta when we need to be thinking about it. It’s a conscious thing, we KNOW when we need to pee and how long we can or can not ‘hold it’.

This system includes a send back from the brain that says “Gotta Pee!” and when there is a place to do so, it also sends a ‘contract & empty signal.

When the spine is damaged or severed, the signals from the bladder don’t go where they are supposed to go. The signals from the brain do not get to where they are supposed to go either.
This means the bladder sits, and fills, and does not notice. Neither does the brain notice the feeling of fullness. There is NO signal ‘gotta pee’, neither is their a signal that says ‘time to pee so squeeze’.

The spine however is not just a tube that signals go through. It has layers. It is like the most complex highway, with stop and go lights, intersections, detours at times and lots of cars…. Only layer upon layer of these highways all bundled into a cord.

When a cat has a lower spinal cord injury, what ‘kills’ them if they survive the initial injury is the inability to urinate combined with the difficulty of training an adult cat to allow it’s bladder to be emptied by a person.

Vets in general do not expect clients to be willing to take on the task of learning to express a bladder, so at this point most vets will say ‘euthanize’.

You don’t have to.

Now, what is important is learning to tell the difference between a bladder that a cat can not feel at all, and one that it can, but can not get to work…yet.

Guidelines

1) Cats who do NOT feel their bladder do not dig in a litter box. Exception, some cats think a clean liter box is a great toy and will dig and roll in it. Boogar does that. But it’s different, it’s play. You can tell by watching him, he’s goofing off.

2) Cats that dig a hole and squat CAN FEEL their bladder, but they may not be able to squeeze enough to get the urine to come out. This is because of several things.

a. The bladder has several sets of muscles, and push out set and a keep in set. Sometimes the keep it in set is stronger than the push it out set.

b. The nerve signals may be going from the bladder to the brain with the ‘gotta pee’ signal, but the signal from the brain to the ‘pee now’ system is not coming though enough.

c. Both systems are starting to work but are weak.

d. Both systems are working, but the muscles are weak, or there is residual pain from injury interfering.

3) NONE of this is overflow urination. Overflow urination is when the ‘gotta pee’ and ‘pee now’ signals are absent, the bladder fills up to overfull, and drips. In some cats this drip will be in combination with a stuck on ‘squeeze now’ signal and their bladder will be small, in some cats this will be with no signals, and they will have a huge, flaccid bladder. Neither of these cats will dig in a litter box and squat to pee, although a few might attempt to pass poop in this way (not typical).

4) Reflex urination is entirely different. It is when there are no ‘gotta pee’ signals going to the brain, no ‘pee now’ signals coming back from the brain but the internal pressure signals from the bladder are working partly. They send the ‘gotta pee’ signal when the bladder is hugely full (this is a failsafe & why you will pee eventually if you are unconscious, but will not leak) to the spine and the spine sends back a ‘pee now’ signal. This is a failsafe reflex. With this signal the cat will pee, but not in a box. It may pee in it’s sleep, on the floor, anywhere and anytime, or just on itself, when the bladder gets so full it sends this signal.

Basic understanding of feeling vs. no feeling is important.
Cats do not groom what they do not feel.

Cats do not dig in a litter box and squat if they do not feel their bladder.

Cats can be taught to know they are full, come to you to be squeezed, and those that do feel their bladder enough to know they are full, some of them can be put down in a litter box where they will either reflex urinate (no digging) or dig and go.

Thanks to Stick and his people for starting this question. Thats Stick up above :)

Hope to be getting EVERYBODIES stories, bios and pictures up bit by bit.

Kadeth & Boogar

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?

Fizz, who had distemper and ...lived

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.....

The Song of the Wild One... Jackal

Pumpkin's dad, Kevin called me about a year and a half ago. He'd been on the road and stopped at a motel for the night and the motel was home for about fifty cats. It was summer, and there were kittens everywhere, skinny, runny eyed, wild kittens.

Now this motel had some long term residents and yes, people put out food for the cats. The cats drank from a swimming pool and a low, foul creek. They lived under dumpsters, behind trash bins, and hid under the cars watching , watching , watching.

Most of them struggled to get enough to eat. many were covered with matts and scars. Welcome to the life of a feral cat colony.

Now Kevin is a man who does NOT look the other way when it comes to animals. So he wanted to know if we coudl take my cat trap out there and trap kittens, tame them and place them. He knew of at least one person looking for a kitten, and was certain we could catch many of these kittens.

OK. I know that feral kittens do not always tame. There is a window in their life where they do. If they are caught befor about 5 weeks old, they tame well. Older, they might be OK in a house, but it's not likely they will become a sweet, socaible and friendly cat.

We took my cat trap out and caught kittens. Not all of them, they were way to smart. They knew what a trap was. But we got a few of them.

Jackal was one. Wild and terrified, skinny, dehydrated, starved. The tip of her tail was dead. She came home with me and went into quarenteen, got medical care, and went into intensive daily petting and people contact.

A home waited for her...

But, she never 'tamed'. Jackal tolerates me. But she loves the cats. She is Boogar's girl, and has grow up free, fierce and strong. She never went to her 'new home' because they wanted a sweet and friendly cat. But she has a forever home with Boogar, and the others.

Peeps and Crow

The lilac siamese is Peeps. Rescued from saddly, a foster- Peeps was one of a litter of four, bottle raised until weaned, then thrown into a cold garage with a bowl of water and dry dog kibble. Aparently the foster only liked kittens when they were drinking milk, and once weaned she lost interest.

At 4 months, when he was taken away from

the foster, he weighed 2 pounds .....

He should have weighted about 6 pounds.

Peeps had cataracts on both eyes from protein deficiancies, and had lost most of his hair. It took him awhile to get caught up.

Behind Peeps is Sage, the lynx point. Sage was found with her brother, at about 4 weeks old in a cardboard box, cooking in summer weather on a sidewalk. Both were almost dead from heat exhaustion, starvation and dehydration. For the first few months of Sage's life she seizured without fail every morning from a random drop in blood sugar that we could not prevent. I'd feed her every 2 hours, and some mornings she'd pass out and siezure, some she would not.

The grey kitty is Crow. Crow and her sister were dropped off in a box, starved and exposed to distemper. They were lucky, neither contracted the disease, which is generaly fatal to unvaccinated cats.

Pumpkin and Boogar, the spinal cord party boys...

It's been four years that I have wrapped my heart and life around Pumpkin, and eleven years of bonds that tie with love and life with Boogar.

They were the best of friends, after of course a peroid of feline 'you are weird go away' adjustment. Boogar is the crazy looking black cat...with one of his kitten friends. He likes kittens.

Pumpkin is the Orange Cat, on his last day. Pumpkin died thanksgiving day, due to extraodinary complications with diabetes, pancreatits, liver failure and finaly, kidney failure. Each organ system literaly 'died'.

Now as I try to let go with love and respect, and hold his memeory in my heart, I watch Boogar. He copes, in his zen tough cat way. But each night he insists on sleeping on the couch, his face pressed into the blankets Pumpkin last rested on. The lingering scent of his friend gives him comfort, the warmth of the blankets offers some solace in his cat grief.

While I ponder the bonds of love and trust between these two cats, I also think of the owners out there in the world who worry tonight, who struggle, who are afraid for their loved furry one, and my heart goes out to you all. You are not alone in your difficulties, in your sorrows, and inyour joys.

So this blog... it's for several things. Stories of the adventures of Pumpkin and Boogar, the spinal cord party boys... information networking for owners... basics of paralyzed cat care.

And if you have reached me, and you'd like me to post aletter you write, or story...let me know. This blog is for you, readers, pet owners..and most of all for those brave souls who have contacted me through my website, and have asked for assistance giving extrodinary care to their pets.

Welcome

Once upon a time there was a 4 week old kitten caught by a dog with a fractured spine. Through a course of events I could not predict, I chose to keep him and raise him.
He is now 11 years old, and has been paralyzed his whole life.

This does not mean he is crippled, or 'poor kitty', but rather that he is strong, healthy and well adapted to living without working rear legs.

And I am adapted to caring for him.

I have gained so much in caring for him.
I have gained wisdom, peace, knowledge and fire.
I have gained Pumpkin...and lost him
Through Pumpkin, I gained my best bro, adopted big brother, best guy friend Kevin, who found me and Boogar online, and brought Pumpkin into my care when Pumpkin was shot by...evil people.
I have gained....

May you gain now from me.

Over the past years I have massed allot of information of care of special needs cats. Having 30 years in veterinary medicine helps, having been a scrub nurse for a veterinary neurosurgeon helps, and being really passioate about medicine..well that helps most of all.

So this blog is for all those people who come to my main website, where I can post letters, and pictures, connect people and so on...without overwhelming my donated web hosting.

Peace

Kadeth

http://www.kadethdarkstar.com/