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Newly worn-out cat daddy here. Yesterday afternoon a neighbor brought me three orphaned infant kittens; they're about three days old tops. Their eyes and ears are still closed, and they still have the dried remains of their umbilical cords attached to their bellies. I was up every hour and a...

Yep, I guess I'm an outlaw of sorts after yesterday. Pennsylvania law states quite explicitly that procedures on animals involving an incision must be done by a licensed veterinarian, and I and a colleague broke that law. The situation was this: On Wednesday night I noticed one of my cats had...

One sees some interesting things in animal shelters, especially if involved in the medical treatment of the animals. Today we did a spay-abort surgery on a pregnant cat; two fairly advanced fetal sacs were removed from her, but so too was a slightly smaller mass that was yellow in color...

Bathroom, pregnant feral and clawfoot bathtub. Five years ago I captured one of my first ferals, who happened to be very pregnant. She escaped, ran into the bathroom and hid under the bathtub. She gave birth there--three kittens, all of whom died two days later. When we recaptured her (an...

Last Monday one of the trappers I work with brought me a young female cat that had a litter of 3-4 week old kittens. She was lethargic and dehydrated; I gave her 200ml of saline solution subcutaneous, but it did no good. She was slightly uncomfortable but put up no resistance and her condition...

Yesterday a man brought a box of five kittens to The Cube--they were less than two hours old. One still had the placenta attached to it; their mother died (cause unknown) before she could chew it off and eat it. We managed to stabilize the kittens and by the time the clinic was done they were...

I'm working with a difficult patient and have been for the last few days, but I'm finally making progress. This was a feral kitten I captured a few months ago who has lived in my home since then but has generally avoided human contact. Clarence would roughhouse with the other cats but ran away...

I used to be in the theater, and the conventional wisdom there meant that a bad dress rehearsal meant a good run for the actual show. I sure hope that bleeds over, because last Saturday's spay/neuter clinic was not a dress rehearsal. It started out well enough, with a vet and a vet tech doing...

Today we spayed, neutered and vaccinated 54 cats--a pretty good day for us. None were pregnant, but one was post-partum and required subcutaneous fluids post-surgery. Three cases stand out--one was two kittens from the same litter with birth defects. Each was born without an eye, one on the...

Rough month--that's pretty much the gist of it. I saw some things that most of us don't, and I'll probably see them again. We're pretty much all in agreement that TNRM is the way to go with managing and caring for stray and feral cats, but like everything else the practice is messier than the...

This really isn't recommended, but sometimes one has no other option. Ideally, TNRM means that a feral cat should be kept with its own managed colony upon recovery, but that's not always possible. The situation I'm currently involved with deals with a feral female who was trapped in a...

The Cube is a facility within the Philadelphia SPCA dedicated to spaying/neutering/treating Philadelphia's stray and feral cats. It is, as far as I know, the only such facility in the US and has great promise as a model for other cities. The Cube is a project started by the Philadelphia SPCA...

A tragic one, unfortunately. A few weeks ago a neighbor gave me some kittens born to a feral mother--they were approximately five weeks old at the time. We called them the "Fuzzy Butts", two males and a female. We kept them isolated on the second floor of our house but gave them free run of...

Wolfie is sound asleep on the end of the bed after an hour or two playing with the Fuzzy-Butt Triplets, and seems to be having good dreams. I get to dream again too, after the Nightmare on Tree Street. Wolfie is a kitten I got from Peg Brickley and is one of only two kittens she's brought me...

In the past week I've seen two young kittens from two separate neighborhoods with pretty bad stomatosis--and those were kittens who tested negative for FIV/FELV. For those of you not familiar with stomatosis, it is an oral infection that attacks both a cat's teeth and the soft tissues in its...

This evening I received the brother and sister of the poor kitty that was killed by the maggots. I cleaned them both up--both appear to be healthy and have really good appetites. Mom has not yet been trapped, but that's pending. On Tuesday we'll have an organizational "meet and greet" at a...

Yesterday evening a fellow rescue worker brought me a four-week old kitten in need of medical care. He was lethargic and dehydrated and covered in fleas; his groin was completely covered by maggots. I washed him off and administered Frontline to kill the fleas, which I mistakenly thought were...

It's definitely kitten season, a less than pleasant time for those of us working the clinical end of this. Not only do we have to deal with the consequences of pregnancy (many of them now advanced), but other aspects of the feline "mating season" as well. At yesterday's spay/neuter clinic I...

I got an e-mail earlier today from a fellow trapper whose neighbor has an injured housecat but cannot afford to take it to a vet. I'm not a vet, I'm more of self-trained medic with some clinical hands-on experience, but I went over and had a look at the cat. I was not very happy with what I...

TNR is really taking off here in Philadelphia, and new neighborhood groups are popping up in response. Here in South Philly we have a loose association of trappers who live close enough together to focus our efforts on areas with the greatest need. During the WWII Battle of the Atlantic...