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I'm incredibly shaken up right now, sorry for any rambling.
One of our ferals ("Pretty Kitty") ended up going missing in very early May.
This was precipitated by a significant influx of new ferals that we were struggling to TNR because of raccoon interference. There was also a simultaneous and very significant influx of raccoons at this time as well.
We honestly figured Pretty Kitty just had enough, and didn't want to compete for food so much anymore. It was so bad that I would literally set my alarm to get up every two hours (and every 1 hour during the cats' peak visiting times) in the middle of the night to refill the food and change the water since the raccoons/wildlife would clean absolutely everything out.
Tonight as we were feeding our clowder, my boyfriend checked the front porch feeding station and Pretty Kitty was there. What should have been the joyous moment we'd been waiting for all summer, was instead a very frightening and disturbing one.
It was almost immediately clear that something was very wrong.
- He had an extreme head tilt (it appeared more severe than vestibular cases I've personally seen in the past).
- His bodily movement was erratic and irregular, although no clear signs of impaired balance or coordination (staggering, falling, etc) were apparent.
- He was very clearly disoriented, and exhibited inappropriate responses to auditory stimuli (not looking or facing the direction one would expect considering the relative location of the external stimulus).
- His eyes were wide, and at times looked to be darting and moving in otherwise erratic, rapid, and repetitive ways (clearly involuntary).
Once I was certain something wasn't right, I rushed to get a camera to film exactly what was happening...
Unfortunately, my boyfriend is still not used to feral behavior. He also thought, for some reason, PK's tail was missing and wanted a to get a better look. So as soon as I started filming, he tried to get PK's attention and PK did what any normal feral and many cats would do - he ran. (Still so angry he did that!!! )
However, PK (thankfully?) didn't act completely predictably - for himself or as a feral. Rather than immediately running well out of sight, he only ran just out of the way, which made him partially visible to us, so we were able to get something on camera.
I am so sorry for such a crappy quality video. It's night, the lighting's bad, the camera keeps going out of focus, we're a good distance away, PK is mostly behind a bush, etc. But please stick with the video and try to see him if you can.
I had to split the video in two in order to upload it.
In the second video, PK can just barely be seen behind the bush on the left of the screen. You can see his upper body and head movements. If you pay attention, you can kind of see the erratic nature of his movements (like making big, wide, swinging movements just to look the other way) and the extreme head tilt.
At points it will look like he is intentionally looking at something above him - I assure you, he is not. He was doing the same exact thing on our porch in every direction (at times with accompanying erratic eye movements). It may not look like much from behind a bush, but the abnormality of it was so clearly evident, that even my clueless boyfriend was immediately distressed by it.
Turn the brightness on your screen all the way up and enlarge/fit to screen as much as possible.
View media item 422733
View media item 422734
I am honestly sick with worry right now. All we could do was watch and I felt so unbearably helpless.
Some unique challenges lay ahead of us now.
We have a hard enough time trapping any of the cats around here because of the raccoons, and I'm not sure what we're going to do. PK was trap savvy before... and we have 3-4 more newcomers/interlopers who just showed up this past week and only two traps.
If we set them and happen to only get the new cats (unlikely, but I want to consider this to be prepared), we're going to be left with a really difficult decision -
Do we let a newcomer go and potentially never see or be able to trap that cat again in order to maybe trap PK?
Or do we take them inside to be TNR'd the next morning, effectively delaying trapping PK?
I'm leaning toward prioritizing PK first, but I know that's an emotional decision... not a logical one. I'm not confident I could make any other decision, however.
I'm so utterly overwhelmed. It is ripping my heart out right now knowing he's out there in the state he's in and I can't bear it.
Any advice or general support would be very welcome right now.
One of our ferals ("Pretty Kitty") ended up going missing in very early May.
This was precipitated by a significant influx of new ferals that we were struggling to TNR because of raccoon interference. There was also a simultaneous and very significant influx of raccoons at this time as well.
We honestly figured Pretty Kitty just had enough, and didn't want to compete for food so much anymore. It was so bad that I would literally set my alarm to get up every two hours (and every 1 hour during the cats' peak visiting times) in the middle of the night to refill the food and change the water since the raccoons/wildlife would clean absolutely everything out.
Tonight as we were feeding our clowder, my boyfriend checked the front porch feeding station and Pretty Kitty was there. What should have been the joyous moment we'd been waiting for all summer, was instead a very frightening and disturbing one.
It was almost immediately clear that something was very wrong.
- He had an extreme head tilt (it appeared more severe than vestibular cases I've personally seen in the past).
- His bodily movement was erratic and irregular, although no clear signs of impaired balance or coordination (staggering, falling, etc) were apparent.
- He was very clearly disoriented, and exhibited inappropriate responses to auditory stimuli (not looking or facing the direction one would expect considering the relative location of the external stimulus).
- His eyes were wide, and at times looked to be darting and moving in otherwise erratic, rapid, and repetitive ways (clearly involuntary).
Once I was certain something wasn't right, I rushed to get a camera to film exactly what was happening...
Unfortunately, my boyfriend is still not used to feral behavior. He also thought, for some reason, PK's tail was missing and wanted a to get a better look. So as soon as I started filming, he tried to get PK's attention and PK did what any normal feral and many cats would do - he ran. (Still so angry he did that!!! )
However, PK (thankfully?) didn't act completely predictably - for himself or as a feral. Rather than immediately running well out of sight, he only ran just out of the way, which made him partially visible to us, so we were able to get something on camera.
I am so sorry for such a crappy quality video. It's night, the lighting's bad, the camera keeps going out of focus, we're a good distance away, PK is mostly behind a bush, etc. But please stick with the video and try to see him if you can.
I had to split the video in two in order to upload it.
In the second video, PK can just barely be seen behind the bush on the left of the screen. You can see his upper body and head movements. If you pay attention, you can kind of see the erratic nature of his movements (like making big, wide, swinging movements just to look the other way) and the extreme head tilt.
At points it will look like he is intentionally looking at something above him - I assure you, he is not. He was doing the same exact thing on our porch in every direction (at times with accompanying erratic eye movements). It may not look like much from behind a bush, but the abnormality of it was so clearly evident, that even my clueless boyfriend was immediately distressed by it.
Turn the brightness on your screen all the way up and enlarge/fit to screen as much as possible.
View media item 422733
View media item 422734
I am honestly sick with worry right now. All we could do was watch and I felt so unbearably helpless.
Some unique challenges lay ahead of us now.
We have a hard enough time trapping any of the cats around here because of the raccoons, and I'm not sure what we're going to do. PK was trap savvy before... and we have 3-4 more newcomers/interlopers who just showed up this past week and only two traps.
If we set them and happen to only get the new cats (unlikely, but I want to consider this to be prepared), we're going to be left with a really difficult decision -
Do we let a newcomer go and potentially never see or be able to trap that cat again in order to maybe trap PK?
Or do we take them inside to be TNR'd the next morning, effectively delaying trapping PK?
I'm leaning toward prioritizing PK first, but I know that's an emotional decision... not a logical one. I'm not confident I could make any other decision, however.
I'm so utterly overwhelmed. It is ripping my heart out right now knowing he's out there in the state he's in and I can't bear it.
Any advice or general support would be very welcome right now.