Month: November 2012

Today, 8 days after his surgery, Beardsley had his stitches removed and weighed in at 2lb 7oz. Only 8days ago he was 1lb 13oz and failing to thrive.

For the last week Beardsley had to wear an Elizabethan collar keeping him from grooming his stitches, he’s been fed during the day every 2hrs or so and been restricted from normal, rambunctious kitten behavior. Today his stitches were removed and no longer needs the collar. What a change, from a weakling to a combat ready cat in just over a week.

Ms. D told us that she has a small litter needing short term fostering and they were all nice kitties. Barbara and I discussed it and we agreed reluctantly, we were just unsure of our accommodations. The kitten room is just not quite  what Barbara wants – more about this some other time.

Ms. D dropped of the kittens, all about 8 weeks old, a black and two orange tabbies. All cute as could be. If you’ve seen the cover to the book Dewey you know what the two tabbies look like.

One of the two tabbies Beardsley was smaller than his brother Mackenzie, yes Mackenzie for a boy, and was the most outgoing and playful. Tori and Mackenzie were uniformly unconfident, huddling with each other and as far from us as possible.

On the third day Beardsley stopped eating. His siblings were fine and we were puzzled. A trip to the vet told us little except we needed to syringe feed him repeatedly through out the day getting him to eat on his own. So, we learned to syringe feed him and did so with about 10-20ml of watered down AD Kitten food mixed with some EnerCal vitamin paste. We fed him every 2-3 hours all day long only breaking at night time.

But, Beardley was losing weight. He came to us at just over 2 lbs and after the 2nd or 3rd day of syringe feeding he was down to 1 lb 14 oz. Over 2 oz lost! We were worried and were really not prepared to lose a kitty finally. After 70 kittens we’ve never lost one. We don’t take the hard cases, we take the kittens that need attention and a home to be habilited-in. We were not doing the feeding wrong, he just was failing.

Barbara insisted on a 2nd vet visit which carried no tests and advice only. We needed to give him some evaporated milk, keep up the feedings, blah, blah, blah. After 10 days of syringe feeding he was listless, had a 1000-yard stare, and was frailer than ever.

Barbara decided that Beardsley need to go our vet, Windham Animal Hospital in Windham, NH. They examined him, took x-rays and after showing the xr=ays to us and the gravelly material apparently in his stomach, they wanted us to give him a laxative for pets several times a day to help move what was in his stomach along. We did administer the laxative orally and after a day we were back at the vet as planned. With the unidentified stuff in his stomach there were two choices, he’s have surgery to remove the stomach contents or he’d be put down. Barbara asked the animal rescue organization to approve surgery and they agreed.

Dr. Sullivan didn’t want to do the surgery given Beardsley’s weak condition however Dr. Pearson did believing Beardsley would pull through. We were on pins and needles all day waiting to hear the outcome of the surgery. While were in the car coming home from some event or other we got a call and the news was good. Beardsley had ingested something thin and plastic, a lot of it, like a cellophane wrapper to something and it was wadded up tightly in his stomach. Likely before he was trapped with his sibs, he was hungry and food attached to the plastic was gobbled down. By the time we got him the full effects of the plastic in the stomach had not fully interfered with him. It was only a matter of time.

We went to the hospital the next day, discussed his home care and saw the plastic extracted from his stomach. Truly amazing.

He was operated on Thursday, we picked him up Friday, he’s been on small, frequent meals of mushy food along with an antibiotic twice a day and pain meds. We’ve not syringe fed him once, just like any normal kitten, he eats the food out of a small dish and we’re so happy.

We got him a 1lb 14oz on Friday and today on Monday he’s 2lb 2oz already. Well on his way to fully mended and to the adopters waiting for him.