Kitten Season. The TURMOIL Of A Vet Who Doesn't Always Know What To Do.

This was the post I placed on my clinics Facebook Page this morning.

"Every Monday JVC provides TNR (trap neuter return) spays and neuters to our community cats. For the past three weeks every female has been pregnant. These cats are either without a home and/or feral. If not spayed the chances of the kittens being preyed upon or suffering from communicable disease is immense. It is not a life for a domestic animal. Please help us provide more assistance to the most needy in our community by spaying & neutering and supporting local charities that provide TNR services. Last year Jarrettsville Veterinary Center found homes for almost 100 unwanted pets. Let's try to cut that in half every year forward. Thanks to all who help."

The TNR cats arrive in a cat trap hiding, hissing, and afraid.
We sedate them through the cage and remove them when they are safe to handle and asleep.

This was one of the first replies I got back;

I am sure that must be difficult for you

Unlike · Reply · Message · 1 · 1 hr

Jarrettsville Vet Center We too often feel like we have no good options. These kittens die outside horrible deaths by disease or predators. These moms are feral. And the kittens become feral if not handled within the first few weeks. It is a vicious cycle only made better by allowing the moms to get spayed and be fed by the colony care givers. We don't even know they are pregnant because we have to sedate them inside the cage. If we don't spay them they will be euthanized when the colony numbers become too large. It is a side of society no one wants to see or admit too. All we can do is help those the volunteers trap and care for. Too many cats get no care, no feeding and no vaccines. Rabies is spread by these cats. Thank you for your kind thoughts.

A sleepy sedated cat is taken out for the exam and spay/neuter surgery

Here is what a typical TNR day looks like; The cats arrive they are in an individual metal trap. They were baited by food to go into it and as soon as they get far enough inside the trap door closes. Most of these cats are from a local colony that is managed by a team of volunteers who take turns providing food, shelter and over sight. They also know the colony. It is as good as we can get when a cat is dumped by a human. These cats were not born here from a wild cat. They are the byproduct of a society that domesticated them and then refused to take full responsibility for them. TNR is the only humane way to provide safety and compassion to a pet we forgot about.

waking up after surgery

Here's where I find myself swimming in an ocean of doubt, despair, and dismay; What do you do when there are too many cats in your area? Too many for homes? And too many to be ignored? After all I live in a very rural area of Maryland. Barns, horses, and farms are the halfway homes to cats who have no residence to call their own. For some the life of a 'barn cat' is a profession worthy of a warm meal, a safe bed, and veterinary care. For others, theses cats are tantamount to rodents. Unwanted scavengers who are not welcomed and not cared for.

For almost every community in our country a cat who is undeniably a domestic pet, they however have no rights, no status, and no obligatory list of provisions. Even though every cat is required to be vaccinated for rabies there is no oversight nor consequence when they aren't. If we took protecting ourselves from this zoonotic disease we should do a better job of protecting our domestic pets.

What do you do when every year, regardless of how hard you try to educate your neighbors about how prolific a cat can reproduce, more cats show up? The never ending revolving door of kittens so sick, so debilitated and so pitiful you are compelled to help, because you can, because you know that if you don't the prognosis goes from poor to grave, again, and again, and, again. There is exhaustion in taking them into the clinic, but, there is death, regret, and pain beyond compare when you don't. So, you do it,, again and again.

Most vet practices do not provide  TNR assistance. I am afraid that it isn't because there aren't any feral, homeless, or unspayed/neutered cats in the community, but rather because;

1. They make more money on owned cats. Typically TNR cats receive only a rabies vaccine, their sterilization surgery and ear tip. At my practice a TNR spay is about $80, a neuter about $40. The average client with a kitten will spend upwards of $400 at my clinic. The vets time is more lucratively served on clients.
2.  They don't want the hassle of feral cats. Big clunky cages strewn about the clinic, smelly cages (really BAD smelling cages), and the loss surgery time for others who can pay full price.
3. There is never an end to these cats. The feral cat well never runs dry. I can say that for as much as the finances don't discourage me the never ending flood of unwanted cats feels like swimming in an ocean without a horizon.
4. These cats are feral. They are afraid. I am sure there are some vets who would use this as a reason to avoid handling them. With practice and the right drug protocol I have never had a case or a cat I couldn't handle. 
5. Disease. I cannot get around the argument that a feral cat isn't a possible source for disease transmission. I can however argue that this is the nature of our business. There is an equal likelihood in my neck of the woods that the "owned" house cat has been, or can be, exposed to the same disease. I cannot chose to not help them.
6. The excuse that "there are places for these cats elsewhere" is a cheap excuse to turn your back on the members of our community we are supposed to be helping. An 'owned cat' should be treated as respectfully and professionally as an "unowned cat."

A very hungry orphan

These TNR cats are the off spring of cats who were;

• allowed to go outside and got lost.
• never spayed or neutered.
• put outside because they were house soiling
• put outside because they were not loved
• dumped by someone who couldn't/wouldn't care for them
• They are the consequence of a species we lack respect for.

Cats are magnificent creatures who are far more intelligent than we give them credit for.

Neutering one of our 2016 kittens

Here's the ethical dilemmas with TNR's. I don't know whether the cat I am sedating through a little wire square is healthy? Or if it is a male or a female? If she is a female I don't know if she is pregnant? If she is pregnant, how pregnant is she? What about if they are REALLY REALLY pregnant? Who wants to live with being an abortion vet? It certainly is NOT what I went to vet school for.. We use an injectable sedative that needs to be placed in the muscle. This sedative allows them to be handled. It also slows the heart rate, temperature, and blood flow. For unborn kittens this, and the general anesthesia needed to maintain adequate anesthesia, will often make trying to revive them impossible. Also, kittens who are removed from their mom before they are ready to be born have a low survival rate.

If the mom is feral (as all of these are) the kittens need to be hand raised. This requires feeding them every two hours. Making sure they stay warm, fed and cared for. It is a full time job that requires experience, fortitude and self preservation when they die at 2 am after a day (or days) of endless worry. To be dedicated and compassionate enough to provide this degree of intensive care and then have them die is.. well,, breaking. It can break you. If you aren't very careful, and somehow manage to volunteer for the next litter you learn to allocate yourself in more manageable amounts. I have tried on more than one occasion to save the late term kittens. I won't do it again. They die within hours or days, and they are so labor intensive it is heartbreaking on too many levels.

This is the uterus of a feral pregnant cat.
These babies are about a month old,, far too young to be viable

I know of many practitioners who are afraid to post to social media. They only allow chummy photos of happy kittens and puppies. I feel very strongly that honesty and transparency are paramount to building and maintaining integrity. I also feel very passionately and deeply about animals. I am a veterinarian so I do need to narrow that a bit to "pets". I am also trying, yes, still trying, to find that end of unwanted pets. To save enough lives along the way that it might actually make a difference.

Do I think about a backlash after I post a pregnant cat spay photo? Of course. I live in in the USA, abortion is under fire, and the collateral damage is possible.

If I wanted to live in the land of happy puppies and fluffy kittens I wouldn't be a vet. I would be a kindergarten teacher. I would blissfully obliviously portray the life I am paid to emulate. The real-life of a vet is unwanted pets. If you aren't happy about it do something. Join me for a TNR, adopt a shelter pet, or donate to one of the many rescues who take care of other humans neglect.

One of our JVC kittens is tested for FeLV/FIV 

You can spend your life tip-toeing around life and all of the sticky spots it provides you. I am too old and have too much left to do to waste anymore time living in life among the minefield.

The surgery table.
One cat is prepped for a spay, the other is being microchipped.

Being a veterinarian is part making people happy, part being true to a calling, and part trying to navigate through unchartered and unchapperoned shit storms. If it was easy we wouldn't be the lucky recipients of the "profession with the highest suicide rate." Do you think that we don't get asked to provide the ugly side of pets being property, disposable, and replacable daily? We do. It is why we are so sheltered, Why many of us are not your personal friends. Why our clients don't have our personal information and why we become the stoic, reserved, distant women of the profession.

The local Humane Society,, where they have more than enough cats to go around already

What do you do with the reality that most cats in my rural area are never going to be treated as a 'companion'? How do I turn away a basket of sick, dying kittens that some well intentioned kid found? If you think I can send them to the shelter, I need to inform you that in many places the shelter doesn't accept cats. In others I am sending the kittens to an overcrowded understaffed s-h-e-l-t-e-r. Where disease is more prevalent, more widespread, and the kittens are not likely to get the intensive care they need. I do not send kittens or sick, injured pets to the shelter. I do not shirk a responsibility I know I can manage better than they can.

Is leaving kittens outside to fend for themselves safe? NO! Absolutely not. They are little tiny meowing morsels. They cannot escape, defend themselves or feed themselves. So I am left having to decide what I can do to help these cats whom I feel equally devoted to. They have survived within the life we cast them away too. The babies we are asked to help get care beyond what the shelters can do. It has been a labor of building a network of people who know we will provide everything they need regardless of the bill and the owner being unknown and unwilling to step up. If you believe you can make a difference you must try. 

The kittens I found in a tire on the side of a deserted road.
They had been dumped there,,
If you are a vet you can have a hard time not hating people

The vet practice I am responsible for is doing whatever we can wherever we can, even if it isn't without sacrifice and hard decisions.

If I turn my back on them, and dismiss them as "someone else's problem, BOTH my conscious and my community cats pay.

If I turn my back on the reality of posting what is really happening in our back yards, I am as complicit as the pet parent who gave up on their cat. The vet down the street who is only worthy of paying customers, and society who refuses to embraces cats with the same degree of genuine love that the dog has earned.

If I turn my back on who I went to vet school to become I have no legacy to leave behind that I am proud of.

Two of the TNR cats we adopted out in 2016 proudly display their ear tips.

Does every pregnant cat break my heart, YES! Almost as much as every sick, debilitated, broken spirited, beaten up, hungry, scared cat does.. There is no end to the ethical dilemmas I face every day, I'm just not going to bury or ignore them.

Here is more about our dedication to cats;

TNR's are not charged an examination. For clients interested in our feline services here are our prices;

Rabies vaccine is $16, spay is $100, neuter $60. FeLV/FIV $45 Microchips are $25

Our routine kitten vaccination protocol;

• We usually see kittens at 8-12 weeks. First visit includes FVRCP + Leuk vaccine, part 1 of 2 done 3 weeks apart. Fecal exam for intestinal parasites, $30, deworming about $15, microchip $25, Feline leukemia & FIV test $45, first dose of flea preventative $10. Cost of first cat visit is about $175.
• Last kitten visit at 16 weeks, finish FVRCP + Leuk vaccine, 1 yr rabies vaccine, pre-op spay/neuter bloodwork ($50), about $150.
• Feline Neuter $60
• Feline Spay $100

Here is our complete Price Guide for 2017

If you would like to follow our Facebook page you can learn more about us. If you have a pet question you can ask it for free at Pawbly.com. You can also find interesting pet facts, cases and stories at my YouTube channel and @FreePetAdvice.

The Kitten House Of Cards

The most dreaded part of my being a vet is the deluge of unwanted, homeless tiny felines. It begins in early March and continues through October. Even as September descends upon us the kittens still bloom. This last week we had 8, (oddly all black or black and white), kittens arrive without a person to love them. Apparently the admission of having a soft spot in your heart for cats and the helping of those in need of a halfway house leads to the flood gates being flung wide open. The idea that everyone doesn't admire and adore cats of all sizes, shapes, and colors is almost impossible for me to comprehend. At the beginning, middle, and end of every disastrous day is a purring mass of fur and my encompassing arms. I take therapeutic kitten breaks daily. It is the single best part of my job, my workplace, and the life blood of my soul.

Every day there seems to be yet another kitten, from yet another person, that appears to have either manifested "out of thin air," was "dropped off by some transparent being," or came from the "cat-cornucopia-farm across the road that never spays or neuters their barn cats."

Every request is the same, "I can't keep it," or, "I'm not a cat person," (what the hell does that mean?),  "but I heard you guys like cats." All delivered with a tone of expectation and a demeanor of self-assured justified shirking of responsibility.

How do I respond to this? "Umm,,,, Yes, of course I like cats. I'm a vet. But, no, I can't take every cat from every person who asks me to." (Although secretly I do wish I could).

After school visit with the kittens.
Our daily ritual with my nephew.

Any species who can adapt so quickly, so efficiently, and so successfully to as many places and conditions as the domestic house cat has deserves respect and adoration. They are incredibly prolific and reported as being able to produce over 400,000 cats in seven years from one cat. Quite impressive and quite humbling to all of us who dedicate huge amounts of time and resources attempting to spay and neuter our way out of the millions of cats euthanized in the US every year.

Found by a client this kitten was caught in a fan motor.
She lost her front left leg, suffered some facial injuries and is being treated for a crushing,
degloving injury of her back left leg.
We are intensively trying to save her back leg.
Many Thanks to our technician Laura and Dr. Hubbard for caring for her.

We say that a cat has 9 lives because they are impressively hardy, smart, cunning, calculating, and savvy, all characteristics of a survivor. Every single one of us has much to learn from the cat.

When it comes to providing for a kitten there is a short list of needs that must be met.

Kittens are like a house of cards. It takes a few cards to be stacked, a shaky foundation and the whole structure can collapse. Should you ever find a kitten of your own they must be provided the following;

• Warmth. Every newborn needs to be kept warm. Whether it comes from a cuddling mom, a warming blanket, a heating pad, a heat lamp, or just being kept close to your heart.
• Keeping them clean and dry in an enclosed place out of the elements.
• Food. Babies burn calories at an alarming rate. Keep them eating. For a kitten this is about every two hours of an age appropriate food. We have calorie dense wet foods to help, think the kitten version of Ensure.
• Fleas. The blood sucking, life depleting parasite that is the demise of many a small soul. Remove them with a flea comb and soapy water, nothing else. Those adult flea preventative topicals can kill a weak, compromised baby, avoid them. Be patient and comb.
• Parasites. The invisible intestinal parasites can, and do, grow to such numbers that they can steal the life from a kitten from the inside out. (Reminder, you will likely NOT see evidence of intestinal parasites in the feces, they are microscopic).

The kitten whole stole my heart,,again, Lucky.

This is Lucky, a two month old feral? (more like homeless) kitten. He came to us almost comatose. He was soo cold that he would not register on the thermometer for almost 30 minutes after aggressive warming was begun. He was emaciated, lifeless, and very pale. He was also covered in fleas, dehydrated, and suffering from an upper respiratory infection.

Within 30 minutes of warming him, removing his fleas, and feeding him he was lifting his head and purring. After 4 hours he was up and cuddling.

He is a miracle of gratitude and the best answer to a long day of not feeling like my life has a deeper meaning. He is the reason veterinarians do what we do.

Lucky was adopted yesterday.

We still have six kittens and four adults looking for a home to fill with a sense of purpose and completion.

Should you find yourself in need of a hug, a warm nose to snuggle, a purr to keep the night from lasting too long, or just the unconditional love of a pet please come by and visit Jarrettsville Vet to see and meet our babies.

Or, ask me a question FREE about how to care for your kids at Pawbly.com, or like us on Facebook at Jarrettsville Vet, or Pawbly. You can also follow me on Twitter @FreePetAdvice.

Boo Gets Better

This is Boo.

He came to us a week ago looking pretty sad. He had been found by some very caring kids who knew that he was very sick but didn't really know how to care for him. So they brought him to us. 

He was about one month old. He had so much snot in his nose that he almost couldn't breathe. He also had so much gunk in his eyes that they couldn't open. 

He had what most sick kittens do; an upper respiratory infection. When a kitten gets stuffed up they can't smell their food, and when they can't smell they do not eat.

He also had a very low body temperature. 

But the biggest challenge he was facing was fleas. He had so many fleas that he was anemic. The fleas can, and will literally suck the life out of a pet.  

The best way to treat a young puppy or kitten with fleas is to remove them with a flea comb. Comb the pet and with each pass of the comb rinse it in warm soapy water. When all of the fleas have been removed dry the pet gently with a towel or a blow dryer on low or cool heat. A wet pet will get cold, and an anemic undernourished pet is always tempting hypothermia. Keep them warm and dry and free of parasites.

Kitten care is about a few very basic things;

1. Keep them warm.
2. Keep fleas off.
3. Keep them eating.
4. If you see snot and goop, you have infection, so go to the vet IMMEDIATELY!

Here is Boo about three days later!

And five days later.

Boo is happy, playful, eating like gangbusters, and breathing easy.

He is so comfortable that he actively seeks attention. A very sick pet will just lay there. They do not interact, they do not play, and when they stop eating its time to get medical attention!

This is Boo and Beast. 

Beast came to us from the local Humane Society because there were too many cats an litters for them to be able to care for. They are both recovering from their upper respiratory infections but the companionship does miracles in itself. Kittens need someone to play with and snuggle with. They keep each other warm and are less likely to have behavioral issues down the road. I swear by the two pet principle. Two is better, easy, and more fun, than one.


This is Boo at two weeks. There is no sign of infection anymore.

Cats and kittens are miracles. They have an incredible ability to heal.

Never, ever, underestimate them. But give them a chance by seeking veterinary attention should you see signs of infection.

A special Thank-You to Dr. Hubbard of Jarrettsville Vet for being such a good foster mom to the kittens. It takes a special person to be willing to get up multiple times a night to feed and care for kittens. Those miracles had some helpers and those happy healthy kittens are lucky to have found such devoted feline fanciers!

If you have any questions on pet care you can find me at Pawbly.com. Questions are free to ask, and anyone and everyone is invited to ask or answer. It's all about helping pets.

Or you can find me on Twitter @FreePetAdvice.

Please consider adopting a cat or kitten at your local shelter, and please remember to spay and neuter.

Thanks!

The Sickest Kitten of Them ALL

I knew when I saw her that she was a hopeless case.

She had every possible ailment piled on top of her and she was a scrap of a specimen.

Unfortunately, she was being delivered to me from a dear friend with a very fragile spirit. Every fiber of my scientific being told me to speak up, be honest, and count this kitten as another sad statistic to a society that doesn’t take responsibility for a barn cat.

I held that kitten, felt her weightlessness, and looked at my friend tell me for the second time now, to hear the tail end of her story of “how she just couldn’t leave her there by the side of the busy 4 lane highway. She seemed to pop up into thin air, and if she hadn’t I would have missed her. Do you think she will be alright?”

I had to take a long pause before I could answer. The simple efficient answer was “No.” The answer I could live with and the crushing blow I was trying to dart was, “I will do whatever I can to save her.”

I stuck with answer number two. My friend said she would take her as soon as she was well enough to go to her house for foster care.

Kittens are about the most resilient creatures created. I thought she would likely be dead in a day or in foster care in three.

She didn’t weigh a half a pound when she was found. She was a carpet of fleas, and so weak she lay in my hand unable to respond to her natural fear of being with a stranger in a vet hospital.

The next two hours were spent combing off fleas, and killing each life sucking ecto-parasite from her emaciated bony pathetic body. This is a common ailment for a sick kitten. I have seen many many kittens come to me with fleas, but there seems to be some delicate ethereal balance between the host and the parasite. Most healthy outdoor kittens have a few straggling fleas swimming under their coats. But the weakened sickly kittens seem to have a plethora. It appears that the fleas can detect the easy targets and they gang up to deliver their coordinated fatal blow.

If you have a kitten, or find a kitten, please make sure that you de-flea them. A comb, some water, and patience are the safest tools to eradicate them. If you have a severe burden we sometimes use a very tiny amount of a commercially available anti-flea product. (Ask your veterinarian, or call your local rescue for advice with which ones are safe to use). Please, please don’t use anything from an old remedy. I have had clients bring in kittens treated with deadly toxic things, too awful to mention, (stay tuned for future blogs, where I divulge them). But, one last thing, if you get a kitten wet you need to be very very careful to not let them get cold. The big kitten killers are cold, parasites, and lack of nourishment.

The secret to flea removal in kittens is to comb them out with a metal flea comb. The flea comb will separate every hair shaft and remove every flea from the pets’ coat. After the flea is caught in the coat it is wiped on an alcohol soaked paper towel to kill it. The objective is to gently comb the fleas out without getting the kitten wet.

Kittens die from two things first, cold and lack of sustenance, (anemia from being sucked free of your red blood cells by a militia of tiny vampires comes in a close third).

I give a ton of kitten advice every spring: Keep them warm, clean and eating. And remember that peeing and pooping is assisted by their mom, so if you are their foster mom you have to be prepared to stimulate, (if you don’t know what I am talking about ask your vet or rescue). And as always get advice early and often.

Every community has an underground congregation of women (and a few compassionate men, I know this sounds sexist, but check me, I’m spot on), who provide emergency and primary care to throws of abandoned kittens every year. Know them, use them, and help them by keeping your kitten in your home until it is 8 weeks old and ready for its forever home. Also check a fecal, see your vet and always, always be kind to a pet.

Back to my poor pathetic near dead kitten.

She was the worst case I had seen in I think about ever.

Her first day in captivity included de-fleaing, warming, feeding and assessing. She was about 1 month old, but about half the weight she should have been. The fleas were eradicated and she was warmed like a preemie in the NICU ward. All swaddled and bundled and appearing to be a happy patient.

My skepticism in her ability to meet her medical challenges was addressed again by the FeLV/FIV test. She was barely pink, and I was demanding three drops of her short supply blood.

We vets are a hard-line bunch. We tend to try to lighten our load at the starting line by looking for the reasons to give up on our patients. We make our mental list of possible pit-fall problems and proceed through the diagnostic tree to try to reach our conclusive diagnosis. For cats the death sentence is usually wielded by the blue dot determining a felid as either feline leukemia (FeLV) or feline immunodificiency virus (FIV). Those dots mean almost certain death for a feral cat.

We justify the sentence as a way of eradicating the disease from the population. Medicine in its truest form is statistics and prognostic indicators for favorable outcomes, but it is usually determined on the idea that we serve the populations better good, not on the heart-strings of the meekest long shot at survival. We are trained to serve the health of the population even though we are called to medicine by the yearning to serve those with the poorest odds.

With a favorable disease free FeLV/FIV test behind her we took another step down the triage tree. Mental checklist went as follows; warm, check. FeLV/FIV free, check. Flea free, check. That left only the anemia to resolve.

OK, here’s where I get obstinate  If you aren’t going to a vet that places femoral catheters you are losing kittens. It is a scary thing to do the first time and a breeze of life saving breathe every time there after. I place them in seconds and I place them with EVERY SINGLE KITTEN that I think is sick.

It has single-handily saved more kittens then I can remember counting. It is the easiest, quickest, and most effective way to provide life support. Whether that be via delivery of itra-osseous fluids or blood. In most kittens cases it ends up being blood, but in all cases it is life-saving emergency fluids.

Within an hour you can transform a lifeless on the verge if death kitten into a playing, purring, animated spark. It will melt your heart, and make you feel like a god.

I was certain she wouldn’t make it through her first day. She had anemia, pneumonia, and was emaciated. I didn’t give her a name, and I didn’t call my friend to commiserate about my premonition.

I had told her that the first 24 to 48 hours were critical, and that if she made it to hour 49 she was probably out of the woods. It was a commonly used medical adage, but I was wrong about that too.

It took one day for me to see even a tinge of color in her gums, but she remained a weak, motionless mass for days.

Her coat went from flea dirt peppered to wet greasy and sickly. Her eyes swelled shut and her head was eternally cocked back nose to the sky to allow her heavy dense lungs to attempt to pull air through her crusted cloaked nostrils. She never lay down, but instead remained sitting up, head back clinging to life by a tiny thread.

I carried her with me everywhere I went. Closed in a tiny cat carrier, a postcard sized litter box, thimble sized food bowl and tea cup bed enclosed in a plastic box with a handle for portability.

I spoke to my friend every day, usually three or four times a day, always saying the same thing. “She is very, very sick, I keep expecting her to get better, but she instead trades one disease or affliction for another. I still don’t think she is going to make it.”

And everyday she would say the same thing, ‘’Well as soon as you think she is well enough I will take care of her, but I’m so thankful that you have her now.”

Every night I carried her little carrier up to the bedside table so I could hear her breathe, and monitor her cage. I woke up every hour or two to listen to her strained struggling wheezing. I cleaned her face and nose at every wake up and at every visit. She became my portable defibrillator, my oxygen tank, my blood pressure monitor, and my pacemaker. I was never away from her. She knew me by my touch, and would flop into my hand as soon as I opened her cage door. She couldn’t see me, or smell me, but I was her lifeline and her care taker and she was fully imprinted on me.

For a few days she ate, but after the profuse green snot erupted from her nose, and eyes she gave up on eating.

A cat is strongly motivated to eat by their sense of smell. If they can’t smell food they are usually not going to eat. Figuring out how to motivate a stuffed up, congested, snot-ridden kitten how to smell, let alone be interested in the food you put in front of her is quite a feat. I always recommend offering a small assortment of anything that smells appetizing if you are a kitten. I suggest trying lots of varieties of canned foods, baby food (meat), and ask your vet about the prescription high-calorie food. For kittens under 2 pounds, (kittens weigh one pound per month of age up to about 6 months old), offer some kitten formula, or mix kitten formula with some canned kitten food.

That little tiny speck of feline spent 4 months tempting her own mortality. For every shuffle forward she shuffled another back. I know without a shadow of doubt that if she had landed in anyone else’s hands, or not jumped at the exact second that she did that she would not be here with me today.

I willed her to live as much as she fiercely fought to grow. There were months of nights that I awoke to peer into her cage to see if her tiny chest still heaved under the brute force of her pneumonia. She needed two surgeries to un-glue her scarred eyes, and to this day, two years later I have to supplement her almost monthly for short periods with an antibiotic. There are still days where her stuffed up nose requires a tissue, and I never let her out of my sight.

For all of the time it took to get her to the point of adolescence and adulthood she is my shadow. She needed me and now I need her. When I come home each day I call her name and she runs to me. The time it took to nurse her back to health bonded us and that bond reminds me every day that love can sometimes cure all.

If you ever find yourself in a position to adopt a kitten, and if you see a tearing, snotty, feeble little thing I have to warn you there is some chance that they may stay a little runny for the foreseeable future, but then again you just might get a soul that reminds you how precious and miraculous life is.

I named her Wren, because I was so afraid my little bird might never sing.