Happy Ending: Ellie

Finally!
A little late...but:



Miss Ellie has found her forever home, after 3 1/2 months in foster care and gaining 20(!!) pounds!

She was adopted by a dear friend of mine, who has already adopted two kitties (see Alice and Dinah below). I'm so excited that I still get to see her and watch her enjoy her life! She is fitting in nicely, her health is great and she loves everybody: people, cats, dogs, birds, the rosebush, the fence...you get the picture. Naturally, her foster mom was very sad to let her go, but she did take home a litter of kittens to help ease her empty nest syndrome :)

Here are: Ellie's Foster Mom, Ellie, and her Forever Mom:



THREE CHEERS FOR ELLIE!!

Update: Mama and Bitties!

Well, we've reached 4 weeks--the halfway point!

And even though they are only a month old, these kittens are huge. If I didn't know better I would think they were closer to six weeks old. They are starting to form their personalities, although they are hard to tell apart since they all look the same! I think the same two come to the front door every day, three are constantly wrestling, and one little peanut is always hanging out in the back. We'll work on him.





Mama is growing on me more and more. She's just such a tiny thing, always wants love, and seems to have made a new friend herself:

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Foster kitten at 2 1/2 weeks old!

Here we go again....another Kitten Season.

Kitten season is both a blessing and a curse.

The blessing being that it enables me to have a job, which in this day and age is definitely a good thing! And, obviously, kittens are cute. You are hard pressed to find an ugly kitten, let me tell you.

The curse? Well, pretty much everything else.

Kitten season is the time during the warm months (spring/summer) where many kittens are born and then brought to shelters. However, as time goes by, the 'season' is slowly turning into February through November. That's more of a YEAR than a season!

It starts off slowly: a pregnant cat here and there. Then come the nursing mama cats and the unweaned itty bitties hidden in shoeboxes and under towels. And then the real avalanche begins: 3-4 week old kittens left in boxes overnight, hissy spitties, more moms, kittens with severe Upper Respiratory Infections with their little eyes swollen shut, you name it. Then, as the season winds down, in come the older kittens. The ones that couldn't find homes.

At times it becomes overwhelming. There are so many kittens and only so many adopters.

Needless to say, kitten is a busy time for a foster parent. There are many foster homes that foster continuously throughout the season. Once one litter has grown up and been adopted, they take home another one. Like a revolving door! These families can save well over 20 kittens in one season. Just think about that! 20 little munchkins that will go on to impact the lives of the families that adopt them. Amazing!

I just took home my first litter of the season. I have to admit, I was getting a little antsy.
Empty nest syndrome. :)

And it begins: a mama with six ALL ORANGE bitties. Did I mention that I love orange kitties?!






It's going to be a very busy season.

All Grown Up

Here is my first foster.

Before:


After:

King Midas of Whiskerton started off as a 14oz, hissy spitty, semi feral kitten.....and became a 16+ lb Maine Coon mix. He is very much a mama's boy and typical of anyone's first foster, I kept him.

He's the best.
:)

Love of My Life -- Another Ellie Update!!

We've got fur!!



After one month in foster and five weeks of treatment, we have new fur growing in!! Hooray!

The best part? Ellie is now starting to act like the puppy she never got to be. She gallops around, saying hi to everyone: people, dogs, cats, the wet floor sign--doesn't matter! She loves you!
The other good sign is that her entropion no longer appears as severe as we thought. She's able to open her eyes and doesn't seem to have much drainage.



We have her set up for a spay and possible eye surgery next week, so we have our fingers crossed. If she keeps improving at this rate, she should be done with treatment within another month!



(Don't you love this one? Looks like a mugshot! Too funny.)

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One of four puppies born after an emergency c-section.
Spay and neuter!

Alice

I always love when friends or family members adopt one of my foster animals. One of the hardest parts of fostering is letting that animal go, not knowing where or who they’ll end up with—so this nips that problem right in the bud. Although sometimes you might take on the ‘protective former mother’ mode or get upset if they don’t remember you (“I nursed you back to health! Let me hold you!” ), it is always nice to see them happy and content with their new family.

Alice was a kitten in a litter of five that I fostered almost two years ago. It started off like your normal litter, just fatten ‘em and love ‘em. I kept thinking, “Woo hoo! I got an easy batch!” I named them after the Twilight vampire clan: Alice, Jasper, Emmett, Rosalie, and Mouse. Well, Mouse wasn’t really a vampire character, but she was just so cute and tiny that she looked like a mouse.



My friend came by to visit and just fell in love with Mouse. It was hard not to, since was the runt and had this cute alien-esque quality to her. She said she wanted her immediately, once she was big enough to be adopted.

Shortly thereafter, the whole litter came down with an Upper Respiratory Infections, which is basically the kitty version of the colds that you and I occasionally get. However, since these kittens were so young, they got hit really hard. They stopped eating, had gunky noses and had difficult time breathing. I would come home from work and play doctor: force feeding, fluids, medication, STAT! One morning I woke up and went to check on everyone. I found Mouse lying off to the side. I had lost her during the night — her frail little body just couldn’t overcome the severe URI that it was battling. I was sad for her, for me and for my friend that had picked her out as the kitten that she wanted.

After we talked for a bit, my friend asked me to pick out another kitten for her from the litter: the one with the best personality. I had always liked Alice; she was a little spunky and had very pretty muted calico markings.




The day finally came when all the kittens recovered and Alice was ready for her new home. She made the long, long car ride down to Santa Barbara (with a few ‘accidents’ due to confusion). She grew up to be a lovely and good looking cat and has moved back here to Sacramento. She doesn’t remember me of course, but I make it a point to remind her.
Here are some pictures of Alice today, with her new sister Dinah—also a foster care graduate!!

Love of my Life -- An Ellie Update!!

Well Ellie came in for her check up today...


AND SHE LOOKS AMAZING!!



She has made a vast improvement after only three weeks of treatment! She has gained 10 pounds and is running around like a puppy. I can't believe how great she looks. Her foster mom is doing a fabulous job.





We'll see her again in another two weeks and I'm sure she'll look even better!
This made my day today.

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Oh really? Whaddya gonna do about it, big guy?

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Frankie.

Frankie is one of our success stories! He went to foster about 3 months ago with moderate Demodex (not even half as bad as Ellie and Babar, but still unpleasant to look at and smell!). He recently came back from foster and was adopted within a day!

P.S. I will have updated pictures of Ellie tomorrow. I can't wait to share them. It's only been a month and she looks AMAZING!

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Pug.

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Roar?

Love of My Life

We have an ongoing joke at work when a new animal comes in that it's the new "love of my (your, her) life." There is usually about one per week and it's almost always some pathetic animal that needs a lot of work before they are cute and/or adoptable.

Which leads me to Ellie--the love of my life for January/February!



Ellie came in as a stray with severe demodex, similar to Babar. She is an Old English Bulldogge (kind of a mix between your typical English Bulldog and the larger American Bulldog). In addition to the demodex, she also has severe pyoderma and entropion. Pyoderma is a bacterial infection in the skin causing that lovely yeasty smell, swollen skin and bloody/oozy discharge. Entropion is a typical problem in wrinkly faced dogs, where the eyelids curve in and cause the eyelashes to lay and rub against the eyeball. Yes, that is as painful as it sounds!!

Ellie needs a lot of work. She's on a slew of medications, baths, sprays--pretty much anything you can think of, she's on it. Our veterinarians will also need to perform surgery on her eyes. However, we can't even tackle the entropion until her skin improves.

You would think after all she's been through and her multitude of problems, Ellie might have a little attitude. I mean, who would blame her? Well, you couldn't be more wrong. She is the sweetest thing! She wants nothing more than to cuddle with you, which she doesn't quite understand is something that you may not want given her condition! :)

We sent Ellie to foster last week for the duration of her treatment. Her foster mom reports that she is amazing and looks to be improving every day. She even said that her own cat likes to cuddle with Ellie and sleep curled up next to her! Precious!!



I will be sure to post new photos of Ellie as she transforms from an ugly duckling into a (still wrinkly, no longer stinky) swan! I can't wait to see her.

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German Shorthaired Pointer

Babar

Babar was not the first (and certainly not the last!) foster that I’ve taken home. But he has struck the strongest chord and the one that I most regret that I was not in a position to keep.

I had been at the shelter a little over a year and showed up to work one day, early in the morning, ready to unlock all the doors. As I was doing so, someone informed me that there was a small carrier in front of the building, apparently left there overnight. I went to look for the carrier and found what was….a puppy? a piglet? a baby elephant?…shivering inside.

We immediately brought it in the office and found this:





Obviously, I was immediately in love.

Here was this poor, defenseless little creature. He had almost no fur, but instead was covered in scabs and open sores. His skin was so swollen that his paws were HUGE, almost the size of a full grown dog! He had a long scar along the length of his back (from God knows what), was severely malnourished, had badly cropped ears and stunk to high heaven. (This is a smell I’ve almost grown fond of over the years, only because I know that it CAN go away!)

We immediately vaccinated and bathed him. I gave him a bowl of wet and dry food. He ate it and very slowly wagged his tail. We did a skin scrape to determine what condition he suffered from and discovered hundreds of Demodectic mites. These mites are common on all dogs, but depending on their immune systems it may or may not develop into an issue. Most dogs are fine,but some develop patches of hairloss that if not treated turns into a really big problem.

After getting the okay to treat him, we waited through his stray hold to see if anyone would reclaim him. We were hoping no one did, since his previous owners (if any) obviously did not treat him well. No one ever came for him and the time had come, someone had to foster him.
And, well, you can guess how that went.



We started him on a treatment of daily antibiotics, fish oil capsules, ivermectin (to kill the mites) and medicated baths. It definitely was a handful, but worth every moment. Every time I walked him around my apartment complex, people would comment on what a sweet boy he was despite his condition. And lo and behold, after five weeks, he was a completely different dog! His fur had grown back, he gained about 15 pounds and was quite the little porker. Everyone loved him and now it was time to find his forever home.



I couldn’t even imagine a better family to adopt Babar. They had already previously adopted two Staffy mixes from the shelter and thought their family was complete. They came to take pictures of their dogs with Santa and I happened to run into them in the hallway. It was love at first sight! I was crying, they were crying, everyone was crying. They adopted him on the spot and even went back and took a new family photo with Santa and their new addition.

I still see him several times a year and occasionally puppy sit for their pack when they are out of town. His parents even made me a photo booklet of Babar’s first year with them and I love it to death. He is such a ham.







He was a lucky, lucky boy to be abandoned on our doorstep that day.

Just the beginning....

I wanted to start a blog depicting the day to day life of a shelter animal and share some the joyful, heartbreaking, funny, and jaded moments that happen each day (hour? minute?) of working in a place such as this.

Many times these animals came from loving, caring families and must wonder what they're doing in this strange and scary place. Many come from horrible, despicable environments and the day they came here is the best day of their lives. Some of these stories will have happy endings and some of them will not. Those happy endings--however few or many--make this job worth doing.