Avis A Townsend

Kitties Dropped Off at Vet Office include Momcat and Scooter Whitesox, who I adopted.

Most cats have difficult lives.  If they are born in warehouses or on most farms, they are seldom taken to the vet, and seldom vaccinated.  Many times they aren't even fed, with the landowners thinking they will survive on mice and vermin.  These poor kitties don't last long.  Eating vermin, their intestines fill with worms.  They are prone to diseases, including Feline Aides and Leukemia, and their lifespan is barely more than a few years.

Just recently I rescued a cat that had been forced to fend for itself for two years.  It looked like a Himalayan, a type of long-haired Siamese-colored kitty with a ringed tail, that resembled the tail of a raccoon.  I would see this kitty on my way to work each day, and he covered a two-mile stretch of farms and houses.  He eventually worked his way to my son's house, where he got into the cellar.  He was very kind, and he enjoyed being petted.

Save A Pet said to take him in and get him tested, and if all was fine, he would be vaccinated and neutered, and they would find him a new home. 

Well, it didn't take long for the combo test results to come back.  The poor guy was dying of both leukemia and AIDS, so he was euthanized.  I felt sad for the kitty, and even more sad now for the cats in the two mile length that he traveled.  As there is no vaccination for AIDS, any cat exposed could be prone to catching it.  The cycle will continue until all the cats have died.

I currently have eleven cats.  All were dumped here or somewhere, and I have taken them in.  All are spayed or neutered, and all are up to date on rabies shots and vaccinations.  My neighbor's cat got into an argument with a raccoon and the health department made her euthanize it because it had not had a rabies shot.  So I make sure my animals are up to date.

 Beetabee

I heard Beetabee before I ever saw him.  One day I walked past my garage and heard this pitiful screeching by a kitten.  It drove me crazy.  It took me two days to find where the noise was coming from, and there was this tiny black kitten, hardly more than four weeks old, in the rafters of the garage.  I rushed to the store and bought canned cat food, and put food and water dishes up high for him to reach.  It took two weeks before he was brave enough to come down, but when I tried to pick him up, he hissed and about ripped me to shreds.  I figured his feisty attitude was what had kept him alive.  I never found his mother or any littermates.  It took two months of daily talking and coaxing until I could catch him.  Once caught, I took him upstairs to an extra room we have and continued working with him, and then took him to the vet.  He is now a sleek, long cat, but he still has quirks and is very flightly.  But he will sit on my lap occasionally if I don't try to hold him too tightly.

The Second Coming of Eli

 Sweet Pea, the matriarch

Sweet Pea came with the house.  I found her living in a tractor scoop in the back forty when we first moved here in 1995.  She was very sweet (thus the name) and she is a tiny cat, only about six pounds.  Of course she was pregnant, so after a few weeks she delivered Murphy, Eli and Pinky.  Pinky and Murphy are still here, with both of them weighing close to 18 pounds.  Eli was killed by coyotes, but another kitten wandered in two years after Eli disappeared, with the same markings and same mannerisms, so I call Eli my reincarnated cat.  The whole story is in the book Romancing the Soul, an anthology edited by Dorothy Thompson.

Murphy, top, and Skeleton.  Two frayed ears.

I walked outside one day and found this half-starved female sitting in my garage.  She was so skinny I thought she'd die before I took her to the vets.  But, she survived.  Skeleton is now healthy and fluffy, except for a curled ear which she got from a hematoma (a blood bubble under the skin).  Murphy had a hematoma several years before, and I spent big money having surgery for him, so that his ear would return to normal.  Well, after spending hundreds of dollars and finding Murphy so depressed from the surgery that he almost died, I vowed I'd never do that to a cat again.  When Skeleton developed her hematoma, I had the vet aspirate the blood once a week, and now her ear is curled, but slightly less than Murphy's.  So, I don't advocate ear hematoma surgery for cats, but I think it's necessary in dogs (but that is just my own opinion).

Swirl, caught with her eyes at half mast.

Bob, enjoying a snooze

Swirl and Bob were kittens belonging to a neighbor's cat, who had its babies in my barn.  The neighbor said he'd drown the kittens, so I took them in.  I found a home for Bob, but the owner returned him eight years later when she said he was going to the bathroom outside the litter box.  The only trouble was, she had one of those covered boxes, and Bob is so big he couldn't fit under the lid, so he stuck his head in and pooped outside the box.  My vet said covered litter boxes are for the owners, not for the cats.  Do you like going to the bathroom in a smelly old outhouse?  Same thing in my opinion.

Pinky, Sweet Pea's daughter, about 10 pounds bigger than Sweet Pea.

Pinky almost died last year, losing all her weight and screaming in pain when she ate.  A dentistry removed all her teeth but for two fangs, and now she is as fat as ever. 

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