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Recap: Wednesday, January 27, 2016

LAPS:

Feral Colony Cats

ferals currently being socialized at LAPS as of 2016-01-25

  • Kim T posted some videos from her visit with Tellar and Eaton at LAPS.

Star Wars Litter

LAPS staff and volunteers have been very good about posting the videos of the various visits with Queen Amidala and the kittens to their Livestream page, so if you miss any visit, you can go to http://livestream.com/accounts/14083503/starwars to watch them. (Note: It’s not always easy to tell what day a video is from — Livestream uses relative time, i.e. “xx days ago”, for posts and Zulu Time, which is currently eight hours ahead of PST, for comments — but they are in reverse chronological order on the page.)

Christmas Decoration Kittens

Alicia tries to broadcast a Periscope with the kittens every night at around 20:00 PST. Because Periscope videos are only viewable on/in Periscope for 24 hours, I record the videos and upload them to YouTube.

  • Star had her spay surgery today at Yorkson Creek Veterinary Hospital and is recovering nicely. Alicia had her final nightly Periscope with a very sleepy Star tonight — Alicia will be Periscoping (hopefully) from LAPS (between 8:30 and 9:00) when she drops Star off. Star’s new human, Katie, will be picking her up at 10:30 at LAPS.

TinyKittens HQ:

Cassidy

  • Shelly had an extended Livestream session giving updates on Cassidy and their trip to Raleigh, North Carolina, with Dr. Ferguson to meet with Dr. Marcellin-Little and his team.The following are Cassidy-related notes I took while watching the video:
    • Shelly and Dr. Ferguson been having conference calls since first week in November with Dr. Marcellin-Little at NC State Veterinary College. They will continue to have those weekly calls.
    • Dr. Marcellin-Little spent four hours with them going over everything and answering all of Shelly’s many questions. (And that’s not counting all the time his team spent working with them.) He also gave them a tour of the whole place.
    • They are building a 3-D model of what is going on with Cassidy’s stumps. Dr. Marcellin-Little did a variety of tests and checks to ascertain Cassidy’s current status, then his team did a CT scan. Cassidy’s knee caps are higher than  they should be. (You can see that on the CT scan image that Dr. Ferguson posted on her Facebook page on January 25, while they were still in NC.) That seems to be a result of the over-flexion and may not go back into place. There’s an unusual amount of hip subluxation (hip not resting in the socket the way it should).
    • Age and growth are still a factor. He’s young and still growing so that could have an effect on his knee function.
    • The physical therapy that Shelly is doing is preventing Cassidy from getting worse. It allows him to flex the joint, but he doesn’t flex it voluntarily. Leaving him the way he is could leap to stump sores and infections, plus they don’t know if there would be long-term arthritis effects what effect the scooting would have on his spine or litter box usage or other things from over-compensating for the bad leg movements. Shelly’s going to continue doing PT for another three months — he needs to be able to voluntarily flex his knees to give him the best outcome (i.e. a natural gait, like having real legs). She’s going to do more frequent sessions of shorter duration. And she’s going to put him through an obstacle course that would encourage him to flex his knees on his own.
    • They are investigating some other out-of-the-box treatments to his knees working. Will have more information in a couple of weeks about one thing that might help the physical therapy, something used with human children but they have to work out appropriate dosage and usage for a cat. [Added later: Shelly mentioned on February 2 that one of those possible treatments would be injecting Botox into the quadriceps that are pulling his knees into over-flexion, to relax them.]
    • If they can’t get his knees working, one option is to leave things as they are and deal with issues (like sores) as they arise; another option is to attach implants right into the femur (like the cat Vincent who’s been in the news)
    • Cassidy did flatipuss everyone, but he was well behaved and did really well considering he’s a feral kitten in a noisy airport and long plane ride and in strange places, around strangers. He didn’t poop the entire time they were away.
  • She posted the video to Cassidy’s Livestream page. (Little Darling also posted a copy of it to her YouTube account.)

People for Happier Cats/TNR site:

General Notes

The TinyKittens VIP cam gets swapped around periodically.  (Since the feral recovery room was implemented, it’s been mostly on the upstairs “formerly feral” romper room instead.) The feed (wherever it’s pointing at any given moment) can be accessed for a monthly or annual fee. (Consider it a way to donate to TinyKittens monthly, with the VIP cam feed as a perk.)

Feral Recovery Ward

Current residents:

ferals currently recuperating at TKHQ 2016-01-27

  • Pansy and Raven were clearly not enamoured with living inside so they were returned to the colony today by Shelly. Both were very happy to be back and ran off. (Pansy came back later for a snack, but Shelly didn’t see Raven again during that visit.)
  • While Shelly was at the colony, she trapped two other cats to bring in to TKHQ — Tiger (who Shelly calls Buffy because he’s buff-coloured) and a mystery guest who escaped from Shelly’s van when the carrier he/she was in broke. (See her 14:00 visit details below for more information.)
  • The shelf bed on the ledge came down again after Kimsies put it back up, this time taking Satine with it again. (Poor Satine. Taken out by the shelf bed again. And poor Tiger — startled by it all into a sneezing fit.) After a pee break and some playtime, she was back up on the ledge and good as new. (Must be related to Mr. T.)
  • The Visits:
    • Shelly visited briefly. She’s on feeding station duty today and decided to take Pansy and Raven back to the colony with her since they are not acclimating to captivity very well. (Getting them into a crate was pretty funny to watch — Satine kept walking into the crate so Shelly ended up shutting her in it to get her out of the way and then getting a second crate for the other two; then she let Satine out again.) Before she left, Shelly gave Satine and Enara some pets and said she’d be back for a longer visit later.
    • Suzanne visited at around 12:30. She didn’t know that Shelly was taking Pansy and Raven back today so she looked around for them a bit. (It didn’t take long for her to realize where they were.) Satine was hissy at first, but ate when Suzanne hand-fed her on the ledge. She also hand-fed Enara — she says she’s not brave enough to try to pull Enara into her lap for a cuddle after Enara lashed out at Kimsies yesterday when Kimsies went in unexpectedly for a kiss (which always makes me think of the scene in “The Fifth Element” where Leeloo pulls a gun on Corbin Dallas when he tries to kiss her while she’s unconscious, saying “Never without my permission“) and after Suzanne herself was bitten by a cat she was visiting at LAPS.
    • Shelly came back from the feral colony at 14:00 with new guest Tiger.
      • Kimsies joined her for the intake — she’s determined to keep that shelf bed up on the ledge so she put it back up and coaxed Satine over to it for some petting. (They really need to screw or bolt it down as the ferals have pushed, knocked, or weighed it down four times so far in the last few days, three of those times taking a cat with it.)
      • Tiger is estimated to be 9 to 12 months old and possibly of the same litter as Caden and Tallon. (They all — around five of them — started appearing at the feeding station at the end of summer, hanging out on the outskirts.)
      • Tiger is super friendly. He allowed Shelly to clean his ears, trim his nails, and check his mouth — he has really bad gingivitis and something weird going on with his lower right canine. He has a manly set of testicles. And he has a mild URI that is causing him to sneeze a bit and have a runny nose.
      • He didn’t fluoresce under blacklight, but they’re going to do PCR tests on all three cats plus the other kittens in the house just to make sure.
      • Before leaving for the vet, Shelly and Kimsies gave cuddles to Enara and Satine. Shelly cleaned Enara’s ears and checked her spay scar, which looks a little pink. (Enara squirmed and growled while Shelly was checking so it seems it might be sensitive. Kimsies took a picture.)
      • Shelly sent pictures of his teeth to Dr. Ferguson, who got back to her later in the visit to say she had an opening now so Shelly and Kimsies headed off with Tiger.
    • Shelly and Kimsies came back from the vet at around 16:30 while Lynda was heading in to visit with Noelle and Elf. Kimsies didn’t stay, but Lynda joined Shelly in with the ferals.
      • Tiger had a foreign object (something spongy that they couldn’t really identify) wrapped around the lower right canine. Things look fine underneath. He does have bad gingivitis and Shelly was given instructions to brush his teeth. She made a first attempt at it during the visit here and will keep trying.
      • His tail had been broken in two places a long time ago and had long since healed.
      • He has a mild URI, which may be why his gums are so inflamed.
      • They did a FIV/FeLV test (because that kind of inflamation can be a sign of something like those viruses), but don’t have the results yet.
        https://www.facebook.com/tinykittens/photos/a.463110733763796.1073741829.462536430487893/995270547214476/?type=3&permPage=1
    • Lorie visited in the late evening. She brought treats and petted everyone where they were. She tried to coax them down from their perches by sitting/lying on the floor but eventually just went and got Tiger for a cuddle. He hung out with her at floor level for some time. He has a really loud purr motor. Satine is still not happy when Enara comes near her on the ledge (not that Enara seems to care), but she doesn’t seem to have the same problem with Tiger. (They seem to be around the same age so I wonder if they’re litter mates or maybe just know each other from the colony. Enara is a different generation to them.)
    • Shelly stopped in briefly after stopping in to give Elf (“the elven princess”) her meds. No iso gear, no bunny suit, just booties over her regular clothes. She moved some things around and took out the small carrier.

Formerly-Feral Mega Romper Room

  • Adoptions: Everyone has been matched with great homes. Joy is going to Seattle (where she’ll have a cat friend), Noelle and Elf are going to Chicago, and Jingle is going to Oregon (where he’ll have a cat friend). Mistletoe and Comet’s new humans are the same ones who adopted Shiraz (which makes me so incredibly happy as Mistletoe and Shiraz are two of my favourite cats fostered through TKHQ and/or LAPS recently). Nicholas will be staying local, and he’ll have a cat friend and two dog friends to keep him company. Logistics are still being worked out so we don’t know yet when each cat will be heading to their new homes (though we do know that Mistletoe and Comet are hanging out at TKHQ until the first week of February).
  • Nicky is still having urinary issues. The UTI cultures came back negative so the crystals that Noelle has aren’t anything that need to be treated. Nicky is continuing to receive pain meds and he seems to be getting a little better.
  • The Visits:
    • Suzanne visited. She cleaned up, put out new food and water, and played with/cuddled the kittens.
    • Shelly visited while Suzanne was still there. She gave Nicholas his morning meds, checked Mistletoe’s toe, and checked out Jingle’s and Nicholas’s neuter scars. Nicholas’s dermatitis on his belly is getting better.
    • Kimsies visited in the early afternoon. She enjoyed extended lap cuddles with Jingle and Comet. Shelly came back from the colony while she was there.
    • Lynda Tyler had a short day at school so came by for a little kitten therapy.
    • Lorie visited the kittens in the late evening. Lots of cuddles and playtime. More food and cleaning.
    • Shelly visited very briefly to give Nick his nightly meds and to say goodnight to everyone.

Kimsies’ videos and pictures at TKHQ:








Today’s video caps courtesy of Sara (Little Darling):

Tiny Kittens Cassidy’s update after NC trip

Tiny Kittens Shellys visit in feral room

Tiny Kittens Tiger intake at TKHQ with bad case of gingivitus or something poor thing

Tiny Kittens Tiger back from vet with Shelly then Mrs Tyler visits

[Page last updated: 2016/02/03 at 02:00 PST]

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