A Happy Ending

9 months ago we accepted 2 cats into our care. It was heart wrenching for the family to give them up but with a newborn baby who was very unwell, cats not adjusting to the new family member and finacial difficulties the cats were not getting the attention they needed.

We happily took them on but their first foster carer decided that after a week of having them she just didnt have time for them afterall. So they came to stay with me :)

Lots of advertising still didnt result in a home for them as people generally dont want to take on 9 year old cats when fluffy kittens are available. A few months ago one of the cats starting becoming ill and blood tests revealed Hyperthyroidism (an over active thyroid). This required medication twice daily and made it impossible to rehome this gorgeous girl so I decided to keep her as one of my own. Her sister in the meantime was happy and healthy and still with us. We kept their previous family updated as much as we could and they were working on becoming more financial so they could possible have their family members back.

Sadly a week ago we had to put our adopted little one with Hyperthyroidism to sleep as she had congestive heart failure and her quality of life was no more. We loved every minute that we had her in our care.

Her sister was still with us and we had grown very attached to her. Upon informing the previous family of their little girls passing they told us that their baby was well now, they both had reliable incomes and were in a far better place. Could they possibly have their other former family member back if we were not too attached to her.

Of course we were attached and would miss her very much but being able to return her to her previous family of 9 years would be one of the greatest pleasures we could have in cat rescue. So this weekend just gone we took her home and couldnt have been happier by how delighted her family were to see her. She settled in as if she had never left and seeing the joy it brought her family to have her back is what makes what we do worth while.

The family gave us blankets, towels and bowls for the cats in our care to say thankyou for all we had done for their girls. We do miss her very much but she has been so happy being back home that we couldnt be happier about how this story ends :)

Nat

An update...

Its been busy as usual but we just wanted to update you all on the little neglected cat we picked up last weekend. We have done blood tests on her which didnt show much other than that she has been malnourished and had an injury (like her paw) so we will run tests again in a few weeks. In the meantime she is in foster care and putting on weight plus having her paw treated and is so far doing well.

Since then we have had several more cats come into our care as well as some of our older kittens adopted out to good homes.

Currently we are focused on 2 cases.

Case One: Semi - Feral cats in a factory area South of Perth.

There are many feral cat colonies in factory areas around Perth and one in particular was brought to our attention by a lady who has been feeding them and trying to gain their trust. They have now become an issue with the bosses at the workplace who wants them removed as well as avoiding more breeding of these cats in the area. Declining the Trap Neuter Release option we have now begun trapping them to go into care so we can adopt out the re homable ones and try to rehabilitate the ones that have potential. We have a carer who has built an enclosure for them and is spending her time socialising them. So far we have 3 out of 7 caught and are able to place at least 2 more in the current enclosure. The others however have become wise to our traps and are proving difficult but perseverence will pay off!

Case Two: We recieved a call from Rockingham on Sunday night about a cat that was wandering around a house meowing and trying to get in. The lady stated that she was frightened of cats and had never seen this one in the area before. After door knocking she found that no one knew the cat. We picked her up that night and found that by morning she had a lot of milk build up in her teets so we went in search of her kittens. Hoping she would lead us to them we placed her back in the area and followed her but with no luck. she didnt lead us to her kittens and after speaking to several people in the area no one had seen her either. We also had no luck finding any kittens in the surrounding bushland areas.We have now posted her on various sites and are doing a flyer drop to find where she has come from but we fear that if her kittens are young they may already have met a horrible fate. In the meantime mum cat is safe in foster care.

We will keep you updated on the progress of these cases

Nat

All in a days rescue...

Well it has been a mixture of a weekend as it usually is. We have had several adoptions of cats that have been in long term care, stitched the torn eyelid of one of our newly arrived kittens from an industrial area and he is now doing well and rescued a cat that has been a victim of neglect.

We will for legal reasons, when recounting rescues, change the names of the people and cats involved in each case.

The last case we had for Saturday turned out to be more than we bargained for. A week ago we recieved a phone call from an elderly person requesting that we come and collect the cat she had been feeding for 2 years after she was left behind by the neighbours. She didnt like cats and didnt want her inside in case she knocked her over. We have a long waiting list of carers so said we would see what we could do. When in the area yesterday afternoon we dropped in to see the cat in question to assess her and determine which foster carer she would best suit.

Upon arrival we were informed that she had a sore paw and the elderly persons son had been around and pulled out what looked like a claw inbedded in her paw pad and disinfected it. He seemed to be doing his best with the cat when he could visit his mum but said she had not been eating much lately so wormed her and she had seemed a little better.

Our assessment of this poor girl was that she was badly neglected. With the wound in her paw we decided she needed to come into our care immediatley and recieve medical attention. Back at one of the clinics we are affiliated with we found her pysical condition was as follows:

- Severely underweight
- Claws so over grown that they were inbedded in her paw pads
- Moderate dehydration
- Sun damage to her ears
- Flea infested - causing mild anaemia
- Burst abscess in one of her claw beds where we think it was her own claw that had caused the problem
- High temperature due to infection from paw
- Deaf (most likely due to her being a white cat with one blue and one green eye)

We dealt with each problem as we found it, flea treatment, clipped her claws to remove them from where they were inbedded in her paw pads, gave her subcutaneous fluids for dehydration, shaved her paw and cleaned the wound then gave her some antibiotics and pain relief to make her comfortable and bring her temperature down. We then placed her in a kennel with a heating pad and lots of recovery food and water which she got into immediatley.

This little girl will be assessed by a vet on Monday to determine if her weight loss is due to lack of food or some underlying age related problem. Once this is done we will most likely stitch the wound on her paw. This is a difficult case as we pride ourselves on taking on the difficult cats to rehome and special cases. Sometimes this is not always in the best interest of the cats quality of life and the best thing for the cats welfare is to put them to sleep. We hope this isnt going to be the case with this girl as she is very sweet and snuggly but rehoming older cats with multiple, ongoing problems is very difficult as people dont want them very often.

We will keep you all updated as to her progress :)

Nat @ 9 Lives Cat Rescue

Our First Post!

Hi all cat lovers!

We want to keep you up to date with all our experiences, trials and tribulations in cat rescue around Perth. We also want to share our views and news on all the current cat related topics in this world.

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