One Big Happy Family

Sometimes, even our mistakes can end up saving us...

We received a stray mom in a trap with her new born babies. The mom was nice enough to be handled so we placed her in a cage with her two 1-day old babies and covered the door with a blanket so she could get back to caring for her kittens.

I would check on her about every half hour to see if she had jumped in the box with her babies. Unfortunately, she seemed to be ignoring them. However, the babies were calmly sleeping so I decided to give her a couple hours alone and see how she does.

Even though the instincts to take care of their young can be very strong, sometimes new moms just don't know how to, or maybe just don't want to, take care of their babies. Also, moving a new mom and her babies to a new place can be very stressful and she can reject the babies. This seemed to be the case when I checked on her again and it was obvious she was making no attempt to clean and nurse her kittens.

I made the decision to take the babies out and attempt to bottle feed them. Unfortunately, that did not go well. Some of the time, even the best efforts from the most experienced bottle feeders can not replicate nature for very young kittens. A staff member and I were continuing to try, carefully dropping kitten milk replacer into their mouths in an attempt to get them to latch on to the bottle. I was beginning to get discouraged when I remembered that we had a lactating mom with three 1-week old babies that was mistakenly left at our shelter when she was supposed to be transferred to another facility for foster!

We rushed the little kittens over to "Baby" - the lactating mom had given birth to 3 beautiful kittens at our shelter one week prior. At first "Baby" seemed reluctant to sniff these new little creatures, but when we placed them on the blanket and they began crawling around she began to lick them -- this was our first success!

We then moved "Baby" to a new cage and placed the new borns on her; they started to suckle vigorously -- this was our second success!

Since "Baby" is an amazing mom, her 1-week old babies were very big, plump, and twice the size of the 1-day olds. I was a little worried that they may push the young ones out of the way in an attempt to compete for milk. However, all my fears were allayed when I checked on the new family later on throughout the day and found these adorable scenes:





A few days after we created this mixed family, a wonderful volunteer decided to take them home and foster them until the kittens are ready for adoption. Last I heard they were all doing great! And they should all be available for adoption during the last week in October.

The Armadillo Dog

I still remember when a staff member told me, "You need to see this dog! She has nearly no hair left!"



She came to us in desperate need of help. By just looking at her, one may question her ability to recover from such severe neglect. Her skin was thickened and rough, and she was covered in flakes and scabs - it was evident she had been suffering from a severe skin infection for a VERY long time. Her nails were very long, and her thickened skin was harboring bacteria and yeast giving her a very bad odor. Her appearance earned her the nickname "Armadillo dog".

There was no question about whether we were going to treat her. Having been so wronged by the people that were supposed to keep her happy and healthy, we had no choice but to try and make it right.

As a new veterinarian, a few things popped into my head about what could have caused this to happen. Mange... Allergies... Endocrine disorders...

Knowing that she needed to start on a treatment regiment right away, I went with what diagnosis I thought was most likely due to the way she looked - demodectic mange.

A few days after having her in our care and being on treatments, her attitude started to improve and she became pretty active and friendly with us! But, then we noticed she started getting goopy eyes, and she had an indention on her right cornea. I was worried she might be developing an ulcer! At the shelter, we don't have very many diagnostic tools yet. So, it was off to a local veterinarian to stain her eye, do some skin scrapes and some blood work to see if we could get a diagnosis.

Staining revealed no ulcer - yay!
Skin scraps were negative for mites - hmmm...
Blood work was not definitive for any endocrine disorders - extra confusing...

Taking all this into consideration, it was decided that as long as she was continuing to improve, we would keep her on her antibiotics, her eye medications (to keep her eyes from drying out), start a special shampoo regiment, and get her into a foster home so she could receive consistent treatments in a less stressful environment...

3 weeks later I see this kid in our front office:



She looked so good! Her skin was returning to normal and she was starting to grow some hair back!

We don't know if her hair will ever grow back completely, but as long as her skin is healthy, I don't think either of us will care :)

To date she has completed almost 1 month of antibiotics and shampoos. Pretty soon she will be ready for adoption!!!