About Dewey.

 

Dewey playing in the tunnel.

All of the Punctuation cats went to the Humane Society of the Palouse on October 18th and they have all except for Dewey, been adopted. In a special turn of fate Minnie who loved her mama more that anything was adopted with her mom Dottie and one other cat from the shelter. A triple adoption! We are really happy for all the kittens and their new families.

So, we have Dewey aka Comma, again. If you follow on instagram you know that the most recent assessment is that he has ring worm on his ear. The first test at the shelter early on was negative. When we dropped them of at the shelter for spay and neuter surgeries a vet student said that they thought it was a burn on Dewey’s ear. That was fun. I could not understand how he could have burned his ear on the baseboard heater. I felt that people must think we were the worst foster parents ever. When we thought it might be ringworm we cleaned and sanitized EVERY thing and every surface in the foster room. We have done this several times since and will do it several more.

When Dewey was finally tired i put him on the chair to take a picture. You can tell he was excited about it.

Dewey was in the cage at the shelter with his siblings until the latest diagnosis. Part of the reason they figured out it was ring worm is because two kittens that were in separate but adjacent cages developed ring worm. They were all removed to another room so as to not affect other cats. This is a serious problem for the shelter. To have something like this spread is a nightmare for them. Imagine all the cleaning they do every day and kittens still get it. Its not that it is all that hard to treat once you know what they have, but the spores can live in the air or on walls or on whatever for a long time and the shelters job is to get these kittens to permanent home in a healthy condition.

When I think about what a lot of work it was for us to clean our room and wear different clothes in the foster room, I can imagine the scale of the work load this is putting on the shelter. While I know that I did all I could I still feel like the villain in a bad movie. In my head I know that I did help to cure the Zodiac cats of ring worm and none of the other Punctuation cats have it as far as anyone knows. I still feel like I am to blame. I feel horrible, BUT they allowed us to take Dewey back and tomorrow we should be able to pick up on of the other kittens that was infected. There is a litter of four more kittens, I don’t quite understand what happened with them other than one of them got it and they all went back to the foster family. The other foster family will be leaving town so we will get those four next week.

Dewey and siblings

We will have time to help these little ones get healthy and then get to forever families. Then, we, our home really will be on a quarantine and not be able to foster until at least March. While I understand the reason and I even agree with it mostly, it is heartbreaking. To dedicate your whole heart to a cause and then have it taken away is hard. We have a whole room in our house and supplies and special gifts that a few very generous people have sent us. We are using them for these cats and they are very useful, but then everything will be cleaned and the room closed up, not used. That hurts.

I will of course post photos of the new cats and more of Dewey, who is by the way very happy to be held and loved and wants to run around. He meows VERY loudly when we leave the room and at any point he feels we need to check on him. If he could leave the foster room he would probably sleep on my head all night. He is a very lovey boy and makes the cutest air biscuits. I am trying to get a video but its hard with him in a cage. Don’t worry the cage is very large and temporary. I have been told that after the cats have had the medication for a certain amount of days they are not contagious any more. I wish I had known that with the Zodiacs! I will have to ask more questions about that.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Dewey got something in exchange for his gift of ringworm. He has Coccidia now also! Don’t worry, we will conquer these little gifts.

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