Cooperation

A problem a friend was having today made me think of a common problem many people have when dealing with behavior problems with any pet, not just felines. The problem of cooperation and blame.

Really? You're going to blame me?

It's easy to blame the cat for the behavior problem. She peed on the carpet. He scratched the couch. She pooped outside the box.

He sacrificed the kids to Satan.

But in almost all cases, the pet does not hold all of the blame. As owners, we also need to cooperate for effective means of changing such behavior. Everyone in the household needs to come up with a plan for modification of bad behavior and stick to it. If everyone isn't on board, those plans won't work.

The cat did you a favor. Those kids were monsters.

The problem for my friend is actually pretty simple to solve. Her cat does what I call "revenge peeing." This means she pees to show her displeasure with whatever situation is going on that she doesn't like.

We really need to talk about the color of this room.

Revenge Peeing isn't always the easiest to solve, but the real problem for my friend isn't that, it's that her other housemates aren't cooperating to solve the problem. Peeing on her items is one problem to solve, but she also pees on her housemate's bed. All they need to do is shut the door when they aren't in the room, but in their minds it's the cat who needs to change, not them.

Just be prepared for the nose under the door.

The cat's problem needs to be solved, no doubt. But part of solving it is to keep a door shut. It'll save the bed from being peed on and a mattress from being ruined. Most times solving behavior problems requires a change on the human's part too. This includes every human in the house, not just the owner.

I'm watching you human.

Part of a behaviorist's job is to come up with a plan for the members of the household to follow to help modify the cat's behavior. Before you give up on solving a problem, it's important to make sure everyone is cooperating to help change bad behavior. If they aren't going to, you might need to consult a human behaviorist.

It's called "kicking them out."

Rebecca is a feline behaviorist with the Finicky Feline in Portland, OR. She can be contacted for all your feline problems at bravemer@gmail.com.

Compassion Fatigue

Compassion fatigue is something that has been covered many times, and those in the medical/veterinary/social services and many others where you help people in shitty situations know all about it. Unless you have experienced it, though, it's pretty hard to convey in words. 

It seems like a first world problem, but it's a real thing.

Goodness knows I've experienced it many times since I've been in shelter care and now vet medicine. There's always a litter of kittens you can't help, a pregnant mom that needs to be spayed, a dog hit by a car that you can't save. It's the nature of our business, but we do what needs to be done for the times when we can save the kittens/dog/see mom go to a good home.

Thanks to us she will never be a mother. She will only be adorable.

A few nights ago I had a very real case of compassion fatigue suddenly hit me. I picked up an overnight at the animal ER where I work, which is hard enough as it is. As sad as it sounds, often we will try (and fail) to maintain some distance emotionally from our patients. We still give them the best care possible, but if you fall in love you make bad decisions and get, of course, fatigued.

I had been up for 12 hours with a two hour nap already before I started my 10 hour night at 9pm. It had been a long weekend already and I was feeling it. The ER side of our hospital was fairly slow, thank goodness, but ICU was hopping. After 3am I was all alone, and had just gotten word that a dog who had had surgery earlier in the day was not doing well and needed to go back in. She was set up on one of our open "pods" and getting transfusions until our surgeon came. But it wasn't even her that set me off.

This is pretty much how I was feeling by then.

What set me off was a little pug named Lola. She was old, diabetic, and adorable. Her blood sugar was high so she hadn't eaten in a while, but it finally came down enough that I could feed her. I found myself focusing all my energy on her. We had to lay her on her side to draw blood, something pugs don't like because they can't breathe well. The last time we drew blood she got a runny nose and started sniffling and sneezing. I wiped her nose, rubbed her face and was allowed to finally give her food, which she happily ate.

She was not even close to the sickest animal in the ICU, but I could see that she didn't have much time left. Even with the diabetes under control, she was just old. I started to think about her owner, and how devastated I would be if this were my dog and she passed. She was adorable, sweet, and full of love even though she wasn't feeling well. Suddenly I wanted to cry, and go home.

Just so you don't get too sad, here's a horse with a cone on its head.

Fortunately the emergency surgery had to start and took my mind off Lola and on to other things. It was a pretty crazy, fast and hectic surgery and I had to concentrate on that. But once I got home, Lola was still on my mind. I don't know if she went home or is doing well, and honestly, I'm often afraid to find out. Lots of times we'll have long term or repeat patients that we get attached to, and it's pretty obvious how much it brings down the whole staff to learn they've passed. If we make jokes or act callous towards death it's because the reality of it would break our hearts, our minds, and make us numb.

It's important to appreciate the people in this industry, and think about the situations we have to go through and deal with daily. It's important for us to appreciate each other, something I think we often forget to do. And it's important for us to appreciate ourselves. 

Animals can't talk, but they thank us every day in their own ways. That's why we do this. 

Introducing...The Spring Muffins!

So I promised an update on my foster babies, and here it is! You are never going to believe how much they've grown.

Here they are at three weeks:

Kitten Parade

They almost completely skipped the "belly crawl" that usually precedes walking and went straight to becoming full on trouble makers. They were definitely not content to spend any more time than necessary hanging out in that carrier.

Skip forward a week and a half:

Everyone sleeps in that little bed together, regardless of size (they still do).

And, without further ado, the names!

Daffodil

Ladybug

Hawthorn is the tux

Sunflower

Not pictured: The shy one, who's name I can't remember anyway. I'll update once I remember!

These guys are already fully weaned and that's good, because Mom seems like she really doesn't want to be there anymore. I can't really blame her, since most of them are nearly her size already.

Now that they are six weeks old, they've been vaccinated with their first shot and have been weighed (the heaviest is almost 2lbs.!). They will be at the Tualatin Petsmart next weekend, March 5th and 6th, from 12-4pm if you would like to see them in person! I have to warn you though, they're evil little pants-climbers.

Happy Tails!

Kitten Talk

Out of all the things I've learned since I started working at CAT, one of the lessons that never ceases to amaze me is how a tiny kitten can turn the most sane, logical, intelligent, manly men and women of adults into coddling, baby-talk spewing piles of mush. No one comes through Kitten Headquarters without cooing at the babies, or expressing their extreme disappointment when there are no babies to coo at.

Try not to call me an itty bitty cutie wootie puddin pie. Just try.

With that in mind, I thought I would introduce those who don't know it already to the world of Kitten talk. Someone who can speak normally to a room of infants will still fall into high pitched gibberish upon seeing a litter of 4 week old kittens. Always.

Some of these are generally known throughout the kitten/foster world, and some are words I just made up, but here is the unabridged Kitten Dictionary for KHQ.

Hidey Bed:

Basically, a bed with sides and sometimes fully enclosed. I don't think I made this word up myself but I can't remember where I first heard it either. It's for shy kitties and baby kittens who need some warmth.

Stuffy:

 
This word isn't specific to Kittens, but that's what we call them. It can be any animal and is used for those small babies that need extra mom-like comfort. I even have two weirdly cat shaped ones that came with a warming pad and a heart-shaped dealie that beats like mom's heart. Kinda creepy.

Boingy-Boingy:

This one is all me. It's pretty much any toy on a spring that boings back and forth and usually comically boinks the kitten on the head.

Slurry:

Anyone in the foster world should know this word if they've had any experience with kittens who won't eat. It's a slushy mixture of (human) baby food, any soft, smelly kitten food (usually a/d) and kitten formula. It's great because if the kittens won't eat it on their own, though most will, you can also syringe feed it to them and it's not quite as annoying as formula to feed, though still very messy.

Muffins:

My Yuffie as a baby.

Yuffie's brother.

Basically any kitten, although I usually only call them muffins when referring to them while talking to their mommy.

Queen:

 Mom, aka momma, mommy, mother, life-giver, food-maker, mess cleaner-upper, tolerater of tail-biting, head-jumping and foot-chomping, knower-of-all and unconditional lover.

Not a word I made up. Moms in foster care are called Queens fur real. (hahahahaha pun!)

This has been Jos as your guide to the world of kitten facts. Happy Tails!

Props to Google for the toy pics, Dawn Rossiter for the slurry pic (plz don't sue me), Nancy Puro for the pics of my Yuffie, his bro, and Noodle, and foster parents for the other kitten pictures.

Kitten Season

For most people, spring means this:

Or this:

Or this:

But for me, spring means this:

Disgusting.

Before I started working here I was like most people who come in looking for a kitten during the winter and are told "we're out". I go "que?" and they say "what?" and I go "what?" and after some comical Abbott and Costello type confusion they explain that it's not "kitten season."

Well, what the heck is kitten season? Perhaps you've heard of springtime as being the time of birth and new life. That's true for cats too. Depending on the winter weather and how warm the spring is, kitten season can generally start from March to May and generally goes until September to October. This year, however, it starts now.

I can't see and I can't walk, but I'm coming!

That's right. Because of the mild winter here and spring starting basically last week, kittens, newborns and pregnant moms are coming out the wazoo right now. Having the benefit of already working through one kitten season makes me tons better prepared for this year, but it's still daunting to think that March is already early for kittens and they're coming a month earlier than that! On the upside- I love what I do and every kitten the foster program saves warms my heart. On the downside, this means we have less room for kittens on the whole, as already during the summer months we have to take only from county shelters and only as I have room in my foster homes.

But we'll keep plugging along and taking in all we can just like last year. In fact, now that I'm not as much of an incompetent fool, hopefully things will go much smoother this season.

If you want to become a foster parent or know someone who does, please go to the CAT website and fill out a volunteer application. And just in case you're wavering on volunteering, here's this:

Resistance is futile.

Spring Pictures found on Google.
Kitten pictures taken by foster parents and me.
Seal Point Himalayan picture taken by Madeleine Barker.

OMG Kittens!

News From Kitten Headquarters presents a very special post today: A compilation of both adoption success stories and cute, cute pictures of babies who are in foster! Are you ready for the adorabless-ness? I think not!

Meet Sugarplum.

Now called Holly Noel.

Holly N. came to us from Multnomah County Animal Services. Because she had lost some weight between when I got the notice and when she was actually transported, she had to spend some time in foster care. Fortunately she went to one of our best and most constant fosters, who immediately fattened her up and got her preadopted!

Mommy is the best bed.

Apparently Holly's new momma is the mother of a woman who adopted two fosters from the same parent several months earlier and decided it was time for a little sugar of her own! She spent exactly two days in the shelter- the day she came in and the day she got surgery. This is the ideal we go for for all of our kittens. And she was our last foster of 2010!

Looks like she's made herself right at home.

This is Aubie.

Wait, wait, get my good side.

Most of us know Monday as that fateful day when Auburn cheated and won the BCS championship. While good sportsmanship was not on the table, it did help one little feline earn himself a home, and fast!

There's a place out east of here where animal control is "go round up cats and shoot them". Fortunately there are kind people out there also who are fighting this form of control, and we often take in the result of that fight. Aubie was a kitten from just those people, and he sprang from his carrier and into my arms in a flurry of purrs and cuddles.

Love me!

Someone decided it would be a good idea to bet with a shelter out Auburn way that if Auburn won, we would name a kitten Aubie. On the flip side, if Oregon had won, they'd have a kitten named Oregon right now. While I protested this bet (I didn't even want to think about the game after we lost), I made good on it and named this little tiger-like darling after them.

He lasted 5 hours on the floor. That very evening a very nice young woman came in and fell in love with his lovey-dovey self. She didn't even mind that he was named after Auburn. ;)

Way to turn up the charm buddy!

You Are Not Prepared

If you aren't sitting down, please do so.

 

 

All together now: "D'AWWWWWW"

We had two groups of kittens come in from out east that needed to go into foster homes. That cutie above came in with two siblings and momma, below:

I'm a great momma!

Hang in there, baby!

RAWR!

 

 

Okay, okay, I could inundate you all day with adorable pictures of these guys, but I won't. Needless to say, they are now in a wonderful foster home where the sneezles and goopy eyes are being well taken care of.

It's actually kinda hard to clean tiny kitten eyes.

Here is our second group of young-ins, a little older but no less cute:

Yes?

We's sleepin here.

I know I'm cute, gosh.

Okay, one more:

Please, no more pictures!

Big shout out to Nancy, who puts up with my constant requests to take pictures of my darlings.