GOODBYE MUDDY AKA MONTY

Regular readers may remember the story of Muddy, an ailing elderly cat found sitting on a grass verge, who I took to the vets and fostered for a short while before, much to my surprise, finding him a new home and taking the new name of Monty. Now neither myself nor the new owners thought this weary battered but affectionate cat had a long life ahead of him. All the same it still felt upsetting when I received this email a couple of days ago-

Hi Ian

Just to let you know the sad news that Monty was put to sleep this morning due to kidney failure.

Thank you for letting me foster him for the short time we had together.

 

Victoria

To which all I can add are my thanks to Victoria and her partner for giving Monty the love and care he received from them for the last few weeks of his life and which made his passing so much easier. I wish he'd had longer.

**************************************************************************

I

I thought a similar situation might be arising with this one. Yesterday I got a call about a stray cat who'd been regularly fed by people in a quiet close at Silksworth. I went up, took one look him, and popped him in the basket. The people who'd contacted me were lucky as the 17 year old cat I'd more or less agreed to take in on Tuesday never arrived so I did have space, especially as three of my foster-cats had gone to the re-homing centre. I couldn't take him to the vets immediately as I had a committee meeting at 4.30 so I left him in the large cage.

When I got back some 90 minutes later he'd messily soiled the cat bed (see above) which I had to clean and put in the washer before I did anything else. Then off the to the vets.

Alas this isn't a story with a happy ending. Apart from a head covered in ticks, he had cat flu and at his age lacked the resources to fight it off. There were only two alternatives, neither pleasant: give him a booster shot and return him to where he came from to look after himself as I had no resources to cope with a cat in that condition; or to put him to sleep. You won't be surprised that Holly the vet and I decided the latter was the kindest option.

Can't win 'em all.
 

CATS, KITTENS AND THE ELDERLY

I got a call from one of the committee, heard the words "eighty year old" and "kitten" and said very loudly, and without really hearing what I was being told, "No! She can't have one."

But that wasn't what the call was about. An 80 year old lady already had a kitten (see above) but realised she'd made a mistake because it was too much for her. So off I went and took it to Carole's.

Rather than hammer home the message of this post, allow me to illustrate the point I'm making from my own life. Susan and I are 64 (well I will be in about eleven days) and we have 9 cats aged from 2 to 15. We both come from families where it is not unusual to be relatively physically and mentally healthy at 90. I go swimming for 4-5 sessions of 40 minutes each every week. Susan, once she gets up, never stops.

But there are no guarantees in life. At five foot five, I'm at least 40 pounds overweight which classes me as obese. I'm on cipramil, perindopril, and statins and have been for years. I should wear my two hearing aids all the time (but don't). Were it not for two cataract operations ten years ago I'd be legally blind by now. My memory, always poor, gets worse and I can just about feel the brain cells dying in their millions. Susan has her own aches and pains.

There are no guarantees in life, especially once you hit your sixties and what we don't want to happen is that we die leaving young cats behind to an uncertain future. I am hoping for at least another ten reasonably active years at roughly the same pace. On that basis, the plan regarding our cats is that (and all this approximate) we won't be taking in any new cats until most of them have come to the end of their own lives. 

And then we will only adopt elderly cats like Lotus whom we took in last year. They are always the hardest to re-home anyway but the main reason is that there's a very good chance that we will outlive them as well as providing a good home for them in their old age.

There's also another reason. As you slow down and your joints stiffen, you don't want a young cat which stays out all night and runs around like a lunatic destroying everything. You want one like our Lotus who just sits in the garden without jumping the fence, likes sitting quietly on knees or curled up on the bed. When you get old you want a cat you can cope with, not, as the lady I mentioned found out, one you can't. So the point I'm making is this, that, for a variety of reasons-

Elderly cats for elderly people is best, for the cats and for the people.

MORAL DILEMMAS

There are a couple of issues I've been pondering on recently with regard to cats. While seemingly different, they are related as you'll see.

1. Is it ever right to put to sleep a healthy cat? 

Now the obvious answer to that is a resounding NO! But sometimes it isn't always that simple. A couple of weeks ago I got a call from a lady who, for very reasons (which I forget, sorry) needed to re-home her two 16-year old cats. 

Apart from the fact that that we were full anyway, it is extremely difficult to re-home older cats and sixteen is quite old for a cat anyway. Unless a friend or neighbour is willing. it's almost impossible. They are coming to the end of their lives and the likelihood of incurring vets bills is quite high. I told her this and also what would happen to them if a local rescue did take them in. The odds were that they'd be stuck in a small cage together for the rest of their short lives, surrounded by other strange cats in cages. 

I suggested that the kindest thing to do in this case would be to put them to sleep. They'd had good comfortable lives and had been loved. If that couldn't continue then it should end. I thought that discussing it with a vet would also help.

I haven't heard anything since. So, did I say the right thing or not?

2. Should a kitten be homed with an elderly person?

I'll define elderly as being in their late 70's or older.

And I'm not going to answer the question directly either. Instead I'll go off on a tangent and tell you what our personal plans are.

We have nine cats and we'll both be 64 this year. The cats are aged from just under 2 to 15 (the eldest being Lotus our newest cat). Despite our family backgrounds suggesting that we could be lucky enough to live to a healthy old age, nothing in this world is certain. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. So we aren't ever going to have another kitten. Neither are we going to replace any of the nine cats as they die off until maybe we just have three or four left. Then we'll begin to take in cats which we're fairly sure either won't outlast us or not by much if they do. I'm thinking of cats aged 14 or over. 

Something that worries us greatly is that we die leaving young healthy cats to an uncertain fate. This is one, not uncommon reason, for cats coming into our care and it's a very sad one and something which we'd rather avoid.

I mentioned Lotus earlier. Her story is a sad one. She was owned by an elderly mother with the onset of dementia and her son, not yet 50, who was dying of cancer. She had to go into care, he booked the cat into Westhall kennels, then put himself into a hospice. They'd been friends of Susan's family but Susan only found about these matters months later. We went to visit Lotus and found her to be withdrawn and in poor physical condition. She was never likely to be re-homed and it would have been kinder to put her to sleep. But luckily for her, we took her home and she now enjoys a good quality of life. But Lotus is the lucky exception.

Lotus at Westhall Kennels

And in our garden a couple of months later.

THE CAT IN CELL 9

It started out as an ordinary Tuesday morning as I went to pick up cat food from Asda and Sainsburys. It differed a little after that as I had to call in at a friend's house to feed her cat and change the litter and then keep it company for a while as she was on holiday. She actually got the cat from me as it had been found locally, had recently given birth, and had a damaged (discovered to be broken) leg. I'd kept the cat in a cage in the garage, spending some time with it each day until it was ready to be re-homed which, obviously, she was and very successfully.

About an hour after getting home, Susan and I set off in the van to visit Westhall Kennels which acts as a dumping ground for stray cats and dogs which have ended up being the responsibility of Sunderland City Council. It's basically a converted farm and is a dark and depressing place to visit. I'm sure the staff do their very best for the animals in their care but it isn't the sort of place I'd want any of my cats to go to. The reason for our visit is that Susan had just learned of the death of a family friend -it had happened some months earlier but for complicated reasons (not unsavoury I should emphasise) it had been kept quite. He was only in his 40's and as a result his mother with whom he lived had immediately gone into care and their cat into Westhall.

What we found is in the top picture. I could tell she was an oldish cat even before I looked at her teeth and she was clearly stressed. She'd stopped looking after herself and her coat was peppered white with dandruff and thick with loose hairs. She hadn't licked her bottom very well either. As I was due to take a cat to Stray Aid (see several previous posts), I rang up them to see if they would take this one -she'd been named Lotus- which they would. In the meantime, we'd look after her for a couple of days and, suspecting this might happen, I'd brought a cat carrier with me.

That sorted, our next stop was at Carole's with the weekly delivery of food. One cat which had arrived a couple of days ago had just finished giving birth to her last kitten not long before we got there. She'd had six in all. I took a few photos of them and some other cats.

 

While we were there, Carole suggested we take Lotus to Roker Park vets to be checked out as they'd probably fit us in now. So we did. Wendy, who took the ginger kitten a couple of weeks ago, checked her out and reckoned her to be about 10-12 years old and in reasonable health, coat  condition excepted. So we took her home and she took up residence under the settee.

I was back at Carole's in the afternoon to take one cat and a kitten to the vets. The cat, Ossie (otherwise known, to me anyway, as Psycho-cat) and one of Carole's had recently decided to start peeing all over the place. The three-week old kitten, on the other hand, had developed eye trouble. Here they are.

Thursday morning dawned mild and sunny and, after paying a visit to the cat, it was off to Stray Aid. The first cat was located upstairs above the shop. A stray, it had arrived yesterday. Now I was originally going to take Lotus but, for reasons I'll explain later, it was going to be this friendly young tabby (sorry, no pictures of it) instead. Then I picked up Phil who, with Andrea, does the dog-running. Over to Red House Estate on the north side of the city to pick up a one year old neutered male as the couple didn't have to look after him properly because they had a new baby. Yeah, right, like a cat takes that much looking after. But into the box it went.

About a mile to the west and it's a one year old German Shepherd which has been neither trained nor socialised with the result is that he's wildly friendly with people, can't be allowed near other dogs and a tight grip needs to be kept on his leader at all times. He can be trained but it will need someone with a lot of experience and patience to do it.

Stray Aid were hugely busy that morning due to an influx of several stray dogs and it took a while for them to check ours out. The cats were no problem, both young, friendly, neutered, and healthy and very re-homeable. The dog might have to go to the Blue Cross animal charity for special training.

It's now Monday and Lotus, the cat in cell 9 (actually a reasonable size cage with an outside run) is still with us and looks like being our Cat No.9. In the time she's been with us, I've given several intensive brushes which she actually loved and would let me pretty do anything to her to get at the fur. I gave her a dry shampoo with a special mousse like stuff which got rid of most of the kennel smell but replaced it with a smell that Susan hated. So we gave her a bath and Susan shampooed her with Head & Shoulders. I held Lotus by her front paws against the edge of the bath and, while she clearly wasn't happy, put up with it all.

She actually looks better than this now and the dandruff has mostly gone. While mainly staying in the living room, she occasionally venture into the kitchen or upstairs. She doesn't react to the other cats even when one of them hisses at her, though they most keep out of her way. She likes being cuddled and will happily stay on your knee or slumped against your chest for as long as you'll let her, purring loudly all the while. 

In the last couple of days she's started climbing on my knee without waiting to be picked up. Although Wendy the vet put her at 12 at the oldest, she acts like an older cat. I've never seen her move quickly at all. Susan doesn't think we'll have her long, though she may surprise us. Me, I just feel so sorry for the poor old thing and also pleased that she's begun to respond to us. But what we are doing is giving an old cat a loving home for her last few years which I'm sure would have pleased her late owner.