Sunday, June 26, 2011

Foster Kitten Insanity

In the world where nothing seems to go like it should, our family is fostering four flea infested kittens. Don’t get me wrong, I love cats and will do anything for them. The fleas are just an unpleasant issue that must be dealt with. Here is how the weekend has gone so far.
Saturday
Went to Blue Ridge Vet to pick up 8 kittens and one cat all to go into foster homes; four for a vet tech, three for my family and one kitten and the cat to another foster. We get to the vet’s office and tell them we are here for the rescue and to pick up cats. The vet tech had a few different medicines for the kittens, eye drops, dewormer and something else that would need to be divided for the fosters to administer. After getting the kittens in four different carriers, we put them in the car. I noticed some of them and pooped in their carrier, which my dad cleaned so the car wouldn’t smell (yeah right).
The vet’s office is 50 miles from our house, plus we were dropping the kitties off at two different fosters, one in Oakton and one in Fairfax city. After driving for about an hour with stinky kittens (they had pooped, peed, vomited and rolled all in it, in their carrier) we finally dropped them all off. Turned out that the vet tech foster couldn’t keep her four kittens and they went to the foster who was supposed to be taking the kitten and adult. But the vet’s office told us not to separate the kittens, so the foster took the adult cat and then the vet tech’s four kittens (sadly, one died this morning – RIP Parson).
After bringing out four home (Frack, Lewis, Abigail and Michelle) we immediately decided to bathe them. My parents bathed the cats and I dried them off and brought them up to my room and fed them. I fed them their kitten food, placed their booda dome litter box down and let them run around rampant. They are so cute. Frack is black and white medium haired, Lewis is medium hair gray, Michelle is a dilute calico and Abigail (Abby as I call her) is a tortie with white.
The cats had been fed their dinner and we had to leave for a wedding reception. After coming home, we fed the kittens some dry food and gave them their eye drops (not quite as hard as one would think).
Abby hid, completely petrified. Lewis was playful but hesitant to approach humans, Frack was so friendly he purred as soon as being picked up and Michelle was nervous but allowed me to handle her. All the kittens played except for Abby. They loved little mice toys. No one slept with me, but they were active all night.
Sunday
Today we were supposed to leave for Richmond for my first college visit to Virginia Commonwealth University. We planned to get out by 1 pm. We never get out when we say we will and of course that was exactly the route we were heading in the morning. Our pet sitter stopped by and got the instructions for the 11 cats she would be sitting for.
Frack got out of the room for a moment but I grabbed him and put him back in. He kept trying to escape and eventually did – running into the huge (only a 1 year old kitty) Piper who crouched down and hissed as I swept up Frack. Clearly a surprise for both cats!
We were combing Michelle after giving her Panacure (dewormer) and her eye medicine when we saw a live flea. We immediately put the flea in soapy water to kill it and continued to brush her and found flea dirt. Same with Frack, fleas and flea dirt. We realized that we had a real problem on our hands. We decided to cancel our hotel reservation. It wasn’t a 24 hour notice, so we might not get our money back – but mom did tell the manager that our kittens had fleas so hopefully they wouldn’t have wanted us to come and will refund us! If not, that’s life I guess.
Michele also had a weird crusty scab like area on her tail. We were extremely worried that it may be ringworm. We decided to take her to Pender emergency veterinary clinic and have them figure out if it was ringworm so we could decide treatment.
It’s difficult having sick, flea infested foster kittens because our 7 cats could catch what they have, and that would not be good at all. So I headed out to PetSmart and Target to get cleaning supplies for the kittens. I ended up buying…
-$150 worth of FrontLine for our cats and the kittens
-Bio spot flea and tick spray (please work!)
-flea comb
-litter
-Antibacterial and Antifungal dog wash (they didn’t have cat ones)
-mattress protector for my bed
-sponges
-wash clothes for cars (no not cats, cars)
-blue original dawn
-flea itch relief (for us just in case)
-moth balls for the vacuum cleaner to clean the floors
-tape
-A few other oddities mostly for me

And the other two random happenings today were a light bulb exploding out of the overhead kitchen light – uneasy to replace. The broken glass was so hot to the touch! Don’t know what that was all about.  And coming out of PetSmart I cut my toe on a shopping cart and probably need to get a tetanus shot. Yippee.

So as soon as my parents get home with Michelle I believe we will be re-bathing the kittens, applying Frontline and cleaning the room. For the time being, the little kitties may have to stay in a crate. We’re doing all we can to take the best care of them. Stay tuned for more updates!