Sophie’s mother, Lily, brought Sophie to my neighbor Bob’s house because Sophie was
dying. Her mother had done all she could for her, but the fleas that summer were too much. Lily was just a kitten herself, and although we didn’t know it at the time, she was caring for two other sick kittens. She brought Sophie to the one place she knew that food would be reliable. Bob had a kind heart and had fed the local stray cats for years. His yard backed up to a usually-dry creek bed, so that was the highway for the roaming cats. He saw Sophie and her mom and knew they needed help, so he called for help. Lily kept coming back to check on Sophie. It was obvious she was worried about her as she hovered around, but she wouldn’t get close to her. Sophie didn’t care. She just sat hunched in the yard unless a person came out and then she scooted under the nearby wooden deck. We tried to catch her for 3 days, but she always managed to get out of reach. Finally, Bob had enough. He disappeared into his garage and came out a few minutes later with a large crowbar.
“Go get her!” We stared at him. Surely, he didn’t mean tear up his deck. Yes. That was exactly what he meant. So, we went to it. Sophie kept moving further and further back. There were 4 humans and 1 tiny kitten, and she was successfully eluding us. Any attempt to reach under and grab her was met with teeth and claws. As we tore back into the final corner, she tried to make a break for it. A large welders glove came down on top of her, followed by a bare hand reaching under and grabbing her by the scruff. She flailed and hissed and yowled, but she was caught.
Up close she looked even worse. She was skin and bones, had a very congested nose and goopy eyes, and was covered with fleas. Completely covered. Think of an ant farm, only fleas. We raced her to the vet. She was half the size a kitten her age should have been, had a very low body temperature, was severely anemic from the fleas literally sucking the life out of her, had terrible kidney values and should have been put to sleep immediately. Two things made us hesitate - first, four years earlier we had dealt with a kitten in similar condition and she’d thrived; second, she was eating like a pig. She was trying to live, so we decided to try and help her. She was admitted to the hospital where she spent four days in ICU on oxygen. The anemia
was so bad there wasn’t enough oxygen-carrying red blood cells circulating through her tiny body to support life without help. She ate everything put in front of her, which can sometimes cause loose stools in kittens, and lead to dehydration. But she needed the nutrition – so it was a four-day balancing act. We wanted to give her a transfusion to buy her body time, but she was so tiny and weak we couldn’t even draw enough blood to type and cross-match. That was dangerous so we decided to gamble her body could make red blood cells fast enough to keep her alive. With the fleas gone, she stood a chance.
She had so many people pulling for her, but it was touch and go for several days. She did have one thing going for her – she had a really bad attitude. She greeted everyone with flattened ears and a hiss. That is so much better than a sick kitten who is passive. Passive sick kittens have usually given up.
She didn’t like people because they were always poking her and interrupting her sleep and not bringing the food fast enough as far as she was concerned. However, there was one thing she loved and that was being “bathed” with damp gauze. She was too fragile, and her body temperature was already too low for a real bath but she was absolutely filthy. And, even after the fleas were killed, a copious amount of flea dirt remained. Her crusty eyes and nose bothered her, but she could not figure out how to wash herself with the IV catheter in. So, we bathed her with a rough damp bit of gauze to feel like her mother’s rough tongue and, she loved it. It was the first step in teaching her people were okay.
Finally she was discharged but still faced an uphill battle to recover and become a healthy cat. She showed the same determination she had showed when trying to evade capture! Gradually she gained weight and no longer looked like a waif. Then she kept growing and became a small, but normal sized cat. She became very affectionate. She turned into a quirky, but loving cat. So much of her kittenhood was spent trying to stay alive, as an older cat she finally got to be the fun-loving kitten she always wanted to be.
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