This Saturday, Mary and I adopted a kitten...or she adopted us, depends who you ask.
Saturday morning I left the house to run some errands and saw a tiny kitten run across our driveway and hide in some shrubbery. I called Mary and let her know that a little kitten was running around the yard. She went out and was able to entice the kitten out of the bushes with some cat food. The poor thing was starving. She brought her inside and kept her in one of the guest bedrooms to be separated from our 7 year old cat.
We felt it prudent to ask the neighbors if she was their kitten. One neighbor had seen her around the day before, but no one has claimed her. At this point, we hadn't decided what to do with her as we had no plans to get another cat but couldn't leave her outside on her own. We thought it best to bring her to a vet as she was in bad shape and we didn't want her to do any harm to our adult cat.
Her first visit to the vet went as well as can be expected for what the vet determined to be a stray 4 or 5 week old kitten that was most likely born in the wild. She had an eye infection in both eyes, terrible congestion, signs of fleas (none visible though), and was malnourished. All other vitals checked out good. The poor kitten had a terrible gargling sound with every breath she took. She weighed a whole 0.5 pound. The vet treated her for worms and gave (read: sold..lol) us medication for her eyes and congestion.
A pic of her initial vet visit:
We pondered bringing her to a family friend that takes care of kittens and finds them new homes or keeping her in our family. My MIL has adopted two kittens from this woman, she takes great care of all the cats that she finds families to adopt them. We are concerned how our adult cat will take to having an addition to the household. The two cats have been separated since Saturday and our adult cat has relaxed so much since her angst filled Saturday. She is now more curious than upset about the kitten in the other room. They will be separated for a few more weeks before we let them have supervised visits together. If all goes well with our cat (which we hope it will), we will be adding this little girl to our family. She is so adorable and friendly. She stole both our hearts.
The kitten, Barnaby, has progressed health-wise in the last few days. Her eyes are better, and her breathing is much less labored. She has a follow up visit this Saturday with the vet. I am sure there will be more vet visits to follow as she is so sickly, but she is worth it.
