(no subject)
Today was hard.
Life's changed a lot since I wrote anything. I finished undergrad in May, and I'm now a graduate student in my field at a university in Georgia, 800 or so miles away from where I grew up. I've gotten a cat. She's a sweet 2-3-year-old torti I've had for about a month. I volunteer at the local humane society adoption center which deals almost entirely with cats. I stop by several times a week, and commit to volunteering on Sundays. That's why things are hard.
For the last several weeks, there's been something going around. A virus that was making the cats miserable. Super swollen eyelids. No appetite. Sneezing. Dehydration. Respiratory distress in some of the cats. This whole week they've closed the adoption and intake center to effectively quarantine us while they figured out what was causing this.
Results came back this week. At least one of the cat's, who was currently one of the sickest, bloodwork came back. It's called Calicivirus, and we have an outbreak. Treatment requires 8 weeks of intensive antibiotic treatment and quarantine. The virus is highly, highly contagious. It's passed through saliva, snot, feces, and urine. It's an RNA virus that mutates quickly. We think it came in with a group of cats rescued after their previous owners had been mauled to death by wild dogs in the area. This week, even they started to get sick, it mutates that quickly. A humane society cannot afford 8 weeks of intensive antibiotic treatment for all of those cats.
I found out this morning that the sickest one were euthanized yesterday. Everyone's being euthanized. And it hurts. I knew these cats well. And it is so hard knowing what's happened to them. Even all of the kittens were/are to be put down. We had 16 cages out front, and 4 kittens left in the back. There were 50-60 still at the intake center. And they're all gone.
They have to notify everyone who's adopted from us in the last month or so. This is a serious enough virus that the outbreak was reported to the Department of Agriculture. I'm sure it will make the news soon enough. We've been sanitizing the place like mad. The bleach and Trifectant will kill the virus, and we're steam cleaning as well. The whole system twice. My throat is raw from the bleach.
So now I watch my cat carefully, fearing that I might have brought it home with me. If she get's sick, no question that I will treat her. I just don't want to put her through that. I hope this never happens again. People comment, when I mention that I'm a volunteer, that it must be hard watching them go home after getting to know them. This is so much worse.
Life's changed a lot since I wrote anything. I finished undergrad in May, and I'm now a graduate student in my field at a university in Georgia, 800 or so miles away from where I grew up. I've gotten a cat. She's a sweet 2-3-year-old torti I've had for about a month. I volunteer at the local humane society adoption center which deals almost entirely with cats. I stop by several times a week, and commit to volunteering on Sundays. That's why things are hard.
For the last several weeks, there's been something going around. A virus that was making the cats miserable. Super swollen eyelids. No appetite. Sneezing. Dehydration. Respiratory distress in some of the cats. This whole week they've closed the adoption and intake center to effectively quarantine us while they figured out what was causing this.
Results came back this week. At least one of the cat's, who was currently one of the sickest, bloodwork came back. It's called Calicivirus, and we have an outbreak. Treatment requires 8 weeks of intensive antibiotic treatment and quarantine. The virus is highly, highly contagious. It's passed through saliva, snot, feces, and urine. It's an RNA virus that mutates quickly. We think it came in with a group of cats rescued after their previous owners had been mauled to death by wild dogs in the area. This week, even they started to get sick, it mutates that quickly. A humane society cannot afford 8 weeks of intensive antibiotic treatment for all of those cats.
I found out this morning that the sickest one were euthanized yesterday. Everyone's being euthanized. And it hurts. I knew these cats well. And it is so hard knowing what's happened to them. Even all of the kittens were/are to be put down. We had 16 cages out front, and 4 kittens left in the back. There were 50-60 still at the intake center. And they're all gone.
They have to notify everyone who's adopted from us in the last month or so. This is a serious enough virus that the outbreak was reported to the Department of Agriculture. I'm sure it will make the news soon enough. We've been sanitizing the place like mad. The bleach and Trifectant will kill the virus, and we're steam cleaning as well. The whole system twice. My throat is raw from the bleach.
So now I watch my cat carefully, fearing that I might have brought it home with me. If she get's sick, no question that I will treat her. I just don't want to put her through that. I hope this never happens again. People comment, when I mention that I'm a volunteer, that it must be hard watching them go home after getting to know them. This is so much worse.