Bad News in Kitty Town
My Poor, Poor Baby!
Saturday night, hours after the parents had left, Justy (the live-in bro) and I are sitting in the living room, respectively playing video games or reading when we hear a sharp yelp come from right outside our living room window. We look at each other, scramble up from our couches and rush out, craning our necks to the side in search of Sterrance, who is normally found hanging out under one of the bushes in the front yard. But, despite our lookings, we couldn't find him.
Let me back up -- Sterrance has been an inside kitty for most of his life, Orlando not being the place for a baby-cat to roam and play due to the large amounts of traffic. Even when we made our home in GA, I was nervous about putting him outside, after all, we still live on a STREET. But, after two particularly unpleasant bouts of colon-explosion (which were fairly inexplicable but desperately disgusting) we decided to put him outside, at least until the runs were over with. Not to our surprise (as he was ALWAYS pressed up against a window), he was quite taken with outdoor life and had no interest in coming back in. So, for the past month or so, we've been putting fresh food and water out for him every morning and visiting him multiple times a day, letting him revel in the freedom of his comings and goings.
Here's Sterrance under his favorite bush:
Back to Saturday Night:
Now, seeing as Sterrance is almost always either under his bush or under my truck, we're worried. There were rumors of packs of wild dogs that would roam around our duplex community (I had seen one such pack a while ago and Justy and I had watched them roam around on the street a few nights prior to this), but we'd never seen any evidence of their being mean or dastardly, so we didn't think much of it, especially since Sterrance had been out for a month now with no signs of having had trouble with them. Needless to say, we were in for a big surprise.
Justin, all of a sudden, runs around to the side of the house because he's heard a scuffle. The backside of our house is composed of about 15 feet of actual grass, followed by 5-or-so feet of red Georgia clay, then woods. I guess he sees a thrashing in the woods, so we run in the house, grab our shoes (as we had been barefoot) and a flashlight, then rush back out to stop the skirmish.
What we see (or Justin sees, actually, as he has the flashlight) is 6 or 7 dogs in a pack, huddled around my cat - two dogs are on the flanks, looking like they're keeping watch, another dog is trotting around and three dogs are in the act of mauling the shit out of my cat. Justin and I commence to yelling at the dogs to scare them away, while Sterrance, using every ounce of energy it looks like he can muster, manages to shakily climb the nearest tree. He was wide-eyed and open-mouthed and it took Justin nearly two minutes to unhook his claws from every bit of tree he could grasp on to. We bring him in the house and note that he's bleeding from the mouth and is wet all over his fur where the dogs had been chewing on him.
Justy and Paul (the guy that shares the other side of our duplex) grab their paintball guns and go to look for these dogs while I stay and look the cat over, trying to see if he has any open wounds. It appears that he doesn't (besides the mouth, where I'm assuming he bit his tongue) but he is shaking horribly and breathing erratically, I just can't tell if it's from being scared shitless or something actually being *wrong* with him.
After a bad run at catching the dogs, we all reconvene to fuss over the cat. He eventually resumed somewhat normal breathing (a little shallow for my taste) and did get up and limp across the living room, but he seemed fine overall - just really shaken up and probably feeling somewhat like a rape victim in that he became suddenly aware of his own helplessness and the ruthlessness of other beings. He stayed in for a while and stopped limping quite so much, but showed his unhappiness and pooped on the floor, then sneaking somewhat to the door as though he wanted to go back out. Justin eventually took him out on the side-porch for a smoke and the cat wandered off to sleep under his bush again. So, we figured he was okay.
As of today, Sterrance hasn't eaten - not yesterday and not so far today - despite our enticing him with wet food galore and treats of lunchmeat. I'm not sure if it's because he's been utterly violated, is in pain, is super-depressed because it looks like his outdoor days of freedom are over, or a combination of the three. We also can feel a sharp inversion in one side of his ribs, leading us to believe that the dogs might have fractured one of them. He basically lays around the house, hardly moving at all, and kind of half-limps, half-creeps from place to place (although he doesn't move that much). We let him stay outside all day yesterday but took him in at night - there was no way he could fight those dogs again if they came by. I don't know if I should take him to a vet or what -- really, what could they do for him? Plus, I'm a grad student in the summer where I'm getting paid hardly nothing and relying on my parents to pay my rent. I can't really afford vet x-rays and whatnot. So, we're going to wait out today, grab some kitten formula and feeding-bottles from WalMart and try to get some food into him, but, if nothing happens, I'm going to have to call the vet tomorrow. He's looking really bad.
Here are pics of him taken this morning:
So, please keep my baby in your thoughts. He's having a really rough time of it right about now and can use all the good-energy he can get.
Saturday night, hours after the parents had left, Justy (the live-in bro) and I are sitting in the living room, respectively playing video games or reading when we hear a sharp yelp come from right outside our living room window. We look at each other, scramble up from our couches and rush out, craning our necks to the side in search of Sterrance, who is normally found hanging out under one of the bushes in the front yard. But, despite our lookings, we couldn't find him.
Let me back up -- Sterrance has been an inside kitty for most of his life, Orlando not being the place for a baby-cat to roam and play due to the large amounts of traffic. Even when we made our home in GA, I was nervous about putting him outside, after all, we still live on a STREET. But, after two particularly unpleasant bouts of colon-explosion (which were fairly inexplicable but desperately disgusting) we decided to put him outside, at least until the runs were over with. Not to our surprise (as he was ALWAYS pressed up against a window), he was quite taken with outdoor life and had no interest in coming back in. So, for the past month or so, we've been putting fresh food and water out for him every morning and visiting him multiple times a day, letting him revel in the freedom of his comings and goings.
Here's Sterrance under his favorite bush:
Back to Saturday Night:
Now, seeing as Sterrance is almost always either under his bush or under my truck, we're worried. There were rumors of packs of wild dogs that would roam around our duplex community (I had seen one such pack a while ago and Justy and I had watched them roam around on the street a few nights prior to this), but we'd never seen any evidence of their being mean or dastardly, so we didn't think much of it, especially since Sterrance had been out for a month now with no signs of having had trouble with them. Needless to say, we were in for a big surprise.
Justin, all of a sudden, runs around to the side of the house because he's heard a scuffle. The backside of our house is composed of about 15 feet of actual grass, followed by 5-or-so feet of red Georgia clay, then woods. I guess he sees a thrashing in the woods, so we run in the house, grab our shoes (as we had been barefoot) and a flashlight, then rush back out to stop the skirmish.
What we see (or Justin sees, actually, as he has the flashlight) is 6 or 7 dogs in a pack, huddled around my cat - two dogs are on the flanks, looking like they're keeping watch, another dog is trotting around and three dogs are in the act of mauling the shit out of my cat. Justin and I commence to yelling at the dogs to scare them away, while Sterrance, using every ounce of energy it looks like he can muster, manages to shakily climb the nearest tree. He was wide-eyed and open-mouthed and it took Justin nearly two minutes to unhook his claws from every bit of tree he could grasp on to. We bring him in the house and note that he's bleeding from the mouth and is wet all over his fur where the dogs had been chewing on him.
Justy and Paul (the guy that shares the other side of our duplex) grab their paintball guns and go to look for these dogs while I stay and look the cat over, trying to see if he has any open wounds. It appears that he doesn't (besides the mouth, where I'm assuming he bit his tongue) but he is shaking horribly and breathing erratically, I just can't tell if it's from being scared shitless or something actually being *wrong* with him.
After a bad run at catching the dogs, we all reconvene to fuss over the cat. He eventually resumed somewhat normal breathing (a little shallow for my taste) and did get up and limp across the living room, but he seemed fine overall - just really shaken up and probably feeling somewhat like a rape victim in that he became suddenly aware of his own helplessness and the ruthlessness of other beings. He stayed in for a while and stopped limping quite so much, but showed his unhappiness and pooped on the floor, then sneaking somewhat to the door as though he wanted to go back out. Justin eventually took him out on the side-porch for a smoke and the cat wandered off to sleep under his bush again. So, we figured he was okay.
As of today, Sterrance hasn't eaten - not yesterday and not so far today - despite our enticing him with wet food galore and treats of lunchmeat. I'm not sure if it's because he's been utterly violated, is in pain, is super-depressed because it looks like his outdoor days of freedom are over, or a combination of the three. We also can feel a sharp inversion in one side of his ribs, leading us to believe that the dogs might have fractured one of them. He basically lays around the house, hardly moving at all, and kind of half-limps, half-creeps from place to place (although he doesn't move that much). We let him stay outside all day yesterday but took him in at night - there was no way he could fight those dogs again if they came by. I don't know if I should take him to a vet or what -- really, what could they do for him? Plus, I'm a grad student in the summer where I'm getting paid hardly nothing and relying on my parents to pay my rent. I can't really afford vet x-rays and whatnot. So, we're going to wait out today, grab some kitten formula and feeding-bottles from WalMart and try to get some food into him, but, if nothing happens, I'm going to have to call the vet tomorrow. He's looking really bad.
Here are pics of him taken this morning:
So, please keep my baby in your thoughts. He's having a really rough time of it right about now and can use all the good-energy he can get.