Wisp Needs A Home!
by Georgetta
(Ventura, Calif, USA)
Wisp needs a home!
Wisp is a Feline Leukemia positive kitten about 5-6 months old who was found in an unincorporated area of Ventura County right after Christmas by a lady who has helped us in the past with providing location support for TNR (Trap, Neuter, Return) in stabilizing some feral colonies in her area of our county.
This lady is disabled and of limited means, but she loves cats and contacted our TNR coordinator and asked for assistance with the mange issue, then decided that the kitten's care was more than she could handle financially so she wanted to get the kitten into foster care with us.
At the time I was fostering a kitten (Razzmatazz) who also had mange, but who had been treated, retreated, spayed, vaccinated, and tested as clear for FIV/FeLV. I told my contact that if Razzmatazz got adopted, I would take the other kitten home for fostering. At that time Wisp had been treated with Revolution and Drontal only. No vet check yet or S/N surgery. Needless to say, my cute little outgoing calitab girl with the "Z" tail was adopted at her first public outing at PETCO to a nice lady and her daughter so I called the finder/foster and made arrangements to pick up the other mange kitten the same night.
I picked up Wisp on January 2, at 8 p.m. and the history I got is that she had been running around the house with this woman's other cats for about a week, but that she had experienced alternating diarrhea and constipation and they had been feeding her canned food and giving her doses of liquid iron. I estimated that she was at least 10 weeks old when I took custody, but she weighed less than 2 lbs and was skin and bones and VERY dehydrated. She was very scared and hissy/growly for the first couple of days at my house.
I immediately quarantined her and called a good friend who has a lot of experience in assessing serious health issues in rescues. She and I work well together, although she is no longer an official volunteer in my rescue. She felt that Wisp's condition was severe enough to warrent sub-Q fluids, so we gave her quite a bit of rehydration 2 or 3 times over a couple of days. She bounced back very well, except for the bowel issues - still had some pretty soft stools, possibly due to the fact that I put her back on kitten formula since she was also somewhat anemic as a result of fleas and mange.
After she was feeling a bit better, I gave her a bath and with a flea comb, gently removed as much of the loose scabs and matted hair as possible. I think she felt better after that since the hair mats weren't pulling at her skin anymore. She isn't like my little Razzie... jumping on my shoulder every time I opened her kennel, but she is very sweet and loves to have her face and chin rubbed. She is still having some bowel issues, more on the constipation side now, but my friend and I are working on that too. She loves to play with her toys and with the ball-in-a-doughnut plastic ring and tilts her head when I approach as if to say "Do you want to play too?"
She has had Advantage, Drontal, and Revolution on 12-29 and Ivermectin sQ-Drontal 1-12-10 & 1-26-10. I am going to schedule her next vet visit for the retest/confirming test in about 2 weeks. I was told to wait for 4-5 weeks from the initial testing to retest. The initial test Snap combo test for FIV/FeLV was done on 1-18-10. She was negative for FIV, but strong positive for FeLV. The confirming test done on 2-16-10 was also positive.
I immediately notified the finder/foster and my TNR contact about the positive test so they could take appropriate action on any other cats in the area where she was found and also for the resident cats at the finder's house. I was told that they didn't have a history of FeLV positive cats at that location.
Please leave a comment if you can help...thanks
Georgetta
