UPDATE: Sunday, Apr 16, 2023 · 9:39:56 PM +00:00
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AZnaturegrrrl
Another update: Sadly my old cat, Buster, died on the 30th after stopping eating on the Sunday.
The vet didn’t have a diagnosis, just that his temperature was low and he was dehydrated. Two days on a drip in hospital didn’t help and so I brought him home to die among his family. He slipped away just before we woke, on a pillow next to me, and surrounded by his bedroom crew. One of my favourite songs at the moment (from a band who lost one of their members last year) has the line “Everybody says goodbye” in it (Depeche Mode, Ghosts Again). It’s a truism that I’m very familar with and yet never prepared for when it happens. Thank you all again for your help with my cat family.
UPDATE: Sunday, Mar 19, 2023 · 4:47:56 AM +00:00
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AZnaturegrrrl
Thank you to everyone who contributed — the “cheezburger” fund has now reached (a little over) my goal — you people are the kindest! Thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me some hope along with the help. My cats and dog are my life. My reason to get out of bed every morning. My support during the day, with their little offerings of love and trust. That you would help me feed them means everything to me.
I’m embarrassed to be back here for the third year running asking for help for my cats, but needs must. Between bad luck (started the year with a water leak in my kitchen ceiling that took all my bill money for the month to get fixed) and an apparent inability to earn enough not to be living hand to mouth, especially when the work is slow to come in, despite having three jobs, I am coming up short.
My household now totals one understanding dog (my darling Daisy) and 25 mannerless cats. I took in three more little souls last November — a lactating mum (Starlight) and her two kittens (Blue and Luna). They were trapped in a parking lot by a TNRing friend just before the weather froze. The kittens were too young to fix, but mum was fixed and tipped immediately. Starlight was destined to be left back at the parking lot, but my friend wanted to home the kittens. Where I live, everyone is saturated with cats and dogs, so I agreed to take them on condition their mum came, too, and that my friend would pay to have the kittens fixed. So that’s how I got to 25…
The kittens were sickly at the start — Blue (a girl) got a very bad cold, then a few weeks later, her brother Luna got an infection and was very sick with a fever. Thank goodness for antibiotics and that I’m not a novice at syringe-feeding cats! They’re doing very well now — I assume, because the kittens are pretty much always moving and always at hypersonic speed. They love to play with the jingly balls I gave them, especially in the early hours of the morning. I usually work into the early hours, and it’s like going to sleep inside a pinball machine, the way they slam those balls against the walls, under the bed. But I’m usually exhausted, so it doesn’t keep me awake. The kittens are also enrolled in the Mr Monkey Monkton training school for wayward cats and already have no respect for Daisy-dog (who is obsessed with Blue, despite getting “rebuffed” by a swinging be-knived paw every time she gets close) or me. Mum, on the other hand, is quiet, sweet and, I think, thankful not to be bringing them up alone — she’s not much more than a kitten herself. The kittens are currently on wet and dry kitten food to build them up — they both lost weight when they were sick.
While most of my cats survive on basic biscuits, my olds (all in their teens) are also now on wet food and/or special (high-protein) biscuits. Yuki was orphaned by her guardian last year and has bouts of pancreatitis. Buster has been with me for years, is half deaf, half blind and has bad IBS symptoms. Patchy has allergies and IBS, and Patsy and Blondie can’t tolerate eating many biscuits, so they all have to have special wet food. In the last year, I realise this has added around $400 to my monthly animal care bill.
When I totted everything up before I came on here to ask for help, I was shocked to find my monthly animal food + litter/puppy pads bill is currently about $675! This has been a stretch for quite a while, but right now, it’s impossible for me to cover while I’m waiting for work to pick up (all my jobs are “seasonal”, in so far as they randomly pick up and drop off through the year) and to see how this year shakes out, financially. So I wonder if I could get some help paying this bill for the next two months, which would be $1350 in total, until I can find my feet. I’d be more than happy to receive Chewy or Petco gift cards, which can be sent to me at naturegirl61@icloud.com, and this is also my PayPal address. A very kind person has already donated $450 (thank you very much!), so that just leaves about $900 to get me through till May, by which time I hope I’m able to cover the costs myself. Y’all have been so kind in helping me out previously and I hope I’m not pushing my luck by asking again.