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Coming Up for Air

Thursday
9/16/2010

The Campers had their first visit from a prospective adopter yesterday. It seems like just a few weeks ago they were flea-infested little furballs with poopy butts, so it's hard to believe that they'll start graduating from 50K by the end of the month. That's because (today's weights notwithstanding) they've grown like weeds. Even little Scottie has evolved into a swaggering little guy with orange-cat mojo. He loves to pair off with Samoa for extended wrestling matches.

And Samoa is the kitten likely to go home first. No surprise there – he's a flame-point-colored, sapphire-eyed, rough-and-tumble outgoing face-nuzzler. As his prospective adopters found out yesterday, all of the Campers are social purr-bunnies who like nothing better than rambling around on a pair of lounging peeps… except maybe shimmying up their legs or playing with their hair.

The Campers had another visitor this week as well, of the feline persuasion. Brett is a four-month-old brown tabby with marbled coloring, green eyes, and ear tufts like a Maine Coon. He's also painfully shy. He arrived Tuesday night, and after Martha held him on the futon for a while, he disappeared underneath when she let him go. And we didn't see him again until we pulled stuff out from under the futon Wednesday evening. We set him up with food, water and litter in an event crate in the middle of the villa as the Campers raced around the room and occasionally stopped to sniff him or extend a paw. Only Scout acted a little hissy.

But this morning Brett was hiding between the paper bags we'd used to create walls on two sides of the crate. He'd used his litterbox, but also kicked litter into his food and water. I removed the crate this morning, so he's back under the futon now. We'll have to decide whether he needs isolation therapy.

Speaking of therapy, the Divers have responded shockingly well to an increased dosage of Viralys (lysine) gel, Erythromycin eye ointment, and Idoxuridine eye-drops during the last three days. They'd been gaining weight slowly as we syringe-fed them every four hours, so we eliminated the 3am feeding several days ago.

But they were still fighting us at every meal… until Monday, when we first noticed that we couldn't hear Oggi breathing anymore. Then Gigi didn’t resist the syringe at all on Monday night. Then Oggi's eyes started to look less inflamed. Then we couldn’t hear Gigi breathe anymore.

On Tuesday we offered them a taste of Gerber's baby food and Oggi lapped it. He's been lapping ever since, and no longer needs our help. Gigi is sniffing and lapping as well, but not quite enough to gain weight, so she's still getting supplemental syringes.

As they get stronger, their congestion is receding and their eyes are getting rounder and less inflamed. Their gums, noses, and paw-pads are pink, and they're spending more time rambling around on the nursery floor.

The Divers aren't back to normal health yet, but they can see it from here. And considering how grim they looked ten days ago, we think their rise from the depths ranks among the best and most gratifying recoveries we’ve seen at 50K.

filed by: TS

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