Before getting into the meat of my blog, I would like to give a big shout out to Steve for his donation to our “Keeping Promises” campaign to cover the vet bills of our cats. Steve found us via Reddit, which is a first for us. We had a nice exchange of emails and I hope he will follow us in the future.
I haven’t blogged in a couple of weeks, the first reason is I couldn’t come to terms with the loss of Penelope and Buddy. Penelope was a 4.5 month old baby of Ms Tabz and she was as sweet a kitten you would ever want. Penelope’s sudden death by what our vet suspects to have been a viral illness happened only two days after another loss. Our old warrior Buddy’s body was shutting down due to old age and several chronic illnesses and we helped him over the Rainbow Bridge to join his friends already there. When you lose two cats almost at once, its just tough to sit down and write about anything, never even mind about what hurts so much and how.
Since these two deaths, we’ve been continuing our efforts to get donations and to apply for grants to help us with our vet bills. I was reminded by our vet that a large number of our cats have auto-immune disorders. Auto-immune disorder don’t necessary bring death quickly to a cat but they require constant medication and scheduled trips to the vet and sometimes a detour to the vet emergency room. Auto-immune diseases raise our costs significantly, but we’re a cat hospice so what do we do? We take care of cats.
There was some good news during this dreary period. We were notified on Friday 23 Aug, that we had been granted a Google Ad Grant. There are some hoops to jump through and we have to get a certain percentage of “clicks” on the ads in order to keep the grant. One rescue told me on Maddie’s Pet Forum that the amount of work it takes to keep up with the Google Ad Grant requirements almost makes it not worth the trouble. They mentioned that they have received almost no donations through the ads but lots of requests to drop off pets. We’ll have to see what happens.
Now, for cat news. There is a power struggle of sorts in the office where I watch TV in the evenings. Elderly cat Linus does not take kindly to little Ms Stella hogging my lap. Linus is normally the first one there when I sit down. However, the moment Linus goes to the water or food bowl, Stella takes his place. Linus generally comes over and glares at the both of us. Though, on occasion, he has given Stella a gentle paw to the head. A strategic retreat by her creates space for Linus, but as soon as he vacates the spot, Stella returns. Sigh.
