Update Continued

I’ve been negligent in getting back to the blogosphere as there has been much going on. However; to update everyone, Mandarin’s Retreat picked up our $2,000 check from the El Paso Community Foundation. The money was provided by the James, Janie and Mark Keating Fund. We are grateful to the Keatings for establishing this wonderful source of support for little outfits like ours.

The first transaction was to pay for the two cat trees that have been ordered from the WLO Company. We ordered those over Black Friday to catch the tail end of a rather nice discount. Pictures will follow once they arrive and are unpacked. For a taste of what might happen please that a look at Cat Tree Saga.

We also have a few sick cat updates. First is Stella. When I wrote about her last, we were fighting multiple lesions around her neck and chest. Stella is apparently allergic to the methimazole gel we were putting in her ears and so, quite literally, broke out in hives. Our vet says it was making her itch like crazy. We stopped giving her the gel and provided her with meds to ease the itching. She’s been improving daily and becoming less a grumpy ole grandma cat. We’re waiting on her liquid thyroid medicine so we can continue treating that problem.

Next cat up is Cooper. The vet team had been expecting Cooper to die at any moment and everyday he putters around is a minor victory. He is a very, very old cat. Dr M, Cooper’s primary vet said, “I guess Cooper decided to change his mind about leaving.” The poor cat has dementia, can’t see well, but has taken to sleeping with us on our bed most nights. He was occasionally missing the litter box and using our bed pillows instead, so now we sleep with each other, cats and a litter box on the bed. Sometimes, drastic measures are required to keep an ancient cat comfortable. Cats like Cooper are the principal reason Mandarin’s Retreat exists.

The penultimate kitty is Hamlet. Another old soul who came to use with his bonded compadre Othello from an amazing military family in town. Hamlet’s mouth has turned into a massive mess. We think an abscess broke in the back of his mouth, causing him to drool like crazy with some bloody “stuff” all over his chin. He’ll go into dental surgery next week and is now loaded on medication to help carry him through and heal his ouchies. 2024 seems to be the year for mouth problems in our cats.

The last cat in we’ll be covering is Carmello. We thought we’d conquered his mouth problems with his teeth cleaning and meds. However, his tonsillitis returned with vengeance and began to hinder his ability to eat and made him absolutely miserable. Our vet says the tonsils need to be removed. Removal of a cat’s tonsils is a fairly rarely done, difficult surgery and so we’re searching for a surgeon skilled in it. We’ll probably have to take a trip to somewhere to get it done, we don’t know yet. We do know it will be expensive, so expect an appeal for help from us in the near future. More to come later.