Blog – Page 3 – Mandarin’s Retreat

Stella and the Cost of Vet Care

**Post Op Stella with stitches on her nose and in her left ear.**

Stella came to us early last week. The lady who found her dumped on the side of the road tried to care for her, but was having no luck. She reached out on the El Paso subreddit to see if someone was willing to help. Mandarin’s Retreat responded and we suggested that she take Stella to the principal vet of the Retreat. One of the great docs there examined Stella and found a tumor in her left ear as well as significant tissue damage on her nose.

Two days later Stella was in surgery for the tumor and for a biopsy or two. While the vet thought the removal of the polyp might have been complicated, it turned out that it was just sitting there unconnected to anything. Stella’s little nose was then biopsied and off all the tissue went for histopathology.

The biggest concern right now is that Stella’s nose tissue is cancerous. We’ll know the results in about a week or so. So, everyone keep your fingers and tails crossed for her. A Paw Circle would not be remiss.

Now for the vet bill. Stella’s initial examination was $145 which included her exam, feline leukemia/FIV test and medicines. Not too expensive and inline with what the Retreat averages for a initial exam. The surgery surprised me a bit. It was less expensive than I thought due to ease of the polyp removal. What surprised me was the cost of the examination of the biopsies. The histopathology for the two samples was $360. Stella’s bill for the day was $844.95 or just under $1,000 for the two visits. We went through our monthly vet budget like a hot knife through butter.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Our vet and their staff are great and they give us breaks on almost everything. It’s just the cost of meds and other items have gone through the roof post-COVID. This is where Mandarin’s Retreat, or any other pet rescue, can use your donations or grants. We can only guesstimate the cost of vet visits. It’s really a throw of the dice plus the needs of the cats we receive.

Please help us if you can.

Now for some good news. The Retreat got it’s first recurring donation this week. Francisco provided us with a $20 monthly donation. Thank you so much from us and our furry tribe at the Retreat. We have named Francisco a Mandarin Kahu. I learned the term “kahu” a couple of months ago from a tweet. Kahu is an Hawaiian term which indicates a spiritual relationship between a human and an animal. The human is not the pet’s owner, but protector or guardian. For me I like to think of a kahu as a shepherd – guiding, guarding, seeing to the feeding, etc. Though the picture of a shepherd trying to herd a bunch of cats makes me giggle – here’s an old EDS commercial will give you the gist. All joking aside, thanks Francisco and may you be the first of many.

As soon as we know Stella’s results, we’ll post on X and other sites. I’ll also post the results in the blog when we get them.

No Words Just Pictures

It’s Been One Year!

It’s Saturday

It’s a touch after 1200 and I’m tired. It’s been a busy week with two trips to the vet and more than a few hours spent working on financial reports for the El Paso Foundation grant. This is my first time submitting for a grant which requires our financial history and I’m not sure what goes where. I’m also wondering how in the hell can I project Vet costs over the rest of the year. Averages will bite your behind when it comes to vet bills. Last year we spent over three times our monthly average in one month when panleukopenia entered the Retreat with one on the kittens. Any way, doing this stuff for the first time always has a bit of a learning curve, though this one is a bit steep.

Back to this Saturday. Saturdays are fill the litter boxes with litter day. Normally cleaning the boxes and adding small amounts of litter takes only 40 minutes or so. On Saturday’s it’s at least an hour and a half. This is the day the pails holding clean litter by the litter boxes are refilled from the stock in the garage. Lugging 40 pound boxes around creates a lot of sweat. And, in today’s heat, sweating was underway big time. Such is the life of a Cat Wrangler.

In our our modest grant request, we are seeking to replace all our litter boxes with very high sided plastic boxes which keep the litter overflow to a minimum. Some of our cats love to dig in earnest, sending litter flying all over the place. We learned of the high sided litter boxes from another rescue. We conducted a proof of concept experiment with our isolation kennel in the office. Our problem was trying to work with flying litter — the isolation kennel rests on the desk behind our principle work area. The litter box sitting about 30 inches off the floor gave the interned cat a great platform for sending litter down our necks and on to our work spaces. The high sided litter box worked like a charm and we want to get more.

Another item in our grant request is to purchase three high quality cat trees. High quality cat trees are expensive. High quality also means durability when the tree is made of solid wood instead of particle board. The company we found in North Carolina makes this type of high quality tree. These trees also have the capability to replace damaged parts without buying a new tree. Another plus is that they are gorgeous. The trees are furniture within our home, so looking nice makes a nicer environment for us. Cats get durability and we get sturdy and good looking.

One other thing we hope to purchase with the grant is grant management software. Trying to find a grant that fits the Retreat is tougher than filling out the grant forms. The software pulls from an updated grant database and helps us make better requests. This is a very non-sexy request but a much needed addition to the Retreat’s tool box.

The final item in our grant request may possibly be the most important. We’re requesting seed money for a fund to treat sick and injured feral cats that our TNR partners trap. This fund would allow us to treat the kitties, nurse them back to health and release them back into their clowder or colony. We also want to used this fund to helps needy oldsters care for their sick kitties. Our vet often lets us know if someone needs help, but most of the time we have no capability to help. This fund would be a start. Again this is just seed money for starting the fund; the Retreat and its gracious partners would have to support this fund with more money in the future. I would expect to see a separate donation/project fund widget in the future to help grow this little fund.

In closing today, we need to name the new kitten. He’s been too long without a name. I’m inclined to name him, Geralt after Geralt, the Witcher of books, games and TV fame. Our kitten is gray, feisty and doesn’t speak much unless hungry. The name seems a good fit but it’ll have to be approved by Mrs H. What say you?

1st Year Anniversary

23 July is the first anniversary of our approval as a 501c(3) organization and the “official” date of the founding of Mandarin’s Retreat. If you’ve read through the material on the website, you would know that as a cat rescue, we’ve been caring for cats for much longer. Mrs H and I got our first cats together in Bogotá, Colombia over 20 years ago. We’ve come a long way since we obtained Silvestra and Weasel.

What we’re planning on doing for this anniversary is to start another modest funding campaign while continuing to work on several grant opportunities. One challenge for the upcoming year is interest on the company credit card. We’ve had an interest free year on the credit card we use for food and vet bills and we have a 4 figure balance. We would like to zero out that balance and have a little money left over for campaigning for regular patrons who support keeping cats healthy and housed. We’re call the new campaign “Keeping Promises” which is a spin off of the joke candidate campaign poster I created for the Presidential debates. That poster is shown below:

Watch for more news on this campaign and please consider becoming a regular donor.