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summer_jackelI've been looking for Trucker since April. I didn't have a whole lot of hope, and then she showed up.
Trucker is my mom's roughly 10-year-old Balinese, and oh man has this cat had a rough life. Over the last decade my mom has made a lot of money selling kittens, and as she's gotten crazier and her situation more precarious, her care of the cats deteriorated a lot. Trucker has probably had something like 13 litters, including Nocturne's. I've been itching to steal and spay her for years. Trucker was born when I was still spending a lot of time with my mom, so I really bonded to her. She's an amazingly sweet cat.
So in her most recent move, my mom had a couple weeks when she had nowhere to keep her cats but her friend's barn. This is where I'm boarding Bey and Equinox. They all stuck around but Trucker, who I never saw when I was feeding them. Mom never saw her again either, and while I hoped she'd found herself a home, I was afraid that the resident feral cats had driven her off.
When I got back from feeding ponies on Monday, Trucker was sitting next to my truck, looking forlorn and purring loudly. She's now locked in my bathroom. I spent about an hour cutting the mats out of her coat...pretty much all of her sides were solid mat...and pulling over a dozen foxtails that had made their way through the mats and were buried in her skin. I didn't get all choked up until she turned around and started grooming my wrist.
She's literally starving, but her runny nose is clearing after a day of antibiotics, which is good. She seems exhausted and unwell, but not fatally sick...let's hope she didn't get anything awful from the ferals. She's missing a few teeth and acts older than Magic (who is about 15), but her attitude is happy and unflappably calm. This is one made-of-leather survivor of a beat-up ol' cat, and whatever I end up doing with her, I'm finally in a position to give her decent care and &^^%$#!!!! spay her. I remain pissed about the whole situation, but that bit makes me happy.
Trucker is my mom's roughly 10-year-old Balinese, and oh man has this cat had a rough life. Over the last decade my mom has made a lot of money selling kittens, and as she's gotten crazier and her situation more precarious, her care of the cats deteriorated a lot. Trucker has probably had something like 13 litters, including Nocturne's. I've been itching to steal and spay her for years. Trucker was born when I was still spending a lot of time with my mom, so I really bonded to her. She's an amazingly sweet cat.
So in her most recent move, my mom had a couple weeks when she had nowhere to keep her cats but her friend's barn. This is where I'm boarding Bey and Equinox. They all stuck around but Trucker, who I never saw when I was feeding them. Mom never saw her again either, and while I hoped she'd found herself a home, I was afraid that the resident feral cats had driven her off.
When I got back from feeding ponies on Monday, Trucker was sitting next to my truck, looking forlorn and purring loudly. She's now locked in my bathroom. I spent about an hour cutting the mats out of her coat...pretty much all of her sides were solid mat...and pulling over a dozen foxtails that had made their way through the mats and were buried in her skin. I didn't get all choked up until she turned around and started grooming my wrist.
She's literally starving, but her runny nose is clearing after a day of antibiotics, which is good. She seems exhausted and unwell, but not fatally sick...let's hope she didn't get anything awful from the ferals. She's missing a few teeth and acts older than Magic (who is about 15), but her attitude is happy and unflappably calm. This is one made-of-leather survivor of a beat-up ol' cat, and whatever I end up doing with her, I'm finally in a position to give her decent care and &^^%$#!!!! spay her. I remain pissed about the whole situation, but that bit makes me happy.
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Date: 2009-07-15 08:19 pm (UTC)There's a cat up the street who seems to have a home. He's got a tag and is always in the same yard and seems fed regularly. But dammit, over the last year he's been developing mats and no one seems to be fixing it. He's so friendly and I can tell the mats are making him uncomfortable. I really want to trim them off of him.
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Date: 2009-07-16 05:03 pm (UTC)Himalayans, which have a coat more like a Persian's, are another story entirely. They MUST be brushed out regularly, or that thick coat quickly develops some terrific and nasty mats. So many people get these cats and don't realize or do the work involved; when I was grooming, we got in lots that needed to be shaved down. Lots of them don't have the patience to be brushed like they need (again, usually the owner's fault, because you need to train them to accept it from kittenhood).
Since you bring it up, I was going to throw this into the post above, but didn't want to make it too long. But here are directions for safely dematting an animal:
If you ever get in a situation where you're trying to remove heavy mats near the skin of an animal, ideally you have narrow-bladed, sharp grooming or hair scissors, but any scissor will do. You insert the lower blade into the mat as close to the animal's skin as you can, with the dull part touching the skin and the sharp cutting edge facing away from the animal. You then make a vertical cut upward through the mat, repeating until you can gently pull the mat out in chunks using your hand or an undercoat rake. What you never want to do is cut horizontally between the mat and the skin, which is what people usually try (because it seems like common sense). The skin is so tight with the mat that this method usually results in the person accidentally cutting the skin open...these are unpleasant and telltale wounds.