#TBT The Story of Teddy- a special needs cat.

moderndragon (55)in #cats • 7 years ago

Hello Folks!

I currently have some sort of post viral fatigue after having this year's flu. It's been 6 weeks now so pretty sure it's not the flu anymore, just some kind of a regression/ flare up of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Doing anything for more than 2 hours leaves me weak and wobbly. Just another day in-the-life of my 10 years of living with CFS.

Anywho, On that cheery note I thought to share some of Teddy's journey.

If you don't have a lot of time to read his story, here is a video I made of his progress.

I tried writing a blog once on Niume but didn't keep it up.
I copied the one and only post here so bare with me, o steam police. Any new blog posts about Teddy will be on Steemit.

This is the beginning of Teddy's story.

This is the story of our special needs cat Teddy and how he became part of our family. I will be posting chapters of the story as I go along, as well as updates on his health and progress.

On Friday night 15 January 2016 we spotted some kittens in the bushes by our front gate. Rather than chase them around in the dark we let them and their mom be.

Early Saturday morning I went outside with some food to see if they would eat and to gauge how wild they were. The mom looked like she wasn't more than 6 months old with 3 kittens around 6-7 weeks old.

They were very interested in the cat food pellets though shy, and ate all the food I put out for them. They hung around so the idea was to catch, tame and find homes for them. They would scamper away whenever we got close and we noticed that they sometimes hid under the car. The 2 on the right are females and the one on the left is a male.

Saturday afternoon when we were about to leave for the evening we saw the 2 females but not the mom or the boy. When we got into the car and my husband Lynton turned the key to start the car we heard a bang and a meow. We looked at each other and went " Kitten!" Lynton immediately switched the car off and opened the hood to see what we could see. The cat was nowhere to be found but there was a lot of hair and it seemed that the fan belt caught most of it. Cringe! Little guy where did you go? For the next 10 minutes we looked everywhere we could think of for the cat but could not find them. We figured if we can't find him then he got away and is probably ok.

We spent the night and slept over at a family birthday celebration. Upon returning home Sunday afternoon we found the kittens sleeping among the flower pots. As I fed them I found that it had been the little male who had been sleeping the the car the day before and that he had been injured.

Realizing he had been in pain since the previous day I managed to catch him and took him to the bathroom to have a look at what state he was in. The tip of his ear had been taken off by the fan belt and he had a bald patch on his side. Worse than that though, he was unable to use his back legs and scooted around to get away. I put down some food and water for him, which he ate and drank, and started phoning around to find a vet open on a Sunday afternoon that could have a look at him, but was crying so much that the task fell to Lynton!

We took him to the 24 hour vet in Kennilworth, (Cape Town) and they prepared us for the worst. If he had severed his spine it would be better to have him put down. If he tested positive for Aids or Leukemia it would be better to put him down. So many tears from my side. My heart broke for the little kitten. The vet checked him out and found that he could still feel deep pain, so the spine had not been severed but rather been shocked. His tests were also negative! Yay! He had inflammation around the spine but with lots of TLC he should be able to fully recover. Since he was a stray, did we want to adopt him or give him up?

How can you say no to that face? We decided to adopt him and we would do what it took to get him healed up and walking again. ( We'd been considering getting a friend for our adopted cat, Flash for a while anyway) We knew he could eat and drink fine. If he could poop and wee on his own his chances of making it would be good. The vet said to give it 3 weeks and we'll know by then if he'll make it or not. She dewormed him and sent us home with anti-inflammatories for the pain and antibiotics for a case of the Snuffles. ( We'd also managed to catch the calico kitten to also have her tested and she was also clear)

It had been a long Sunday for this little guy. He was doing really well for a cat whose first human contact was the previous day.