Bee Holistic Cat Rescue and Care - Blog

Notes from the Trenches...

6/19/2018

I may have alienated a caller this morning.
She asked me for help with an injured cat she had been watching. Feeding? I hope so. She said that her dad could not take the cat as he already had three, she could not, etc. I get calls like this every day.

I suggested that she herself might be the cat's best hope...

The general idea folks have is so faulty, limited, skewed, and flat out ass-backwards that it drive me nuts. There IS no one you can just call and bingo! A great home is found, a good shelter is available (virtually every shelter houses them, each alone, in metal cages...usually with desperately barking dogs, in rooms with no sunlight...), loving arms are waiting. NOT SO.

There is not a single shelter I would want to see a cat go to...including mine. Mine has too many, even though it is in a home, no cages, good food, in-out access after integration with the household, etc.

I think it's a mix of ignorance, wishful thinking, and failure to consider personal responsibility at work here. Folks just don't know...homeless or stray cats are more invisible than dogs, so how could folks know how many are out there?

I think people would reconsider breeding if they knew how many need homes. And there is no reason to "preserve the breed". The breeds are un-natural. Many did evolve, and were bred with others similar (inbreeding). Others were bred to have features useful to humans (short legs, etc.) I'm getting into dogs here, but of cats are bred too, for perverse and commercial reasons...designer or status animals. Fie.

The point here is that we all need to pitch in and help the homeless among us! Please. We cat ladies need you!
With love,

Cynthia

Hey! It's KITTEN Season!!

5/9/2018

And Yes, it IS true that we have the cutest kittens on the planet! You've heard right! Come meet them, and adopt! We are at 6073 Felix Ave., Richmond, 94805. They will go in pairs, one with mama, for lots of great reasons...(easier on you for one thing) and you'll get a 'starter kit' to take home wih your little treasures!! Email us: cynthia@beeholistic.com, or phone:
510-237-1190. We have thirteen!! Don't wait!!

Theo's Big Day...

4/25/2018

It's been awhile, and Theo wants to thank all of you for suppoting him. He was neutered yesterday...big day for him...haha. Bless his heart. I had my dear Doctor Han do surgery, as I knew that he would use as little sedation as possible. He used just one-third the usual amount of ketamine. We had put the surgery off, as , with his neurological damage, the risk was greater than usual. But he came through with flying colors, and was home as if nothing had happened.
What prompted me to go ahead was, during his visit to the chiropractor (A+ for Theo there) he became interested,very interested, in Gloria. She also has neuro damage, and we had not had her spayed for that reason. She had just come out of heat (NO chance of her getting pregnant, for various reasons) and may have had lingering attraction. But Theo was after her persistently...bless him. I felt that he might be moved to roam if not neutered, and there were other risks to him...so..it's done!

Agony and Ecstasy: the usual...

3/29/2018

My rescue has the word "rescue" in it, so I'm usually the first one showing up in a search...mixed blessing haha.
So the call came in...and my response must have sounded like the limo driver in the Dave Chapelle Baby on the Corner routine: Hmmm, uh, huh, um hmmm...WHAT! WHAT??
Hold on, I'll be right there!

Actually, the young man brought the kittens to me, three very much alive and two not. With super-loud music playing...sweet and clueless. Poor things, all.
The caller had moved a car, and when she started to tow it, a cat jumped out. When she got the car home, she found the kittens in it.
So the agony: how to find the mother and re-unite the family. Her milk could get impacted, infected, and kill her, worst case. The emotional damage...well, just consider. How could she ever find her babies? How awful.
Now the good part. The babies were within a day or so the same age as the mother I had!! What are the odds!? I immediately put the babies in with Mother Marcella and her fat five...in the photo above. She was not fazed. They started to scramble for nipples...WOW!!!
But I didn't know how long the new three had been without food, so I weighed them, got the right amount of KMR (kitten milk replacer) into them via tube (accurate and fast) one by one, and put them back.

Two new angels

The caller has been looking for the mother in the place the car had been sitting...and has not seen her. A great trapper will be there today, and the family with the car will keep looking. Say a prayer!

Your Daily Cat

3/21/2018

Archie! Gorgeous, you can see...brave and long-suffering not as obvious. He was a neglected, starving "pet" belonging to someone at the apartment complex where I feed and do TNR (trap neuter return). A friend there took him in. A young couple then adopted him...but after they were evicted (they struggled so hard...) they bought an RV and took off. I asked to keep Archie till they got stabalized, but they said no. Yes, he escaped from the RV, but then a series of miracles brought him back to me.
He got loose near a colony, near my home. He found his way to that colony! The caretaker had a scanner! The chip worked; I was notified that he'd been found! He walked all the way from across the street into the drop trap (no longer willing to be handled)
He was injured, we'd known that, but only when we got him home did we see how badly. The ignorant folks had put a collar on him, not even a collar, let along a safety collar, but a cord with metal bits.

He had, of course, tried to get it off, and had gotten it under his arm. How many weeks or months had it been digging into his armpit is anyone's guess. He underwent two unsuccessful surgeries; that area is too delicate and hard to immobilize. He had lots of other therapies, including the hyperbaric oxygen chamber of Dr. Gary Richtenr, all to no avail. I have hopes that it will eventually heal completely, but it's been two years now. Getting better, I can say that. He's a trouper...they all are. We love our Archie!! Send him some love!

More Dang Miracles!

3/5/2018

Blessed Georgio

It's been an intense few months...coming up for air... two new ones in bad shape, and, major miracle: new advisor! She was recommended by a nutritionist friend of mine, and fills in gaps in my knowledge...and how! Truly an angel. She came at a time when one new rescue had stumped the experts. Little Georgio had what turned out to be toxoplasmosis, which had affected his nervous system, among other things. When he came to us, he could walk, tho was wobbly, then he got worse...and was so hypersensitive! Shaking all over, absolutely FREAKING over anything at all...in a bad, bad state! Biting whenever possible. All I knew for sure was that he had been fed nothing but sporadic table scraps. Bad nutrition can cause a world of problems... Poor dear baby! His mouth was also terribly ulcerated, making it impossible for him to eat. This angel prescribed a mix of honey, Goatein (goat milk powder concentrate) and Italian parsley juice (for appetite). Also for his ulcers, aloe juice. Those babies are intractable, but....!!! Gone! In about ten days! I'm still kind of in shock...want to tell the world! She also did T-Touch on him, and acupressure. He came alive for the first time! Bless you angel! We finally got him to a neurologist, who was lovely! He recommended another (blood) test for toxo, and lo and behold it came back positive! So now we Finally had a diagnosis! WHEW!
Georgio has been taking doxycycline, and is improving, but still not able to walk, and still incontinent. But he's EATING! It was, at first, a real, two-person fight to hold him still to syringe feed him. Got easier...I'd put a dish of soft food down in case, but due to head-bobbing and pain, he didn't eat...until he did! He still has some tremors, and small freakout incidents, but is much better. Has not purred yet... soon!!!
I have a phone consultation with Dr. Reed tomorrow...see what else we can do and where to go from here.
There are more miracles, but I'll do another post!

Cats with no problems :-)

Madonnas and Children!

10/22/2017

Melissa and Baby Ben

Perhaps the greatest blessing that comes from doing rescue work is being with mothers and their babies! the mothers are creative, wise, skillful, vigilant, loving, no-nonsense: just incredible. They coo and talk as at no other time...and nurse and educate the little ones for months. (I hate to see them separated too soon) They are young and old at the same time, playing with the babies with abandon, and putting teeth to the neck when attention is not being given...they give birth, and keep the nest clean for weeks...we love them...here are some of our brilliant mothers from over the years!

Marlie with her own and her fosters!

Tina and her babies!

Rose with her own and Louisa, her foster

Baby Hercules and his mother

Suzette with her six sweet babies

Mother Suzanne and her lovely babies!

Proud Mother Marlie

Feral Jenny putting up with domesticity for the sake of her babies...

Marlie and her four fat baby boys!

Wheee!! I'm with my mother!!

Guess Where This was Found!

7/18/2017

I'll have to tell you; impossible to imagine or guess. It was in Caroline's eye. Yes. We had a chiropractic visit scheduled, and her eye looked irritated & A bit swollen, so we included Caroline in the chiro group. (She checked out perfectly, spine-wise!) Dr. Margaret looked at the eye, and Dr. Anne too. they figured she'd gotten a scratch, and reccomended antibiotic ointment in the eye three times daily. I kept her in the big back bathroom...she was content, ate fine, etc., but the eye was slow to heal. She's a very robust girl, and should have healed faster. Took her back, Dr. Anne said that she must have something in it. Sent her to Dr. Han (Dr. A doesn't do sedation as part of her holistic practice) . Dr. Han is VERY skilled with his hands. I love him, and have been seeing him for over 45 years! Yes again! Dr. Han did NOT sedate her, as most vets would have done, merely numbed her eye with drops. He then got a small tool, and pulled the above stick out of her eye. Yes.
don't ask me how it got in there; she must have run headlong into it. Dr. Han had never seen a foreign object of that size in a cat's eye...staff was amazed. Over an inch long. Glad it's out.

Caroline the VERY next day! A robust cat heals quickly!!

Again the stick! I'm keeping it along with other amazing things off and from inside the cats.

Baby on the Corner Moment!

7/7/2017

If you know Dave Chappell's routine "Baby on the Corner", aka "3 AM in the Ghetto", you can imagine how I felt yesterday when I drove into the BART station and saw a young man standing on the corner, all alone, with a small kitten in his hands. "Something's WRONG here!!" Braked, put on my blinkers, got out, and went up to the young man. Teenager? Twenty? I thought he might have just plucked this little one from the parking lot. Turns out someone had 'given her' to him that day, and he had (!) brought her on BART from Hayward, (no carrier or even blanket) and was waiting for a friend to pick him up. Alarm bells galore! He was a sweet young man, calm and self-possessed, and most fortunately, receptive and willing to listen as I gently explained the many serious risks this kitten faced in her current situation. Most of you, dear readers, can easily imagine plenty of those, so I'll move on. (You might not know that there would be lots of fireworks that night, as it was July 6)
To my great relief, he conceded that he didn't have a clue about caring for a kitten, and, after some thought, surrendered her to me!

And just as I was putting her into my car (in the carrier I always carry :-)) his friends arrived to pick him up. Night of partying? Gosh knows. But I do know that someone was watching out for little Carmella here; if I'd come by five minutes later, she'd have been gone. She's a powerhouse: must have called in some chips. Ball of fire, she is! AND! Next day, a woman brought a sweet little boy, found under the hood of a car, who is just her size, so now she has a friend! Life is good.

Carmella and Winston in a rare quiet moment.

What a WONDERFUL Day!

7/1/2017

In spite of having to get up early even! Things started out with a bang, when Toffee (above) arrived home after a four-day hiatus! Got our lives back we did. He was the companion to Oracle, who passed on last month, and I just don't know how I would have managed if he'd gone and stayed gone. The bloody imagined scenarios, etc. So that would have made it a great day right there!
Then, got ready to go to what sounded like an iffy rescue. Another woman without a home wanted me to keep her cat. Of course she wanted to GET a home, and take her back at that time...to digress, just watched a wrenching movie Dogtown Redemption, about the folks, mostly homeless, who live by collecting what used to be recycling material and trading it for cash. Archie's former caretakers had lived by doing this till the (it must have been) Alliance Recycling in Oakland shut down. Small world. Then the S.F. Chron had a big feature about the many, many homeless camps in Oakland...
Toffee is here on my desk, VERY happy to be home, won't leave me alone. My face is in his fur.
I pick up the woman at the E.C. BART station, and we make a plan. She had been renting a cement floored garage (no windows, water, kitchen: a garage) and things got bad. She left June 7, and the folks agreed to keep her cat (who turned out to be a lovely Tortoise-shell colored lady) Well, that didn't go well either, and the cat stayed outdoors...in a pretty urban but safe enough part of Albany. She was not sure she could get the cat...find the cat...would not venture onto the property, but...we made a plan, I stayed in the car, and she went to the sidewalk and called around for her Mookie. Mookie appeared right on time, and let herself be carried over to and put into the carrier. Not often does it go this smoothly!! We got Mookie home, and into the big cage in the living room we had ready for her. The woman stayed with her a long time, reassuring her that she would be safe now, and cared for. She is a smart one, and figured out quickly that she could exhale a bit. she'll do well.
It was shaping up to be a spectacular day!

But wait there's more! Friend Tom was released from the hospital and is safe at home. And we got a 4th of July card from a friend, and Mookie settled in nicely, and Caroline's eye is way better, AND Gloria ate a real dinner for the first time in four days. As Hughes said, "My bowl is full"!