About a month ago, me and my girlfriend bought a cat from the animal shelter here in Ottumwa. He was a 14 week old kitten that we dubbed Smokey. We picked him up the next day from Southside Animal Clinic where they had him neutered. When we brought him home, he seemed to have the sniffles a bit, so a couple days later we brought him to the vet and the vet gave him a antibiotic shot for a upper respiratory infection. He seemed to not sneeze anymore a day later. He was very active for the next couple of weeks, playing fetch and always cuddling up to us, even sleeping with us at night in his cat beat at the head of our bed. So a couple weeks go by and he slowed down a bit since he stopped eating as much (almost 2 cans of food a day when we got him). So we bring him to the vet, and the vet gives him another shot and some medicated cat food,he acts great after that for a day or two, then he reverts back to barely eating. We had to forcefeed him sometimes because he just would not eat. When he did eat, he had a crunching noise in his mouth, even with wet food. So I brought him to the vet again and I figured it would something wrong with his mouth. The vet looked at his eyes and said that it was something neurologically wrong, a virus. So he gave him a steroid shot and said time will tell what happens. After the shot, smokey was walking around more. During the last week, he walked a bit like a drunk person, which seemed odd of course. After the last vet visit, he still walked that way but he ate ALOT, so we figured he was recovering. 8 hours after the vet visit, he was acting like before, staying in his bed, but still eating and could barely walk. I stayed up with him just in case anything happened. From 8pm to 8am Saturday to Sunday,he became a lot sicker. He wouldnt close his eyes, he was having seizures, and couldnt stand up very well at all without falling over. I decided that when my girlfriend woke up, I would give her the bad news and tell her we had to put him down. I contacted a Pipeline vet clinic and luckily the vet was in her office that day. We had done a lot of research and found that he most likely wouldnt recover anyways, but we did have hope until Saturday night/Sunday morning. At 3pm Sunday, we had Smokey put down and relieved him of his suffering. We had gotten really attached to him since we had gotten him, so Ive had to do a lot of thinking about all of this. In our research, cats get these viruses and there are generally no cures because of so many strands of it. The ones that are susceptible to these viruses are cats that are in enclosed areas with alot of other cats and ones that are fixed too early, all of which Smokey was. There are preventative shots, but they are considered by choice, not mandatory. When we got him, we payed $50 for him, which included shots and him being fixed. Apparently those shots did not include shots that obviously every cat from a shelter should have, the shot that would have prevented all of this. I know animal shelters work on limited funds and mostly on donations. I understand that you dont know what you get from there usually, but Im sure this isnt the first time it has happened there, but something has to change. I dont want a little kid getting a new kitten from there just to have it die to something that was preventable and should have been taken care of when the cat is purchased there. We payed for 4 of the 5 vet visits and having him put down, which racked up to a lot of money, especially for a couple that just moved into their first home together. I would estimate that we have spent at least 300 in vet visits and getting him put down. We honestly just do not want this to happen and we want to raise awareness of what is going wrong at the Heartland Humane Society. They need to get the correct shots done, or heavily advice on the correct shots to be taken care of when you get any animal from out there, because animals are more susceptible to different diseases when they come from places like that. I plan on going to the animal shelter, getting on their ass for allowing this to happen, but Im also going to see what it will take for a solution to this. This is the least we can do to make sure that our little Smokey didnt die for nothing. Here is a cute video of Smokey playing fetch, he was a bit on the crazy side but you can see why we got attached pretty easily.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 10:28:31 +0000
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