Monday, December 30, 2013

And Then There Were Four...

I was planning on writing this several months ago. You know...directly after the events I plan on discussing. However, my computer had different plans and decided to die on me. Several times. Unfortunately, I lost a lot of pictures and was unable to blog for awhile...which may have been a good thing. Then my phone died and I lost more pictures!

So here we are several months behind schedule and I am on a new laptop with pain medication in my system.

Two posts ago I went into detail about our latest foster kittens. At first our favorite was the one name Barack. He was a little orange tabby with the cuddliest personality you could possibly imagine. I think I was the first one to comment on a new favorite; a black and white named Percy.
Look at that face!

Jessica soon started saying Percy was her favorite as well.We noticed a few of the kittens were having trouble swallowing their food. For whatever reason they could cough and hack even though we were feeding them wet food. Percy was the worst of the bunch. He would cough, meow and struggle for breath.His gurgling plea for help was heart-breaking. After a few instances of his choking, Jessica called a made an appointment for him at Mountain View in Providence.

(This is where I would post a video of one of his choking episodes if my computer hadn't died)

The day of his appointment he started choking worse than ever before. In a panic we scooped him up and drove as quickly as possible to the Providence Mountain View. Upon arrival we found the place locked up tight since everyone was on a lunch break. Jessica held wheezing, choking Percy in her arms while I checked the side of the building for another entrance. I found a door and started pounding on it. Through the glass I could see a woman grooming a dog. She looked up at me with an annoyed look on her face. I kept knocking until she finally came over.

She informed me the other door was the entrance (duh) and to come back later. I explained my kitten was choking to death and we needed help. Just then I saw one of the vets walk around the side of the building. We took Percy over to her and begged for help. After looking at him for a moment she said the needed equipment to help him was at the North Logan location.

Percy had been choking for 20 minutes by now and we felt time was running out. We jumped back into the car and took off on the back roads. I wasn't about to watch him die while on the road and decided to drive through stop signs and stop lights. Unfortunately, I didn't pull any Hollywood stunts and cause people to swerve out of the way. 

We arrived and they rushed him back while Jessica and I sat in the waiting section trying to decide what to do. We could hear him crying back there. Ugh. Heart wrenching. The vet told us he might have a hole in his esophagus. Wow. I didn't know what to think. At what point do I be the though guy and say we can't afford it?

He eventually stopped crying. The vet came out and said they could run a test to see how his esophagus was doing. The test would take a few hours so we went back home. And worried.

And worried some more.

Keep in mind this guy wasn't even ours at this point.

The phone rang and we picked up, expecting the worst. Thankfully, she told us he came up clean. No holes. Yay!

So we picked up Percy and our lives changed.

He has grown so much since then. We still have to feed him in a special way or he will choke (which is painful to watch). Wet food is bad for cats as it sticks to their teeth more readily than dry food. And dry food require more crunching which in turn removes plaque. We bought a treat toy for the cats before we got Percy and decided to use it for his feeding time. He has become accustomed to it over time and whines and whines until we give it to him.

tl;dr - Percy was a foster cat who won us over because of sickness and money and now we own him. Or he owns us depending on who you talk to :P