Ark Animal Sanctuary (week of December 12, 2018)

5 years ago

I would like to tell you a story about a little kitten named Mouse. Mouse was born to a mom who was a stray living on the streets. A young couple took in the mom whom they soon found out was pregnant. They reached out to us for help. They knew they wanted to adopt the mom and give her a home and just wanted us to care for her until she had her kittens.

The Ark will keep the kittens once they were weaned from mom and find them homes. So the mom whom they named “Chance” came to stay at The Ark for a while. Chance was a very small cat with a huge belly and shortly after she arrived she went into labor. Chance delivered three tiny babies and wanted nothing to do with them. The first two died, and the third one was struggling because mom wouldn’t clean him. So we cleaned the tiny baby up, cut the umbilical cord and placed him with another nursing mom we had at the time.

The mom accepted the kitten and life was good for a while. Chance went to the vet and then home with her new family. As the weeks went by we noticed that Mouse wasn’t really growing.  He was active and eating, he just wasn’t growing. The other kittens he was with were three times his size. We knew he wasn’t normal, so we continued to monitor him. He didn’t even weigh half a pound at 7 weeks old.

Last Friday morning Mouse crashed. He was lifeless, just barely breathing. He was rushed to the vet and they immediately began trying to save him. We were told that Mouse was not a normal little kitty and that he was experiencing problems emptying his bladder. He was too tiny to have surgery so they put him on antibiotics and started laser treatments.

As the days went by there was a slight improvement. He was up, alert, active and eating. He is not out of the woods yet, however, and still remains at the vet. We are not sure what the long term effects are going to be, but we are going to give Mouse every opportunity to live.  We ask that you keep Mouse in your thoughts and prayers and we will keep you updated on Mouse’s condition.

Kittens are tricky they can decline in a matter of hours or days. For those of you who think that not altering your pet is OK, we strongly urge you to do some research. Cats that are strays living on the streets have no one to help them when they run into problems delivering babies.  And for the people who rescue or try to make a difference that is so unfair to the animal.

A very well educated lady once told me that her cat was not neutered.  When I asked why there really was no good reason. She opens the door and lets the cat out but she never sees the end result of what happens when her cat goes out. Her cat can’t get pregnant but it can certainly find a stray to get pregnant. What in turn happens to that stray pregnant female? I think we all know the answer. The owner opens the door and lets her cat back in where he is safe and warm and fed, unfortunately this is not the case for the now pregnant stray.

I guess the old saying out of sight out of mind applies.  If you never see the end result then you never have to deal with it. I am hoping that maybe just one person with an unaltered cat reads this and the light bulb will go on and they will finally get it . Please neuter and spay your pets  so there are no more sad stories to write about.

There will be a bake sale every Saturday outside the Hollywood Pet Salon from now until Christmas. Thank you for your continued support and as always thank you for reading our column.

The Ark Animal Sanctuary is located on 101 Old Woodstock Road. To contact the Lorraine Monfils at call 532-7387, check out their Facebook page.