Talk about good-natured! Barley has been gentle and sweet since the day he arrived here (and, we suspect, for a long time beforehand). Not much seems to faze him, whether it’s people fussing over him or other cats galloping nearby. Barley is a small-to-medium-sized boy, with medium-length fur of the most gorgeous solid gray (even his whiskers are gray). He has no tail; we believe it was removed at one point before he came to us but have no idea why. Our best guess is that he was born around 2002.

When Barley came to us, we were concerned about him. It seemed like he had a severe upper respiratory infection, but antibiotics, even several courses of antibiotics, did not help. In a case like this, we begin to suspect chronic rhinitis (in his case, severe), but we had to rule out other possible causes (including nasal tumors), so we performed several tests. Fortunately, those all came out negative; we believe that Barley does indeed have severe chronic rhinitis. That’s not great, but it could be much worse. In our boy’s case, it means that he’ll probably be on antibiotics periodically for the rest of his life. Because of this, he’s one of our Special Needs crew. Barley also has stomatitis (that means his gums are allergic to the plaque on his teeth), and most of his teeth will need to be extracted, an operation we expect to perform in late winter or spring of 2013.

Although he’s much improved now, Barley’s health issues mean that he won’t be a fit for many households. Still, we hope that the right person or family (it only takes one!) will come through our doors and give this good cat his forever home.