By now, I expect you have heard the saddest news of the last month – we lost our little Florence. I was absolutely shocked at how suddenly she was gone, and I’m not the only one. I was in to see Florence just a few days before she went into full-blown congestive heart failure, and the pictures I took that day fell into to categories: pictures of Flo preparing to pounce on some other unsuspecting kitten, and blurry pictures of various parts of her body as she crawled all over me looking to snuggle. She was spunky and safe and home, and while I’m still so sad that she’s no longer with us, I’m incredibly grateful that we knew her as long as we did.
Time does not slow down for kittens, though, even if the rest of us would like it to a bit. Our not-so-little babies continue to grow, and Ezekiel and Murray were adopted at long last this month. I’ve also spent time getting to know Ray, a sweet tuxedo boy who came to us through our TNR program at a nearby correctional facility. Ray’s eyes are a bit of a mess. Or rather, Ray’s eye. He only has his right eye, and he doesn’t see very well with it. Between his impaired sight and the challenge of adapting to a life of domestication, Ray is still pretty timid, but he is a really nice boy. You just have to give a chance to ease into friendship with you.
Ray is a true-blue friend to our little Drita, though. You’d never guess it from looking at their pictures, but Drita, like Ray, is about six months old. Really! We still don’t have a grasp on exactly what Drita’s story is. She’s unbelievably small, still, yet this month her adult teeth started coming in. It’s waaay early for that, but try telling that to Drita. What’s most odd about this, though, is that her baby teeth aren’t coming out yet (apparently they have some sense of the calendar), so she’s got two rows of teeth. Yup, Drita is part shark.
Seriously, though, she is a mystery, and the neurologist suspects she may have a “storage disease.” Super rare, and well, we aren’t exactly clear on what that means. The neurologist is, though, and has submitted blood samples from Drita and a normal (control) kitten her age for some extra-special testing to see if some markers for the disorder turn up. Who volunteered to be that normal kitten? None other than sweet Ray, who was a very good sport about helping out. It may take a while for results to come back (among other things, the lab that does the testing is several time zones away), but we choose to remain hopeful that this will offer some answers at last!
Thank you, dear sponsors, for your love and support for our little ones. We have so many kittens pass through Tabby’s Place each year, and each of them needs their own measure of care. But the three sweet ones we’re thinking of this month – Florence, Ray, and Drita – needed to be a part of this family, because they just can’t get this level of devotion anywhere else. Thank you so much for all you do for them.