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Gilda in 2011

Gilda, our most senior lady cat, passed away a few days ago. We miss her but she had let us know it was her time.

Gilda first came to us through another cat rescuer who had to move some feline inventory. We offered to take in two elderly cats, Gilda and Mabel, for "a few months" until she could take them back. Well, of course they never went back and became members of the household. At the time we thought Mabel was the elder of the two, she looked so bad. Even though Gilda was clearly up there in years, she looked like a spring chicken compared to the emaciated, polyp-ridden wreck that was Mabel. Who would have guess how they would swap places over the next few years.

As you may know, after some much-needed surgery, Mabel is now better than ever, with an adjusted age of 7 instead of the 18 we estimated at first. But ol' Gilda, she turned out to be at least as old as she appeared. After a bout of giardia she struggled to put on weight. She was picky with food and shy, often hiding from us. But we often spied her in the bed with us late at night, and slowly she warmed up to us.

At some point we decided we should get her vetted to see where she was at, health-wise. When the bloodwork came back our vet said "A cat with numbers this bad should be hospitalized." We had no idea she was so sick, we just thought she was a little stubborn. The verdict was advanced kidney disease (CKD/CRF), she would need some serious intervention to keep going.

This was a huge change for us. We had just been sympathizing with a friend who had to give her cat fluids 3 times a week and suddenly found we would have to give infusions of fluids every single day. We started in on it (and soon Jeannie took over the fluid duties so I could spend valuable time cleaning litterboxes) and it soon became routine. Once all parties get used to it, it's not so bad, and the change in Gilda was evident. She was much more active and engaged (albeit in her own low-key way).

We set her up in her own room so she could have 24-hour access to food. Getting her to eat was tough and we quickly abandoned the kidney disease diet in favor of the "whatever you can get her to eat" diet. This mostly involved Fancy Feast, we got every flavor to be able to rotate them at will (if you stick to the 'Classic' flavors, FF is not actually too bad of a food, certainly better than most dry cat foods). Any time we thought there was something she'd like we'd try it out, resulting in a lot of leftovers for the other cats, which they loved.

Gilda never ate as much as I wanted, she was always too skinny. We put a space heater in her room during the winter to keep her warm, and would warm up her fluids when it was cold out. She loved being brushed and having her chin scratched, she loved napping in boxes or on her cat tree or window perches. We miss not seeing her in the window when we come home.

We had Gilda for 3 years but we don't really know how old she was. She was on sub-q fluids for over a year and a half, which I'm told is a very long time for cats with such advanced kidney disease. The experience has made me a big believer in fluid therapy, and having the gear in the house has allowed us to give fluids to other cats through various ailments. It can be a highly effective treatment. But in the end, Gilda was still dehydrated even with all the fluids we were giving; she wasn't eating at all and she couldn't get around like she used to. Her last few days were spent curled up next to the space heater, barely raising her head when we entered the room.

We found a house call vet who lives in the neighborhood, a real boon for us. We hated the idea of dragging her to the vet's only to confirm what we already suspected. If she was on her way out, we wanted it to be as easy as possible. The vet made the whole process go smoothly, and once we decided we should let her go, she went very gently, probably with no more discomfort than her daily fluids.

When I think of Gilda I see her as she was at the end, and I probably will for a while. But I hope happier memories will replace these soon, something like this video taken in May when she was momentarily transfixed by this toy. Of course she completely lost interest and never gave it another look after this. So Gilda.

Decatur. My first and only shelter cat, I adopted her from BARC in 2000. She's put up with a lot, but deals with it gracefully. In the past year she had all of her teeth out due to stomatitis, but has had a full recovery and can and will eat everything. Hobbies include walking on our heads while we're sleeping.

Freddie. She was a cat in my backyard in Clinton Hill who we kidnapped to bring to Bushwick. She is at least 14 years old so we decided to bring her inside last year after a life outside. She seems to like it. We are pretty sure she's gone completely deaf, but she may just be ignoring us.

Lucy. She brought us into the world of cat rescue by showing up at our door hugely pregnant in 2007. The kittens have long gone but she's sticking around. Find her napping on top of the kitchen cabinets.

Flossie. Possibly Lucy's mother, definitely the mother of a number of the local cats. With that behind her, she is a friendly ambassador to new fosters. Except for kittens, whom she hates. She also had all of her teeth out in the last year due to stomatitis and still has some ongoing dental issues. But she still manages to eat more than her share.

Marbles. Still technically a foster, her curmudgeonly personality and weird allergies makes her a hard sell. But she can be great fun and would probably be happier in a home without so many cats. So we hold out hope someone will see what we see in her someday.

Augie. First thought to be feral, he's now our main Kitten Wrangler and food tester. He's also technically a foster but who's counting? He has had some weird eye issues in the past year but that mostly has cleared up and he can focus on irritating the other cats who don't want to play right now.

Jefe. The boss is still sequestered while we work on both his weight and behavior issues. He is doing well with his pal Stymie, and we hope to reintroduce him to the household soon. In the last 6 months he's lost 3 pounds so he's on his way! Only six more pounds to go :/

Stymie. The 'indoor feral' we've been working with to get him to tame down a little. He has improved immensely over the past year (I can now pet him as long as food is in the area). Jefe does his best to model correct behavior for him. He's gone from totallt hands-off to allowing pets as long as food is in the offering. He's much more comfortable around humans now, but he may never be a lapcat.

Gilda. Our eldest cat, Gilda has kidney disease and requires daily fluids and general pampering. She has been trucking along with us for over 3 years and actually seems better now than in the past. She gets daily IV fluids and eats whatever she wants. She and Freddie share the Old Ladycats Room.

Mabel. The Six Million Dollar Cat. Almost. She required a number of operations to correct ear polyps and nasal stenosis. As you can see, she's better than ever now! Just keep the kittens away, please. Mabel can be grouchy but she loves to play so much she is starting to play with the other cats. Augie may finally have a playmate who doesn't immediately get adopted and leave!

Effie. Our foster girl, we would love to find her a home away from all these cats who bully her, but she's gotten pretty tough and can give as good as she gets these days. Effie has some health issues which kind of make her a target in the household, but she has been doing well lately. She is getting more self-confidence and is a much more active member of the home than in the past.

Belmont. This poor guy came to us after his foster person died. During the confusion he was left on her fire escape for over 24 hours! Consequently he's very shy with new people but he is super affectionate once he's sure you won't lock him on the roof. He briefly had an adoptive home but his humans turned out to be duds. He will find a superior home soon.

Checkey. One of three orange/white tabbies that showed up at our house this summer. Not sure what's going on but he was conveniently already fixed when we got him. He is incredibly playful and sweet, but he doesn't get along with the other cats so he has made our spare bedroom his home for now until he too finds a home.

Grey Boy. Yep, this once-feral guy is now indoors 24/7. He hails from the Bronx and though he was born inside, he was never socialized. We assimilated him into our feral colony and he was very happy there. But he's recently asked for an upgrade and after some growing pains has become a bone fides member of the indoor staff. His next mission: getting into the upper echelon of the housecat world: the bed.

Blue. One of the first batch of cats we ever TNR'd, Blue was a fixture in the backyard. He went from slender to obese over the years, and seemed happy to accept the newer cats as they moved in. He never had a close buddy like he did in the days of Edmund and George, but he was close with White Fang and got along well with everybody. Sometime this summer we noticed he wasn't showing up for food, which should have been a red flag right there. We kept a look out for him for the next few weeks but we never saw him again. I assume he was hit by a car, even though I rarely saw him leave the yard. Even with all the enticements we try to provide them, feral cats are still free-roaming and unfortunately we can't easily stop them from stepping into the street. This seems likely to be what took Blue, cars have been the reason for almost all the feral deaths we've had.

Dimples Appleby. We often get "Eartip Alerts" when a fixed feral gets brought into the city pound (TNR cats get their ears tipped off so they can be easily identified in the field). If the cat's caretakers can't be found, they try to find somebody to take in the errant cat, usually by assimilating them into an existing colony. This involves keeping the cat in a crate in the colony for a few weeks, then hoping it sticks around upon release. We've done this a number of times, so when a cat named Blue turned up on the Eartip Alert list who was from nearby, we offered to take him in. Blue was in bad shape, very old, thin and dirty with matted fur. We couldn't put him outside right away in this state, so we set him up in a cage inside. His appetite was good so he improved quickly. After a dental extraction he got even better. He turned out not to be feral but totally tame so we let him roam free; he soon became good pals with our cat Jefe. We gave him the silly name Dimples to differentiate him from our other Blue. He continued to improve through the summer, so much so we started looking for an adoptive home for him. We eventually found a willing home that would have been perfect: a good sized apartment with an older female cat who liked to groom other cats. But just before he was to move out, he took a turn for the worse. X-rays indicated he had an enlarged heart. We put him on heart medication but by this time it was already too late. He only lived a few days more.

Doyle. We have several ferals we feed in the front of our house, most of whom live across the street in a vacant lot. We've always been aware that it can be dangerous for the cats to cross over to us, but we weren't sure how else to help them without feeding on somebody else's property. I built a cat house out front and a couple of the cats (Horace & Mongo) spent the winter inside it. But there were always cats who would come over to eat, then rush back across the street. A month ago Horace got hit by a car and we feared the worst. It turned out he wasn't injured, just heavily bumped, but he was too scared to cross the street any more. Soon after this, we found a cat named Doyle dead. He had clearly been hit by a car and crawled under our stoop to die. Doyle was part of the same colony that lives in our yard, but he had moved back to his original yard after we released him. He had been fine over there all this time, in fact we didn't even know he was coming over to eat at all. But clearly, having food out like this was becoming a dangerous problem. So we started setting up our drop trap out front. We caught two of the cats, Snopes and BT Dubs, and set them up in the assimilation cage in back. They did well, but this kind of assimilation is tough to pull off. These cats knew they weren't miles away from their old haunts, they were just behind the house. They have since been released and we haven't seen much of them, although I'm pretty sure I saw them both out front again already. The new plan is to quietly drop food off at the vacant lot on the way to work in the morning. Hopefully nobody will mind.

Next up: the Current Cat Roster.

Pinky and the boys

This day, ten years ago, we had a pretty crazy blackout in the city (and some other, lesser places). I'll never forget where I was when the lights went out: in the exam room at Clinton Hill Veterinary Clinic. I was getting two young kittens examined.

She showed up with this flea collar, hence the name

Pinky was a stray cat who kept hanging around my apartment in Clinton Hill in 2003. She was very whiny and was always trying to sneak into the house (including ripping a hole in the screen to get in). At the time I had 2 cats (Hubcap and Decatur) and my roommate had one cat (Mr Bones). I even had a cat who lived in our backyard I took care of (Freddie), I could not possibly conceive of taking care of another cat. It was so impossible to imagine there was any room in the house, or that my schedule allowed the extra effort (I worked from home at the time) that I ignored the obvious signs that Pinky was about to have some kittens.

A little later that summer, Pinky showed up at my 2nd floor window, with a tiny gray ball in her mouth. This turned out to be a kitten, she had carried it up a chain link fence to reach the 2nd floor. She stayed for a while and then went back out the window and returned with a white kitten. So now instead of one extra cat I had 3. Nice work, dumbass.

The kittens were probably a month old and the white one had a really bad eye infection. I can't remember the exact timing of it all, but soon after they arrived I made an appointment to take them to the nearby vet to get the eye looked at. The vet prescribed some ointment but wasn't optimistic about saving the eye. Right about then the lights went out in the exam room, which had no windows. After several minutes of confusion, we made it out to the lobby. The lights didn't come back on, so eventually they said I could just take the ointment and kittens and go. This may have been the first and last time I ever got out of the vet's office without having to pay for anything.

The blackout continued for another day or so, it was a fun break from society for a while (though when I look back now, my life seemed so damned easy I can't imagine what I needed a break from). The kitten's eye started to get better, and both grew quickly.

I didn't really notice it at the time but the gray kitten turned out to have cerebellar hypoplasia, a developmental condition possibly caused by malnutrition in the mother during pregnancy. Now that I know much more about it I would rate his condition as mild, and as a kitten I barely noticed anything off about him other than the fact that he fell down a lot. The white kitten's eye mostly healed although it's hard to say if his vision was impaired (he looks a little cross-eyed now). Within a couple months, the two boys had found their permanent home with a friend, where they reside to this day (as Maurice & Leroy). Pinky was also adopted and now lives in Colorado!

Maurice, Leroy and Pinky

Since that experience I dove headfirst into the cat fostering game when we moved to Bushwick a couple years later. But it all began with these two scroungy kittens and their annoying mom. You can read the original posts about Pinky's kittens here (forgive the formatting issues, it's the raw html of my old site).

The gang right before the boys got adopted