DCFoF: Chase [5]

Alison O'Hara says: I live in just outside of Madison, Wisconsin, and in addition to working full time, I have been doing volunteer feral cat rescue for six years. Our rescue, Dane County Friends of Ferals, is entirely volunteer based, and we try to focus on helping those cats that other rescue groups cannot manage. The true ferals, the really scared ones, the sick ones.

This orange kitten is a boy named Chase. He and his sister Ruby came to DCFoF with their mom when they were about three weeks old. Even though their mom was feral and hissed at me every chance she got, I still felt so sorry for her. She weighed only four pounds and was still practically a kitten herself. She required more than a week of sub-q fluids, dewormer, and antibiotics, and she was so dehydrated from diarrhea that she was producing no milk. The kittens had diarrhea too and were covered in it. I felt bad giving them baths though because they looked so sad and pathetically tiny... :o(

The good news is that they are currently with one of our foster parents who has experience with caring for really young kittens. It will be quite a while before they are ready for adoption though. Dane County Friends of Ferals will adopt them to indoor homes, and prior to adoption they will be healthy, spayed or neutered, vaccinated for FVRCP and rabies if old enough, and tested for FeLuk (tested for FIV too if old enough). The mom will stay with our rescue too until she is healthy and spayed, and if she remains feral she will be adopted to a farm or rural home that provides shelter and care. Sometimes the feral cats do decide they like people after all, and if this is the case we will adopt her to an indoor home.