For those of you who don't know, we adopted an older cat just about a week after snowball passed. The cat looked exactly like snowball and he was the exact same age, one month over 10 yrs, well that is what the shelter put him as at least. So we brought the guy home and he followed us everywhere and seemed to love having a loving home.
I should take a step back, his shelter name was Eggnog and Jenn especially felt guilty looking for a cat after Snowbs passed. We found his pic online and decided to just pay a visit to see if we would be compatible. Jenn must have looked at his pic online about 100x, when we got to the place we said to each other that we wouldn't bring him home unless he was special. When we walked into the cat wing of the shelter, we saw that the old man (that's what we call him) had his own penthouse right beside the entry way door, he had a 6'x8' kitty condo as far as shelters go. We had one immediate concern, that he was not in the enclosure. We couldn't believe it but the cat must have already gotten adopted. Well we were wrong, we found that the weasel had gotten out and overtaken another cat's kennel. When we finally found him sleeping, we found that he immediately responded to us, he purred and he continually put his head under our hand when we stopped petting him. Jenn right away knew we were taking him home. As Jenn left to find the shelter people, I decided to test the new cat. I got up and slowly walked way. Just as I hoped, this guy got up and followed me down the hall. I knew as well, we were taking this guy home. Just a note, Eggnog has the crappiest meow that I have ever heard - if you can imagine a full size adult male cat meowing as a little kitten with a chest cold, this is what he sounds like, we thought it was adorable...... but it could have been a sign.
We brought him home and were so happy with him. He ran after us when we walked away, he slept on the foot of the bed (as Snowball did), and he walked very gingerly showing his old man age. From what I have heard, a ten year old cat is equivalent to a 65 yr old man, that is how this guy was acting.
Well fast forward a couple of days, we noticed that "Jack", our new name for this guy, was very lethargic, he wanted to sleep and wouldn't follow us around the house. Finally one morning we woke up and we found that he had very bad diarrhea and he vomited several times. Over a series of vet visits we found out that this old cat had contracted feline distemper, despite being vaccinated when he entered the shelter on Halloween. His prognosis is still very bad, and we were not given alot of hope. Wayside Waifs (http://www.waysidewaifs.org/) helped us out alot and gave us all the meds that we would need to give him a shot. Jenn has previously done animal (wild) rehab and knows the ins and outs of a syringe. At this time Jack's room resembles an ICU, Jenn has a medical chart and she is attending to him at all hours. We are hopeful that this little guy can make it through. The shelter basically told us that if we wouldn't have adopted him, he would have been put down, maybe it was fate that Snowbs passed and gave this guy a possible life. To this minute, Jack is struggling, he won't eat unless Jenn forces food down his throat via a syringe, he is only getting fluids by injection under the skin. From our online research, cats that make it 5 days, have a good chance of making it. It is now day 4 and we hope that the little bear can keep on. We are giving him constant companionship and love. If nothing else this little bear has at least a home. We hope he can pull through, we are doing all we can. Jenn is unbelievable, getting up at all hours to attend to Jack.....
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