Hi everyone,
Happy to have found this list, but I so wish I didn't need to. Here's my story...
A feral cat had 5 kittens in my in laws brush pile, she moved them after I found them at 3 weeks old. I waited a few weeks and went looking for them again, figuring they could be weaned but were still small enough to catch. After a lot of work moving the wrong neighbor's huge, gigantic brush pile, I found them in the next yard over in a little, tiny brush pile in the woods. Called my husband to bring the cat carrier and we caught 3 relatively easily. The other two ducked into a rabbit? or woodchuck? hole, too deep to see them, and wouldn't come out. We set the live trap, caught the mom and one very sick little runt (Alice), then reset the trap. It took 2 more days to catch the last bugger, Dash. We put everyone but the sick one in a dog crate in a shady spot at my in laws, took the runt in to the vet, got her wormed, eye drops, antibiotics. She was only 14 oz, less than 1/2 the weight she should have been, and too sick and little to do a blood draw on. We made an appointment to have the Elisa test done in a week, and kept her in a crate in my in laws spare room. My mother-in-law hates cats, she is elderly and set in her ways, it was causing a lot of stress in the family, then we got three 94 degree days in a row and she wouldn't let me bring them in her house, so we brought the crate to my back yard (mistake #1) and set it up with a fan blowing on one side until her appointment to get spayed (the humane society clinic had a 10 day backlog for this). She had the surgery Wednesday, Elisa was negative, it was still stinking hot, so I brought her crate inside of our house (mistake #2), sequestered in a spare bedroom away from our resident FeLV neg. furbaby, Blue. I figured if mom was neg., the kittens were probably negative (mistake #3), so I put them in a borrowed crate in our bedroom, but soon felt sorry for them and let them out to run around and play. Couldn't afford to take them in to the vet as well, figured we'd find homes for them and ask the adopters for a deposit to help get them started on vet care. They are twice the size of the runt, few sneezes once in a while, but no discharge and they run around like crazy. I washed up and disinfected after caring for any cat and kept everyone separate, except for letting my cat peek in the kitten's door once (nobody came near her, she stayed outside and watched, but what an idiot I am.) Alice the runt was still at my in-law's, we decided to keep her, took her to vet on Friday, gained 8oz. in a week, got her first vaccination while we waited for the test results. They were very busy, but she was so darling that the vet didn't want to leave her. Then we got her very positive results. I sobbed, the vet tech and receptionist were crying. I should get her IFA results back in a few days, but don't have much hope. The others get tested tomorrow, not sure what we will do, a rescue might find homes for 1 or 2, but what if all 5 are positive? If I didn't already have a cat I would keep some, but I'm hyper-ventilating just thinking about the danger I've put her in already. In the mean time, we've spent close to $700.00 on this whole thing so far, I haven't made the house payment yet and our only car with less than 100,000 miles on it blew it's engine the night before we got the bad news on Alice. Mom cat hates my guts, can't be touched, her only hope to live is to be re-released as a feral, is it ethical to do this with just the negative Elisa? I can't afford to keep testing everyone, have to get them out of my house and away from my cat, any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you, Beth
