Unexpected kitten

There is a kitten in my bathroom. He is not really happy to be cooped up when he could be out exploring, and he is very loud! Loud is good though, because he is also one sick kitty, and so long as he still has energy to want to act like a kitten, I’m happy.

I don’t know yet if I’ll be keeping him or not. I’m starting to kind of hope I will. I have a sneaking suspicion that his previous owner dumped him.

But I should start at the beginning. This afternoon while on our way out the door to run some errands, my boyfriend and I saw a kitten running around in front of our apartment complex. It looked pretty sleek and energetic, but it was sort of listing to the side oddly, and carrying its head cocked sideways. Well, we’re cat people, and we couldn’t resist trying to pet the kitty, it was so cute! So we coaxed it over and petted it, and that’s when we noticed that it had a very light, thin coat, like a summer coat, not a winter coat. So this was an indoor kitty that had escaped. It also was wheezing very loudly.

So we had found a sick, possibly crippled indoor cat, loose in the winter. We couldn’t possibly let it just run off, so we picked it up and carried it home. The wheezing was so bad I figured I’d better make a vet appointment right away.

He’s mostly in good health, (though he had fleas) but wasn’t microchipped, nor fixed (he’s a bit young for fixing, but not impossibly so) and the wheezing and the head tilt and listing to the side were probably from the same source, a polyp growing in the middle ear and through the eustacian tube into the back of the throat, partially blocking it. The bad news is fixing that requires surgery, but the good news is that it’s quite simple surgery, with little chance of complications, and it’s not too expensive, so we can afford to have it done.

We’ve printed up a found cat flyer, which we’ll be putting around the neighborhood, but honestly, I don’t expect anybody to turn up and claim him. It’s far more likely that he was some kind of impulse buy, maybe a Christmas gift, and when he developed the unsightly crippling and disturbing wheeze he was just dumped.

Here’s a few photos of the cute little guy:




He wasn’t very good at holding still for the camera, and he’s very vocal, as you can see! You can also see the way he holds his head funny. Poor guy. Hopefully he’ll either be claimed quickly by a responsible owner who will take care of him (and you can bet I’m not giving him back to somebody who won’t!) or else we’ll be able to keep him and get him all fixed up soon.