Lily Kitty at 8 Months

Some of you have been wondering how Lily is doing. In June, I wrote about her horrific accident with an ordinary, seemingly safe, carpeted cat tree. We believe what happened is that Lily and 4 year old Sophie were playing, as usual. And Sophie spun off of the cat tree and tipped it. Lily, 12 weeks old, must have been clinging to the opposite side of the cat tree or climbing it. We were home, but in another room, so didn’t see exactly what happened. But we found blood under the cat tree, so we know it fell on Lily.

It must have been moments after it happened, that we began to hear faint kitten cries. We went in search of Lily and found her tangled in a decorative plant stand a few feet away from the downed cat tree, barely conscious, her face covered in blood and her mouth hanging open.

I don’t even want to live through the horror again by writing it. You can read more about the accident and her veterinary and home care in my blog entry for June 30, 2009.

One thing I didn’t report in that blog post was how after 3 or 4 days, we thought Lily was somewhat improved until about noon, when she started to fade. It was as if she was giving up. We rushed her to the vet again and he said, “Well, she looks a lot better than she did when you first brought her in, but I will give her something for swelling.” I’m now told that there could have been swelling in her brain. It is possible that without that shot, she may not have made it. We still don’t have a diagnosis as to where the blood was coming from—exactly where the injury was. But we’re pretty sure that she had a concussion. The vet originally thought her jaw was broken; thankfully extensive exrays showed that was not the case.

By the way, the cat tree now lies on its side—we no longer stand it upright. Lily still plays on it every day. She never seemed to fear it or Sophie even after the accident.

Sophie was traumatized after the accident. We had to leave Lily at the vet for several hours and Sophie walked around and around the house meowing and searching. Once we brought Lily home and secured her in the large enclosure, Sophie stayed close. She knew that something was wrong with her little buddy and it seemed to upset her terribly.

Today, Lily is 8 months old and she is a delight. Looking back, I can see that it took her a while to completely recover from her accident. To me, the kitty mommy who kept vigil over her day and night for literally weeks, she seemed to have some issues for a while with balance, depth perception, confidence and maybe even headaches. But she was much improved.

And then she had another setback with one of her vaccinations. She had a scary reaction to something in the vaccination—we’re thinking it was the leukemia vaccine. Late that afternoon, after the veterinarian’s office closed, Lily seemed lethargic. We could tell that she just wasn’t feeling well. And she was in pain. I found that out when I attempted to pick her up. I did some research on the Internet and learned what to look for indicating that this was a very serious reaction. I watched her closely. She eventually chose a spot in the hallway to crouch and that is where I slept all night—waking up many times to check on her—the vet’s phone number close at hand. It was a long night, but she made it through. She will not have that vaccine again without the antidote—which I think is like Benedril.

As I said, Lily is an absolute delight. She is a total people cat—loves us, loves it when we have guests and adores little children. We have two formerly feral cats and yearned to have one that wasn’t such a challenge. I found out later that Lily was far from a domesticated cat. I ran into the woman my daughter got Lily from (she had 15 kittens from 3 mother cats in late March and early April that year). She asked me how Lily was doing. I told her how much we enjoy her and she said, “You mean, she lets you pet her?” I responded, “Yes, she’s a real snuggle bug.” This woman said, “Well that’s surprising because her mother is absolutely wild and the kittens were never handled.”

No one told Lily she is supposed to be wild. She is one of the most social kitties I’ve ever had. And we wonder if she may have passed some of our other kitties on her way to us—those who have crossed over the Rainbow Bridge. You see, she brought with her Winfield’s obsession with water. She even occasionally drinks by using her paw like he did. And just this morning I caught her moving one of her water dishes around. Winfield was never satisfied with where I put his water bowls. Winfield was our “greeter” cat. While the two formerly feral cats ran away when they heard the doorbell, Winfield ran toward the door to see who was there.

Lily puts me to bed at night like Katy (my beloved Himalayan) used to do. And she has Katy’s sweet, completely trusting, gentle demeanor. There’s no rough and tumble play for this demure kitten. Oh she plays, but like a girl.

We had her spayed in late September. Gosh, we hated to leave her overnight. And when we brought her home the next day, Lily was so happy to see us that she kept trotting from one of us to the other expressing pure joy in her kitten-like gestures. She repeatedly hugged our hands to her chest and purred, and she buried her face in us and snuggled. It was like watching a happy puppy, she expressed such glee.

As you can tell, we couldn’t be more pleased that we finally opened our home to another rescue kitty. There’s nothing like a kitten to warm one’s heart and bring a smile to your face.

Be sure to order your copy of Catscapades, Tales of Ordinary and Extraordinary Cats for Christmas giving. You can order the E-book or the comb-bound print copy–fully illustrated with charming cat photos. http://www.matilijapress.com/catscapades.html

All for Animals Founder Helps Shelter

Karen Lee Stevens Videoing a Shelter Dog

Karen Stevens of Santa Barbara, California does a lot for animals. First of all, she has been involved for many years in cat rescue. She founded an International organization called All For Animals http://www.allforanimals.com. She had a spot on local TV for quite a while where she featured a pet from local shelters each week. And she launched the Adoptable Pet Photo Gallery, in hopes of helping shelter animals get adopted.

Recently, Karen began video-taping cats, dogs and other shelter animals that need homes and posts these at her website. They also play the videos at the shelter so that visitors can experience the personality of a dog or cat that happens to be sleeping at the time of their visit, for example.

All for Animals is not a new pup, er, kid on the block. Since 1997, when Karen Lee Stevens founded the organization as a resource for animal lovers in Santa Barbara, the group has been dedicated to raising awareness about cruelty-free living and the importance of compassion to ALL animals.

But that’s not all. When Karen first viewed a video of an adoptable dog at a local animal shelter a few months ago, she said she had one of those “aha” moments. “I actually got goose bumps looking at this dog’s video and listening to the background music (Rio by James Taylor),” Stevens remembers. “The dog happened to be named Rio and the James Taylor song happens to be one of my favorites. Do you ever have a flash of insight where you just know when something is right? For me, I knew in that moment that I wanted to shoot videos of adoptable pets and post them on the Internet.”

Karen calls herself a “video virgin” as she’d never even held a video camera until last month. That’s when she signed up for an introductory camera class at Santa Barbara Channels, a non-profit organization that helps other non-profits produce and air their own high-quality shows on local public access television. Since then, Karen obtained enough funding to purchase a Sony Handicam camcorder and a Macintosh computer (di riguor for any type of graphics or video work) and got to work. Every two weeks, she spends a couple of hours at local animal shelters, shooting video of adoptable cats and dogs and then coming back to her home office, where she edits the videos and adds narration about each pet.

She has always posted photographs of adoptable pets on the All for Animal’s Web site and she felt that videos would be a natural extension of the Pet Photo Gallery. Karen says, “Video enables potential adopters to get a better feel for an animal’s personality, whether it’s watching a dog catch a Frisbee or listening to a cat purr. We want to make it fun and easy for people to meet and ultimately adopt a new best friend.”

All for Animals gratefully accepted donations to help them continue their important and life-saving work of helping shelter pets get adopted. You can send a tax-deductible donation to: All for Animals, PO Box 3534, Santa Barbara, CA 93130. The 501(c) non-profit organization is also registered with Cars for Causes, and accepts old cars, trucks, motorcycles and RVs (this is a perfect time of year to dispose of your old clunker and get a nice tax break). To learn more about All for Animals, visit the organization’s Web site at www.allforanimals.com.