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I was in Walmart this week buying litter for my critters and noticed that Walmart had a new variety of scoopable litter in its Special Kitty store brand, and it caused me some distress. It was in a cheerful orange box, and splashed all over the box were the words "Citrus Scented." Cats HATE citrus. In fact, they hate it so much that it's recommended you scatter lemon or orange peels in places you don't want your cat to go, like in the mulch of your flower beds, for example. As an added bonus, slugs are also attracted to the peels overnight, so in the morning you can gather the peels and slugs up and dispose of them and then scatter more peels.

But I digress.

I see much disaster ahead when well-meaning humans unknowingly bring this stuff home and put it someplace where their furballs are supposed to go the bathroom. Cats have no way of saying, hey, I'm totally repelled by what you've just put in there, why did you do that? So they're going to be confused and distressed and are going to want to do their business someplace that doesn't repel them. So if your cat has suddenly started going outside the litterbox in places that distress *you,* like the living room carpet or your bedspread or your slippers and you've recently changed their litter to this new scent, you may want to run out and bring home some of your old litter, as well as a new litterbox. The old box can hold the offending scent in the plastic, especially if it's been in use for awhile, and in that case even changing out the offending litter won't help.

Litterbox issues, by the way, are one of the top reasons people give their cats up, because so few people understand the complicated relationship between a cat and its box. First you have to understand how sensitive to smell a cat is and how sensitive their paws are. A cat has a sense of smell 14 times better than a human's, and it can feel the vibrations from a mouse in the grass at 100 yards away. If their box isn't cleaned out at least once, preferably twice, a day of solid and liquid waste, they're going to find it offensive to their noses and touch and will start looking for someplace else to go. If their litter brand is suddenly changed, from, say, clay scoopable litter to those pine pellets or a wheat/corn-based one, they may find it upsetting and start looking for someplace else to go. This doesn't mean you can't ever change the kind of litter they use. It just means you have to do it gradually, by slowly adding small amounts of the new litter to the old until the new has replaced the old. Sometimes the process can take as much as a month, but it can be done.

And if a cat is having urinary problems, it will often associate the litterbox with the pain and start going outside the box. Cats who get urinary infections or crystals will often go to the box over and over and over in a short amount of time due to spasms in their urinary tract, and then they'll abandon the box to squat someplace in the house, leaving a tiny puddle which could be bloody. If you see this behavior in your cat, get him or her to a vet ASAP. Urinary problems, especially crystals, can be fatal for felines.

I talk a lot about our low-cost spay neuter clinics. But what actually happens there? Keep reading for an indepth look-see!

Before the clinic even happens, there's pre-registration. All callers to our number (502)222-7537 answer questions about their pet, such as gender, age, color, breed, etc. All those answers help us decide what kind of treatment they'll get (for example, kittens under 2 lbs can't be spayed and under 4 months can't have their rabies shots, but we can start the CVRP shots and reschedule them for the rest at a later clinic) and how we'll identify them when they come in.

And when they come in, first there's check-in. Someone will pull that pre-registration paperwork when the client comes in and go over it with them to make sure nothing was missed or needs to be changed. This is a deceptively calm picture. Usually the check-in foyer is filled with carriers and pooches on leashes and folks are lined up out the front door. Volunteers like Genie make getting everyone in and ready in what is often chaos (dogs and cats crying, owners chatting and asking questions) and make it look easy.


Cats come in first because we send them to surgery first. Often, folks bring in multiples:





Once through check-in, they head to weigh-in. There volunteers experienced in cat handling weigh them and put white paper collars on them so they can be identified if they're separated from their paperwork. This can be a dangerous post, since sometimes even the sweetest, most docile cat can become frightened by the noise and unfamiliar surroundings, go Tasmanian devil, and unintentionally bite and claw someone badly. Luckily, volunteers are trained in how to identify a cat who may not be amenable to handling, and leave them for special handling back in surgery prep.








Then they're put back in their carriers and lined up for medical services.


Once they have their surgeries, they go to the shot station to get their rabies and CVRP shots, and are carried in to recovery, along with their carriers. Each cat rests on a heating pad, since anesthesia lowers body temperature, and volunteers here administer eye drops, clean ears if needed, and monitor them carefully until they wake up to make sure they come out of the drugs all right.



Once they're aware enough to start moving around, volunteers put them in their carriers and, if they still appear to have a lowered body temperature, the carrier is placed on the heating pad. If multiple cats have arrived in the same carrier, they'll all be placed back in the same carrier, since they often take comfort from each other when they wake up disoriented and sore after surgery. If it looks like the anethesia is affecting one or any of them with extreme grumpiness, we'll separate them and monitor them carefully until their people come to pick them up. This was not the case here:



Sometimes they need some extra TLC when they wake up. Although it's going above and beyond on the part of our volunteers, we can often impose on them to provide it!




What about the dogs? We take care of dogs, as well, although cats we do at a clinic will far outnumber dogs (recently we had 60 cats and seven dogs), mostly because the cat overpopulation problem in the county SO far outnumbers the dog overpopulation problem. The dogs start coming in after the cats. They go through the same process. They'll be checked in, weighed, have collars put on them. Often much oohing and aahing takes place during that process (and we do not have a size cutoff!)



While they're waiting for surgery, they're kept safely in kennels and monitored by volunteers.


They're walked as often as necessary while waiting. Once they come out of surgery, like the cats, they get eye-drops, their ears cleaned, and they'll get their nails trimmed (we only trim cat nails if the owner requests it).





The dogs, like the cats, suffer from lowered body temperature after surgery, but they're hard to keep on heating pads (and often too large!), so they'll get blankets.




Often the blankets end up on the bottom of the kennel if there's a warm buddy to snuggle with.



Once the cats and dogs have come completely out of the anesthesia and we're sure they're ready to head home safely, we'll call their people for pickup. And another clinic day concludes.

Saturday, November 7, was our first annual Rover Ramble, a fun walk for dogs and their people.     It was at Wendell Moore Park in Buckner, and we couldn't have ordered up a better day if we'd actually had the chance to order one up!     Here are some images from the day:

The ducks heard about it and flocked from far and wide, eager to join in, even though they didn't meet the four-legged requirement.  We let them stay.  <G>



I have my bling.   When's the party starting?  (This is Tiger Lily.  She's available for adoption.   That's right, some lucky person could have all that style and panache in their very own home!)



On the walk trail:









The Derby Disc Dogs do their thing:

Wow.   Can you believe it's almost the end of the year?    And the final two months of 2009 have holidays in them, which means we'll only have one low-cost spay/neuter clinic each.   November's is on the 14th, which is a Saturday.   December's is on the 12th, also a Saturday.    If you want to bring a dog or cat to either, call to preregister at 502-222-7537.

We have an upcoming adoption event for October - we'll be at Petsmart on Westport Road with pets who are looking for their forever homes Oct 24th and 25th.   If you've seen one of our availables up on Petfinder (www.petfinder.com/shelterSearch/shelterSearch.cgi) and would like to see one in person, this is your chance.    If you can't make it to one of our adoption events, feel free to ask for a meet-and-greet anytime. 

Our June 27 clinic has been cancelled.    Those who'd signed up for it have already been contacted and moved to a new date, June 22.    Check back here frequently.  As soon as we have dates for the July clinics, I'll let you know!