Stray cat receives love and care
Like 1 Dislike 0 Published on 20 Jul 2014
This is the gentle stray cat for whom we are trying to find a home. He is such a nice cat! We can't keep him because we have two female cats already and we cannot risk exposing them to diseases. It is likely that he has fleas, of course. He also has ear mites, which is the cause of the terrible wound on his ear. Constant scratching is what causes that type of wound. Over the past two weeks he has scratched the scab off several times (You can even see the fur and blood caked onto his back left paw, which he uses to scratch it). Because we have seen the wound without a scab, we are sure that it is not a puncture wound. The wound has grown and grown though, and finally we got to the point that we realized it would not heal on its own. That is when we called a vet to find out what it is and we were told that it is almost surely being caused by ear mites. We looked it up and, sure enough, that is the type of wound you see with bad ear mite infections. He also has a puncture wound behind his left arm, it looks like a dog bite.
He may also have feline leukemia, although he doesn't display any obvious symptoms of it at the moment. The reason we say this is that the cat population in this area is heavily infected. We tested a stray kitten from our apartment complex in December and he came up positive. We were able to find a home for him. Another stray kitten was taken recently and she will likely be tested in the next week or two. We are hoping that he doesn't have it, but even if he tests negative, he could still be infected (It can take 1 to 2 months after infection for it to be detected by the test). So, if he comes up negative we will still have to assume he has it until he has a second test about 6 weeks later to confirm it.
We are hoping someone who has no other animals will take him in. Even if he has feline leukemia, he can still live a normal life. While some cats do die within a year, many others live a normal healthy life. It is not always an immediate death sentence. Unfortunately, we have found that many vet offices will tell you otherwise, but we believe that the vet offices who say this are saying it because they want to kill off any infected animals to reduce the spread of infection. Many people in this area are incredibly ignorant and cannot be trusted to keep their cats indoors. So, the vet offices simply tell people to put the animal down rather than even bother to ask if the owner can/will ensure that it stays indoors. Many of the owners in this apartment complex are so stupid that they simply leave their un-neutered/un-spayed cats behind when they move. So, the cat population here has grown quickly. Other idiots will actually let their cats outside in this complex because they are completely ignorant about feline leukemia. Anyway, the point is that we have found that many vet offices are dishonest about the disease. As long as you make sure he is an indoor cat and you are very careful not to let him outside, he will not infect other animals (They must have direct contact with infected saliva/blood). Read up on the disease on your own, but make sure you find reliable sources and not just some random junk on the internet.
We are beginning to believe that this cat was left behind by an owner, because he appears to be used to being inside.