Rescue Journal

playing the odds...

Carol  ·  Jun. 10, 2011

saints welcomes stanley, a sweet little FIV cat that we actually already turned away...twice. we first heard about him a few months ago..he came into a clinic as a stray and when no one came looking for him, they decided to try to find him a home. he got himself neutered and a while later, snap tested...oops weak positive for FIV. because he was unneutered, the weak positive probably meant he had just contracted the disease.

anyway..the board said yes but i played my veto card and said no. i figured the clinic was pretty attached to him by then and would have a hard time putting him down. about a month later we got another call...they were still looking for someone to take him and were getting desperate cuz he couldn't stay there for much longer. i recognized the bind they were in..clinics are not rescues..they can't take in, fix up and house every homeless animal in the world or they might as well stop being clinics and become a rescue. still..i stuck by my guns and kept playing the odds..they already had him for 6-8 weeks...and that clinic is full of kindhearted softies.

we still had three difficult cats coming in and we were too full as it was, plus maestro and sage had just been dumped in our driveway..we really had no room.

i checked a couple of weeks ago and lo and behold, finally a rescue was found for him...yay! now i could quit feeling guilty about him.

yesterday i got the third call...his time was up. they had been dinking around back and forth with rescues (including us) for almost three months. the newest bump in the road came when the admitting rescue needed him re-tested to see if he had stayed fiv or if he had reverted back to negative. unfortunately that meant the clinic would be stuck with him for another 4 weeks.

vets are not stupid...this cat had been waiting for the rescue train to come in for almost 3 months and enough was enough. they can't keep an fiv cat in a cage in their clinics for the rest of its life and they can't bite the bullet and make them a clinic cats because their clients who know nothing about the disease probably would freak out.

the staff were in tears..by now everyone loved this little cat but the reality was that stanley was still sitting in a clinic cage 3 months after he came in as a stray. now most cats they can't find homes for can go to the spca...but not felv's or fiv's so stanley's time was finally up..the odds turned the wrong way.

i may play the odds at times with animals lives...we have to cuz we just can't take them all in every single time. but i ain't stupid either..i can see a brick wall when they are backed up against it and stanley had been in and out of my consciousness for the past three months.

sometimes i figure if they keep coming back to our door, we are meant to finally quit fighting the inevitable and open the freaking door.

saints welcomes stanley, he beat the fiv stray cat odds and found himself a safe place to go....he is a VERY sweet boy.

other news...

daisy has decided she can't walk again for some reason..she goes into the vets for xrays today.

trevor is staying with us for a few weeks. a tripod parapalegic ex-saint is too hard for anybody to deal with in a second story apartment...i couldn't do it either.
if trev is going to get back on on his three feet...he needs absolute rest, not being hauled down long hallways and down to the street to do his business..it is too hard for him and it is too hard for heidi..he is a pretty big dog. trev is not all that happy about being here right now..and neither is heidi..BUT i told both of them to suck it up...think of it as a temporary rehab hospital stay so he can hopefully heal once and for all. i spent a half an hour in with him last night laying on the floor and playing with him and his toys..i forgot what a sweetie pie he was...he is an old dog with the sweet and innocent soul of a puppy...taking care of him for the next few weeks is not going to be any real chore at all.
welcome back for a bit trevor...i remember now that i loved you a lot!

mystic ate one of my slippers again...luckily i have a mismatched right one from the last pair that she ate. and here is another one who is a joy to have around here as a pain in the neck...i so adore the magic of her as i watch her eat my things that i don't even try to take them away from her..whatever honey, glad your are enjoying yourself, joyful slipper destruction occasionally is fine with me.

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