How Can You Mend a Broken Heart ....

As some of you will know, for the kitten season of 2012 we fostered kittens and a few adults cats for a local shelter - Paws4Life. In total, 35 felines in need passed through our doors including two kittens - Lisbeth and Tyrion, who never left.

Tyrion and his three brothers; the Grey Babies, came to us with their adoptive mother Busy Lizzy. This little family had been uplifted from a property along with the kitten's birth mother who had rejected her kittens. Busy Lizzy  - just a kitten herself, was already nursing 2, one month old kittens and when the grey babies mother had rejected them she took the newborns on as well. On arriving at the shelter Lizzy's two kittens were fostered out as they were just old enough to be weaned. Lizzy and the grey babies then came into foster with us. The grey baby's mother was found to have a ruptured diaphram and once she had had corrective surgery and lots of tender loving care at Paws4 Life she was successfully adopted out to her forever home.

Five days after Lizzy and the grey babies arrived, I got a desperate call from the shelter. A litter of kittens had been found in a box on the road and the box had been sitting there for at least three days before the kittens were discovered and rescued.  One kitten was dead, two more had accepted the bottle but on wee girl was conpletely refusing to feed at all. She's had less than 5 mls in 24 hours and they wanted to see if Lizzy would accept her. I arranged for her to be brought straight over and I could hear her screaming as she was carried up the path to the front door. If she refused to feed or Lizzy refused her she was facing euthanasia the following day.

Sadly, it didn't work out with Lizzy but Geri and I sat up with the kitten all night and managed to get 5mls into her. The following morning I took her back to the shelter to collect some formula and get some advice from Rachael.















This wee girl weighted all of 185gms (a new born kitten weighs about 125gms) and it was thought she was about 2-3 weeks old.  But as it turned out, she had all of her baby teeth so was 6-8 weeks old but was severely emaciated.
 
In the mean time the grey babies were thriving but about a week after Lisbeth arrived they suddenly started crying and were very unsettled. Twenty four hours later it became apparent that Lizzy was very sick so off to the vet she went. It transpired that Lizzy was gravely ill and she ended up in the critical care unit at the vet for over a week. She nearly died but they managed to save her and after a prolonged period of recovery at the shelter she was eventually adopted.

Suddenly, we were bottle feeding five kittens! Once we confirmed that Lizzy's illness wasn't contagious I integrated Lisbeth in with the grey babies. She didn't know what on earth was going on but ultimately it was a really good thing for her socialisation.

Some of the fab Five wearing their 'food faces'

We had decided early on that we would adopt Lisbeth as she was obviously going to have issues and we felt that putting her back through the shelter wasn't going to be a good outcome for her. Of course, we also decided she would need the company of a cat her own age and we chose Tyrion as he was such a character.

We've been through ups and downs with our four ever since. In June 2013 we made the decision to stop fostering as we were having behavioural and health issues with our crew which I was certain were caused by stress related to having so many extra cats in the house. We worked hard at getting things on an even keel and things seemed to be fine for quite a while. Then in the late summer of 2014 I discovered that Tyrion had been spraying inside. This coincided with Effie and Coco becoming increasingly aggressive towards Lisbeht and Tyrion.

I put back into practice all of the measures I'd used in 2013 and for a while we made progress. Then Tyrion started spraying again so I put him on to Clomicalm and for over a month we had a break from nightly blacklighting and cleaning sessions.

Then, he started again.

I was at breaking point by this time and had to start to face the fact that  it looked like I was not going to be able to 'fix' this situation which meant that I had to make a decision about Tyrion's future.

Two weeks ago I finally came to the awful realisation that my wee man Tyrion would have to be rehomed. He couldn't stop spraying, was becoming aggressive with Lisbeth and was undergoing significant personality changes - becoming increasingly withdrawn and was obviously very unhappy.

I tried to rehome him through my network of friends and aquaintances to no avail as the stigma attached to spraying is hard to overcome, so admitting defeat I contacted Rachael at the shelter I volunteer for. 



Rach was fantastic and after discussing the situation at length we came to the conclusion that as Tyrion was maturing; he is 22 months, his need for his own territory - totally unchallenged or shared in his mind, was becoming overwhelming and that there was just no way I could provide this for him here with so many cats not only in the household but in the neighbourhood as well. We agreed that this was very likely an inherent personality trait that was coming to the fore as Tyrion entered adulthood and that there was nothing I could do about it - living here with us just wasn't doing it for him and I had to accept it was never going to, no matter how hard I worked at it or tried.

She also assured me that she has rehomed MANY sprayers successfully and that as long as they are placed carefully usually once they are out of the environment that they were finding stressful, they no longer feel the need to spray anymore. We agreed that Tyrion needed to be rehomed into a quiet (he's quite a nervous chappy), calm, sole cat household. Rachael is extremely picky when it comes to placing the animals in her care and I knew that she would be taking extra, special care with and of Tyrion for me.

Surrendering Tyrion to the shelter has been the hardest decision I've ever had to make in my life and I am still unspeakably sad. I've been mourning his loss for weeks and Paws4Life/Rachael is the ONLY place/person I would/could have entrusted him to.

Once at the shelter, he stopped spraying which is usually the case according to Rachael. He was so bewildered and scared when I took him over, it was awful. I had taken his favourite cubby bed with me so I set him up in his crate and after crying on Rachael's shoulder for an hour I left, sobbing my eyes out all the way home.

The following 10 days were horrendous, but then I received this text from from Rachael -

"Tyrion adopted by the most amazing, sweet and lovely older couple. He is off (with his bed!) to watch Pirongia Mountain and to be thoroughly and utterly loved."

I rang her straight away and she said the couple's previous cat had died of old age and that they are very gentle, quiet people. I've been crying ever since with joy, hope, relief, sadness, grief, happiness .... I don't know!

The shelter has a condition on adoptions that if for ANY reason the animal needs rehoming the owners are legally obligated to return them to the shelter. So, I know that if it doesn't work out Tyrion will still be safe. However, Rachael has a full disclosure policy and this couple sounds perfect so I am hopeful that he has found his forever home.

Since Tyrion left the dynamic between my girls has changed enormously with less aggression and a LOT more "Oh, it's just you Lisbeth, yeah ok .... I'm going back to sleep" instead of "LOOK!!!!! IT"S LISBETH (or TYRION) > LET"S GET HER/HIM!!!!!" 

For now, I am holding my breath and hoping against hope that Tyrion has found his forever home, that his need to spray is a distant memory and that he will now move forward to live a blissfully happy and content life full of love and cuddles with his new family.

Goodbye my special wee man. I will forever hold you in my heart where there will always be a void in the space that you used to occupy.