MLAARE -Poor Kitty

Well....it was depressing at work today...
I was in the middle of cleaning out the cat cages.
When I reached a large cage that had 4 cats in it.
And they had made a huge mess.
Urine covered half the cage it seemed like.
As someone in there had missed the litter box. >.<
Foo.
Which meant I needed to do a deeper cleaning than usual.
As usually, if the cat doesn't want to leave the cage, I don't force them to leave the cage. I work around them.
This.
This required moving all the cats out.
This particular cage had about half in half. 2 cats that wanted to stay in the cage, 2 that wanted to wander about the room.

But I needed them all out.
So I went and picked up one of the black kittens.

And immediately noticed something was off.
The cat felt thin. For one.
And wasn't really responding.

I mean, usually you pick up a cat and they have some weight to them, a pressure on you as they adjust to be more comfortable. That sort of thing.
This cat could have been nearly a rag doll.

Not a good sign.
Maybe it was sleepy.
So I set the cat on the ground.
And it just stood there.
Awkwardly.
Looking like it would tip over at any moment.
Not good.
Once cats are out of the cage they usually run and hide if they're the more shy ones.
This one didn't move.

So I went and grabbed a manager.
And in the time I was gone...
The cat hadn't moved.
Still standing in its awkward position.

Not good.
I picked it up.
And it threw up (lucky me most of it landed in the litter box. Yay for coincidental placement of that.)

Not good.
We tried to contact the group in charge of the cats.
I finished cleaning up the cage. Placed the cats back.

And...
Didn't go straight to the next cage.

As I had had something similar happen a little bit ago.
...Which because I hadn't been wearing gloves at that point in time.
Resulted me in making a mad dash home to take a shower and totally deep clean all my clothes.

If this little guy was sick with what I thought he was sick with.
Then I couldn't contaminate the other cats more than necessary.
So I switched gloves.
And then continued with the rest of the cats and onto other tasks.
A couple of hours passed.
I checked back in on the cat.
To see that it wasn't doing so hot.
We'd had no word from the group.
And so I (and the manager) made the call to take it to our vet.

So I put on gloves again.
Because I'd learned my lesson from last time.

And took it to the vet.
Where the result was what I feared.
Y_Y Poor thing had contracted PanLuke. (Similar to the Parvovirus but for Cats.)
And that...is fatal. There was nothing we could do but put the poor thing out of its misery.
Y_Y

And once again...we have to go through the whole deep cleaning process....*sighs*

In any case.
One of the Vet Techs passed by me a little later.
lol.
And said "You know, you're getting really good at catching the cats getting sick. ....I know that's not the best thing to say, but you are getting really good at that."
Which made me feel a bit better.
Because I guess other people would have just let the cat suffer. Would have adopted out other cats who had been exposed. Would have caused heart ache for pet owners who had to deal with their cats possibly getting sick...

Yah.
Definitely don't want that.
So its a good thing that I'm getting really good at noticing that the cats aren't doing well.
So we can ensure that healthy pets are adopted.
*sighs*
But....if I had caught it sooner...maybe the cat could have been saved. Maybe.

I mean, I had noticed that the cat was inactive before today.
I've cleaned the cat cages more than once this week.
But hadn't picked up on that the cat wasn't feeling good.

Because this particular cat had just arrived.
So I just assumed that its particular tendency to hide out in its house and not move....was from stress.
I mean....they had a long drive...recently arrived, strange place. It's enough to make the cats not be themselves for at least a week.

I suppose the lesson from this...is that there is always room for improvement. :)
So, make the effort to check in on the cats.
And make sure that they are just shy and not sick....

-Sarnic Dirchi