Pepe was a street cat until recently. He was being fed by a lady who feeds feral cats but he is not feral at all. He was probably somebody's pet at one point and was dumped on the street. I took him in to be neutered in March of 2007 but he was placed back where he had been staying. Since he was in a high risk environment, with cars speeding by his location all the time, I convinced the lady who cared for him that he needed to be removed. A local no-kill animal shelter agreed to take him in. I brought Pepe to a veterinary clinic to update his shots and have him combo-tested for Feline Leukemia and Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV). Unfortunately, Pepe tested positive for FIV so the animal shelter wouldn't take him.

Pepe is very friendly and sweet. He would do great in a home. Pepe's exact age is unknown, but he is probably 3-5 years old. He gets along fine with other cats and might even do well in a home with other cats due to his good disposition. If not, he could go to a home with another FIV cat or as an only cat. In fact, Pepe and B.W. would be a great pair to be adopted together! Anyone interested in taking Pepe (or B.W.) into their home?

"BW" (short for "Black and White") needs a home. He is a very friendly male that was dumped off by some irresponsible previous owners and ended up hanging around an apartment complex where a friend lives. He is probably 3-4 years old and seems to love attention. I took him in to be neutered, vaccinated (Rabies/FVRCP/FeLeuk), and combo-tested on April 12, 2008. He tested negative for Feline Leukemia, but came up positive for FIV. He will need to go to a good home where he can be the only cat, or to live with another FIV+ kitty.

If you would be interested in meeting or possibly adopting BW, please download an adoption application at http://www.sanantonioferalcats.org/adoption_list.cfm.

My sweet kitty Azul crossed the bridge last night and is now with the angels in Cat Heaven. She suffered complications from her surgery to amputate her right front leg and lost the battle after a valiant struggle. I miss you so much, baby girl. Rest in peace.

Azul's Photo Slideshow

Azul is my 11 1/2 year old Turkish Angora. She is the only purebred cat I have (the others are rescues). My sister bought Azul at a cat show in Dallas and brought her home, expecting to enjoy her company for many years. Unfortunately, her husband said "no cats" so my sister called me to see if I was interested in taking her at the time. I told my sister that I would keep Azul until her husband changed his mind. That was eleven years ago.

Recently, I noticed that Azul was limping a bit on her right front leg. She has always been a pain when it comes to clipping her claws (she bites me when I try this) and brushing out tangles in her coat and I have often let it go too long before getting her groomed. I thought maybe one of her front claws had curled around and was digging into her foot pad, causing her to limp. But then I also noticed that she seemed to have some disfigurement on her leg. Calling the vet the next morning, I got her in to be examined and groomed ASAP.

My vet, Dr. Bekkah Byrd (who I consider the best vet I've ever worked with), informed me that Azul had a lump on the elbow of her right front leg and took some culture samples to make some slides to send to the pathology lab. When the report came in, the results pointed to a suspected fibrosis or mesenchymal neoplasm and the recommendation was to remove the growth and submit it for biopsy to the lab. So, back to the vet for Azul to have the growth removed from her leg. The lab report came back indicating the problem was a soft tissue sarcoma, intermediate grade malignant. Damn. Azul had cancer. The oncologist at the lab strongly recommended "disarticulation amputation." Azul's right front leg had to come off. Dr. Byrd was optimistic that she would quickly adapt to having just three legs.

I took Azul in yesterday for surgery. X-rays prior to her operation indicated the cancer had not spread to her lungs (which often happens, I'm told, if not caught soon enough), so Dr. Byrd performed the amputation. She called me in the afternoon to say the operation went very well. She called back later to tell me that Azul was already standing on her one front leg and eating like a horse. Good signs. I picked Azul up this afternoon and brought her home. When I opened her pet carrier, she came out like a shot and hobbled into my bedroom before collapsing on the floor. She can definitely move on those three remaining legs!

After a brief period of adjustment (which included several of the other cats skulking up to her for a good sniff-over), I removed her Elizabethan collar. She was able to hop over to the food bowl and attack some kibble. Awhile later, when I fed everyone their evening meal of canned food, she was right there, chowing down, with the rest of the gaggle. A little while after that, I figured she might need to go potty and picked her up and took her into the cat bathroom where the litter boxes are. She quickly hopped into a litter box but struggled a bit tending to her business. Well, nothing is easy at first, but I believe she will adapt soon. I expect Azul to be hopping around in a few days as if nothing unusual happened. We'll see.

San Antonio took a huge step forward today to embrace the Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) program. At a press conference, Animal Care Services (ACS) Director Jef Hale announced that, effective April 1st of 2008 (next week), the city will no longer accept cats in traps at its facility or in the field. Last year, the city adopted a Strategic Plan to attain No-Kill status in San Antonio by 2012. Today's announcement proves that the city is continuing to make gains in embracing No-Kill and will save the lives of countless stray and feral cats. Accepting cats in traps at the ACS facility has always been tantamount to more of the same kill mentality that has affected our community for decades. This new change in policy puts San Antonio on the right track and will dramatically reduce the numbers of cats taken into the ACS facility. I am thrilled.

A recent change to the city's animal ordinance (December 2007), which now provides for legalized TNR programs, makes all of this possible. Jef remarked that the city has done nothing to improve the situation regarding free-roaming cats over the past three decades, so the problem never got better. Statistics at the ACS facility in recent years have shown that most cats brought in (usually in traps) have resulted in the killing of about 85-90% of those cats. What a tragedy. Now, with an increased emphasis on adoptions, working with rescue groups, and cutting off the intake of cats in traps, ACS is saying we need to change the way we think by embracing TNR. ACS will now begin offering alternatives for those people who still need help with stray and feral cats. ACS used to loan out traps to enable cats to be caught and brought in for killing, now they will loan deterrents to help people deal with cats humanely.

ACS will partner with the San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition (SAFCC) to provide different ways to address nuisance behaviors of stray and feral cats. Some of those alternatives will be: 1) encouraging people to attend SAFCC's TNR Workshops; 2) offering deterrents to people complaining about cats in their yards; and 3) specifically addressing free-roaming cat nuisance behaviors in a humane fashion. Jef indicated that he will have a dedicated ACS person to work on this initiative.

In addition, Jef said there are plans to increase the capacity of spaying and neutering pets in the community, including feral cats. ACS will shortly begin offering SAFCC 30 appointments on Fridays to spay/neuter feral cats. ACS will also offer no/low-cost spay and neuter to the public. Most of the complaints ACS has received in the past involved intact (non-sterilized) cats. Sterilizing them will greatly reduce nuisances from free-roaming cats.

Congratulations to Jef Hale and the San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition. Your partnership will save many kitty lives and help those people to address cat issues in our community. Well done!

(Jef Hale gives TNR a big thumbs up!)

Find out more on how you can help feral cats at http://www.alleycat.org/savethiscat/.

For information and help regarding feral cats in the San Antonio area, visit the San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition web site at http://www.sanantonioferalcats.org.

Saw this and thought I'd see if I'm a nerd.

You decide. Try it out for yourself!

Caruso's New Home Photo Slideshow

Caruso's adoptive mom, Katie, forwarded some great photos of Caruso in his new home and had this to say:

"Caruso is doing really well. He is coming around wonderfully now. ... We went to Sam's one day and brought home some boxes with our stuff in them. He picked this box and will not let me move it, never mind think about throwing it away. I tried to move it off that chair and he refuses to sit in it until I move it back. Caruso and the other cat are getting along well now. When I come home from school in the afternoon, I will sit down in my chair and Caruso runs up next to me and will stand straight up on his back legs and push me with his front paws. It's adorable! He is like, "Hello, I am here... Pet me now... Please"... and gives me this sad look. He also loves looking outside at birds and people passing by."

Thanks, Katie and Jacob! I'm so glad he is doing well in his new home.

This underscores why we (fosters) do what we do and makes it all worthwhile.

You may have seen this floating around the Internet, but it so reminded me of my Princess, who I lost to kidney failure in 2006, that I am re-posting it here.

Author Unknown

I am your cat, and I have a little something I'd like to whisper in your ear.

I know that you humans lead busy lives. Some have to work, some have children to raise. It always seems like you are running here and there, often much too fast, often never noticing the truly grand things in life.

Look down at me now, while you sit there at your computer. See the way my eyes look at yours?

They are slightly cloudy now. That comes with age. The gray hairs are beginning to ring my soft muzzle.

You smile at me; I see love in your eyes. What do you see in mine? Do you see a spirit? A soul inside, who loves you as no other could in the world? A spirit that would forgive all trespasses of prior wrong doing for just a simple moment of your time?

That is all I ask. To slow down, if even for a few minutes to be with me. So many times you have been saddened by the words you read on that screen, of others of my kind, passing.

Sometimes we die young and oh so quickly, sometimes so suddenly it wrenches your heart out of your throat. Sometimes, we age so slowly before your eyes that you may not even seem to know until the very end, when we look at you with grizzled muzzles and cataract clouded eyes.

Still the love is always there, even when we must take that long sleep, to run free in a distant land. I may not be here tomorrow; I may not be here next week. Someday you will shed the water from your eyes, that humans have when deep grief fills their souls, and you will be angry at yourself that you did not have just "One more day" with me.

Because I love you so, your sorrow touches my spirit and grieves me. We have NOW, together. So come, sit down here next to me, and look deep into my eyes. What do you see? If you look hard and deep enough we will talk, you and I, heart to heart.

Come to me not as "alpha" or as "owner" or even "Mom or Dad," come to me as a living soul and stroke my fur and let us look deep into one anther's eyes, and talk. I may tell you something about the fun of batting toys, or I may tell you something profound about myself, or even life in general.

You decided to have me in your life because you wanted a soul to share such things with. Someone very different from you, and here I am.

I am a cat, but I am alive. I feel emotion, I feel physical senses, and I can revel in the differences of our spirits and souls. I do not think of you as a "Cat on two feet" -- I know what you are. You are human, in all your quirkiness, and I love you still.

Now, come sit with me. Enter my world, and let time slow down if only for 15 minutes. Look deep into my eyes, and whisper into my ears. Speak with your heart, with your joy and I will know your true self. We may not have tomorrow, and life is oh so very short....

Caruso's Photo Slideshow

Caruso was always a special cat to me. He came to me sometime around May of 2006. Thought to be feral at first, Caruso may have just been a very scared kitty, but his ear got tipped (sign of a neutered feral cat in a managed colony) at the time he was neutered. He had been living on the street and was being fed by a man who didn't want him back after he was trapped and fixed. Caruso was originally with another foster parent but she asked me to take him and work on socializing him. So I brought him home, caged him, and started socializing him. Over time, Caruso let me pet him more and more. He had a chance to see the other house cats interacting with me and got to know them through his cage, although he never seemed that interested in them. Eventually, I let Caruso out of his cage to find his way in the household.

During the year and a half that Caruso was with me, he remained mostly a solitary cat. He wasn't that playful but would occasionally chase one of the black cats for exercise. I convinced my father, who lives alone, to take Caruso and foster him for awhile. I thought that if Caruso was around someone else, he might come out of his shell and not be so shy. As the only cat in my father's house, Caruso did start to develop his personality somewhat. Once, when I was visiting, I was able to coax him into my lap. This was something he never did at my house. Alas, Caruso eventually came back to live at my house until he was adopted.

I always had a great fondness for Caruso. He was never any problem for me, just aloof. And with all of the other crazy cats in the house, I greatly appreciated Caruso for who he was during the time we spent together. Katie and Jacob adopted Caruso on January 11, 2008 and from my follow-ups with Katie it sounds like he's doing great. Take care of him, guys, he's a special kitty!