Here are some pictures of Mr. Boots, both before he came home from Good Mews and since he’s been home.

Mr. Boots’ Picture Album

I’m running a bit late thanks to travel and the holiday, but here’s a short but high-quality Best of the Week!

• From the Etsy Storque, we have a quickie review of ColourLovers with Samantha Hahn.
• Seraphim Flameworks, they of the marvelous tube beads, has been spending mucho time lately testing out the newest Double Helix odd lots and test batches. Their generosity in sharing their results will either result in gratitude or envy, I’m not sure which!
• Kerry Bogert talks about taking a lemonade stand approach to art for Watch Me Create.
• Finally, a badly needed Overload of Cuteness from the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee. All together, now……AWWWWWWW!!!!!

Mr. Boots was finally allowed to come home Friday!  We are still trying to get a good handle on his medical issues, particularly the cause of the anemia, but as Dr. Ray put it, “Mr. Boots needs to get on with his life.” So everyone cleared him to get out of that double-wide cage and into his Forever Home.

He does definitely have polycystic kidney disease, but right now it’s not affecting him at all.  Sooner or later he will go into renal failure, but that’s pretty common in elderly cats anyway.  Dr. Ray has him on a trial of Epogen for the anemia, so I’ve had to learn how to give him an every-other-day injection.   He’ll go back to the vet at the end of next week and we’ll see if it’s doing any good.

As for adjusting to his latest move, well, he just made himself quite at home.  He had a “safe room” to himself Friday afternoon, but by the time I got back from running my errands he was eager to come out and begin exploring the rest of the house and meet Donovan and the SarahCat.  They, OTOH, were NOT quite so eager to meet him ::rolling eyes::.  But they are adjusting as well.  He is turning out to be a “proximate cat” and wants to be either near us or near the other cats (but not TOO near them yet).  He follows me around the house; he sleeps on the bed with us; he sits on the sofa and watches TV with us; he snoozes in the office while we work.

He purrs a lot.  I think he’s happy :-).

Mr. Boots still has not been able to come home.  We ran his bloodwork again last week, and when the results came back several of the numbers indicating anemia were even lower.  After discussing it with Dr. Ray at CCR, Dana arranged to send Mr. Boots over there for an ultrasound and x-rays today so they could see if there is any underlying cause for the anemia.

When I went over this afternoon to check in on him, I stopped in to talk to Shannon about any results that might be in.  She said they had definitely found cysts in his kidneys, but didn’t know the size or extent.  That’s indicative of polycystic kidney disease, which I now know (of course I came home and researched) is a congenital condition very common in Persian and Persian-related cats (like Himalayans).  Apparently approximately 37% of the breed develops this condition.  It’s not curable, and treatment consists of pretty much the standard treatment for any feline renal disease.  They also did a urinalysis, which they don’t yet have the results from, and I’m not sure what they are looking for there.

Dr. Ray is supposed to consult with a specialist tomorrow, then will get back with Shannon; Shannon is going to give him my number so he can call me and tell me just what is going on first-hand.

Shannon also said that if we talk it over and decide that we just can’t go through with adopting him, she and everyone else would certainly understand.  Maybe so, and my head says she has a point.  But my head’s not saying that very loudly, and my heart is practically shrieking “don’t listen!!!”  I don’t think I can explain it with any logic, but I feel like this is meant to be — Mr. Boots is supposed to be part of my life, even if it may not be for that long. Backing out of making him part of our family is not a thought I can consider.

On the last day of my spring break last Friday I happily got up early to go fill in on Clean & Feed at Good Mews — I’d been missing my Friday morning ladies! After greeting Connie, Charlene, Patty, and Karen, I popped my head into Intake to say hello to the new residents. Almost all the cages were full because we’d been the recipient of an influx from yet another hoarding case, though at least this time the kitties were still in pretty decent shape.

When I got to one of the bottom cages, I gasped. The cat in there looked startlingly like my IrisKitty, who (with a little help) I had rescued off the mean streets of Norcross and who had been my beloved feline companion until I lost her to cancer on Christmas Eve, 1998. The only major difference was gender — this was a big fluffy boy cat. He was one of the intakes from the hoarder, and had been there less than 24 hours so we knew essentially nothing about him except for his name.

I took time out to get acquainted and give him some good snorgles, which he grumpily assented to. As I cleaned the isolation room, I kept slipping back into Intake just to look at him and coo at him, in addition to discussing him with the shelter staff. At one point Dana told me that he is front declawed, which sent chills up my spine — Iris was front declawed when we got her.

I told DH about Mr. Boots and introduced them last Saturday. I went by just to visit him twice last week. On Thursday, Dana asked if I had put Mr. Boots on hold yet, and she wasn’t just joking. DH and I talked a little, and Friday morning he went up to the attic and brought down our larger cat carrier without telling me, saying “you don’t want him coming home in a cardboard box with holes, do you?” So Friday afternoon before leaving work I downloaded, filled out, and printed an adoption application.

On “Caturday” our first stop after leaving the house was Good Mews, where I walked in, greeted the counselors, asked who had been adopted so far today (two adoptions and two “on-hold” by 1 p.m. — a good day already!), and told Lori the lead counselor that we were here to put Mr. Boots on hold, knowing that he has to have some dental work before he can come home, and handed her the application. She looked it over, hassled me about forgetting to sign it , then signed the approval spot and took my credit card. That’s the fastest adoption interview she’s done in a long time, I bet — though when Michelle and Janet the tour guides commented, I dryly remarked that Lori has, after all, been interviewing me for the past two years (that’s about how long I’ve been working as an adoption trainee, then counselor, myself).

Of course we spent some time with our new family member before leaving. DH had brought in some Feline Greenies (aka Kitty Crack) and Mr. Boots hoovered them up with even more alacrity than our Sarah!!! We also brought the camera:

Don’t you just LOVE that grumpy little face? He adores chin scritches.

It will be a couple of weeks before Mr. Boots can come home, because he can’t get his dental work done until they do another round of blood tests and make sure that the slight anemia was just a temporary thing. But I will be visiting him frequently to get him used to me, and I will probably be utterly worthless this coming Saturday as an adoption counselor since I’ll be hiding in the back the whole time snorgling him ::LOL::.