Barney is an Angel Now.

**Emeraldgreen** · 10-14-2008, 10:50 PM

This little cat just breaks my heart.
I posted a thread a few days back regarding Revolution dosage because I was trying to help this woman who was caring for a stray cat. Well, I gave her the Revolution to treat the cat and today she asked if I could come over to see the cat and to look at it's ears. She said they were all bloody and she wasn't sure if she could take the cat to the vet due to finances.

So I stopped by after work tonight and I was so shocked by the condition of this poor little cat. It turns out the cat is a male and he is so tiny and thin. My coworker rents the cottage that this cat has been hanging around and she has named him Scrawny. She had to go across the country to Ontario last week for family reasons and a death in the family so her good friend has come all the way from Ontario to house sit for her and has kind of taken over the feeding of this little guy. My coworker won't be back until November 15th and Angela has to leave at somepoint in the near future but she is trying to get this guy on his feet before she leaves.

I think my co-worker thought he might be young because of his size but as soon as I saw his eyes I knew he was a senior. I checked his teeth too and they were the teeth of an old cat. I'm guessing he might be around 13 or 14?

This poor cat has been hanging around this property for a year. The house she rents is actually a little cottage on an acreage that is owned by another family. The family have never been able to touch him and it's only now that he has reached out for help and allowed people to comfort him. He is so sweet and was purring the whole time we handled him tonight. I think he must have been someone's cat at some point in his life because he does not act feral.
Here is a few second video of him when I first arrived.

I gasped when I saw him because I wasn't expecting him to be in such bad shape. He is skin and bones and he is filthy. His ears are a mess and he is deaf. Angela held him while I trimmed the scabs back. One was half an inch thick!! We put hydrogen peroxide on the scabs on the exterior of his ears and they foamed up like you wouldn't believe.

The rest are just pictures:

We filled a sink with warm water and some hypoallergenic soap for pets. We didn't want to freak him out so we used a cloth and gently washed him with that. We tried to wash his feet but he got angry when we tried so that will have to wait until later. Once he was washed we used a hair dryer on warm with a diffuser to dry his fur. He couldn't hear the dryer so thankfully it didn't scare him. He even ate a plate of food while we dried him. So sweet.

I'm going to get some antibacterial soap from a friend of mine who used to work at a vet clinic and has a large supply. We'll use that to continue cleaning his scabby ears. I'll bring some nail trimmers over as well to trim his long nails. He needs to go to a vet but I can only pitch in a bit and Angela doesn't seem to have much money either nor does my coworker. My plan is to try and find a way to get this guy on his feet so he's healthy enough and handsome enough that when my coworker gets back she won't be able to resist him and she will give him a home. She already wants to but her partner is not too keen on the idea.

My hope is to get him examined. He is such an older guy that I wonder if putting him through surgery for neutering would even be worth it. He has a set but I don't think he's interested in using them. He's just trying to survive right now.

It sure made me realize how fortunate my own cats are to have a warm home. I can't believe Scrawny has been out there on his own like this. I'm so thankful though that my coworker and Angela want to help him. I will do everything I can too. I'll post an update as things progress.

**jennielynn1970** · 10-14-2008, 11:48 PM

Oh my god. That poor old guy! I was sitting here, reading your post, looking at his pics, and was just gasping out loud. I cannot believe how skinny and sickly he looks. That poor, poor thing!!

You are wonderful for what you are doing to help him. I hope that he can get to a vet and get a checkup and some treatment.

Gentle pets to Scrawny, and hope that he will get to feeling much better.

**critters** · 10-15-2008, 06:16 AM

Poor guy! I'd consider neutering when he's stronger, mainly because that would be an ideal time to give his ears a GOOD cleaning and medicating, and to see what's going on in them. I can't imagine he'd let somebody do too much with them awake.

**Medusa** · 10-15-2008, 06:56 AM

He may be deaf because his ears are in such bad shape w/mites or whatever. If the vet can get his ears cleaned up, he may be able to hear again. It's so dangerous to have him stay outdoors if he can't hear because he may not know when danger is upon him. This is just heartbreaking, just heartbreaking. Poor sweet little guy. Thank you, Lara, for having such a kind heart. I'm fairly selective as to where I contribute but this guy makes my heart ache. If you take him to the vet, I'll be happy to contribute towards the bill. I'd be curious to know how old he is and if the vet feels he should be neutered yet. You can PM me w/details. His face is just haunting me. He looks so much like my RB Peeka and by the time I rescued her, she was bone thin like that, too, and kids had tried to skin her alive; all the fur was missing from her tail. She survived and lived for 14 years so there's hope for Scrawny. (I believe that pets live up to their names, so I wish he had a different one. Rocky, maybe, because he's managed to survive this long. I'm just sayin'...)

**Randi** · 10-15-2008, 10:10 AM

Oh Lara, it's heartbreaking to see the condition poor Scrawny is in, and yes, I'm sure he's an elderly cat.

What luck for him that you came round to help care for him. I really hope you can get him to a vet soon. I'll be glad to give a contribution towards the bill. PM me!

**Emeraldgreen** · 10-15-2008, 12:12 PM

Thank you Jenn, Mary, Randi and Critters so much for your posts and support!!

I'm heading over there again after work. I do think he should get to a vet too. My only concern is that Angela indicated that if his blood work does show kidney failure then it would probably be best to put him down. I told her that my cat Jade went on to live for 4 good years after her diagnosis with fluids and care. The thing is that she will be leaving my coworkers house soon and I don't want her to put him down before she leaves. My hope is to get him feeling and looking better so my coworker won't be able to resist him when she gets home and then when he gets bloodwork, she will still want to keep him despite the results.
I know this sounds like a stupid plan and maybe it is. What do you guys think?
It's kind of a weird situation because this cat isn't mine to make the calls and I'm not able to take him in myself (hubby would absolutely kill me) but I want to try and do everything I can to help him stick around and have a good life.

I absolutely appreciate the wonderful offers for some donations and Jenn is sending some Revolution in the mail for his next treatment, which is so great.
I would want him to go to my vet as they are such good people and so good at what they do. I could call them and see if people could call them to make a donation on his behalf? I don't have a paypal account. I did set one up a long time ago and I just used it to send a donation to someone but it's not set up to receive anything. I'm kind of nervous about connecting it to my bank account. That's probably stupid too.

I guess the main goal right now is to get him examined and get a geriatric panel done on him and maybe dewormed. I know my vet charges around 60.00 (Canadian) for an exam. I'm guessing that bloodwork would be about 120.00 but I need to call and find out for sure. One drontal tab is probably about 15.00 but I'll find that out too.

Medusa wrote:

He may be deaf because his ears are in such bad shape w/mites or whatever. If the vet can get his ears cleaned up, he may be able to hear again. It's so dangerous to have him stay outdoors if he can't hear because he may not know when danger is upon him.

That would be so great if he could hear again. We figured that the loss of hearing was probably from all the mites/infection and debris but I didn't even think to hope that he could get some hearing back. That would be so awesome. I'll start praying about that ASAP!

Thank you for your offer to help. I know it is so hard to choose sometimes who to help as there are so many in need and times are as hard as they get right now. This guy sure is in rough shape though and I appreciate so much that he has touched your heart.
Thank you Randi as well!!

Critters wrote:

Poor guy! I'd consider neutering when he's stronger, mainly because that would be an ideal time to give his ears a GOOD cleaning and medicating, and to see what's going on in them. I can't imagine he'd let somebody do too much with them awake.

You wouldn't believe how tolerant this guy is with regard to his ears. He does pull back when he's had enough but I spent a good 5 minutes straight trimming away at this scab that had scabs built on top of that etc.. We didn't attempt to clean inside his ears though yet and that might be a different story.

I received some advice via PM regarding Ivermectin and using that to clean his ears but now I'm wondering if we shouldn't mess with them too much and let a vet have a good look and steer us in the right direction. It might be something that requires Surolan or something like that. We're just guessing it's mites but that could be wrong.

**Randi** · 10-15-2008, 01:47 PM

Lara, I just sent you a PM, but forgot to say...

Any chance you could call your vet and ask what might be the right thing to use for his ear - something that won't be harmful, whatever the problem is. Scrawny must feel awful with that ear.

**critters** · 10-15-2008, 03:01 PM

I'm in red.

Originally Posted by Emeraldgreen

I don't have a paypal account. I did set one up a long time ago and I just used it to send a donation to someone but it's not set up to receive anything. I'm kind of nervous about connecting it to my bank account. That's probably stupid too.

You don't have to do anything special to get $$ via PayPal, and to get your $$ out you can ask them to send you a check. Slow, but effective.

I guess the main goal right now is to get him examined and get a geriatric panel done on him and maybe dewormed. I know my vet charges around 60.00 (Canadian) for an exam. I'm guessing that bloodwork would be about 120.00 but I need to call and find out for sure. One drontal tab is probably about 15.00 but I'll find that out too. You can get 3 Droncit for $10 at KV; they add a little, $5, I think, if you don't make their minimum purchase.
Critters wrote:

You wouldn't believe how tolerant this guy is with regard to his ears. He does pull back when he's had enough but I spent a good 5 minutes straight trimming away at this scab that had scabs built on top of that etc.. We didn't attempt to clean inside his ears though yet and that might be a different story. I'd be concerned about using anything in them until he's on antibiotics and all because of the likelihood of making him dig more.

I received some advice via PM regarding Ivermectin and using that to clean his ears but now I'm wondering if we shouldn't mess with them too much and let a vet have a good look and steer us in the right direction. It might be something that requires Surolan or something like that. We're just guessing it's mites but that could be wrong. Ivermectin is effective ONLY for mites, and it irritated Spunk's ears something terrible; luckily, she was out of it from being spayed. I'd say he also has at least bacteria because the front of his L ear looks gooey & pus-y in the pic. He may well have fungus too.

**Medusa** · 10-15-2008, 03:41 PM

Originally Posted by Emeraldgreen

That would be so great if he could hear again. We figured that the loss of hearing was probably from all the mites/infection and debris but I didn't even think to hope that he could get some hearing back. That would be so awesome. I'll start praying about that ASAP!

In the last litter of kittens that I rescued, one of the them had ear mites so badly that I and the person who adopted her both wrongly assumed that she was deaf and I mean stone deaf. As it turned out, she had ear mites so badly that she couldn't hear but once that got taken care of she could hear just fine. If Scrawny does have an ear fungus, that's certainly treatable. Yodie has had that problem ever since the polyp was removed from her ear but I have her on drops and salve and she's doing aces.

Thank you again, Lara, for doing this for the little guy. I PM'd you, too.

**jennielynn1970** · 11-17-2008, 03:54 PM

can you order one from amazon? I found this one on there... not sure about shipping.

**jennielynn1970** · 12-07-2008, 10:53 PM

How's Barney doing this past weekend?

**Emeraldgreen** · 12-07-2008, 11:41 PM

JennLibrarian wrote:

How's Barney doing this past weekend?

Well, we've had a good and not so good weekend. The good part was really neat. My husband was playing the piano and I thought that maybe Barney might be able to feel the vibrations from the music. I went and got him and bundled him up and brought him inside. Scott was playing and I sort of sandwiched Barney between me and the piano. He perked up and seemed to hear it! It was so cool. Then I sat down with him by the fire and he spent the whole time watching my husband playing the piano and his ears were moving all over the place. He was very calm though and stretching his paws out and kneading them in the air. I think he liked being able to hear/feel something.

The not so good part was that he was scratching his left ear while I was dishing up his food and his ear started bleeding. I think it is because I had just trimmed his nails when Angela was here and they were maybe a bit jagged. It was unbelievable how much it was bleeding, I was really freaked out. Everytime he shook his head, blood was flying everywhere. After about an hour, the workshop had blood splatter covering alot of it. Finally, it started to clot and the bleeding mostly stopped. There is still some blood when he shakes his head but nothing like the other day. I looked it up and Prednisone is supposed to help stop bleeding and he is already on that to help shrink the tumors so I will make sure he continues to get them every morning and night.

He is no longer fond of his low glycemic wet food and I need to make sure he eats so I'm giving him Fancy Feast and he eats it up. He also isn't interested in Pill Pockets anymore so I'm grinding the pred up and mixing it in his wetfood.

The daughter of my boss brought in some videos for Barney to add to his collection. He now has 'That Darned Cat' and 'Benji' and a couple of other similar movies to watch.

I'm going to be boarding Barney at the vet for a couple of days while we take a short road trip. Probably towards the end of the month. I have someone staying at our house but I just don't want to leave Barney with all of his special needs. It will be good for him to get out of the workshop for a bit. I'm worried that the vet is going to suggest that I let him go after they have him under their care for a few days and see his ear and stuff. But maybe it will be the opposite, they might help get him in better shape with glucose testing and hopefully some more dematting and just good attention from people who know what to look for with regard to everything that is going on with him.

One other thing that I've noticed in the past few days is that the tumor on his neck that leads up to behind his right ear seems smaller now. Just a week or so ago, it seemed larger but he had only had a few doses of the pred at that time. So I think it is working.

All in all, he's doing okay. He perks up whenever I go in there to see him and feed him and we have our good moments. I guess I'm just discouraged about his ear but hopefully in a few more days with more prednisone, it will get better. I will post in a few days and let you (all of Barney's Angels) know.

**critters** · 12-08-2008, 05:14 AM

Originally Posted by Emeraldgreen

JennLibrarian wrote:

Well, we've had a good and not so good weekend. The good part was really neat. My husband was playing the piano and I thought that maybe Barney might be able to feel the vibrations from the music. I went and got him and bundled him up and brought him inside. Scott was playing and I sort of sandwiched Barney between me and the piano. He perked up and seemed to hear it! It was so cool. Then I sat down with him by the fire and he spent the whole time watching my husband playing the piano and his ears were moving all over the place. He was very calm though and stretching his paws out and kneading them in the air. I think he liked being able to hear/feel something.

The not so good part was that he was scratching his left ear while I was dishing up his food and his ear started bleeding. I think it is because I had just trimmed his nails when Angela was here and they were maybe a bit jagged. It was unbelievable how much it was bleeding, I was really freaked out. Everytime he shook his head, blood was flying everywhere. After about an hour, the workshop had blood splatter covering alot of it. Finally, it started to clot and the bleeding mostly stopped. There is still some blood when he shakes his head but nothing like the other day. I looked it up and Prednisone is supposed to help stop bleeding and he is already on that to help shrink the tumors so I will make sure he continues to get them every morning and night.

He is no longer fond of his low glycemic wet food and I need to make sure he eats so I'm giving him Fancy Feast and he eats it up. He also isn't interested in Pill Pockets anymore so I'm grinding the pred up and mixing it in his wetfood.

The daughter of my boss brought in some videos for Barney to add to his collection. He now has 'That Darned Cat' and 'Benji' and a couple of other similar movies to watch.

I'm going to be boarding Barney at the vet for a couple of days while we take a short road trip. Probably towards the end of the month. I have someone staying at our house but I just don't want to leave Barney with all of his special needs. It will be good for him to get out of the workshop for a bit. I'm worried that the vet is going to suggest that I let him go after they have him under their care for a few days and see his ear and stuff. But maybe it will be the opposite, they might help get him in better shape with glucose testing and hopefully some more dematting and just good attention from people who know what to look for with regard to everything that is going on with him.

One other thing that I've noticed in the past few days is that the tumor on his neck that leads up to behind his right ear seems smaller now. Just a week or so ago, it seemed larger but he had only had a few doses of the pred at that time. So I think it is working.

All in all, he's doing okay. He perks up whenever I go in there to see him and feed him and we have our good moments. I guess I'm just discouraged about his ear but hopefully in a few more days with more prednisone, it will get better. I will post in a few days and let you (all of Barney's Angels) know.

I'll spare you all the details

, but he may well have a conductive hearing loss rather than "nerve deafness," in which case touching the piano may let him hear it! What a neat idea to let him do that!!

If you don't have styptic powder, you might try a little dab of flour the next time he gets a bloody spot.

Congrats on shrinking the tumors!!!

**Medusa** · 12-08-2008, 06:36 AM

So now Barney is a lover of the arts. Boy, he's really getting some perks for being sick. LOL I'm glad that the lump on his neck is shrinking but the ear thing is scary. Well, as you say, while you're gone, maybe the vet and staff will be able to do some other things for him that you wouldn't be able to do. Besides that, I'm sure you could use a break by now. Barney is just short of thriving thanx to you so you deserve a little time off w/family. The usual prayers and (((HUGS))) are headed your way.

**Purr-tender** · 12-08-2008, 12:14 PM

What a cozy picture you've painted. Scott at the piano, you with our Barney all bundled up in front of the fire...Ahhhh!! It doesn't get much better than that!

How awful that ear is acting up again. That must have been very upsetting to see so much blood. I would've freaked, too. It's good that his one tumor appears to be shrinking. As far as thinking that the vet may suggest letting him go...I don't think that will happen. It will be good for him to spend time at the vets while you and Scott take a much needed break. I'm sure Barney will get plenty of extra TLC while there, but there's nothing like your gentle touch and love. I'd send something of his with him when he goes, like a special blanket and toy.

Warm hugs for you and Barney,
Mary aka Barney's Angel!