We did our first batch of 'February cats' at the PAWS-Chicago Spay/Neuter clinic today.
I picked them up at Tammy's and brought them into PAWS this morning while the super-volunteer tag team of Dale and Arlie picked them up and brought them back to Tammy's for recovery. Thanks Dale! Thanks Arlie!
There were 5 friendly ferals and 2 true ferals. Unfortunately for one of the ferals (and I'll let Tammy tell the story here);
Of the 5 friendlies, everybody was fine. Bella was still growling when she came back.
Of the ferals, the female had been pregnant.
The male, Bob, we had asked PAWS to look at and treat his leg. While under sedation, the vet found that the infection had gone into the bone and the only way to treat the cat was to amputate the leg. Bob was completely feral. To hold him for the length of time it would take for the amputation to heal would be torture for him and the amputation of a front leg would greatly reduce his ability to protect himself outside. Euthanasia was the best answer for this guy. We thank the vets at PAWS for their help with the injured cats that we bring them and for helping us find the right answers in difficult situations.
This is always a difficult situation to deal with and is, fortunately, very rare. I think in the thousands of cats we have brought to PAWS, the decision to euthanize has been made only a couple of times. It's just a shame that we couldn't have trapped this cat sooner.
With these 6 cats, we've now done 19 cats this year and 2,500 overall.