Teaser and Firecat came to Happy Cats from a sister rescue. Both had eye infections as kittens that were bad enough they each needed to have an eye removed. They were an adorable matched set of one-eyed kittens.
They were soon adopted by a busy family with teen boys and renamed Ellie and Fury. A houseful of boys certainly prepared them for these active little catolescents! Cat Mom Laura tells us,
“In May – Ellie jumped onto a half-wall, missed it, and landed all the way down to the bottom of our stairs. Her cry and hiding immediately let us know that something horrible had happened in the landing.
Off to the ER we went. She had dislocated her femur. They put it back in, wrapped her leg, put a cone on her and sent us home. That cost me my “Saving for when the 2009 van dies” account.
Well, they used a cone that didn’t fit her and when we weren’t watching, she took it off and got her leg out of her wrap. We rewrapped her and upon our return for her check up, discovered the femur had not stayed in the joint.
So then she had to have surgery to reduce the head of the femur and move the muscles in the joint to support this new configuration. Then she was back in seclusion and on drugs. This cost me the rest of my “Saving for when the 2009 van dies” account.
She and I spent a LOT of time together in the bathroom and we discovered which of the two was the kick-all-the-cat-litter-out-of-the-box, it was Ms. Ellie. The stinker. Fury was NOT happy to not be with her and would lay outside the bathroom door sticking his paws underneath constantly.
Soon they were reunited. To keep either of them from ever jumping up on the half-wall again, I bought double sided tape from Amazon for this purpose. We then would put both cats up on the half-wall to feel the tape on their feet and they would immediately jump down, not liking the tape at all.
Ellie is still quite the adventurer and has an amazing jump height ability, even with her wonky joint. She isn’t comfortable laying in a loaf of bread position, but prefers to lay on her back with her belly to the air in a most undignified position. (She looks like she is advertising her personal wares)
Fury went to an animal ophthalmologist to have his eye checked soon after we got him at the recommendation of our vet. The eye doc said that he no longer had an infection and it appeared as though his eye had exploded during the infection, accounting for some of the scar tissue on the eye itself.
He can see well enough when there is light, but when it gets dim, he is quite hesitant to explore or check out anything new. Plus once he gets used to a pathway, we cannot change it unless it is early morning, giving him lots of time to memorize it.
We learned this the hard way when we had to shut them up in my son’s bedroom and Fury, used to the door being wide open, run headlong right into it. TWICE. So I stuck around 15 fluorescent bright sticky notes onto the door, covering only the bottom two feet and he figured it out.
A student of mine was more than dismayed to learn I couldn’t eat the donuts he had brought to school for me one day. (I explained I can’t eat wheat.) In the end, he was excited and happy that I would keep them refrigerated until I took them home (two were jelly filled) for my boys to enjoy. The condition was that Fury, was to be in the photo I took for my student to see my boys enjoying their donuts.
I used to run the Roomba while we were gone, but after a while, no matter how carefully I searched and picked up every hair tie, cat toy, nerf ball, I would miss one or three and I would come home to find it clogged and frozen in place. This is Ellie dropping an item in front of the Roomba so it gets clogged up and then stops moving.
Yes, she hated the Roomba and figured out how to make it stop. I HAD picked up every possible clogger, she would just jump up to where I kept them and grab them to drop in front. I have no idea how she figured this out, but it was fun watching her outsmart us.
So that is our year with our sweet wonderful kitties. They are adored, loved upon, respected and we are so glad that we adopted them. They have been the source of laughs, screams of pain and made us so much the better for having them. (But you might want to warn one-eyed-cat parents that loss of depth perception in a jumper like Ellie could mean large medical bills.)
Thank you for letting us have these two amazing creatures!!!
