#special needs kittens

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cats are adorable chaos demons

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Have I shared these two? Ava (black and white) is my Gus’ litter mate and also had eyelid agenesis and was severely underweight, she needed lip to lid surgery for her eyes when she got bigger. She’s partially blind now. Benjamin was my first special needs kitten. He came to me sick and blind because of the illness, and underweight. We had to remove one of his eyes. They were adopted by the same family and even though plenty of people thought we should euthanize they are healthy and happy and loved!

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Anyway. The first special needs kitten I ever fostered was a little blind kitten named Benjamin. A woman found him on her porch at about 4 weeks olds and wanted to find a vet that would euthanize him because he had an upper respiratory infection and was blind due to severe infection in his eye. The minute I saw that post I knew I wanted to foster him. Wonderful people have since adopted him and he’s so handsome and so loved. They came in last Thursday and I got to see him and his sister Ava- who is also a previous foster and the actual littermate of my Gus Gus, who needed that same eye surgery Gus had- and it made my heart so happy! The first couple pics are a little gruesome but he’s a cutie!

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So when I’m not talking about fandoms I foster neo-natal and special needs kittens and I feel the need to show y’all how adorable my babies are. These are my foster fails, tbh. But I’ve successful adopted out 36 kittens and I’ve only kept 4? 5? So there’s Bea who is paralyzed, Gus who is partially blind and had to have surgery to make eyelids because he was born without, Quinn who lost her front leg because we think someone shot her with something, and little Wentworth who came to us with a burst intestinal hernia and broken up leg they had to be removed.

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this is Gus’ sister Ava. she also had the same surgery he did which is why she looks like a little panda. she was the weakest of the three and I had to put formula in her mouth drop by drop. then she had gastrointestinal issues that made it hard to keep food down, so she took forever to really put weight on. this was honestly my hardest litter and I was exhausted by a week in. usually I would tap out and have my boss- the owner of our practice who also rescues kittens and is always willing to babysit when I’m educated- take them for a couple days to give me a break, but I couldn’t do it. this litter I had to see through on my own. thankfully Gus and Ava survived- we lost their sister Monroe and to this day i grieve- and my unofficial mom and dad adopted her so I get to see her, which thrills me.

they also adopted this guy, Benny. he came to me about four weeks old and so sick with an upper respiratory infection which was causing his blindness, and severely malnourished. the person who found him wanted to euthanize him but the humane society I worked with stepped in and I immediately volunteered to foster. we had to get his weight up and get him old enough and then we removed one eye and the other he cannot see out of, the eyeball itself has basically shrunk until it hardly exists.

this is Quinn. she was brought to the vet hospital at six months with an old injury in her leg that had healed badly at the joint and also a new injury that looked like someone shot her. we tried to keep the leg but it was obviously causing her pain and just couldn’t heal right. so we ended up amputating and she was much more comfortable. my roommate and I share custody of Quinn.

this is Wentworth. when he came into our hospital from the humane society his intestinal wall had ruptured and his back leg was mangled. to save his life our vet had to literally shorten his intestinal wall on one side and also remove the leg while shaving down the hip bone. the result is that he was one back leg that’s practically in the middle, and he walks with a big of a curve towards one side. but he’s growing up healthy and strong and my roommate is adopting him.

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This is one of several special needs kittens I foster. Bea’s sacral joint was damaged when she was an itty bitty baby and she can’t use her back legs.