THE GOOD, THE BAD and JEFFREY

I wrote this post several weeks ago and never published it.
I suppose the reason was because I was hoping for a more complete ending.
Well, I finally have one!
You will find an update at the end of the post
and I can finally hit the Publish button on this one! -

The GOOD:
The Humane Society brings in animals to our clinic that they find or who have been released to them, who need medical attention.
It happens all the time.
Right now there is a kitten who was impaled on a fence.
He suffered damage to the area around one of his eyes and wounds to his belly.
He's doing great now. All fixed up, the eye was saved and his wounds almost completely healed.
Sometimes these animals get patched up and then sent back to the Shelter where they have capable staff to care for them.
But as we all know, the shelters are always full so sometimes we just keep these animals until they are more fully healed and adoptable.
We also have another kitten, who is fast becoming a cat, who was paralyzed on her lower body.
Her owner had a stroke and fell on her.
After a lot of care, chiropractic and laser treatments and therapy work, she's regaining use of her hind legs.
Not full use but if you set her on the floor, she flies across the room!
They seem to think there's a very good chance of full recovery.
Both kittens have people interested in adopting them as soon as they are given the green light to go home.
That should be any day now.

Then, just the other day they brought in a little Pitbull.
The woman that cares for the animals medical needs at the Shelter is a friend of mine.
We've become friends through work and the fact that I've rescued several pets through the Shelter.
So she was coming out of an exam room as I was walking by.
This little guy was so small that I thought he was a puppy but he's in fact a year old.
Sadly he doesn't really have use of his legs.
Right away I noticed the weird twist on one of his front knees.
My friend assured me that he could still maneuver around quite well in spite of his limbs.
I couldn't stop myself and I scooped him up and held his soft squishy body against my chest.
He had such a dopey wrinkly face.
If you've never embraced a Pitbull, I should tell you that they feel wonderful.
It's a soft smooth warm feel.
So I had him snuggled up to me and
my friend said "Oh my God Cindi NO!" and laughed.
I told her not to worry, I'm not acquiring any more pets.
I set him down and looked at his legs and she told me how Doc said the one knee might need some work done on it, some surgery, but it was very hopeful.
I looked down at him again and picked him up and handed him to her.
"OK!" I said, "I know you'll find him a great home!"
and then I went back to my work area.

I was glad to know that they were going try to get him better and adoptable.
Of course I did have that brief thought about how I could get that garden cart I've been wanting and pull him around on it....
I told that to one of the vet techs who is a friend and she laughed and said she had been thinking about getting a kids wagon.
So, that's all the good things.

Then there's JEFFREY.

Jeffrey came in as a kitten with a hole in his belly.
A big one.
They weren't sure, but most likely a dog got a hold of him.
So Doc stitched him back up and gave his antibiotics and pain medication and the staff cared for him.
I'm not sure who named him Jeffrey but one day, that was his name.

He had such a BIG personality for such a little kitten.
During lunch hours and after the clinic closed, the techs would let him run around.
Apparently one night as they pulled a blanket out of a kennel, Jeffrey jumped on it for a ride.
So the girls pulled him around the lab area and laughed that he was on his magic carpet.
They said that Doc turned from his computer and watched and LAUGHED.
It wasn't much longer after that, that Jeffrey was ready to go back to the Shelter
but then Doc told the girls to call and let the Humane Society know that the bill was covered and we were going to keep Jeffrey!
So Jeffrey became the new clinic cat.
There is one cat up in the reception area, Cinderella, but she just sleeps on the counter all day and only wakes up for meals.
Jeffrey was EVERYWHERE
and when he would finally need a nap, he crawled into one of the file bins and snoozed.

He claimed it as his own so the girls made it his bed, complete with a name tag.

So many people played with him and loved on him and dressed him up.
For Veteran's Day:

and Thanksgiving:

Here he is, joining in for the staff meeting:

He could be a rowdy boy and quite the stinker.
A couple of the staff teased him though and I'm sure that added to his behavior of giving a scratch here and there and little bites.

Back in my area, I have a cat room.
In the cat room are my Kanga, and Doc's very elderly cat and another elderly girl and another cat that Doc didn't want to put down during an appointment for euthanasia and asked the owner to sign the cat over to the clinic instead, which the owners gladly did. Apparently that cat peed outside of the box and they were moving and didn't want that happening at the new place. (Although she has never done so since she's been in the cat room...)

THE BAD.
So Jeffrey could be annoying at times.
There were times when SOME people were working and I could see them getting mad, even angry at Jeffrey, so I'd pick him up and carry him back to the cat room with me.
Then at some point during the day, Doc would ask the techs where Jeffrey was and they'd come back and get him.
So it became a back and forth thing.

Some days he was up front and some days in the back with me.
Then finally the day came when the girls who loved him, would come back and pick him up and carry him to their area and he'd immediately ran back to my cat room door.
Rumor had it that some others would get so mad at him that he just didn't want to be up there anymore.

Truth be told, he was very rowdy in the cat room too.
I'd come in many times to messes he made.

But how can you get mad? He was just a young cat full of pent up energy.

I would have to cover the paper instruction sheets that hung outside the cages and kennel name tags with packing tape as a sort of lamination because he would climb the cages and rip them into pieces.
Other times he'd climb up and reach into the cages and steal food.
He was very crafty.

Then he started jumping on the old cats, trying to wrestle with them and they would get angry and a cat fight would break out.

Finally one day when Doc came through the cat room I asked him if we could find Jeffrey a home.
He went over to pet Jeffrey and Jeffrey let him for a moment,
and then tried to grab his hand and get mouthy.
Doc laughed at Jeffrey and  then sighed and said that, Yes. that would be alright since he just got into trouble when he was upfront.
We had a home in mind for him but then that home fell through because
they had four cats already and the husband said that was enough.

Then just recently, a family decided they wanted to adopt a cat.
The wife/mom is a friend of one of my workers so my worker told her to come in and see our cats.
The Mom came in and looked at the eye kitten,
and the partially paralyzed kitten and
a pastel calico cat that we also have and who is very laid back and
at Jeffrey.
The family has three boys and two rowdy cats and old dog.
After the visit, the wife told my worker that she was interested in the eye kitten
and that was who they would like to adopt.
So we got the paper work ready.

I felt sad because every day when I'd pull up to work in the morning, before anyone else was there,
I'd see Jeffrey's little face in the window.
Just looking out.

I would make me want to cry, to think of him growing up in a single room.
I even thought about bringing him home, and only because my big cats would stand up to him and hopefully play.
But then I worried about my older little tiny dogs
and of course about the fact that I don't want to adopt anymore.

The GOOD and JEFFREY.
Then I got a phone call.
It was from my worker and her friend the wife had called her.
Apparently her boys told her that they didn't want to adopt the kitten!
They knew that other people had wanted that kitten too but they were worried about Jeffrey!
They didn't know who else would adopt him.
They told their mother that they wanted "The Naughty Cat!"
The husband had said the Toys R Us Giraffe mascot was named Jeffrey
and he said "We need to adopt the Toys R Us cat!"
So the mom apologized for not requesting Jeffrey from the start and asked if they could adopt him instead.

Yesterday the mom dropped the boys off at school and drove directly over to get Jeffrey.
She said the boys had been asking for Jeffrey so she came in to get him.
We walked into the cat room and Jeffrey was up in the cat tree.
The mom set her cat carrier down on the floor and opened the door.
As she stood up,  we both turned to Jeffrey.
He was on the cat tree in front of the window and he jumped off the tree and ran across the room and right into the carrier!
We both looked at each other and laughed.
"I guess he's ready to go!"

I reminded her if it didn't work out, she should bring him back to us.
She agreed but didn't foresee a problem.

That's the agreement we always have.
If a pet doesn't work out, they can always bring them back...
I have another story,
for another day about that agreement and what happened with a different cat.

I hope it works out, but I have a GOOD feeling it will.

UPDATE -

Jeffrey has fit in perfectly.

Here he is with his new brother/buddy George.

I love a happy ending.