Thursday, April 28, 2011

Looking Good!

It is sooo nice to have Max home with us. We get to love on him whenever we want and help him with his healing. Bella is also enjoying Max (notice the fancy decor that Max's crate now has thanks to Aurielle's visit yesterday).
So one of our instructions from Doc is to give Max an antibiotic pill once a day. They gave us this handy pill popper that is supposed to help humans give cats a pill. The tech told us to simply scruff Max, put the pill in the pill popper, place the pill popper in Max's mouth and push the plunger to pop the pill down his throat. Sounds easy, right? Wrong!! Maybe we don't know how to scruff a cat correctly, or we were just too concerned about handling a fractured cat extremely gently, but Max let us know pretty quickly that he wasn't going to have any handy, plastic pill popper shoved into his mouth. After two unsuccessful tries with 2 bites and some scratches, I tried hiding the pill in some food...Max swallowed the pill down with the first try! Thank goodness (for all of us)!

Now for those of you with weak stomachs, pass over this paragraph...

Another job we have is to clean Max's open wound each day. This is how we do it...First, I take a towel lined with a plastic bag and lay it in his crate. I then gently lay Max down onto his right side. While the kids are feeding him and petting him for a distraction (and Maya strategically looks away), I lift his left leg to expose the 3 inch gaping hole in his upper thigh. I then squirt hydrogen peroxide into his wound and let it bubble, bubble, bubble. I give him a little break, and then I take a cotton ball soaked in iodine and dab the wound. He flinches during this, because I am sure it HURTS LIKE HELL! I then give him lots and lots of love, so he doesn't hate me for the pain I just inflicted on him. In addition to washing out his wound with hydrogen peroxide and iodine, I got additional instructions today to do "hydrothreapy" whenever I want. Hydrotherapy keeps his wound wet which helps it heal quickly. Well, I wound never WANT to do hydrotherapy, but I do it out of my love for Max. So, this means that in addition to torturing him with hydrogen peroxide and iodine, I get to torture him by squirting water into his wound with a syringe "whenever I want." Yay! Max is a real trooper through all of his torture sessions which makes it so much easier on me.

Concerning my husband's support of Operation Rescue Max, he is slowly coming around. He has been helping me with Max and even talked about how good he is looking this evening! Now, check out this picture...
Not quite "good looking," right? So, I think Steve is really coming around ;)

Here is a picture to show a consequence of showing compassion toward animals through this endeavor...

Our 8 year old neighbor, Brennon, found a bird egg yesterday and brought it over to ask Sam & Maya what he should do with it. Well, Samuel constructed this incubator out of a cardboard box, straw garden hat, two scarves and his snake's basking lamp. Notice how he even placed a thermometer and a leaf by the egg. I guess the thermometer would help if anyone had a clue about what temperature a bird egg should be kept at, and the leaf will bring lots of comfort to the little bird if he miraculously hatched. It is about the cutest thing ever and brings tears to my eyes to think of my little boy showing so much love and compassion.

So, our journey continues in the the Hope House of Animal Nurturing and Recovery...

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