Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Tales of Two Kittens

Been out of touch for awhile, a lot has happened . I don't even know where to begin. My poor little Revan went in for his neuter surgery last week. Tristan and I didn't want to neuter him but since Rayne was already fixed and he was trying to figure out how to hump her all the time, we thought it was best for her if we got him fixed. Well, I get a call from the nurse saying the there were complications and that they were going to have to do more invasive surgery because they could only find one testicle. If the other one was in his body cavity somewhere her could get cancer later on in life so they had to go in and find that testicle. I authorized the surgery but was a wreck at work thinking of my poor little boy having 2 surgeries in one day. I couldn't wait any longer I called the pet hospital to ask how he was doing and I get a weird reaction from the nurse. She said, "Um the doctor is just monitoring Revan coming out of anesthesia but she wants to talk to you in person, she will call you right back. Of course I am thinking the worst. He survived but he is brain dead, or he will never walk again, you know BAD STUFF. Then the doctor calls me back and tells me that the reason they couldn't find Revan's second testicle is because he didn't have it, instead he had AN OVARY!

Yeah that's right! He had one testicle and one ovary. He is a hermaphrodite. Well, technically he is a hermaphrodite but in actuality, the doctor said that even if Revan was going to be a girl, and estrogen released to her instead of testerone "she" would have only had one working ovary cause the other one was a dud. And since all mammals are female until testerone is introduced, and he does have the one dud ovary, he is technically a hermaphrodite. He is classified as "mostly male." She said that since he had the one dud ovary all that testerone pumping to his body gave him one BIG testicle. (She thought my husband would be proud to know that.) So, my little baby boy is a hermaphrodite and he has been locked up in our bedroom since the surgery so he can heal without trying to jump all over the place and injure himself.

I was also having trouble with Rayne lately. I came home from work one day to find she had a chunk of fur missing from her head. I first thought Revan and her were wrestling hard but the more I looked at it the more it was clear that was way to big a chunk of fur for one kitten to pull out so I though maybe she ran under the furniture too fast and caught her head on a sharp end. I went looking for this clump of fur but found nothing. And shrugged it off. The a few days later I notice Rayne's eyes had begun to turn outwards (like the opposite of cross-eyed) and I figured I might as well take her in to the doctors too. Turns out my little Rayne came to us with Ringworm. Since she was a shelter kitten, she more than likely picked up a bunch of germs waiting to be adopted. She made Revan sick when she first came and then she turns up with Ringworm. So, I had to isolate her as well.

Already the kittens were separated because of Revan's recovery but now I had to put her in the other bathroom to keep her from dropping ringworm spores all over the house infecting Tristan, Revan, and I. It was hard enough just keeping Revan locked up in my bedroom for a few days, but to have to turn around and lock Rayne up too was just tragic. I spent the first two days crying on my bathroom floor while petting Rayne and telling her I am so sorry that she is by herself. We try to go in and play with her and give her some loving but then we have to wash our clothes and any part of our skin she touched, its really awful. We have 2 kittens and we can't hang out and play with either of them. She'll have to be isolated for about a month while she is medicated to kill the ringworm in her. A MONTH! Now Revan can probably start roaming the house again in a few days but she'll have to hear Revan walking about while she is trapped in a windowless bathroom. It is too much to bare.

It takes me about an hour to feed and medicate Revan, then feed and medicate Rayne. Throw all my clothes into the wash and wash my hands and arms, then get myself ready for the day. So, not a whole lot of affection time. I try to make up for it at night. It's unbearable. It has been 9 days and Revan is recovering great. I'm sure I'll be able to de-cone him soon so he can be a real cat again. Oh its been crazy awful.

There is a whole lot of other stuff going on but all I can think about is the kittens. I'll try to update my blog with all my new knitting projects. I'm making a camouflage baby blanket for one of my prego co-workers. Just bare with me on the blog posts. Thanks.

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

Oh Sharmane - all of that is just so awful! Well, not all of it...I'm so glad that Revan is doing well now after his traumatic surgeries. I was reading along, w/ my hand over my mouth, scared to death you were going to say that they lost him.
I hope that things get a little easier and that poor little Rayne doesn't get too lonely in the bathroom. Wish there was something I could do or say, but I'm at a loss.
Hang in there, momma...you'll get through this!

Anonymous said...

I am so sorry you all have to go through all of this. Hopefully everything will be better soon! I've never heard of a cat hermaphrodite before.