Jack's Comeback

Much in the same way my friend, Michelle, found our boys in the parking lot behind her building 2 1/2 years ago, she found another little orange and white kitten last May. We think he has the same mother as our two boys. He had the same herpies infection in one eye that our boys did. So, being the animal lover she is, she took in the poor little kitten and started nursing him back to health. We started calling him "Jackpot" since he was one lucky kitten when Michelle took him in. Since she already had two cats of her own, she couldn't keep him. We already had three so we were also out of the running. Plus, I think I might have seen divorce papers if I came home with another kitten :) In the end, her landlord (who is now also our landlord) took the kitten for his 10 year old son.

The kid decided to keep his name and called him "Jack" for short. They bonded almost immediately. Jack turned into an indoor/outdoor cat and went with the kid almost everywhere.

Fast forward to about two weeks ago. Michelle gets a call that Jack cut his tail. As with any small cut, it didn't look too bad so everyone assumed he would clean and care for the cut on his own. Not entirely... On Thursday, we find out that his tail is infected so they took him to the Vet Friday morning. It turns out that it was so infected they had to amputate the tail :( We knew that Jack was going to have to be fostered in order to make sure he got his medication correctly. Michelle already had plans and a plane ticket home to visit her family so that left us.

We agreed to foster Jack this week to make sure he was cared for correctly while his tail healed. When we brought him home on Saturday, he was still in a little bit of pain and didn't really want to do anything. However, he did purr whenever we scratched his head. His tail now looks very similar to a Weimeraner's tail since it is all shaved.







He was very pathetic looking over the weekend and into Monday. We let him set up camp in our second bedroom so our kitties pretty much left him alone. Until Monday morning. We were woken up around 5:30 am by a familiar growl. I looked over the bed and there was Jack walking around our bed. Now, keep in mind that our cats normally sleep until we get up. Now its 5:30 in the morning and they don't know why they're up so early. Turns out that Jack is an early riser! So, now that he is up and moving around, we had to put his cone on him so that he didn't mess around with the stitches in his tail. If you've ever seen a cat with a cone, they look very pathetic and betrayed.





Jack had to wear the cone until this evening. Since we're both home to watch him we took the cone off so he could move freely and actually be able to bathe himself. The first thing he did was was clean his face and his paws. He is definitely feeling better now and our cats have almost accepted him.







He has his follow up Vet appointment tomorrow morning so hopefully Jack gets a positive score and is healing nicely.

~AKO