Every critter has a story, and one of the things we enjoy most about our work here at the clinic is the diversity of those stories. Our feline friend Canarsie has had many twists and turns in her life road. Her companion Judy was gracious enough to relate her “tale:”
“Canarsie’s first human family moved away and left her to fend for herself, near the apartment complex in Hayward where my co-worker Pat lived (in Hayward). Pat put out food and water for Canarsie in the El Nino winter of 1997-98, but Canarsie remained wary of human contact. In the spring she started to come into Pat’s apartment, and I adopted her from Pat in May 1998. Her fur felt like straw, and she hid herself in my house for the first few weeks.
She got into fights with cats in the neighborhood and I thought she was destined to be mostly an outdoor cat, but she started spending more time indoors. Then one day, she joined me and my other two cats on the bed. It turned out that she wanted to be a cuddling boudoir kitty, but had not been able to do so.
In the fall of 2007, she somehow broke all four bones in her right rear foot, and over the next six months she had two surgeries. The wound and the bones eventually healed, but she has walked with a limp since then (and given up hunting). In the fall of 2010, she was diagnosed with kidney disease, and since then, she has been receiving fluids subcutaneously and eating a limited diet of kidney disease kibble. Despite these medical problems, or perhaps because of them, she has become amazingly sweet. She often purrs when I am giving her fluids. She also often purrs during vet visits. She sleeps every night with me under the covers.”
Likes: sunbathing, cuddling.
Dislikes: her roommate Mustard and certain behavior from her roommate Keeper (Keeper pretends he’s being friendly and licks her face and neck and then bites it. When she and I are in bed under the covers, he walks across her).
As Spring falls upon us we introduce a little ray of sunshine in the form of a sweet pup called Tenzin. When coming up with our latest featured critter, Tenzin’s name came up over and over. He’s won the hearts of all of us here and no doubt many others.
“We adopted Tenzin from the 
As Valentine’s Day approaches, who better to feature as our latest critter than this sweetheart? Fufina, as she is known to her friends, is a lovely little poodle of uncommon style and grace.
Due to her semi-drugged state, Fufina was brought everywhere that David went: the office, the hardware store, the nursery—you name it. It soon became apparent that she prefers her pillow under the office desk to staying home by herself. Fufina thrives on the company of humans. She isn’t sure if she really is a dog, she is more like a friendly cat. She seems to have a fan club where ever she goes and became the mascot of the office, the mascot of our running group and fans established her own Facebook page, much to the chagrin of her owners…
As we usher in the holiday season, we are honored to present you with our furry four-legged elf “Hemingway Tiberius.” This handsome young kitty is a gent of many talents. His companion Arianna was generous enough to provide us with more insight into this fascinating fellow.
Hemingway’s intelligence has certainly surprised me over the past year and a half. He knows that the sound of the pantry opening means it’s breakfast time, he has figured out how to open sliding doors and swinging cabinets, he puts his toys back into his play cube when he is done playing with them, and even knows how a doorknob works! (Although, his attempts at opening a door consist of batting at the doorknob with his paws). When he’s not getting in places he shouldn’t be in, you can find him staring out the window trying to intimidate squirrels, or holding conversations with the neighborhood felines.
often dishing out multiple kisses for his “special humans”. Perhaps my favorite thing about living with Hemingway is coming home from work and seeing his adorable face peeking out from behind a curtain, waiting for me. I’m sure this adorable ball of fur would have been adopted in a heartbeat, and I am thankful to have walked into Berkeley Animal Services just in time to have Hemingway walk into my life.”