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).