She’s has the best temperament for us, and we’ve all absolutely fallen in love with her.

Unfortunately, she came to us wounded. I mentioned her first vet visit was prompted by a paw wound, and that led to about eight weeks of various types of care for that. Antibiotics, a foot bandage for a couple weeks, ointments, creams. By late October, we were grateful to have that behind us, but another problem became apparent at the end of September: she had a tail wound too.

Early on we thought she had merely had a broken tail, but when a chunk of fur fell off and exposed a bloody tail wound, we realized the lump on her tail was a lot more. She saw an emergency vet in Dublin that day because I panicked: my cat is falling apart! From there, we went through more attempts with antibiotics, wound care, and added a plush “donut” to her cone configuration. I even tried wrapping her tail and dousing it in flavored spray that’s supposed to deter her, but she was able to brave the bad smell and taste to remove it (this didn’t surprise anyone, but I had to try!).

Once we sized up on the cone to a Small, I bought raised food dishes so she could still eat with her cone on.

Ultimately, I had to get her a Medium size which got us into dog cone territory. I had to punch bonus holes in it fit around her neck, and added a small harness and medical gauze to hold it in place. That’s when we finally got her to stop biting her wound so it could heal.

Poor kitty, it’s a really big cone!

We changed out her litter box to an open one that’s easier for her to enter, though she did develop the unfortunate habit of peeing next to her litter box instead of inside it, which we cleaned up for a few days before MJ went out and got a case of pee pads, which we now just replace every time she uses it.

At almost every other vet visit, the various vets we saw would quietly mention that partial tail amputation was an option. A surgical removal would heal more quickly and it would be over, and likely less expensive when it was all said and done. It was nice to know there was a healthy escape plan out if we really couldn’t get the wound to heal, but we wanted to save her tail!

We saw a dermatologist across the bay in Mountain View who did a tissue culture and that’s how we discovered she had a MRSA infection and that’s why it wasn’t healing. Fortunately, they didn’t see signs of a deeper problem, like a skin or neurological disease versus just wounds that needed to heal. Another round of stronger antibiotics, and ointments!

In November we started doing weekly Phovia light treatments, which I was incredibly skeptical of, but the dermatologist felt strongly about. Thankfully, I found a clinic less than 15 minutes from home that would do it, instead of making the trek out to Mountain View. Those treatments were paused when we went to Philadelphia for three weeks over the December holidays and she stayed with a pet sitter, and I’m sure that delayed healing more. We resumed treatments in mid January and finally started to see significant healing. In January, we also met with a vet who did Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) treatments, but thankfully by the time the [prepaid] appointment rolled around, her healing had progressed to a place where they felt it wasn’t necessary. We continued the Phovia treatments through the end of January.

Today, she was given the all clear to remove the cone! Her wound has scarred over and aside from a hint of dryness, it looks really good. Once the cone is off, she didn’t immediately target her tail for grooming, which is good news.

Cone-free drive home!

It’s been a lot. The vet visits are during my work hours, so I’ve had to work a lot early mornings to stay on top of work these past couple months, thankfully I have that flexibility. Having a cat in a cone for this long, especially one that’s so big that it’s not designed for cats, has been a challenge for all of us. She’s less able to snuggle with the cone on, it makes playtime harder and I’m always worried she’ll take a tumble and hurt herself somehow, and I’m sure it has been no good for her neck and spine. Fortunately, she’s young and this will all soon be a distant memory.

My biggest regret is not getting the bigger cone earlier, since the smaller cone + donut only prevented her from getting to her foot, and likely made the tail healing several weeks longer. I was just really worried about logistics of eating, relieving herself, and generally navigating the house day to day with the larger the cone, so I really wanted to avoid it.

What’s next? We need to ween her off kitten food, since she’s a year old now. We’ll also work on the litter box situation, the vet suggested in a few days to put a box with the old clay litter out next to the pellet litter box so she can get used to it again and maybe she’ll switch over on her own. I’m really hoping that cone-free life and changing the litter also nudges her back to peeing in the box instead of next to it. We’re also slowly re-introducing her cat tents and caves, which we had to put away since she was getting stuck and using them to remove her cone. Hopefully all will be back to normal within a few weeks.

And here’s hoping she has an injury-free future! The vets we’ve seen along the way are convinced she was hurt during her life as an outdoor cat, and without all the risks of outdoor life, she should live a happily wound-free life now.

Our adventure to welcome a new cat has been in the works for a while. At first we weren’t ready, then life was just incredibly busy with life with two young children. But the desire to have a pet again was growing. We had to work out some details, like how we’d handle our summers in Philly (where does the litter box go at the townhouse?) and generally the additional load of caring for a pet when our lives are already so full. But the solutions trickled in and the benefits and positives finally won out.

And then when we were in Philly over the summer, the boys fell in love with a cat they saw at Petco. They went back and saw her several times, she was a very friendly tortoiseshell cat, but we couldn’t really adopt a cat across the country. Still, when we came home the boys insisted that they wanted a tortoiseshell cat. The search was on.

Our first encounter was via a local pet adoption agency, Nobody’s Perfekt Dogs and Cats. They are an incredibly dedicated group of volunteers who rehabilitate, foster, and find homes for animals that had some rough spots in their past. Given that we have two rambunctious boys, we didn’t think any of their animals, many recovering from trauma, would be a good fit, but they were local and they also have a shop of gently used pet items so we stopped by. We had a great conversation with their volunteers, and learned about a tortoiseshell cat in foster care who we were able to meet a couple weeks later, over Labor Day weekend. Alas, in spite of warming up to Aaron a little, we determined she was just too timid and scared for our noisy home, and we hope she finds a better fit, somewhere more peaceful.

But I was ready for this potential outcome. I had scoured shelters ahead of time and found a tortoiseshell-tabby (torbie) at the East Bay SPCA in Dublin, it was Zara!

I was cautiously optimistic since her listing called her friendly, but you really never know how cats are going to react to young children, especially a 4 and 6 year old who aren’t used to engaging with cats. But she surprised us all. As soon as Adam and I went into her room, she rubbed up against his legs, and he was instantly in love. Aaron took a little more getting used to because he was a bit more… excited, but even him she seemed fine with. And both MJ and I found her to be lovely. We filled out the paperwork, and brought her home!

We’re her second family, and her first family is the one that named her. Alas, we were told they surrendered her with the reason that she was an indoor/outdoor cat, but would disappear for days at a time outside, and that wasn’t working for them. With us she’s indoor-only, so we should be able to avoid that particular hurdle, unless she gets out. We’re looking at AirTags as a solution to her potentially escaping and disappearing, but that assumes she’s willing to wear a collar.

We did discover a benefit of being her second family through the same SPCA is that while we brought home an 11 month old, the SPCA had her kitten picture!

We kept her in the laundry room for the first 24 hours to get her used to us and the smells of a new home. We took turns going in and visiting with her, but also giving her some space to adjust. We built a brand new cat tree for her, which joined her in the laundry room that first day.

She was eager to explore though, and settled in pretty quickly once she had the run of the house on Monday (Labor Day) and we moved the cat tree into the family room. We had a pretty laid back day welcoming our new cat to our home, and the boys had a lot of fun playing with her.

She’s very people-centric, always wanting to be nearby someone. As soon as Gaby leaves to pick up Aaron from school, she comes into my office. When Aaron comes home, she’s off to play with him. Over night she’s been sleeping in our bedroom, after we extract her from the new game of trying to hide out with the boys to sleep with them. Temperament-wise, she can be very snuggly when she wants to be, but will let us know with a little bite or a swat if she has had enough. We do need to work on her scratching, since she likes to dig on carpets and there are a few heirloom chairs downstairs that she’s taken a particular liking to. I think that’s a surmountable challenge though.

A couple days in I noticed some blood on our bed, and a thorough inspection caused me to discover a wounded pad on her back right foot. I can’t imagine she got it with us, so I think it was a pre-existing wound that opened up with her getting to run and jump around a big house. I took her to the vet, which she wasn’t happy with me about, and was instructed to keep it clean by using some medical wipes they gave me twice a day. She isn’t super happy with me about that either. And unfortunately, I’m not sure it’s healing as much as we’d like to see at this stage, she has a follow-up at the vet appointment this Friday to see what our next steps are.

But back to the good things! The boys have been really great with her. Adam is very protective, and she’s been snuggling up on his lap while he plays video games. Aaron is learning how to be more gentle with her, but she’s tolerating the learning curve, especially since he’s the most fun human to play with around here. One of the most adorable things so far has been the boys building her little forts and beds, and then Zara actually sleeping in them!

MJ and I are totally in love with her too. She’s made a great addition to our family. And I hope she forgives me about the vet stuff soon.