Happy Bear is going to be very happy later today.. I got the okay to take the kittens home about half an hour before the shelter closed on Wednesday. Since the owner of the company I work for had just walked through the door I emailed back that I would be in for them the next day. I asked after them and was told they were eating pate and kibble and while they still had diarrhea and were still pale they felt comfortable letting them go to me - knowing I don't just let things get worse without letting them know.
I spent too much time cleaning up the kitten room. I was quite fearful that the smell was going to be overwhelming, but once it had dried it wasn't bad at all. Don't get me wrong, it was still pretty bad, but it was back to the 'bad kitten diarrhea' smell.. and that is totally manageable for me - heck I even find skunk smell manageable. There were a few spots of stool on happy bear, and I did my best to scrub it off and then soaked the spots in bleach water.. I'm seriously tempted to just throw out the towel that I used to clean the little one off.. I need to talk to the vet about how virulent these worms are, and if a hot water cycle in the washing machine will kill them all, because frankly I don't want to risk contaminating household laundry if it doesn't**. It is hard to track down information on how long parasites lives in the household environment, and if when it gets really cold if I just turn off the heat and open the windows can I freeze it if the bleach didn't kill it all? Considering all of the cleaning I did, I'm guessing I killed it all.. but I do want to replace the cat climber scratching post thing now.. I wonder if I can find a company to donate one.. because it would be on the dropcam and featured in videos on my facebook page all the time.. it needs to be under 3.5 feet tall and it needs to be enough for mother cats to help keep them in shape. Ah well, I'll deal with it once these kittens go up for adoption and I've got a vacancy at Casa de Gato.. Maybe I'll find another one on Craigslist..
* Thank you Peter Schilling for the inspiration of the blog post title
** (oh wait, everything in there is bleachable, I'll just bleach it all)
