Tangoing in Tokyo

Sunday, September 27, 3:51am
Tango went to his new home in Tokyo today, taking along his favorite blanket to knead for comfort! Yes, yes, they’re all cute and they’re all sweet, but honestly some are just a tiny bit more. He’s a doll baby–loves to be held, loves to sit on your lap, and purrs like there’s no tomorrow. I imagine that he will make his new family very very happy. Found abandoned at around 8 weeks old, hiding underneath a car, and covered in scabies, he has come a long way in his 2 and a half months here. Animal control facilitated his arrival at our shelter, so he joins the lucky number of kittens that we were able to save this year from destruction. Buttercup and Blossom (2 other sweeties!) will go for their early spay operations tomorrow, in preparation for their new homes. David went out to Tokyo this weekend, bringing Tango and attending a special screening of “The Cove.” He ended up having to help rescue a couple of stray kittens, one in very bad shape. Our volunteer took them to a clinic for treatment, and a young couple plans to adopt them. It sounds like the sick one will pull through, so good news on that front. There are also several adult cats in need of spay neuter in that area, and one with scabies that will be given treatment tomorrow. Hoping we can find someone nearer to the location to lend a hand with trapping and finding low cost clinic services.
Last night I went to the vet with Megan, a new local volunteer. Coincidentally, she lives in the same apartment that we used to live in when we first came to Japan, and works for the same board of education. I visited her apartment and was amazed to find that they are still renting furniture and household goods for the staff, and that they are still renting the same blanket that we used in 1993! Megan is fostering a kitten (Alice) with a bad paw, and we went to have it checked at the clinic. The x-ray revealed that it had been dislocated when the kitten was very young (now aprox. 4 months old), and that combined with malnutrition caused the bones to develop strangely. She walks on the side of her paw/leg–the paw part is kind of floppy and she doesn’t seem able to use it well. We talked about what an operation might be able to do, but decided that it wasn’t going to make much of an improvement, and she seems to have accepted her handicap. She’s a bit shy, but is warming up to people little by little. We decided to bring Willy, who has been staying at the clinic since his rescue at about 1 week old, to Megan’s place to join Alice. Willy was very friendly at the clinic, and the idea was that he would encourage Alice to be more friendly as well as give her someone to play with. However, he was a completely different kitten, when we got him home from the clinic! He wouldn’t let us pick him up and growled or hissed constantly. My guess is that he’s been on his own from a very young age, living in the incubator at the clinic, and the new smells/sounds of life in the real world were all too overwhelming for him. He seemed a little more relaxed when I left this afternoon, so fingers crossed that he will settle and that these two kittens will become fast friends. While we were waiting at the clinic we saw a very cute kitten and then found out it has FIP…so sad. We looked in on the newest 5 kittens that we are helping our vet to rehome, after he found them abandoned. They are a cute bunch, and so friendly (see more pictures and their sweet new names on our nursery page). We also saw Michan, a stray cat that one of the volunteers rescued after it was hit by a car. He was very wild when she brought him to the clinic, and had severe injuries–both hips broken and some bones crushed. This is a case when I would have thought we should euthanize him…he was very unhappy to be in the cage, and in a lot of pain. An operation wasn’t possible, and rehab seemed unlikely. Yet the vet decided we should give recovery a try. Somehow the bones fused, he adjusted to life indoors and now he is miraculously a friendly happy boy. He’s not a fan at all of other cats, so he’s still hanging out at the clinic until we can find him a good home. The vet has a small outdoor enclosure that Michan really loves to have a little bug catching (and eating!) exercise in, so hopefully his new home will have a similarly safe outdoor access.

I saw Nozomi when I was out yesterday. We decided to release her near the shelter (after spay), since the people who found her in their shed with kittens refused to continue feeding her, and we couldn’t be sure that anyone else in the area would regularly feed her. David has seen her around, but I hadn’t seen her at all, and was worried that she was having a problem finding the food that we put out for the TNR cats. But she seems good, and snacked on some food that I put down for her.