Kaya the kitten is recovering at her foster home after surgery.
UPDATE, 12/1: To Rescue says Kaya the kitten is “healing nicely” after surgery on her eyes, but will remain with her foster family for another week before she’s cleared for adoption. Kaya was examined by a veterinarian on Nov. 30 and was given the all-clear. She’ll stay in foster care until she’s finished with her medication.
Original post:
Several readers asked for a follow-up about Kaya the kitten after our earlier post about her.
The shelter To Rescue turned to the internet for help after not a single potential adopter showed interest in Kaya, who has a congenital facial malformation but is otherwise healthy.
Kaya had successful surgery on her eyes on Nov. 16 and has been recovering in her foster home, where she continues to be her natural, playful self, shelter staff say.
She was scheduled for a follow-up vet visit today, Nov. 30. We’ll update as soon as we hear anything else.
If you’re interested in adopting sweet Kaya, you can visit the shelter’s site and fill out an adoption application.
First Lady Jill Biden says she hasn’t brought a cat into the White House as promised because the Biden family dog, Major, has been an aggressive biter lately.
First Lady Jill Biden generated hundreds of headlines late in 2020 and again earlier this year as she promised she and her husband would welcome a feline pet to the White House for the first time since the George W. Bush administration.
Since then we haven’t heard anything — until today’s edition of the New York Times, which includes the first sit-down interview with the First Lady since her husband took his oath of office back in January.
It turns out the Bidens did pick a cat, and that cat has been living with a foster family because the Bidens’ other family pet, Major the German Shepherd, has a bit of a biting problem.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki downplayed Major’s biting incidents, telling reporters he nipped White House staff twice, but emails obtained by the group Judicial Watch show Major’s biting isn’t so minor: In the first week of March, an internal Secret Service email said “an agent or officer has been bitten every day this week.” The dog also bit a visitor to the White House that same week, according to the email.
Since then there have been other incidents, and the pooch has been shuttled between the White House and Delaware, where he’s spent more time with trainers in an attempt to curb the bad behavior.
The president and First Lady didn’t want to subject their new cat to the stress of living with a bite-happy Husky, so the kitty remained in foster care. It seems the cat is now a “failed foster.”
“The cat is still being fostered with somebody who loves the cat,” Jill Biden told the Times. “I don’t even know whether I can get the cat back at this point.”
A brave and heroic cat executes a glorious karate kick to the face of a slobbering, clumsy dog, proving once again that felines are superior.
In related news, Buddy the Cat — whose track record of biting to get what he wants is second-to-none — volunteered himself to help solve Major’s behavioral issues.
“I’ll straighten him out right quick,” Buddy said, lifting a paw and flexing. “If my razor sharp claws, vicious fangs and intimidating size don’t deter him, my huge meowscles will. I guarantee he’ll want no part of this.”
Bud is not only smart and good looking, he also has huge meowscles and is known for his bravery
Bad news out of a Florida shelter, good news from a Portland cat cafe.
Sad news out of Orlando, where more than 20 cats died in a late night fire that destroyed the shelter where they lived on Wednesday.
Officials from the Orange County Fire Department said one section of the building was already engulfed by the time they arrived, with flames visible through the roof. They’re not sure yet how the fire started, but flame patterns indicate it started near the front of the Pet Alliance shelter, where the cats were housed.
Firefighters were able to rescue all the dogs and 10 cats, but at least 20 — and as many as 30 — cats were still inside, with first responders unable to get to them, per the Associated Press. Of the 10 cats who were rescued, some were moved to another Pet Alliance shelter, while a few were under veterinary care for smoke inhalation and burns.
“If you run a shelter, this is literally your worst nightmare,” Stephen Bardy, the executive director of Pet Alliance, told WFLA, an NBC affiliate in Orlando. “To see your building in fire and know that there are animals in there that you’re charged to care for and you can’t go in. …I’m grateful that the firefighters put their lives at risk to help save as many as they could.”
We don’t want to leave you with bad news only today, so here’s a hopeful story out of Portland, where a cat cafe was able to adopt out every one of its cats in less than a day since its post-COVID re-opening on Sept. 4.
Purrington’s Cat Lounge has coffee, wine and beer on the menu for guests who drop by to hang out with the cafe’s feline residents and see adoptable cats. Although it’s a popular place in the community, it’s had a tumultuous few years: First it looked headed for closure after its owners planned to move out of town, but was rescued by a kitty-loving local couple.
The new owners renovated the space and had big plans for it, but those were halted along with everyone else’s ambitions with the arrival of the pandemic in 2020.
Finally, the renovated cat cafe reopened about two weeks ago, and Portland locals — perhaps daunted by the Delta variant and the prospect of more work-from-home, socially limited months — were eager to give the resident kitties new homes. Since Sept. 4, Purrington’s has placed more than 80 cats in forever homes.
The SPCA says it has already agreed to adopt the cat to another family and won’t reunite her with her original owner.
UPDATE: Charlene High was reunited with her cat, Donna, after staff at the Humane Society were able to work out a solution between her and the New York family that was going to adopt the 5-year-old Cornish Rex.
Little Donna went missing in February when contractors were installing a wheelchair ramp in High’s home and she got spooked as so many cats do, running out of the house.
She was found on March 14 and brought to the Humane Society of Highlands County, where staff held her for the mandatory five days before listing her for adoption.
In the meantime, High — who had been calling around to local shelters, posting Donna’s photo online and looking for her in the neighborhood — saw a social media post about a cat who had been found. The staff at the Humane Society named her Karena, but she was High’s Donna, and High said she was “ecstatic” her kitty was alive.
High and Donna couldn’t be immediately reunited, however. A family from New York had filed adoption papers for Donna and were planning on driving down to Tampa to pick up the cat.
Staff at the Humane Society worked to find a solution for everyone involved.
“We had to do some backchanneling and talking to the adopters and trying to find a solution with the adopters while also talking to Ms. Charlene,” said Sara Olivero, a staffer at the Humane Society of Highlands County. “We’ve had to do a lot of shuffling, a lot of phone calls, a lot of phone tagging.”
Ultimately, Donna’s would-be adopters agreed that she should be returned home, and will adopt a kitten instead, Olivero said. Donna was spayed, given a day to recover at the shelter, and was reunited with High on Tuesday.
“Ms. Charlene felt bad. The situation was bad to begin with,” Olivero said. Thankfully the solution was satisfactory to all and “every party is happy” with the outcome.
A Fox13 Tampa Bay (WTVT) story about the situation was aired and published to the web on Monday after the resolution, but presented the story as if the dispute was ongoing in addition to including several errors of fact.
We contributed to the flow of misinformation by linking to the WTVT story 11 hours after it was published, a practice called aggregation, and added our own commentary based on the misinformation. We got burned, and the result was presenting an inaccurate and outdated account of events to our readers.
We regret the error and promise to do better in the future. We’re glad the Humane Society found a satisfactory solution in a difficult situation, and we’re glad that Donna the cat has been returned to her original home.
Here’s a roundup of amusing cat stories from the past few days:
Pilot Lands After Berserk Cat Gets Into Cockpit
The captain of a Qatar-bound passenger flight was forced to return to Khartoum International Airport in Sudan — his takeoff point — after a berserk cat got into the cockpit and began attacking him, according to news reports.
The Wednesday flight was headed to Doha, Qatar’s capital, and was in the air for about an hour before the cat forced the emergency landing. Flight crew weren’t able to subdue the cat, who likely slipped onto the plane undetected the night before when it was stored in a hangar, according to airline authorities.
The cat-jacking was not the first incident of its kind, Euro Weekly News noted. In perhaps the most well-known incident in 2004, a cat named Gin escaped its carrier mid-flight and snuck into the cockpit while stewardesses were passing meals to the pilots. Gin attacked the captain and co-pilot, forcing them to return to Brussels. Also in 2004, a cat breached the cockpit of a plane bound for Bangladesh and caused havoc. While the plane arrived at its destination without any problems, it took the flight staff another two hours after landing to trap the frightened furball.
Earlier this month, a cat snuck onto a grounded El Al jet at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel. On Feb. 21, maintenance staff at the airport discovered the relaxed feline “sunning himself” on the dash after using the pilot and co-pilot seats as his personal scratchers.
The cute shop cats of Cleveland
Cleveland.com’s Anne Nickoloff has a nice write-up about the shop cats of Cleveland who occupy bookstores, record shops, a brewery, a hardware store and a comic book shop, among other businesses. Some of the shop cats serve part-time as mousers, but most of them are really mascots and friendly faces that keep regulars coming back.
The shop cats of Blue Arrow Records in Cleveland. Credit: Cleveland.com
Among them is Saaz the cat, who calls The Cleveland Brew Shop home.
“She’s part-pet, part-employee because we have a lot of malted barley here, and so often if you don’t have a deterrent, it can attract rodents,” Brew Shop owner Darren Cross told Nickoloff. “It’s actually true – the pheromones of the cat will eventually get around the store and mice can detect those pheromones and they’ll stay away.”
“I’d recommend having a cat for any store. People walk into our store just to pet the cat… She comes to the door when people walk in, she’s not shy like you would expect a cat to be, so it works out well.”
Cat is reunited with owner after 15 years apart
While this is a nice story, it’s also a cautionary tale about allowing your cats outside. Along from the anguish of losing a cat, I imagine the worst part is not knowing what happened to the little one.
A Los Angeles man named Charles adopted Brandy when she was just two months old and had her for only a short time before she disappeared. Charles told the Associated Press he searched for her and put up signs, but after his efforts proved fruitless he guessed coyotes may have gotten to the young cat.
“I wanted her back because when I adopted her I made a moral obligation to take care of her for her life,” he said.
On Sunday he received a call from a Los Angeles area shelter who had picked up Brandy and scanned her microchip. The long-lost cat was skinny and malnourished, but “seemed content” and was purring.
“I did break down and cry because I thought about all of the years I lost from her,” Charles told AP.
Charles and Brandy. Credit: Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control
![Florida Woman Reunited With Lost Cat [UPDATED]](https://littlebuddythecat.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/7a397e71-highlands-cornish-rex-cat-1.jpg?w=932)
Pain In The Bud 