animal shelter – Page 3 – Pain In The Bud

Bomb Squad Opens ‘Suspicious Package,’ Finds Kittens Inside

Police dispatched a bomb squad when a suspicious package was left outside an Ohio church on Feb. 17. Instead of an explosive, they found a mom and her newborn kittens.

Authorities dispatched a bomb squad after they received a call about a suspicious package left outside an Ohio church on Wednesday, but instead of a ticking counter the explosives experts heard another rhythmic sound — a female cat purring to keep her babies calm.

After confirming via x-ray that the bag contained cats and not a catastrophe, deputies from the Butler County Sheriff’s Office contacted Animal Friends Humane Society and put the mom and her kittens in the care of the shelter staff.

Kittens found abandoned in bag — Six day-old kittens were found inside the bag along with their mother, whose constant purring kept her babies calm. Credit: Animal Friends Humane Society

A note provided some information, but didn’t say why the writer abandoned the cat and kittens.

“The note inside the bag said the mom’s name was Sprinkles, and she began giving birth at 2:00 pm on Wednesday,” Animal Friends Humane Society staff wrote on Facebook. “Sprinkles and her newborns were immediately brought to Animal Friends for care late Thursday afternoon. They were all soaked in mom’s urine and needed gentle baths when they arrived. Sprinkles, purring throughout it all, received her vaccines and blood test and appears to be in good health. She’s doing a fantastic job nursing and caring for her babies.”

Sprinkles and her little ones were transferred to a foster home, where they’ll remain while the kittens grow.

“Last year, we provided care to over 1,300 at-risk kittens,” shelter staff wrote in their post. “This was only possible thanks to support from our community.

“Volunteer foster families take on the burden of caring for orphaned kittens in their home until they’re ready to be adopted. Many of them getting up every 2 hours in the middle of the night for feedings. All needed supplies and medical costs are offered for free to these foster families, and this is thanks to our generous donors who give monetary donations or donate supplies from our wish lists.”

Animal Friends: Mom and Kittens Found Inside Bag — Volunteers remove Sprinkles the cat and her kittens from the bag in which they were found on Feb. 17. Credit: Animal Friends Humane Society

If you’d like to help the busy shelter and cats like Sprinkles, you can donate directly to Animal Friends here or purchase supplies for the non-profit via its Chewy wish list. The shelter needs cat food, litter, wipes, collars and treats, among other essentials for the animals they care for.

This Cat Looks Like An Angry Drill Sergeant

A street cat’s glare wins him thousands of admirers.

A scowling street cat dubbed Giggles has found a new home thanks to his mean mug.

The tabby cat with an unforgettable glower was found roaming in Streetsboro, Ohio — a small city about 20 miles northeast of Akron — and had ticks as well as a wound from a cat bite, according to staff at Riggi Rescue.

After a good Samaritan brought the little guy in, the rescue fixed him up, then snapped a few shots which quickly went viral.

giggles2 — “Private, you’d better unf– this situation right now before I…you know what? Get down and give me 50 pushups. NOW!”

Despite Giggles’ fixed expression, the golden tiger-striped tabby is friendly and affectionate, shelter staff say.

“He’s not mad, he’s actually quite happy, sweet and charming,” Giggles’ rescuers wrote on Instagram. “If he’s angry about anything, it’s because you aren’t petting him.”

As expected, adoption offers poured in, and Giggles already has a home lined up, presumably to someone who’s going to make a fortune on Instagram from his mug.

Screenshot_2020-11-13 Riggi Rescue ( riggirescue) • Instagram photos and videos — “Unhand me, human, or face my eternal wrath!”

Then Keep Your Cat Inside!

Iris the cat tips the scales at 7.5kg, which equals 16.5 pounds in the Proper American Way of Recording Weights and Measures™.

The fluffster has become so rotund that she can no longer fit through her cat flap. But her humans, who live a few miles south of Exeter in the UK, think the problem is their neighbors, so they’re “pleading” with people in their neighborhood “not to feed the overweight feline,” the Daily Mail reported.

“She’s getting bigger and bigger,” Sheena Wilson, Iris’ human, told the newspaper. “We cannot keep her indoors. Her diet, as you can see, is not going very well.”

Photographic evidence confirms the Russian blue does indeed love the snacks:

Iris can only manage to get her head through the cat flap now, “so she can only use it to play peek a boo and can’t fit the rest of her in it,” Wilson said.

But Wilson also told the newspaper Iris is a “diva” who demands attention, so we’re left to draw the obvious conclusion: Wilson and/or other humans responsible for Iris are letting her out every day, since she can’t get out on her own.

Iris “pretends to be neglected” and fools neighbors into thinking she has “an empty tummy,” Wilson said.

As much as Wilson may want to outsource supervision of her cat’s diet, it’s hard to believe anyone thinks Iris is underfed.

We sympathize, and we also know there’s a simple solution: Keep the cat inside. You can’t control your snack-dispensing neighbors, but you can cut off your cat’s access to them — and keep her safe from traffic and all the other dangers of the outdoors.

We wish good luck to Iris and her owners.

Broken-Hearted After Losing His Cat, Man Goes To Shelter And Finds His Lost Feline

A Maine man reunited with his lost cat when he went to the animal shelter to adopt a new feline friend.

Theron wasn’t exuberant like most people who walk through the door of the Bangor Humane Society looking to adopt a new pet.

The Maine man told shelter staff he’d resigned himself to adopting a new cat after his Cutie Pie, a gray-and-white medium hair kitty, went missing. He told the staff he hoped bringing home a new feline friend would help “heal his heart.”

Staffers showed him to the section where they housed the adoptable cats so he could browse at his leisure.

“As he perused the kennels, he stopped to examine one of our friends a little more closely and when the cat turned to face him, Theron erupted with joy. THIS WAS HIS CUTIE PIE!!” the shelter’s staff wrote in a Facebook post on Friday.

The staff had no reason to doubt him, but even if they did, Theron had ample proof: Like any human who loves his or her cat, Theron’s smartphone was a virtual gallery of photos of the little guy.

“Theron’s camera roll was full of pictures of Cutie Pie,” shelter staff wrote, “leaving no question that this reunion was the real deal!”

For his part, Cutie Pie must have had quite the ordeal and couldn’t wait to go back to his real home with his human.

“Let me just say I’ve honestly never seen a cat so eager to be in a cat carrier!” shelter staff wrote on Facebook. “He was SO ready to go home!”

I really don’t like to think of the possibility of Bud going missing, but if he did and we found ourselves in a situation similar to the one Theron and Cutie Pie found themselves in, the reunion wouldn’t be nearly as happy or tear-inducing.

“Oh my God! It’s Buddy! Buddy, it’s really you! I’m so glad I found you!”

“Get me out of this cage this very instant! These people are crazy! Do you realize they have not fed me turkey once since I’ve been here?!? Not once! And these accommodations! A bathroom and a food bowl within five feet of each other. Unthinkable! They’ve put me in with the riff-raff, as if I’m a common cat and not a king! I demand to speak with the manager! Actually, nevermind…I demand you take me home this very instant, feed me turkey, give me a massage, and then summon the manager so I can give her a piece of my mind! You’re going to have to make this up to me, you know. I expect the treat cabinet to be restocked with all manner of yums, including Temptations. I had to sleep on a pad. A pad! I tried to tell them, I said ‘I only sleep on top of my Big Buddy!’ And they wouldn’t listen. These people are torturous! I swear, when I get home…”

Dennis Quaid The Actor Adopts Dennis Quaid The Cat

Double the Quaids, double the fun.

“Hello, Lynchburg Humane Society, how may I assist you?”

“Hi, This is Dennis Quaid. Is Dennis Quaid the cat still available?”

…CLICK!…

“Hello, Lynchburg Humane Society, how may I assist you?”

“Yeah, hi, this is Dennis Quaid again. I think we got disconn–“

“We’re a very busy shelter, sir, and we don’t have time for prank phone calls…”

“No, seriously, this is Dennis Quaid. I’m Dennis Quaid!”

“If you’re really Dennis Quaid, then which film is your greatest regret as an actor?”

“Oh that’s easy: Jaws 3D.”

“I’m sorry we doubted you, Mr. Quaid. Now how can we help you?”

That’s how we imagine the initial call went when Dennis Quaid — the actor — saw photos of Dennis Quiad — the cat — and called the shelter, whose staff were initially suspicious, adoption manager Danielle Ulmer said.

“I was like there is no way this is real, like, someone is pranking us,” Ulmer told WSLS, the local ABC affiliate.

Quaid is co-founder of the podcast company Audio Up, which produces a cast called The Pet Show. Jimmy Jellinek, who hosts the show, worked with the shelter to set up a Zoom call so Quaid could meet his feline counterpart — and the shelter could see they weren’t dealing with an elaborate prank.

“It took us a while for them to actually believe us,” Jellinek said.

Jellinek is expected to fly to Virginia this weekend to pick up Dennis Quaid the Cat and bring him to his forever home in Los Angeles.

“It was really off the wall, but I just couldn’t resist. I had to,” Quaid told WSLS. “I’m out to save all the Dennis Quaids of the world.”

Cat Who Was Shot In Head With Arrow Finds A Loving Home

Cupid the cat finally has a home and humans who love him after suffering through an incredible ordeal when someone shot him in the head with an arrow.

Google News is a wonderful thing if you put it to good use.

A handful of alerts keep me abreast of cat-related news, arming me with potential topics and stories to share with you, the readers of Pain In The Bud.

Unfortunately when it comes to cat news, bad comes with the good. Lots of it.

For every story about lovable chonksters, cute kittens or miraculous reunions with lost cats, there are articles about dying felines rescued from hoarding situations, future serial killers torturing innocent animals and lunatics putting cats in microwaves.

Sometimes I have to stop, click off the browser and go find something to distract me from how disgusting the human race can be.

That’s why I’ve taken a pass on writing about Cupid the Cat — until now. (The story has a happy ending, thankfully.)

Last month, a Good Samaritan contacted the Animal Welfare League of Arlington, Virginia, about a stray cat suffering from a horrific injury: The poor boy had been shot in the head with an arrow, leaving the shaft protruding from the side of his face.

The cat’s rescuers dubbed him Cupid because he was found on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, and appealed to the public for help to cover the costs of several surgeries little Cupid would need to survive.

Despite the horrific act of violence committed against him by humans, and despite the pain he was enduring, Cupid was happy to see his rescuers, Chelsea Jones of the Animal Welfare League said.

“When he arrived and we opened his crate, we’re kind of shocked to see this cat with an arrow shaft sticking out of his face, is making biscuits …. That’s when cats knead their paws,” she said. “It’s a very comforting, positive behavior. And he was purring, and he wanted us to scratch his tummy and his chin. And we just could not believe that this cat was being so affectionate and friendly in how much pain he must be in.”

“So, it was kind of right there and then,” Jones said, “we were like, ‘We gotta call this guy Cupid.’”

Veterinarians worked for several hours to remove the arrow, clean the wound and stitch the little guy back up, putting him on antibiotics and painkillers. The arrow miraculously missed Cupid’s brain, eyes and other vital organs, but his rescuers feared he could succumb to a serious infection from the wound.

DD39677B-7CD3-442A-87BB-09898F39A36E — Cupid was placed on antibiotics and pain killers after his surgery. Credit: Arlington Animal Welfare League

The Animal Welfare League put out an emergency appeal for $6,500 to cover the cost of Cupid’s surgery. Well-wishers covered the cost within hours, and by week’s end the League had taken in more than $87,000, allowing it to fund life-saving surgery for two other animals in addition to Cupid.

The young cat fought hard and recovered from his wounds, and after whittling down dozens of applications to 14 finalists, the League held a drawing.

“It would be amazing if we could send him home with everyone but only one lucky person gets to take cupid home,” Jones said.

Well, two people: Cupid went home with a loving couple from the Washington, DC, area. No more cold, no more hunger, no more loneliness — and protection from the kind of horrible people who would hurt an innocent animal. Congratulations to Cupid on getting better and finding a forever home!