Cat Updates – SEVEN

I’m going to start with Skinny, one of the cats that started hanging around my front yard.  Unfortunately my mom was right, the cat was pregnant and two months after she appeared in our front yard she came back with one of her kittens.

The first time we tried to catch them they escaped, but fortunately next day they returned but this time with a second kitten, a striped grey one.  I saw it from my kitchen window and it looked as if it was hurt, there were flies flying around the poor kitten.  We got out to trap it, the kitten tried to escaped but it could barely walk toward the mom, when the mom saw us she just got up and left her kitten there.  Once in the crate the kitten lay down looking at me with those big round eyes, to tell the truth it broke my heart.  The mother and the other kitten left, so we took the grey one inside our home.

Just captured

One day later we successfully trap the other kitten, the two kittens looked happy to be together again and they played a lot.  Not all things were well; the grey kitten’s leg was messed up, when the kitten stood up the leg just dangled and its paw was twice the normal size and swollen.  We could see a bone sticking out near its hip area. At first we thought its leg was dislocated or broken, but its paw on the other hand seemed as if was crushed in two places.

We took it to the hospital, they told us it was female and they took some x-rays.  The x-rays came back and the doctor said it was really bad, she gave us only two options:  Amputate her leg or euthanasia.  She had several fractures in her leg, she told us she could send us to a specialist to look for a second opinion, but the kitten was in bad shape. During her stay with us she was running a fever and we thought that time wasn’t on our side, we had to made that decision right there.  My sister and I went with the option we could live with more–we went with the amputation, after all that little fur ball showed us that she was strong by following her mother all the way to our house.  Of course, there was still a risk, she was so young and malnourished, so, she could not wake up from the anesthesia. We were afraid that she wasn’t going to wake up but surgery went fine and she woke up without a problem.  When we went to pick her up they told us that two hours after getting out from surgery she was running around her crate just as if nothing happened.

Saying good-bye for her surgery.

We named her “Seven” for two reasons one is because she is the 7th rescued cat and second because some people think seven is a lucky number; although I don’t consider losing her leg as being lucky, but she was lucky to reach our house in her condition in a neighborhood where there are more dogs than cats. OK, maybe she is not lucky but tough, and after her surgery  we started calling her “Millie” a short form of “Milagros” which in Spanish means “Miracle”.

Planning her next move.

Squirrel or Cat?

She is doing really good, she is in high spirit since the day she came back from the hospital.  She is very playful and hardly can stay still.  She was supposed to be resting but it is like nothing happened to her.  Next Thursday they are going to removed her stitches.

Mekka.

Nobody can resist those big eyes

SLEEPY’S UPDATE

This is the second update for Sleepy since he came to live with us, hopefully this will be his permanent home.  I was supposed to post this before but I got caught up in work.  Ok this is what has happened

On Monday 14 he had his last shot for the mange/mite problem. We had to bribe him with treats to get him into his carrier, but now he doesn’t want to eat them anymore.  When the Doctor came to examine him, he kept looking at Sleepy; which made me nervous, he said that Sleepy looked like a different cat. His recovery was unbelievable, a miracle even, compared to the state he came to the hospital. He also said that Sleepy is in good shape and that he is one lucky cat.  Yes, Sleepy is one lucky cat to have been treated by this Doctor.

Sleepy had to be moved to another room, he was staying in my room in a crate while he was recuperating but now that he is feeling better, walking, and wanting to explore his surroundings he needed a bigger place. He will be in a covered exercise pen until he gets used to us and to Fluffy, who started to hang around in the other room. Hopefully they will get along.

I tried to play with him with a string/rope but he doesn’t like it, when he is annoyed he just put his paw on the string without letting it go until I get bored and leave.

Mekka.

August 22

He still didn’t approved of his new place.

August 23

Annoyed? Mad? Planning his revenge?

August 25

Being a cutie!!

September 02

He trashed his place after getting mad at us, then he went to sleep.

Sleepy the Cat Update

As you may have read, about two weeks or so we found a cat near our house that was barely moving. In a desperate move to help him, we took him to the hospital where he stayed for many days. This cat was around 10 years old, weighted around 5 lbs., his body was covered in mange, his body temperature was abnormal, he was anemic, FIV positive, and he was dehydrated. This poor kitty was hit on every level as you can see/read.

At the beginning the doctor gave him 3 days (from Friday to Sunday) to recuperate or see some progress, but unfortunately the kitty didn’t respond to the treatment during those three days. Every time I called the hospital another day was added. On the 5th day (Tuesday of the new week) we went to visit the kitty, he was alive but didn’t move or opened his eyes; he was covered with a thermal blanket to keep his temperature since he was unable to do it by himself. The only time he opened his eyes was when the doctor tapped his head and opened his mouth, but still he wasn’t strong enough to fight the doctor [not that I wanted him to scratch the doctor or anything]. He still wasn’t eating much on his own; he ate only when they warmed his food and fed him, nor he was responding as the doctor had hoped. I was told to call the next day (Wednesday) by then my sister and I started talking about what was best for the kitty, and that meant to put him to sleep/down; although there was a tiny ray of hope as long as the doctor didn’t give us that choice there was still a chance the kitty could get better. The doctor told me to call him on Friday, he didn’t want to give up on Sleepy; he wasn’t lying when he told us he was going to bust his butt to help Sleepy the day we brought him to the hospital. Then Saturday came and he was going to stay another day.

Sunday came, 10 days had passed and we didn’t know what else to do or to think, money was not a problem as we were told that he, the doctor, was going to take care of the extra days. But what about kitty, was he going to get better, was he going to have a second chance in life, was he going to know what is to be in a warm home with food, not to look over his shoulder every time he goes out looking for food? I called on Sunday and was told that on Friday Sleepy got a bath, and that it looked like he was ready to go home on Monday, as long as the doctor gives his consent. I called on Monday at 3:30 p.m. and by 6:30 p.m. we were in the hospital waiting for Sleepy. When they called for Sleepy’s owner my heart started to beat faster, we were excited to see he was well and most of all alive.

The first thing I asked the nurse was ‘Is he friendly?’ we hadn’t thought about it this whole time. She said ‘He is –‘she paused for a moment ‘ then she continued : “A little bit with me, but so you know he might hiss at you. ’ That meant that we were going to have to work hard on gaining his trust and to avoid being bitten or scratched by him. The second question was ‘Is it a boy or girl?’ now it is confirmed it is a boy.

The nurse was right, after we took him out of his carrier he hissed at us and he continued to do so every time we got near him. But on Wednesday I took my chances and tried to scratch his head and chin, cats love that, I convinced myself. To my surprise he didn’t bite me or scratched me instead he closed his eyes and little by little started to purr. By Thursday he started to reach for our hands, it seems like he likes to be petted after all. However, it is no lie that this cat has and attitude, he gets annoyed pretty quickly and hisses at us if we take too long with his food. There is still a long way before he gets used to the company of humans and to trust or care about us but for now being able to pet him and show him that we care is more than what I hoped.

At the moment he looks like the Cheshire cat from Alice: Madness Returns, due to the mange he lost some of his fur and some parts were shaved like his tail as well as his belly. I also refer to him as Crusty because he still has some scabs on his head. Although we didn’t find him sleeping on the street we decided to name him Sleepy which is partially what he does lately. But his name is also a painful and a bittersweet reminder of the condition he was on that Friday afternoon and during these past 11 days at the hospital.

Mekka.

Day 1

Day 4

Day 5

 

$1 Donation for Sleepy, Skinny and Fluffy

Hello everyone!

We don’t usually make this kind of request because we are well aware that in the economy we are living sometimes we don’t have the money to spare on this kind of fundraising. However, the reason why my sister and I decided to do it is because of a feral cat we found almost dead on the streets last Friday [8 days ago]. It is heartbreaking to see a scene like that but it is harder to turn the other way and do nothing about it. This fundraising is to help Sleepy, Skinny and Fluffy who are stray/feral cats.

We will share the story of “Sleepy” [as we call him] who is the one of the three stray/feral cats who is trying to survive in the hospital. If after reading his story you would like to donate to help him and the other two cats we would appreciate it very much. We don’t have pictures of Sleepy at the moment since we took him directly to the hospital after we found him. However for those who would like to see the bill/invoice or if you want to inquire directly to the hospital we are willing to provide the information just send me a PM requesting the information. Something that we need you to keep in mind is that at this point we are not sure if he/Sleepy is going to make it or not. So far, it has been 8 days since he was taken to the hospital, today my sister called to inquire about his progress and the doctor said that he is starting to get better, it is a slowly recovery. The expenses for the time that he has been in the hospital is covered but we still don’t know how many more days he will need to be in the hospital any donation [if any] will help us keep him in the hospital in case he needs more days than what are already paid. In addition, part of the donation will be used to help the other two cats “Skinny” and “Fluffy” [we couldn’t come up with better names]. The donation will help us pay for the visit to the vet and for the necessary tests for this two cats. We want to help these other two cats before something happen to them like it did to Sleepy.

This is “Skinny” a white cat who is pretty skinny and dirty. She started to come to our house two weeks ago. We have started to feed her in hopes to catch her and take her to the vet or to any rescue group.

This one is “Fluffy” another white and brown cat who has been around the neighborhood for quite sometime but who in the past months has started to hang out in our back and front yard.

Here is Sleepy’s story:

Last Friday my sister was on her way back home from work and saw a cat laying on the middle of the street close to our house. As soon as she got home she told me there was a poor dead cat on the street. We decided to go and check before he would be crushed by other cars. As we were getting closer to where he was laying we saw him raise his little head; then, we knew he wasn’t dead, so we rushed to help him. A lady from one of the houses close to the street was already on her way to help the cat but she stopped as she saw us getting closer to him. Since we were not prepare to take him home I asked the lady for some rags or plastic bags to carry the cat , she was really nice and gave us gloves and a blanket to help the cat.

We knew that the cat was in a very bad condition and we were not sure if he was going to make it to the hospital. We are grateful that they took him in pretty quickly and did not turn him away for being a stray/feral cat. After a 3 hours waiting we had some news about his condition. The doctor said that his condition was pretty bad he had mange all over his body, anemia, and an abnormal body temperature. He continued saying that mange was easy to treat but it was hard to tell if there was another under laying health problem. Then, he told us the estimated cost for his treatment if we wanted to give it a try even though there was no guarantee he was going to respond to the treatment. If we didn’t want to go with the treatment the other option was to put him down.

The estimated cost was $710.00 which included the doctor visit, iv fluids, 3 days in the hospital, tests etc. That was a lot of money to spend in one night especially because we are going through some financial problems. However the life of a living creature is worth the try. We were left alone for a few minutes to decide what to do but we already made our decision the moment we brought him to the hospital. When the doctor was back we told him about our decision, we were going to give it a try, to leave him in the hospital for 3 days in the care of doctors and to give him a very slim chance to survive. The doctor said he would do his best to help the kitty. We know that life is given by God only and that leaving him in the hospital was to give him a chance to fight for his life only.

He was going to stay in the Hospital until Sunday but on Saturday the doctor called to tell us the result of the test, Sleepy was FIV positive and he wasn’t responding well to the treatment. He told us to leave him an additional day without any extra charge. Sunday another doctor called us to tell us that there was no improvement at all but considering the state he was brought to the hospital it would take more time/days to see if the treatment was working or not. On Monday, we were supposed to go to the hospital to decide what else to do but the doctor called again and said that Sleepy started to eat which could be a good sign; therefore he said that he was going to keep him for another day in the hospital.

Tuesday my sister called to inquire about Sleepy’s progress and the doctor said that Sleepy seems to be getting better reason why he wanted to keep him for a couple more days, so, Sleepy was going to stay until Friday. He also said that if we have the time we could go visit him. It was wonderful news to hear that Sleepy is slowly getting better yet we couldn’t deny the reality that having him stay in the hospital for more days was going to be quite expensive.

At this point there was no way we were going to back out, we knew it was going to be expensive to keep him for more days than planned but if he is still breathing and fighting for his life, we would do what we can to keep him in there. Something that we didn’t expect was the other news: when my sister asked him for the estimated cost for the extra days the doctor responded to her that those extra days were on him. He wanted to help Sleepy and he would not charge more than what we already paid. We couldn’t believe it, you don’t hear something like this everyday, we were profoundly grateful for his kindness and compassion toward a nobody’s cat. It is too soon to say whether Sleepy will fully recover or not but for now this is more than what we could have ever asked.

Later that day we went to visit Sleepy at the hospital, he was covered with a blanket and he looked as if he was sleeping that‘s pretty much all we can say. We talked to the doctor and he said that Sleepy was doing better, believe it or not but he’d probably need more time to show better improvement. The doctor continued saying that the poor cat had it rough, that maggots hatched on him while he was there and they had to take them off, so, considering all that seeing him eat and finally being able to maintain his own body temperature that was a good sign. We also talked about what would happened if in the next days there is a turn of event and he gets worse; if that happens it would be time to put him down. The doctor also said he would try to help us with the other two cats “Fluffy” the friendly one and who seems to like us but “Skinny” is the scared cat and runs away and hide when we are nearby. However, she is eating the food that we are giving her, so, we hope we can catch her and take her to the vet.

So far this is Sleepy’s story, it has been 8 days since we found him half dead on the streets yet he is still fighting to stay alive by slowly responding to the treatment. Regardless of the outcome of Sleepy’s condition we decided to ask for donations to help him [if he fully recovers] and to help the other two stray/feral cats.

Any help will be greatly appreciate it. If you guys can’t donate that is okay we understand but maybe you can still help by sharing the story with others. We understand that no one is oblige to help us in any way but we thought it was worth the try.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to read.

Sincerely,

EkkE & Mekka

KIGURUMI PALZ

Well, these are the finished plushies using my new chibi pattern, I’m testing the pattern by making some chibi dolls for my friends.  I will be using safety eyes unless the dolls are based on a famous character like the third one.

The first one is for a friend dressed as her original character.

 

Second – dressed as Totoro

Third – Sebastian Michaelis from Black Butler dressed as a cat.

Fourth – dressed as Pikachu, he is the only one available in our Artfire store.

EkkE.

NEW AMIGURUMI

I know it has been so long since my last post and a lot of things have happened, unfortunately not good things, but for now I will share my new amigurumi creations.  They are available in our Artfire store.

First is The Once-ler; I made him once before, but this time I brushed his yarn hair and gave him rosy cheeks.

 

Second is Jack Frost from Rise of the Guardians, I made him before as well but this time I made him in amigurumi form.

Third is Pusheen, I gave him a chocolate chip cookie to make him happy.

 

Mekka.

WIP – Dolls 2

For the second doll I decided to turn her into a Studio Ghibli character. The dress, the shoes and the wig were finish long ago but like all of my other projects she was left half way through, but when I saw my sister working on Totoro I decided to finish the little girl.

Can you guess who she is?

It is Kiki from Kiki’s Delivery Service. She is missing her little broom but hopefully it will arrive soon and then she will be ready to look for her new home.

I believe I have one more doll, but I don’t know which character to do, maybe in the following days I’ll decide who to make.

Mekka

 

WIP – Dolls

I have been doing so many things for the past three weeks but I am going to start by posting about a project I started months ago.

It began when  I went on a shopping spree, I bought a lot of 80’s Strawberry Shortcake dolls, I came across some dolls from Bandai who for some reason lost their hair, they were bold and without clothes.

My idea was to repaint those without hair; I have seen so many re-painted dolls and they look beautiful but soon I came across with problems, for example what type of primer, sealer, paints or pencils to use.  But the biggest setback/problem was that I remembered that I can’t paint a pair of eyes, the first eye always a piece of cake the second one never,  the second eye will always look wonky; that is why I decided to go with the easy way and used safety eyes.  But to be honest it is hard to poke a hole in the little doll’s face, both physically and emotionally.

The dresses, shoes, and wig cap are crocheted and the hair is yarn.

Mekka

Before:

After:

Totoro Plushie — For Sale

Finally I was able to create my very first pattern!! Oh, happy day!!  This was one of those unfinished projects that was lost and forgotten. This Totoro plushie was supposed to be a Christmas present [last year] but I wasn’t able to finish the pattern on time and finding that type of nose was just as hard as drafting the pattern.  I’m not a pattern maker but I was determined to draft a simple Totoro pattern, so, the plushie would be extra special.  The pattern is not perfect and probably not accurate but I’m very happy how it turned out and I hope my friends would love it.

These days I’m trying to use all the fabric left from past projects and sell the plushies for less that what I would charge for a commission. So, I’ll be putting him for sale on my store if someone is interested in buying him.

https://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/product_view/car2in-bitz/13313287/totoro_plushie_–_my_neighbor_totoro

EkkE

Commission – Lavi (D.Gray-man)

This happy chibi  is Lavi from “D.Gray-man” and it was a commission for L on DA

Adding all the white trim was time-consuming but we like the result. We thought making the hair style was going to be difficult but it wasn’t…first of all because the headband did all the trick. Second of all, the commissioner suggested to leave it without any stiffener. Cool, huh?

The jacket has a functional zipper but it is not removable. The scarf is not removable.  The headband has a velcro closure and the details were handpainted. the main belt has a side release buckle and the second belt has O-rings and a metal slide. He has only one eye.

EkkE