Herbie

I decided to dedicate this blog to Herbie. My Herpes virus kitten, I call him kitten but he is now 10 months plus old. He is such a love, he bounds around the flat, sneezing everywhere. His sneezes aren't snotty, but they are pretty loud!

He came to me in March, he was about 4 weeks old, he looked fine, I should have known better. I had a nursing mum, Jazz at home and I thought she would be able to cope with one more, as she had only given birth to 3 kittens of her own.




Herbie at his worst around 6 weeks old. I've never seen as much puss and blood spurt out of a kittens eye. Even the vet was completed shocked. I was extremely surprised his eyes were still there after seeing projectile puss & blood coming out.


Unfortunately within a week all the kittens and mum came down with herpes. Herbie seemed to be affected the worst, so the vet and I assumed that he was the carrier. It's hard to say, i hate to place blame. Of all the litters of kittens I had, I really should have known better than to introduce him straight away. I'm not sure what possessed me, but I did (which was the wrong call). Either way, he could have ended up in the same condition (but wouldn't have passed it on), so I feel slightly responsible as Jazz and her kittens would have been fine if I hadn't of introduced him straight away without quarantining him. Anyway to cut a long story short, I had one fatality, another orphan who came in who was much smaller, he was the 5th kitten. The rest all survived included Jazz and apart from sneezing they are fine. Herbie unfortunately is another story, I'm having to keep a close eye on his "eyes". I've been to the clinic and it had seemed at that time his eye had possibly ruptured, so I discussed with the vet about having his eye removed, which would stop it weeping and perhaps make him more aesthetically pleasing for rehoming. I wish I wasn't so cynical sometimes, I don't pretend to know about medicine or more than a vet. I just know cats, I spend enough time with them, day in and day out. I am optimisitic for Herbie, and I do believe that he has sight in both eyes at the moment, however limited and fingers-crossed he's not at the eyeball removal stage just yet.

I didn't want to make such hasty decision with his eyes, which I may have done in the past (i.e one of my permanent foster cats Callie). I know he has some vision and really just wanted to wait. The following week his eyes seemed to be a little better, so I'm actually relieved I didn't get his eye taken out straight away. I just personally think that removing an animals eye or anyone's eye is huge decision that shouldn't be taken so lightly ...god gave us one set of eyes, it's something that you can never replace once they are gone. Sight and smell to any being is so important. Although blind cats can adjust well as they still have a keen sense of smell, but taking out a cat's eye to me is something that curls my stomach.

So we'll continue treating him with anti-viral medicine and drops, which at $400 a bottle for the anti-viral turns out to be an expense medication. It would be okay if it actually showed some results, but at this moment, I've not noticed that it really has made much of a difference. He's on lysine from Nature's Health & the Olive Leaf extract. He's easy to give pills to, but doesn't seem to like eating canned food as much, so we're sprinkling the lysine & Olive leaf extract into the general bowl of biscuits so all cats will be getting a dose.

Me and Herbs are holding out that there is someone special out there who will see that beyond all this caffufle is an extremely loving, hilarious one of a kind kitty and he is worth all of this. I just wish he didn't have to go through this. But honestly if Herbie could talk, he would tell us that he's the happiest of kitties. The fact that it hasn't affected his appetite leads me to believe this is true. As unhappy kitties will stop eating if they are in pain or discomfort. That's generally a tell-tale sign.



If someone decides they would like to adopt Herbie, I will be over the moon, but to be honest they would have to do alot of convincing that they could love Herbie as much as we do!!