This week was a fun one because I got to spend a lot of time with kittens this week! Since the 4th of July was this week, there were two days at the clinic with no appointments (Sunday, and Tuesday). During this time, I got to spend a ton of time socializing and vaccinating the kittens. They're all quite sweet now, and are really excited to explore the world outside their room. Here's a breakdown of the things that happened this week:
- On Sunday we vaccinated the six older kittens, as well as three other kittens that were getting adopted. Some of them were not super happy with us.
- The younger kittens were named as such: Levi, George (after curious George), Peter, Parker, and Spider (since a superhero theme was decided upon). These kitties are all super sweet and I will miss them a lot!
- We got in a duckling that had swallowed a fish hook. Dr. White was able to remove the hook after anesthetizing the duckling and making a small cut through which she removed the hook. The duckling was reunited with its family after two days of recovery.
- I got to learn why avian medicine is so hard by example. A young girl and her father brought in their Green Cheeked Conure because its green feathers had started turning black. This led to Dr. White and I doing research about these kinds of parrots to see if it is a natural change or one caused by poor diet. Since the change was not normal, Dr. White suggested a lot of nutritional and lifestyle changes for the bird. Most avian medicine is preventative care, making sure their diet and habitat will keep them healthy. The other reason why avian medicine is hard is that birds can stress very easily. I was helping Dr. White treat a chicken that had been attacked by an opossum. The bird's eyes were swollen shut, and there was mucous in the mouth obstructing the glottis( the entrance to the lungs). While Dr. White was removing some of the mucous with cotton swabs, the chicken gave up the ghost in my arms. It was very sudden, and we almost didn't notice, since the chicken wasn't moving much. Dr. White said the bird was in bad enough shape that a little stress from care killed it.
- On a more positive note, we got in two little tortoiseshell kittens. They're a little shy, and strong enough to deal a painful bite through leather gloves (I say this from experience), but I think they'll pretty easy to socialize. Since I've become more experienced at drawing blood, I am now allowed to take a small amount of blood for blood tests unsupervised. It always requires two people, but now they are letting us interns take care of it. It feels nice to see my skills grow and to have my ability recognized. I got to take blood from four cats this week for FIV/FeLV tests. These diseases are common in outdoor cats and are incurable and have serious health consequences, so we test new cats for them.
- A funny thing that happened on Tuesday was that I let one of the shelter cats out to get some time out of his cage. He sat in my lap and walked around the clinic a bit, but we were closed, so it wasn't really a problem. When someone came with a wildlife intake, they rang the doorbell, which caused the Shadow (the cat) to freak out and hide in a dog food display. When I tried to get him out, Shadow ran into the bathroom, so I followed and closed the door, thinking I had him trapped. Shadow proceeded to jump 8 feet into the air to get the top of a cabinet, and then to jump five feet onto the top of some pipes next to the ceiling. Chasing him down would probable break the pipes, so we set out some food and waited for Shadow to come down on his own. Shadow let the shelter operator grab him after he calmed down, but it took a few hours. I learned to never underestimate how high a cat can jump!
Non-work stuff:
- I went to Mount Rainier National Park today. It was very quiet since the 4th of July was yesterday and I assume people were sleeping in. I only saw other people on the trail once I headed back to the parking lot. It was sunny and around 90 F, so I didn't do a super long hike. I saw a lot of bird species, including the Varied Thrush, Canada Jay, Barrow's Goldeneye, Spotted Sandpiper, Dark-eyed Junco, Swainson's Thrush, and the Audubon's Warbler (the name for a regional variant of the Yellow-rumped Warbler). I saw lots of wildflowers, though there seem to be many more to come. I also got to see a Red-legged Frog and four Cope's Giant Salamanders! The salamanders were so cool! They keep their gills for their entire lives, which is very rare among salamander species. It was a wonderful day, and I'm excited to go back soon to try some new hikes!
