Update on kitties from Gaston #1295

It has been a long nearly three months with these babies. The mother, Lola (#1295 in ARRF photo album 6),has now been spayed but she continues to allow her 2 remaining babies AND 3 other older kittens to try and nurse from her. She is like the best super mom! This post is regarding her 2 remaining kittens. We lost 3 kittens to Distemper. Lola came out fine. However, her 2 remaining kittens are still fighting for their lives. The first kitten I'll tell you about is Pookee. She is still fighting off a URI. The distemper held her back. She is now 10 1/2 weeks old yet she is the size of a four week old. She is still drinking from a syringe but she has graduated to being spoon fed baby food. She is so adorable and loving. Here is Pookee:

Her brother Thomas is also fighting a URI and he has residual affects from also having distemper. His back legs are wobbly and he falls a lot. But sometimes when he gets going, he can run with the rest of them. Although while trying to stop, he falls on his side. His back left leg seems to be the worst. His head bobs uncontrollably. We are hoping he will grow out of this. But the nerve damage, neurological damage, may be permanent. He is extremely sweet and loving. Unfortunately, he'll need further medical care which we do not have the funds for at the moment. Here is Thomas:

If you can donate to help feed these growing babies, it will be greatly appreciated. I will be doing more posts shortly of the other foster babies I have. In the end, the goal is to get them healthy, s/n, and off to a no kill rescue up North.

10 kitties who are sick & update on Maple

Hi everyone. I want to start off by letting you know Maple arrived to her destination and everyone just loves her!
Thank you so much for helping her get there.

We now have Maple's four brothers who are well on their way to getting better. Tiny now has both his eyes open. They are running around like crazy now that they can see!
Also in the bunch is our mama kitty Lolita (Lola for short)and her five babies. They are now 5 weeks old and running around, playing rough with the other four. Spiderman is so gentle with these little one's. Lola allows ALL of them to nurse from her. She also has an upper resp. infection but is responding very well to her medication. The little one's are sneezing but other than that, they don't seem to be affected by the virus. They are all on the same medication to fend off any other illness that may come their way.

We need donations for the continued care of these sweeties. We have a donation button to the right. Any amount will be greatly appreciated. We'll also take gift cards to Wal-Mart (they are the cheapest) because we need wet food and litter for all of them. If you would prefer to mail your gifts, please email me at the email button or send to: thecatbin@gmail.com .

Thank you again to all of you who helped get Maple to her new home. And thank you in advance for your help with these 10 kitties. Here is a video taken on May 17th.

Maple is on her way! Please help her with her journey

Hi everyone! Maple has been cleared, medical certificate in paw and is ready for transport on Thursday morning May 16th. We still need funds to cover her and her four brothers. Please share this so other's may help. Maple would appreciate it and her brothers sure would like to make sure their only sister gets to her new place safe and sound.

Here's an update on the 5 kittens rescued May 1st, 2013

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. What is a video worth? You can't tell it from the video because 3 of the 5 kittens look so pitiful. But they all run around playing together. Maple and Spiderman are the most healthy. Maple needs to gain some weight. But so far, the infection in the eyes hasn't spread to them.

Hootie and Sleepy run around. They aren't strong enough to play rough with Spiderman and Maple. And Tiny is so sick. But when he's awake, he runs over to my legs, crawls all the way up to my shoulders and perch's himself there. He's such a sweet little thing.

Here is the latest update on these babies. And I also added an earlier video of Tiny.

Thank you to everyone who has donated to these little babies. All is welcome and all is greatly appreciated.

5 kittens need you!

I happened to be at Animal Control when these 5 babies were dumped there. The person said she found them in her basement! What a load of crock. Anyway, I was on the phone with Jo Ann (she coordinates rescues, transportation and so many other wonderful things for cats/kittens), and we agreed to take them.

We really need some donations for these babies. They are being fed kitten glop (you can substitute goat's milk with a can of whole evaporated milk) and Iames kitten food soaked in water. They are also getting Nutri-Cal and medication for their eyes. The medicine is a bit pricey at $24 for a small tube. Of course, this is on top of the cost of litter.

Any donation amount would make us super grateful. Here are the 5 kittens. And if anyone would like to adopt any of them, it's possible we may be able to help with transportation.

Flea season is upon us

Hi everyone! I want to remind you that flea season is upon us. Imagine if you were covered in bees. That's what it is like for animals to be covered in fleas. Fleas will bite your pet and keep it miserable.

I have been researching all the flea products available and which work the best. There are countless reviews out there. I noticed one pet medication in particular that received mostly horrible reviews. I'm not sure why even after reading over and over "It doesn't work!". In order for a flea medication to work, you must use it properly.

If you have indoor cats and you are having a flea problem, the best thing to do is put your cat in a pet carrier and place in a cool spot like on a porch or under a shady tree. The idea is to get your cat outside the house. Next, purchase roach/flea bombs. Wal-Mart carries a brand that comes with 3 bombs (some boxes have a 4th can free) and off the top of my head, I want to say it's "Hot Shot". You will need a bomb for each room in your house and maybe 2 bombs per room if they are big rooms. After setting them and then airing out your home, bring your cat back inside and immediately give it a bath using the blue Dawn dish washing soap. Be careful not to get it in your cats eyes, get water in it's nose or ears. I have experienced that once you get your cat good and soapy, turn the water off and massage your cat with the soap. They tend to be more stressed while water is running. Make sure the water is luke warm. No hotter than that. It's very easy to burn your pet with hot water. What feels warm to us will be too hot for your pet.

So now you have flea bombed your home and given your cat a bath. After waiting 48 hrs (this is very important as your pet needs to replenish the oil on it's fur), it's time to put on the flea medication. And here is where knowledge is key.

Not all flea medications are the same. It's all in the ingredients. Here is a link that will tell you what each ingredient is used for. The most well known flea treatments are Frontline and Advantage. There are new products on the market now, Advantix, Comfortis and Petarmor. Again, let me stress it's important to know the ingredients in your flea medication. Some ingredients kill adult fleas only. Some kill adult fleas and ticks. Some kill adult fleas, eggs, ticks and some do it all plus repel these pesky insects. People may want to spend the big bucks for the latter. But if you are on a budget (and who's not these days?), I am going to recommend Petarmor which is available at Wal-Mart. It has the same active ingredient as Frontline but it is much cheaper. Petarmor's main ingredient is Fipronil. It does not kill the eggs, however once hatched, it continues to kill the baby fleas. It also kills ticks.

Which ever product you decide to use, please keep your cat flea free.

Fosters need donations for medical certs & transportation

Hello everyone! We have a new batch of kittens ready for transport to their new home!

There will be at least 4 of the 6 kittens traveling this Friday May 3rd, 2013. Because the kittens were given to me when they were only about a week old and very sick, not all may be able to travel. We are keeping our fingers crossed though. Here is a video of the 6 kittens who are now 6 weeks old:



You can also watch a video of when I received them below.

We also have another mama kitty (#1295)with 4 babies (I previously posted she only had 3 kittens). She is doing super fantastic and so are her babies. Here is a video of them:



I want to thank everyone who has helped so far. Without you and your generosity, these kitties would not have made it out of Gaston animal control services. If you or anyone you know could possibly make another small donation, every little bit helps. Medical certificates run between $25 to $50 and a special transportation vehicle equipped just for mama's and babies runs $125 for each rider group ($125 for mama & babies, $125 for the kittens) for a total of $250. So we are looking at near $300 to get them safely to their destination.

If you could get each of your friends to donate $1, I'm positive we could raise the funds needed to make this happen. And that is the great thing about using PayPal's donation buttons instead of going through a different 3rd party fund raiser that charges a percentage of donations raised. And it is a great tool to use so not a handful of people need to make another charge on their credit cards. If everyone you know and everyone they know and so on and so forth would just donate $1, we could save a lot more cats and kittens from being put to sleep.


I want to make it clear that we work on getting cats and kittens out of Gaston animal control in Gastonia, NC. There is only 2 rescue groups for them and NO fosters in the area. We work closely with the employees to save as many as we can. But if the funds are not there to provide for the cost of food, litter, medical and transportation, then these cats and kittens would be put to sleep.

Please help us in saving as many lives as possible. Thank you so much!

And let's not forget to spay and neuter our pets!

Squeezy the foster cat for the homeless man

Yes, this is Squeezy.  Her and her sister are fosters until the man who gave them up with a dog can find a place to live.  She's trying to be a good mom.  She's very protective of her kittens and she feeds them all the time.  She just doesn't know how to do anything else.  She doesn't seem to clean them up or clean up any mess they make.

Because she didn't know what to do, one baby died and the orange kitten was injured.  We are hoping he pulls through.  He seems like a fighter.  He will probably need surgery at one point.  But again, we are keeping our fingers crossed.

This mother cat was turned in to Gaston Animal Control.