Gabriella

I got a call from one of our deans this morning with an "interesting" problem. It seems that a student arrived at school and heard a cat crying under the engine hood. When he opened the hood a kitten sprang out and ran under another car. The dean and other staff members spent the next hour chasing this cat around the parking lot before finally catching it. They knew I did volunteer animal rescue work so he called me for assistance instead of our local "kill" animal shelter (thank goodness!).

I was teaching a class at the time so I called my wife and asked her to take off work and come get the cat. When class was over I hurried down and brought the kitten back to my room to evaluate it. The poor little gray tabby was scared to death and obviously had never been held by a human before. I immediately discovered the cat had a badly broken tail and was in pain so I put it back in the box quickly and put in towels and water. I didn't want to cause any further pain or panic so I couldn't find out the sex then. The cat calmed down a little bit after awhile and the wife came in about an hour to pick it up.

I told my wife to spare no expense since the cat may have other injuries so she took the little one to our personal vet, Dr. Russell, a great cat vet here. I called Karen later for an update. It seems that the cat is a female and about 5 weeks old. One of my students, Gabe, requested we name it after him. Since the kitten turned out to be a "she" we are calling her Gabriella. She weighs 1.1 pounds. Gabriella is in surgery now to amputate about a quarter of her tail. She was dewormed as well. Other than that she seems to be in good health. They will keep her overnight and we get her back tomorrow. I am not certain what we will do next. Several teachers at school have shown an interest in adopting Gabriella. She needs to be worked with a lot. She will also need vaccines and a spay. We are working with our rescue group Goliath and Bebe's World to find a foster parent and we will adopt her out to a good home that will keep her indoors as soon as she is ready. My group and their vet will give the necessary vaccinations and spay. I would take her myself but with 9 cats and a bunny in a mobile home we are maxed out. With her rough start in life I feel that I owe her a wonderful home so I will be very picky about selecting the home she will eventually be adopted to. She certainly deserves a little happiness after what she went through. We are waiving the adoption fee if we find a great home for Gabriella. I'll post photos soon.