Medical Care
Kotor Kitties focuses on sterilization
While the cats are under anesthesia for their spay-neuter surgery, we ask our vets to take care of simple problems they find, such as:
- Ingrown nails;
- Simple dental extractions, needed so the cats can eat comfortably;
- Amputation of a damaged tail or treatment for ear mites so they won’t develop into major health concerns.
When the day comes that we can afford vaccine and parasite treatment, we will add that to our protocol. It makes sense to stay as healthy as possible since this is probably the only chance most of these cats will ever have for veterinary care.
For now, we have a limited vaccine program that prioritizes lactating mother cats and orphaned kittens. You can read more about it on our vaccination page.
At the moment we would love to limit our work to that.
In a perfect world, cats that are too sick or badly injured to humanely return to life on the streets should be euthanized if there is nobody to adopt them and give them appropriate care. All other needs would be referred to other resources: shelters, fosters, rescues, sponsorship programs, or large vet hospitals … but there are no other resources for these medically fragile cats. And our vets are loath to euthanize even the most badly injured animals.
Kotor Kitties walks a fine line
All of our volunteers want to improve the situation as much as possible for the animals, but also for the people who care for them. Often they are desperate for medical care and even food for the cats in their area. At the same time, we realize that every euro spent on rescue and medical care is a euro that can’t be spent on the long-term solution of prevention through spay and neuter.
In order to balance these competing needs, we find the most urgent need, beyond sterilization, is for hospitalization and recovery space in Kotor that is easy to clean, safe, can make use of volunteers, and allows our primary vet to continue his busy practice while also accommodating the requests of coastal tourists wishing to help specific cats.
We have a proposal to renovate and equip a hospitalization recovery space next to VetPort Kotor, to be called “The Atom Ant, Lulu, and Frankie Memorial Recovery Room.”
We are close to renovating and equipping a badly needed hospitalization and recovery space next to VetPort Kotor, staffed primarily by volunteers. It will be named in memory of some of our early foster kittens, who badly needed a safe space after surgeries.
The Little Ant, Lulu and Frankie, as we affectionately called them, were much-loved kittens who died within a short time of each other while waiting to travel to their adoptive homes. It was a devastating loss to their foster carers and adopters.
Our vision for the small garage adjacent to the clinic is to finish the space with insulation, a framed-in front wall with a door and window, easily cleaned walls, ceiling, and floors, electrical fittings, a heat and ventilation source, a drain line and plumbing for a sink and laundry.
The second phase of the project will be to equip the space to allow for quarantine, hospitalization, post-surgical after-care of feral or un-owned animals, laundry, and refrigeration for medicine. All of this equipment, as well as the heating and ventilation, can be taken to another location if the need arises.