The Tale of Wiggles and Scooter, part 1

Scooter (formerly Wiggles)
August 25, 2007

A few weeks ago I mentioned a new kitten in our lives, who at the time was going by the name of Wiggles:

I haven't mentioned Wiggles before. One of these days I'll write a full post on him...and then there will eventually be another post. Wiggles is a feral kitten who was dumped on my mother by a cruel and heartless neighbor who either took him and two other kittens from their mother, or who (as he claims) discovered the litter after their mother had been killed. Wiggles is a sickly cat, and will probably not live to his first birthday. But I will write about that later.

At Anne's request, here is a photo, and an update.

When we first received Wiggles (he didn't have this name yet) as a several-days-old kitten it was obvious that there was something wrong with him. His body moved in jerky fits and starts. His head wobbled like a top. My mom used a syringe to feed him kitten milk (KMR formula, I believe) but it was difficult to get him to take anything. She also used a warm washcloth to stimulate him to poop, something that would have been done by his cat mother with her tongue, but he pooped only occasionally. After a few days he began to exhibit a strange tensing of his muscles, as though every muscle was straining to maximum extension at the same time. After a day or so of this, he lapsed into a coma.

We decided that our goal was to provide him with a comfortable place to die.

We made a nest for him in a plastic box and put it on our kitchen floor. Periodically we would check on him, but his condition remained unchanged. He just lay there, breathing shallowly, his arms and legs stretched out straight below his body, his neck curved back.

On the third day I peeked in his box after I had taken my morning shower, wondering if maybe he had finally stopped breathing. He turned his head, opened his eyes, and looked at me.

He began his "questing" movement, bobbing his head from side to side as if looking for something. We grabbed him and quickly gave him a few syringes full of water.

His progress from that point was remarkable, but it was still obvious that something was wrong. His head was twisted to the left. His motions were random and uncoordinated, as f he had a sort of palsy. When we decided to let him try out his legs for the first time, he began to walk backwards in a circle.

After a few days we took him to the vet. Everyone in the office loved him, but they were also distressed at his condition. They had seen it before. It was indicative of neurological damage, possibly caused by inbreeding, or a virus, or something else. The "bent frame" appearance was a part of it. One of the receptionists had taken in a cat with a similar condition, and he had not lived to see his first birthday.

At the vet's we needed to give a name for the records. My mom and I tossed around several names, but in the end settled on the descriptive placeholder "Tabby." On the ride home we considered other names. As we approached the house my mom suggested "Wiggles", based on his wiggling movements. I liked it. Unknown to her, "Wiggles" was also the name Captain Bender bestowed on First Mate Frye in an episode of Futurama.

The vet recommended that we start trying to feed him solid food: kitten food, crushed into a powder, and mixed with water to make a paste. We did that, for about five days. Getting him to eat was a trick. We would make the paste and the plop it onto a washcloth, then position him so that his face would be somewhere near the food. Sometimes he would just jam his nose in it, sometimes he would walk in it. After a while he got the idea and began to gobble it down.

As he learned to use his mouth we realized he wanted to chew and bite things. This actually became his "I'm hungry" signal: if you were holding him and he started to bite you, it meant he wanted to eat. We began to mix whole softened pellets of kitten food with his paste. After a while he graduated to all pellets.

All this time we had maintained nearly constant physical contact with him. Many times he fell asleep on my left arm as I typed a blog entry one-handed. Other times I would tuck him into my shirt and he would fall asleep resting on my belly, or with his head against my heart.

One day I came home and my mom took him out of his box. "Look what he can do," she said, placing him on the floor. The moment his feet touched the ground, he began to run.

Not very well, not with much coordination, but definitely quickly. He kept slipping on the linoleum of the kitchen floor and clearly had more strength in his right side than his left. He ran all over the kitchen as quickly as he could. At that moment we stopped calling him Wiggles, and began to call him by a more appropriate name: Scooter.

He scooted, and he ate, and he began to poop on his own. His neck stopped bending to the left. We let him run on a carpeted floor where he could get better traction. His left side eventually caught up with his right.

We took him to the vet again. Everyone in the office was astonished at Scooter's improvement. Of course, now it was determined that he had ringworm and ear mites. (He had been cleared of Feline AIDS and Feline Leukemia on his previous visit.)

Since that visit Scooter has continued to grow and improve. In the course of a few days his legs nearly doubled in length, so he looked like a tiny kitten running around on stilts. Then his tail also doubled in length. After a few more days his body caught up.

He continues to scoot whenever we let him. My mom wonders if this is an expression of a neurological condition. I think it's because he loves to stretch his legs whenever he gets a chance to get out of his isolation box. We need to keep him isolated for another week or so until we are done with his daily ringworm treatments. (He hates the syringe of ringworm medicine, but seems to love getting his ear drops.) He has his own litter box, and his own toys, and his own puppy doll that he plays with. His box is clear, so he can see the other cats through the walls. He even has a picture of a look-alike on the back cover of this month's High Five, the Highlights magazine spin-off for the under-six set.

Is he out of the woods yet? I don't know. The early concerns about diminished life expectancy will continue to haunt us. But for now, he seems to be a happy, healthy, active, and growing kitten. We'll see where he goes from here.