Howl’s Two Week Adoptiversary and Five Day Amputation Countdown

Hi everyone! Howl has been home for officially two weeks today. We’ve made lots of progress with him considering he was found as a feral barn kitten.

For the first week, he was very afraid of the main floor of the house, he spent most of his time in our bedroom, in our closet that we made into a little safe space that we leave open for him to come and go.

Then he slowly started coming out of the closet and roaming the bedroom, and found a couple of new spots that were his favourite: underneath the cat tower in our room or with his belly to the heater. We also purchased cat stairs a week ago and have put them at the end of our bed, and he loves being able to climb up and down by himself (and his brothers like being lazy and using the stairs instead of jumping on the bed like usual).

When we are not home to monitor, we use a gate to keep him away from the stairs (mostly for my peace of mind as my biggest fear is him falling down the stairs). He didn’t venture downstairs for the first ten days even when the gate was not up, but he finally started to do so and he loves it now. His favourite place to sleep is under the Christmas tree, he loves to play with the ball track toy and he’s even able to use the hooded litter downstairs that we didn’t expect him to be able to use. One night this week, he went downstairs while we were asleep, jumped up on the couch by himself, and fell asleep with his oldest brother, Poe.

Our other cats are adjusting pretty well to him, but he can be quite overbearing sometimes.

Poe (two and a half years) tolerates Howl’s chewing and smacking for so long before he gets up and jumps to higher ground and taunts Howl from high up. He lets Howl sleep on him when he stops being a crazy kitten and calms down.

Theo (almost two years) is the slowest to adjust. Theo is a rescue from a hoarding situation and has a lot of anxiety and special needs. Theo’s nasal passage was badly burned as a kitten and he can’t breathe through his nose. He can sometimes be very anxious, and he tends to cry when Howl enters the crazy kitten mode and tries to play fight with him.

Ace (one and a half years) is the most surprising for us. Ace is a mama’s boy and the cat we thought would take the longest to adjust. Ace has taken on a rather paternal (And sometimes maternal) role. He is always very concerned with Howl. He follows Howl around and watches him when he walks around. He is SO patient with Howl, and will lie beside Howl while he chews, swats and play fights with Ace’s tail. We’ve even witness Howl trying to unsuccessfully knead and suckle Ace a couple of times (much to his disappointment).

Howl is acting like a true kitten now, terrorizing his siblings, trying to climb the cat towers, (I bought a shorter cat tower, with lower platforms for him to climb, and ordered this amazing cat tower with ramps that I hope will be easier for him to climb. The cat tower is 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide! It’s a Christmas present for all four kitties from Mom and Dad).

There are five more sleeps until his surgery and I’m trying not to worry, but it’s hard. I know it’s a well-done surgery, and I’ve even watched videos of the actual procedure online, but I worry about complications, his recovery, how he adapts, etc. I’ve read a lot about post-amputation depression and I worry about that as well. The vet said we could choose to take him home or leave him with the vet overnight after his surgery and we opted to leave him overnight so he can have the best medical care available within the first 24 hours, but we will get to see him when he wakes up from his surgery. Luckily, we are off for a few days following his surgery as it is his dad’s birthday and we had planned to celebrate it for a few days and booked some time off but will now be staying home and ordering in with our kids (which is a much more appealing celebration to me). I will be back when he has his surgery to post about how everything went! For now, here are some photos of how well he is doing and looking now.