Fix Your Pets!

I have always and always will love cats as I have five of my own. All of my cats have been strays, four of the five were kittens when I got them. Their names are Oscar, Smokey, Tom, Jerry, and my only girl, Bandit. Smokey, Tom, Jerry, and one other kitten were born under my back porch and I have three of them since they were weaned from their mother. I gave the one girl of the litter to Kristen, and it worked out great because she wanted a girl kitten and that is what I had to offer. The summer that they were weaned, I was working at Scoot Vet Services and I fixed my three kittens myself.  I took their mother to my uncle's barn because she was already pregnant and about to have another litter of kittens. I had set a live trap for a raccoon that kept eating the barn cats food, and I caught Oscar in it. I took Oscar back to the neighbors barn where he came from and set the trap again; he was in there the next day again. I decided to keep him and get him neutered. My boyfriend trapped a litter of kittens that were under his house and they were not tame at all, however I chose Bandit from the litter and I have now had her four months and she still is not the most friendly cat but she is still very cuddable when she chooses to let me carry her around and pet on her. She was fixed about three weeks ago and she had to wear a cone for ten days afterwards.

Left to Right: Jerry, Tom, and Smokey waking

up from anesthesia after being fixed.

Now that I have told you all about my cats, let me tell you about the actual reason that I wanted to talk about. Overpopulation is a major problem amongst mostly dogs and cats. They have litters two to three times each year and have anywhere from two to twelve babies each time. Then each of the babies are able to reproduce at about six months of age and thus multiplying the number of animals further. The rule of natural selection states that more organisms are produced than the amount of orgasisms that will survive. So many animals are homeless, injured, and uncared for, simply because there are just so many of them, all of my animals are neutered or spayed. Getting them fixed drastically lowers their chances of having cancers related to spikes in their hormones at the time they are in heat. Getting your animals fixed would solve a lot of problems due to the overpopulation of them. (450)

Bandit                                       Jerry

Warblers On A Rabbit

Most of the animals I have saw have been accident prone in some form or another. Sometimes they did something to injure themselves or something else did something to injure them. Whatever the case may be, injuries are almost inevitable amongst animals and most living things in general. One case of when something else inflicts an injury to another animal is in the case of warblers. Several different animals can get warblers including cows, dogs, horses, sheep, goats, squirrels, birds, cats, and even humans, but in the case of this blog, rabbits.

Bot flies are very common around manure and moisture, the typical place you will find most livestock. This is why bot flies create such problems with animals is because they have access to easy hosts. One way warblers are created are when a bot fly lands on the host and deposits an egg. They can also lay the eggs on manure, or on vegetation around animals and be ingested or inhaled and eventually find themselves at the host skin to feed. The egg then matures underneath the skin of the host, and then burrows throughout the host to feed, it creates a hole from the outside to breathe and surfaces so often. If you look at it, it can appear to be just a hole or it can have a large tumor-like appearance. The larger the surface hole, the larger the larvae.

The infection of a bot fly larvae.

If you monitor your animal, you will notice the worm surfacing. The hole will get very watery as the worm pushes fluid out with it. It is recommended that you let a Veterinarian remove the warbler because if it is ripped, it will release toxins that can result in death to the rabbit, or whatever the host may be. If you wait for the larvae to surface, it will be much easier to extract. Make sure you have gloves on, as this is a parasite. Then get a pair of tweezers and a small bottle of saline solution, so you will have somewhere to put the larvae once it is removed. Grab right about halfway down the larvae with the tweezers and clamp on it , but don’t squeeze too hard as that would cause the worm to be split in half resulting in the toxins seeping out. Gently tug against the worm and it should slip out, but sometimes it will take a little bit of wiggling to work the worm out, depending on the size and depth of the larvae. After the removal you should take a syringe and flush the wound with a saline solution to cleanse any debris out, and you should do this everyday for at least a week or until you see improvement in the wound.

After the removal of four larvae.