Newbie
Say hi to Newbie. One of the neighborhood kids brought him by and said the kids over at the school were being mean to him. Now, why would the kids know to bring him here? Sigh… At that time he was almost an adult. That was in 2002 (give or take).
We called him Newbie because I kept referring to the “newcomer” as “Newbie”. The name stuck. We tried to find who he belonged to with no luck.
He’s a big guy now. 16 pounds and not much fat. He’s a real marshmallow, except he gets after Fletcher something terrible. Tommy (more on him to come) is Newbie’s only enemy.
Newbie is polydactyl. He has two extra toes on each front paw and one extra one on each rear paw. His front paws look like he’s wearing mittens. He’s a large cat anyway, and his front paws look huge.
Newbie develops deposits (the vet calls them crystals) in his bladder, preventing him from urinating. He’s had two operations to open up and flush out his bladder. Now he has to have four Uroeze® tablets each day or the deposits come back rather quickly. They taste so terrible, the only way we can give them to him is grind them up in a bit of canned cat food juice and smear the mixture on his front paws so he can lick it off. Maybe you have a better idea?
When you have to do this twice a day, Newbie becomes rather adept at avoiding capture. It’s now a morning and evening game to get him nabbed and medicated. Most of the time we win, but sometimes we don’t.
He’s a very affectionate cat and just loves to be scratched and lay by your side. We’re convinced he was guided here because of his medical problems and no one else would put out the effort and money to take care of him.
