Fred, the best cat in the world

For about a year, Fred has had a funny ear. Most of the time it's fine, but every so often, he holds his left ear flat and shakes it and scratches at it. He'll do that for a few hours and then he's totally fine again. I've never taken him to the vet because it never bothers him for long and it's a bit tricky to get a vet appointment, and frankly, it's not all that fun or all that easy to take a cat to the vet.  But the other day he was having trouble again and I decided it was time. Fortunately, I am very blessed to work at the nation's largest animal sanctuary and one of the best perks of working there is that we have a great clinic and 4 excellent vets who will see our personal animals. It is a little hard to get appointments though, and the only thing they had for a while was today, a Sunday. I took it rather than waiting for several weeks, I normally wouldn't do something like that on a Sunday. Also, Fred got in a fight a few days ago and has been pretty gimpy and has a puncture wound on his chest that I thought might ought to get looked at.

Well, to make a long story short, we loaded Fred up and took him - complaining a little - down to the sanctuary and saw the new vet, Dr. Brooke. When we got there, she asked his name and I said, "He usually goes by "Fred", but his whole name is "Fred-the-best-cat-in-the-world". She laughed, but after she finished examining him, I think she realized that it was true. She cleaned his ears, shaved around his wound, scoped his ears, palpated his sore leg and examined him all over and he never, ever offered to scratch or bite.  He didn't even try to get away!  What an extraordinarily good cat!

So it turns out that he does have a bacterial and yeast infection in both ears and has to have drops in them twice a day for a week.

Brynn and Luke came with, they like Fred pretty well.  (This is the reason I carry a point and shoot camera in my purse - you just never know when you might want to take a photo.)



Brynn took this photo of Fred the other day and I thought it was cute. What a good boy.



So where do you find good cats like this one? At the dump, of course.