The Journey Begins

Hello and welcome to my blog. My journey with Noodle began almost two years ago when I discovered him bleeding and severly injured in our laundry room. It's hard to believe that it has been that long and his jouney to wellness continues on. Sometimes it feels like he will never recover and at those moments, I feel like a complete and utter failure. I originally started this journal on my about me page on eBay, but a few weeks ago I discovered that a good part of my journal was getting lost everytime I updated it. I was positively crushed, as I had not made a back-up and it was the only record of our journey together. I have decided to transfer it to this blog now and write the updates here. Although no longer in its entirety, this is my journey with Noodle...

Noodle was our neighbor’s cat and the best buddy of our cat Reggie. His owners decided that they no longer wanted him and he was given to another neighbor who lived a few blocks away. A few months ago, I found him in our laundry room bleeding and seriously injured at about 4:30 in the morning. He had been viciously attacked by a raccoon, I suspect and had come in through our pet door. I found him trembling and shaken on the pet blanket that we keep in there. Even though it was early, I called the original owner, not knowing the new owners number. If it had been one of our babies I would have wanted to be called no matter what the hour. She was real nice about my waking her up and contacted the new owner who said she would pick him up in a few hours because she didn't want to wake her children. Having taken care of many injured animals, I did what I could to clean him up and dressed his wounds, but he really needed professional care. About 10:45 that morning I got a call from the original owner telling me that the new owner decided, "It just wasn't working out". Needless to say I was more than a little upset because in my book you don't adopt an animal and just abandon it, especially when it's injured. The original owners offered to take him to the pound thinking they would fix him up and adopt him out, but I told her he would immediately be put to sleep. This poor baby was only 18 months old, and the sweetest little cat, and I just could not let that happen. So I adopted him and took him to our vet. He was in surgery for more than three hours and came home with so many incisions and drains you just didn't know where to pick him up at. He almost lost his tail and the vet was worried about nerve damage. He was such a good little patient, letting me clean and dress his wounds, purring all the while even though he was in a great deal of pain. He was on a good bit of medication and I tried to coincide the cleaning with his meds, which he was so good about taking. Since his food intake wasn't real good I put him on Nutri-Stat, which he still insists on having every day! He pulled through everything very well, but had to have a second operation about a month ago. There was an area on his side from an unrelated incident, which just would not heal. What we thought would be a simple operation, turned out to be so much more. The vet discovered a large nodule surrounded by many smaller ones. He was cut from his belly, almost to his back on one side. I was just devastated and shaken when I picked him up, and waiting for the results of the biopsy and culture was pure torture. It was hard on our vet too, because we had worked so very hard to save him. God smiled upon him once again however, and we were elated to find out it wasn't cancer, but a particularly bad infection. I'm happy to report that his incision is healing nicely and he is doing very well. To this day I have not heard a word from the owner that abandoned him, not even to see how he is doing. The original owners contributed $100 to his vet bill, as did my father and I had enough open on my charge cards to pay the bills. Now I need to pay them off so here I am selling on eBay again to raise the money. I told my vet what I was going to do and she said it was okay to call if anyone needed to confirm my story. You can contact her at:

Dr. Charron A. Skandera, D.V.M.
4 Paws Animal Hospital
1450 Skipper Road, #26
Tampa, FL 33613
Phone: 813-877-2485

She has taken excellent care of all 3 of our cats and if you are in the Tampa Bay area, I would highly recommend her. She even makes house calls, which is great if you have a little wild child like my Misty. Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful New Year!

Warm Wishes,
Suzy