Blackjack and Newt

D. E. Larsen, DVM

“Joleen, are you still feeding that feral tomcat out the back door?” I asked.

“I don’t think he is really feral. I am going to catch him one of these days.”

“Catch him. If you get ahold of him, it will be a question mark as to who has caught who,” I said.

Our original clinic on Nandina Street had a large patch of berry vines across the alley from the clinic. That patch of briers was home to a sizable population of feral cats. Joleen had taken a liking to this young black tomcat. She was convinced she could catch him and tame him down.

A couple of weeks later, Joleen came out of the back and washed her hands at the front sink.

“I got him,” she said as if it was no big deal. “I threw him into the isolation ward. It wasn’t so hard. I didn’t even get scratched.”

“What are you going to do with him,” I asked.  

“I figure if we neuter, vaccinate and deworm him, then leave him in a kennel for a time, he should tame down just fine. Then I will either take him home, or we could make a clinic cat out of him.”

“I’m not sure about a clinic cat,” I said.

But, so began Blackjack’s sojourn in the clinic. 

Our first adventure was transferring him from the isolation room, a small bare room at the time, into a cage in the kennel room. He was not going to be fooled by Joleen’s gentle nature again. It took a capture pole and a lot of clawing and biting at the end of the rod to accomplish the transfer. 

Finally secured in a kennel, we made plans to secure his future.

“We are not going to have a tomcat in here for long,” I said. “There is nothing that will stink up a vet clinic worse than tomcat pee.”

“We have time; you can neuter him this afternoon,” Joleen said.

One more wrestling match, and I had an injection of Ketamine into Blackjack. Joleen took the opportunity to comb him out. Blackjack was a short-haired cat, black as could be, but he had been living in the briers for some time now and needed to be spruced up a bit.

Then we neutered, vaccinated, and dewormed him.

“He will be a new man in the morning after his brain surgery,” I said.

Blackjack tamed down in a surprisingly short time. In a couple of weeks, he was given a limited run of the clinic. It was not long that we recognized that he enjoyed people and the cats that were with them. Coming off the street, he was very dog-wise. He could greet a few of the dogs that came through the door. But most of them he avoided with the skills only learned by a feral lifestyle.

He was controlled by the smell of the canned food. Joleen would pop the seal on a can of cat food, and Blackjack would come running from anywhere. 

There came a day when Blackjack wanted out the door.

“Do we dare let him out,” Joleen asked, more to herself than to me.

“I think he knows where his home is by now. My guess is he will be back before closing time.”

That was the case. About 4:00, Joleen heard him meowing at the back door. He came in for his can of cat food and then headed to his kennel for the night.

It was not long, and he would come and go by the front door. He learned to scurry through the door as a client would come or go. Jumping up on the counter and almost scaring some lady who had not noticed him following her through the door.

Most clients loved Blackjack, and he loved to sit on the front counter and accept any pats handed out by clients. But unfortunately, not all clients. One of our ‘Cat Ladies’ thought we provided Blackjack a terrible existence. 

“It is not right for him to be cooped up in here all the time,” she would say. “He should be in a home, where he is loved.”

“Mary, he has the run of this place,” I said. “He can come and go as he pleases, and his life here is far better than his old life.”

“Well, that may be, but I think he deserves a real home,” Mary said.

It was some months after that conversation that Blackjack left by the front door of the clinic one afternoon and never returned. We looked on the neighborhood streets and through the feral cat colony. There was never a trace of him.

“I bet she took him,” Joleen said. “Poor Blackjack, his life here was far better than she will ever provide.”

“There is no way we will ever know. There are a hundred ways that a cat can meet his fate in this world. We gave him the best we could while he was in our care. And I doubt she would have been capable of catching him out on the street.”

We were still in a sort of grieving status over Blackjack’s loss when Kathy burst through the front door with a limp kitten in her hands.

“The highway crew found this guy in the ditch by our house,” Kathy said. “It looks like he has taken a big whack on the head, but he is alive.”

“If you guys can do something for him, that is fine,” Kathy said. “I can’t afford to do anything for him.”

“We will look him over and see if he is savable,” Joleen said. “If he recovers, we can maybe find him a home.”

This kitten was about 6 weeks old and had a patch of hair gone on the top of his head. Still unconscious, he must have been hit by a car. When I started handling the kitten, he began to stir a little. Other than the patch of missing hair on his head, he looked fine.

I gave him a dose of Dexamethasone, and Joleen went back to settle him in a kennel. Or so I thought. She carried him around in a towel for the rest of the morning. 

By noon, the little tabby kitten was back to normal function. We offered him some canned food, and he acted like he hadn’t eaten in a week.

“It looks to me like you have your next clinic cat,” Joleen said.

After devouring his lunch, he was screaming for more. And I did say screaming.

“He sounds like he would make a good Speaker of the House. Maybe we should name him Newt,” I said.

Newt grew up in the clinic. Will, he spent most of his first year in the clinic. The clinic was his domain, he had free run of the place during the day, and we would put him in a large kennel overnight. His voice was the first thing one heard when we came through the door in the morning. He knew he got his breakfast and that the kennel door would be left open.

Newt enjoyed people, and they loved him. He would often perch on the front counter, acting as a greeter. He seemed to have no interest in going through the front door.

He was close to a year old when Bill and Opal were in with Mucho for a check-up. When they completed their visit, they purchased a 25-pound bag of C/D cat food. We were a little surprised when Opal came back into the clinic with the bag of food.

“This bag has a hole in the corner,” Opal said. 

Sure enough, there was a small hole in the bag and evidence of scratch and bite marks.

“That looks like Newt has been helping himself to some free meals,” I said. “We will refund that money. Do you want to keep this bag, at no cost, or do you want another one?” 

“Oh,” Opal said. “We can keep this one if you can tape it up. We really don’t want our money back.” 

I grabbed some packing tape and closed the hole. “You really don’t have any choice, Opal,” I said. “Sandy has already reversed the charge. If I take it back, we will just throw it away. So you may as well get the use of it.”

When Opal left, I went back and inspected our inventory. Newt made good choices. The bland diet foods for liver or kidney failure were not touched. But every bag of C/D had a small hole in the corner.

“Newt, I think you just got canned,” I said. Newt looked at me in a very aloof manner. “I think you earned a trip to the house. I can’t afford to lose hundreds of dollars in inventory to a cat that doesn’t produce any income for the clinic.”

That night Newt went home with us. This transition to the house went off without a hitch. He was quick to stake out his corner on the foot of our bed as he settled into a long life in the Larsen household.

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A Saturday Afternoon Outbreak

D. E. Larsen, DVM

It was almost a perfect Saturday afternoon. Late August in the Willamette Valley provides a short stretch of weather that acts as an interlude between the summer heat and the fall’s rains.

We were still getting settled into our newly purchased house. We had the kids outside, working in the garden, and playing in the grass. I started to consider setting up the garage to see patients for a couple of months while waiting for the clinic construction to be completed.

The afternoon’s calm was broken when the phone rang.

“Doc, I know this is Saturday evening,” Dave said while trying to catch his breath. “But Doc, I was just out in the pasture, and I have seven dead calves, all about 2 months old. They were healthy as could be yesterday. I have about 30 more out there. What do you think I have going on?”

“It sounds like we need to get a necropsy on one or two of those dead calves,” I said. “The Diagnostic Lab at OSU is closed for the weekend. I can do a necropsy, but any lab work would need to wait until Monday.”

“If seven of them died overnight, they might be all dead by Monday,” Dave said.

“I agree, Dave,” I said. “I have a pretty good background in pathology. I worked in the necropsy room at CSU the summer following my sophomore year in vet school. I can likely get a good diagnosis with a gross necropsy. I will collect samples, just in case we need them for Monday.”

Seven dead calves amounted to about 15% of his herd. That was probably the profit for the year, at least a good chunk of it. A dead animal usually was not an absolute emergency, unless it was a herd animal. Unless it was a bunch of animals that died in a short time.

Dave had all seven dead calves lined up at the pasture gate when I pulled in the driveway. 

What a waste. All seven calves were in good shape, looked good for a couple of months old. I surveyed the herd out in the pasture. Good pasture for August, and the herd looked like nothing was wrong.

“Where do they get their water?” I asked.

“There is a pond, just over the rise, at the far end. You can’t see it from here.”

I pulled on a pair of gloves and looked over all the calves. Jaundice was evident in each one.

“Let’s take the smallest one and pull him over here out of the pasture,” I said. “We don’t want to contaminate things any more than they are already.”

I laid the calf on his left side and quickly reflected his skin and right legs. Stretching them out over his back. I took a moment to remember Dr. Norrdin’s words, “Work with your mouth closed.” Then I opened the chest and abdomen. The chest was fine, but the liver was swollen and dark in color. The urine in his bladder colored with bile. This was an acute outbreak of Leptospirosis. 

Lepto was known to cause abortion ‘storms’ in pregnant cow herds. Acute outbreaks in young calves occurred only rarely. It always amazed me how I always seemed to see all the rare events in my first couple of years out of school.

I collected samples for the lab on Monday if we needed them, liver, kidney, spleen, gall bladder, urine, and blood. Then I roughly closed the animal up. 

“Dave, I think you have an unusual outbreak of Lepto in these young calves.”

“Is there anything we can do to stop it?” Dave asked.

“Have you had any cows abort this year?” I asked.

“We had one cow abort about a week ago. I never thought much about it. It is not unusual for us to have an abortion or two every year.”

“There is an antibiotic treatment that will stop an abortion storm in cows. The entire herd is treated with a single dose of Streptomycin. I don’t think anything is written about controlling an outbreak in young calves. But my guess is if it stops abortions in a herd, it will stop an outbreak in calves.”

“So where am I going to get enough streptomycin to treat a herd at this hour on Saturday evening?” Dave asked.

“You’re lucky enough that I ordered it on my initial stocking order. I didn’t think I would ever use it, but I wanted to have it on hand. So, I think I have you covered in that regard.”

“There are a couple of other items we need to cover,” I said. “Number one, this is contagious to people. And it can do the same thing to people that it does to these calves. I was just talking with Dr. Craig the other day, he worked a herd with another veterinarian, and they both got sick. Dr. Craig went to the doctor as soon as he noted some blood in his urine, he got well. The other veterinarian waited till the next morning, he died.”

“Number two is the pond. Lepto is usually spread via contaminated water sources. If you had a cow with a Lepto abortion, she sheds organisms in her urine for several weeks. If she pees in or near that pond, calves that drink out of the pond can end up here,” I said as I pointed to the dead calves.

“You need to fence that pond and put a water tank in the pasture,” I said. 

“Do you think I should inject these calves tonight?” Dave asked.

“If you’re up to it, that is what I would recommend,” I said. “You might wake up in the morning with another batch of dead calves.”

“I will get you enough Streptomycin and vaccine,” I said. “I would give both. Lepto vaccines have some limitations in that there are many strains of Lepto. The vaccine protects against three of the most common strains, but there are others, and there is not a lot of cross-protection. It is the best we can do at the moment.”

“What should I do with these calves?” Dave asked.

“Move them out of the pasture. If you will have the rendering truck pick them up, that is okay. Otherwise, bury them deep. And don’t let the dogs get into this calf that we opened. They can get this also.”

I fixed up Dave with the necessary antibiotic and dosages and left him enough vaccine for the entire herd. He had a crew coming to help him. When I left that evening, I left him with one last piece of advice.

“Dave, you make sure everyone works with their mouth closed tonight,” I said. “And make sure they shower before going to bed.”

“Thanks, Doc, wish me luck,” Dave said.

“There is very little luck in this business. That is why it is important to do things the best we can at all times,” I said. “I will give you a call in the morning.”

I spent a long time drinking my coffee in the morning, and Sandy noticed.

“What is wrong with you this morning?” she asked.

“I am dreading calling Dave,” I said. “I am hopeful that I solved his immediate problem last night, but if I didn’t, he might have a bigger problem this morning.”

“Dave, this is Doc. I was just checking in with you on how things went last night and how things look this morning,” I said.

“We got the herd done, had to get out some floodlights for the tail end of it, but they are done. Things look good so far this morning. I have a couple of guys stringing an electric fence around the pond this morning, and I have a small water tank in the pasture. I am getting ready to run to Albany and see if I can pick up a large tank. Can’t thank you enough, Doc. I will keep you posted.”

Dave never had another problem, and the lab confirmed the Lepto diagnosis on Monday. In the next forty years, I never saw another outbreak like this one. Go figure the odds.

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The Dart’s Glance

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Fred Briggs waited patiently while I was finishing up on my office calls. He always came at the end of the day, maybe because we were close to his home in Albany, but I liked to think because he knew he would have more time to talk with me.

Fred was a salesman for one of the drug companies that supplied our clinic. He was older and had been in the business for many years. I enjoyed his monthly visits, not only for the information he provided and the orders he took but because of the stories he would tell.

Fred knew all the veterinarians on his route. I would guess he had a little card on all of us. What we liked to talk about, what drugs we favored, and what we wanted to do in our spare time.

When the last client left, Fred showed himself back to the pharmacy area and opened his briefcase on the counter.

“Have a story to tell you, Fred,” I said. “I will be with you in a couple of minutes after I finish up in the back.”

Sandy was there to place our order and place the flyers on the new products in a stack to transfer to my desk later.

“I will take them, and he will glance at them,” Sandy said. “I can never tell how much he absorbs with a simple glance, but it must be a bunch. He always seems to know what it’s all about.

“I think a lot of these vets just absorb things by osmosis,” Fred said. “They are always too busy to sit down and read anything.”

“How are you doing this evening,” I said as I shook Fred’s hand. “I have been wanting to tell you about using that new capture drug that you got for me.”

“How did that work out for you?” Fred asked.

“Worked like a charm,” I said. “We darted a bull elk. We have captured him every year for the last couple of years. He gets sort of ornery during the rut, so we saw his antlers off just to keep his pasture mates safe. He killed a little Sika buck a couple of years ago. It was always such a struggle just using Rompun.”

“The sad news is, I hear that they are probably going to pull it off the market,” Fred said. “It’s ten times the concentration of Ketamine and Ketamine is becoming so popular as a street drug, they don’t want it out there.”

“That’s too bad, just when you find something that works and you don’t have to keep it in a safe deposit box, and they pull it off the market,” I said.

“You know when they first started using those capture guns, they used Nicotine Sulfate for the drug,” Fred said.

“That was not a very safe drug,” I said.

“Let me tell you a little story,” Fred said. “One of the Albany vets bought one of those capture guns. I walked into his clinic just as he got ready to go out on a farm call to castrate a 600-pound boar hog. He asked if I wanted to ride along and watch. I figured it would be a good show.”

“A 600-pound dose of Nicotine Sulfate loaded into one of those darts would be dangerous if it misfired,” I said.

“Let me finish. We got to the place, and they had this boar in a small shed. The vet stood at one doorway and sent me around to stand at the other doorway. They had a couple of boards tacked across the doorways, but if this boar wanted to go through them, the boards wouldn’t even slow him down.”

“So here I am, standing in the doorway,” Fred continued. “And this vet aims at the rump of the boar and pulls the trigger. This dart glances off the boar’s butt and sticks in the top of my Wellingtons. Probably would have got me if I hadn’t had on those leather boots.”

“While, a 600 pounds dose of Nicotine Sulfate, you would not have even survived for the ambulance to get to you,” I said. “Would not have made much of a difference. There is no antidote. You would have been a dead man.”

“The face of the old vet was pretty pale as he was looking at that dart stuck in my pants leg,” Fred said. “He thought it was in my leg. That sort of brought that farm call to a conclusion. He was just getting some color back into his face by the time we got back to town. He stopped at the back of the old T&R truck stop and threw that capture gun into their dumpster.”

“And I thought I was the one who would be telling the story this evening,” I said.

“What are you going to be doing this weekend?” Fred asked. 

“I don’t have anything planned,” I said. “If this place doesn’t tie me down, I am probably free.”

“I am putting together a float trip down the Molalla River. I thought I would see if I could get you and another vet hooked up with a steelhead.”

The fishing trip was a soaker. No fish, just a lot of rain. But it was a good time. Free time away from the practice was precious in those early days.

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