HandiCats Available

(Please read this before inquiring about an adoption)

IMPORTANT CHANGES REGARDING
PLACEMENT OF YOUR CAT OR KITTEN

Every life has worth and every kitten or adult cat from Donegal Cattery deserves a home with someone who will love and care for that kitty for the rest of its life. From time to time a kitten will be born at Donegal Cattery with a genetic propensity for a disease or with a weakness that predisposes them to viral or other risks. Every possible step has been taken by me, their breeder, to produce the “perfect” baby, including screening for disease when possible by DNA and ultrasounds. But having only “perfect” cats just isn’t how life works.

My husband’s half brother was the fourth child in the family and was born with a heart defect. They were very poor, and his parents made the heart-wrenching decision to give him up for adoption, so that he could get the best possible medical care. Medicaid didn’t exist back then. That baby was raised by a loving couple and went on to become a doctor.

We’ve all seen people with abnormalities or handicaps at some point in our lives. In this case, the parents loved that child so much that they wanted to give him every chance to survive and go on to provide great joy for the parents who were able to provide for his “special needs.” And so it is in the world of Persian cats, as it is in many animal species. All breeders will experience it if they breed long enough. My breeding experience has spanned nearly two decades. If it were up to my heart, I would keep them all, but like human parents (birth, adopted, or foster) as a breeder I can only keep so many cats and offer them the love and the care that they need both physically and financially.

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Listed below are the Donegal “special needs” kitties that are currently ready for your consideration for adoption. If you are unsure or need a little tug on the heartstrings, continue reading after you review their biographies. The stories of Donegal’s successful “special needs” placements will tickle your hearts and put a big smile on your face. Examples of successful placements can be viewed on the HandiCats Adopted page.

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Donegal’s One Last Dance (Danni) Solid Black spayed Persian female DOB:  7/26/14 Danni is a stunning black Persian female with awesome, round copper eyes. She has retired from breeding due to Hypertension (HTN). I had taken her in at three years of age for her baseline cardiac ultrasound. I normally do that at two years to check for Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM). But she was nursing babies when that round of testing came about and I didn’t want to stress her. She tends to stress easier than most Persian cats. Her ultrasound revealed very slight thickening of the left ventricle (LVH) with systolic anterior motion of the mitral valve (SAM). Such a condition would typically be interpreted as HCM, especially when that disease is so prevalent in Persian cats. But I questioned that diagnosis because her parents at age six and eleven years have perfectly normal hearts, and four to six years is the typical age of morphological changes in the heart. That is not to say that her condition is definitively not HCM based on her parents lack of morphology. As yet, there is no way to test for it other than by cardiac ultrasound. In Danni’s case however the HCM diagnosis just didn’t seem to fit any of her genetics, especially with the onset at such a young age. In researching the combination of LVH and SAM, HTN can be a sole cause of those two cardiac changes combined. So I had the vet check Danni’s blood pressure and BINGO! She registered with a very high blood pressure. Her veterinarian prescribed Norvasc, a calcium channel blocker prescription medicine. Since she has been on the medicine she seems less timid, so I can only presume she feels better. Danni will do best either as an only cat or with one or two other laid back kitties. Dogs or other pets may be too stressful unless they are very calm animals and she is slowly introduced. We can discuss this on a case by case basis. My main goal is to find the best adoptive home for Danni.

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