Last night I went to the vet with Megan, a new local volunteer. Coincidentally, she lives in the same apartment that we used to live in when we first came to Japan, and works for the same board of education. I visited her apartment and was amazed to find that they are still renting furniture and household goods for the staff, and that they are still renting the same blanket that we used in 1993! Megan is fostering a kitten (Alice) with a bad paw, and we went to have it checked at the clinic. The x-ray revealed that it had been dislocated when the kitten was very young (now aprox. 4 months old), and that combined with malnutrition caused the bones to develop strangely. She walks on the side of her paw/leg--the paw part is kind of floppy and she doesn't seem able to use it well. We talked about what an operation might be able to do, but decided that it wasn't going to make much of an improvement, and she seems to have accepted her handicap. She's a bit shy, but is warming up to people little by little. We decided to bring Willy, who has been staying at the clinic since his rescue at about 1 week old, to Megan's place to join Alice. Willy was very friendly at the clinic, and the idea was that he would encourage Alice to be more friendly as well as give her someone to play with. However, he was a completely different kitten, when we got him home from the clinic! He wouldn't let us pick him up and growled or hissed constantly. My guess is that he's been on his own from a very young age, living in the incubator at the clinic, and the new smells/sounds of life in the real world were all too overwhelming for him. He seemed a little more relaxed when I left this afternoon, so fingers crossed that he will settle and that these two kittens will become fast friends. While we were waiting at the clinic we saw a very cute kitten and then found out it has FIP...so sad. We looked in on the newest 5 kittens that we are helping our vet to rehome, after he found them abandoned. They are a cute bunch, and so friendly (see more pictures and their sweet new names on our nursery page). We also saw Michan, a stray cat that one of the volunteers rescued after it was hit by a car. He was very wild when she brought him to the clinic, and had severe injuries--both hips broken and some bones crushed. This is a case when I would have thought we should euthanize him...he was very unhappy to be in the cage, and in a lot of pain. An operation wasn't possible, and rehab seemed unlikely. Yet the vet decided we should give recovery a try. Somehow the bones fused, he adjusted to life indoors and now he is miraculously a friendly happy boy. He's not a fan at all of other cats, so he's still hanging out at the clinic until we can find him a good home. He wobbles a bit, but walks around fairly well. The vet has a small outdoor enclosure that Michan really loves to have a little bug catching (and eating!) exercise in, so hopefully his new home will have a similarly safe outdoor access.