January 4, 2026

𝐃𝐚𝐲 𝟒: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐦 𝐁𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐦

Today was a day of preparation. Thankfully, not every day comes with excitement. Today was pretty uneventful in the grand scheme of things, and sometimes that's exactly what we need.

Each Sunday, we prepare for our "doctor day." Monday is when our shelter veterinarian is in. The rest of the week, I'm carrying out her treatment plans for the cats.

Sunday is a day for getting surgery ready. There are many pieces of equipment that go into preparing for procedures—from the surgery suite itself to the instruments, the sterile drapes, the endotracheal tubes, and everything in between. While the team is setting surgery up, I'm writing out exam sheets for every patient she'll see tomorrow. Those of you who follow my weekly photo dump have seen the photo of our whiteboard from doctor/surgery day. It can be intense at times.

Sunday is also when we bring cats back to fast for procedures, run bloodwork so it's ready for her to view on Monday, and make sure everything is in order for the smoothest day possible. Insert the cats... they don't care how much we prep or what we're hoping to do. In the end, it's always about their agenda, and they love to throw us curveballs.

For example, last week we were supposed to do a dental on Escalante. We learned something about him that day: he's a mean drunk, and his pre-anesthetic cocktail did not go well. He refused to get sleepy, and one of the drugs made him agitated. We ended up having to abort and scrap the procedure altogether. Tomorrow, God willing, we'll get to try again—but this time with a different pre-anesthetic protocol. His mouth is ouchy, so we really need to get it done.

Last week, we had two surgery days and caught up on all of our spays and neuters thanks to an amazing volunteer veterinarian. We ended our year having done 499 total spays and neuters! It's the first time we've gone into the new year caught up, and it felt great!  My favorite part of today was running recheck bloodwork on our clinic cat, Ricki Lake. She was previously in liver failure. Being new to the shelter and losing everything they know is hard. A lot of cats will lose their will to eat, which is very dangerous. She's been very difficult to get out of this rut. She's totally herself now but still doesn't want to eat well. Thankfully, her bloodwork showed that she is recovering! I feel like I can finally breathe as far as she's concerned.

Tomorrow's agenda includes the dental on Escalante, a multiple mass removal on a five-month-old kitten, and an exam on a very fearful cat that just came to us from El Jefe Cat Cafe. He's having some skin issues, but he's very scared and not used to being handled. The wonderful thing about what we do is that we don't have to force anything on him. We can safely sedate him, do the full exam, and then wake him up—and he won't remember a thing. It's the best way to treat a cat that fearful. Hopefully we can work with him and get him to a better place with some time, patience, and love.

That's all I've got for today as I need to get my rest for our busy day. Tomorrow is my Wednesday, but most of you will just be starting your week—so I hope this week is everything you want it to be! Until tomorrow...