Saturday, February 27, 2010

BooBoo & Friends Henry

BooBoo, Trixi, Kalli & Oscar Henry The last litter of the Henry household. Cute as buttons and neurologically impaired. They have cerebellar hypoplasia. It's a condition they received while in the womb. Its thought they contracted panleukopenia. It caused damage their cerebellum. Their balance and gait is affected. They were tested for a number of things, all negative. So enutero panluc is the default. Boo Boo, the cat on the right, is the most effected. She has a terrible time walking and spends much of her time rolling over on her back. We're in the process of developing a special wheelchair of sorts. Amazingly enough, we've gotten 2 litters so far, both from different sources, both CH babies. So we've done some research talked to our vet, talked to Treehouse, who's had quite a few CH babies. Cerebellar hypoplasia causes jerky movements, tremors and generally uncoordinated movement . The animal often falls down and has trouble walking. Tremors increase when the animal is excited and subside when at ease.

The disease does not get better or worse with age, but the cat or dog can usually learn to somewhat compensate for it and should have a normal lifespan. Most afflicted animals can lead a fairly normal life if special considerations for the animal's disability are taken by the pet's owner. It's our understanding that they're more suseptible to infection like URI's and such so we're sure to give them our usual regiment of immune boosting supplements and good food to assure the best possible health now and long term.

We've listed the litter on petfinder.com, they aren't ready for adoption but we wanted to see what kind of response we might get and we've received several calls from people aware of CH and interested in adopting them. They won't be ready for adoption for about 6 week but it's nice to know there are people who care.

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