NEPA Scene Staff

SHELTER SUNDAY: Meet Jersey (blonde Chihuahua) and Hope (tabby kitten)

SHELTER SUNDAY: Meet Jersey (blonde Chihuahua) and Hope (tabby kitten)
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Blue Chip Farm Animal Refuge teams up with NEPA Scene every week for Shelter Sunday, a post that features one dog, one cat, and occasionally some surprises up for adoption in the hopes of finding them a loving home.

Blue Chip Farm (974 Lockville Rd., Dallas) is a no-kill shelter, a place where no animal is too old or too unwanted to find a warm bed, good food, and most of all, love. Their mission is to provide a sanctuary where older, stray, abandoned, sick, or abused animals can wait to be adopted or simply live out their lives in safety and peace.

Visiting hours are Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday from noon-5 p.m. Other hours are available by appointment. Call 570-333-5265 or visit bcfanimalrefuge.org for more information.

This week, both animals are in need of very special homes.

Jersey

Jersey is a five-month-old blonde Chihuahua who was recently treated for heartworm. She needs an out-of-shelter environment ASAP – a temporary foster or permanent home.

When heartworms die, pieces of the decomposing worm bodies can block blood vessels in the lungs, causing a potentially fatal pulmonary embolism (blood clot). If her heart rate is increased by exercise or excitement, the worm pieces can be forced into the tiny blood vessels of her lungs, increasing the chances of complications.

Jersey should be kept indoors and/or in a kennel most of the time. When she needs to go outside to relieve herself, she needs to be kept on her leash so that a sudden encounter with a squirrel or other distraction doesn’t send her running. Her adoption fee is $300.

Hope

Hope is a 12-week-old kitten who lost sight in one eye due to an untreated eye infection.

You may not realize it, but the normal eyesight of a cat is superior to the eyesight of a human with 20/20 vision. This means cats are already starting out with an advantage over us, but that’s not the end of the story.

Along with superior vision, cats are equipped with other heightened senses that help them find their way around. A cat’s whiskers are an extremely important part of its sensory system, and so are the hairs between the pads of the paws. By no means as sensitive as a dog’s olfactory system, a cat’s sense of smell is also far more delicate than our own. They can smell things we normally only rely on our vision to detect, such as water.

Since cats make such good use of their other senses, they are not at as much of a disadvantage when their sight begins to fail, so Hope certainly does not act like she has a handicap. She runs, plays, and jumps with the best of them!