Welp, we've inadvertently adopted a cat.
We already have several cats (and chickens, a mouse, a shitton of parrots, two foot-long plecos. . . ), but there's this one old timer who comes by our house for breakfast every day. He is a raggedy gray tabby, and he's clearly a stray-- he always looks scraggly and thin, and he isn't neutered, and he's always looking like he just got out of a fight. He used to be very shy around us, but in the couple years he's come around he's gotten bolder. These days, he let's us pet him, follows us if we have the food dish, and he's stopped running away when we walk by him when he's sunning himself on the porch. For our part, we feed him whenever he comes by, and we try to give him flea medicine if we've got doses leftover from our own cats.
The cat (who we call Grayson) is always looking a little fucked up, but a couple days ago, he came by limping, with his front paw swollen up.
Quick Backstory: For almost ten years, there was a very feral calico cat who lived in the neighborhood, mostly in our backyard and the yards of our neighbors. She was the mother to a number of cats we wound up adopting before we finally managed to get her TNR'd. We called her Slutty Grandma Cat, and despite knowing us for 10 years, with us feeding her and taking in her kids, she was a colossal, raging bitch who wanted to tear out our eyes. So of course we loved her.
One day, Slutty Grandma Cat showed up limping, with a swollen up paw. We took her to the vets, and it turns out that someone had shot her paw with a BB Gun. When the vet tried to fix it, her paw fell apart, and due to her age and the severity of the damage, we wound up putting her to sleep on the vet's advice.
So when Grayson showed up with a messed up paw, needless to say we were all having traumatized flashbacks of Slutty Grandma Cat. My sister and I called our usual vet and found them booked for the week. We called around other local vets, and they were booked too. Eventually we went to the same animal hospital that cared for Bosco, my sister's cat when she broke her jaw.
It took an hour for them to see him, and then another four hours for them to give him back. His paw was infected, but there was no break or anything; it seems he likely got into a fight, got a scratch or puncture, and that got infected. They did a "clip and clean", pumped him full of antibiotics and pain meds, and told us that he was FIV positive. they encouraged us to get him neutered at the least, and to try and convert him into a housecat if possible.
So now he's in "Baby Jail".
I've already scheduled a follow up appointment with our family vet to check on the paw, get him his vaccinations, and see about getting him neutered. So far, he is remarkably chill about being inside, but that may be all the pain medications he's on. I don't know how well he'll react once the pharmaceutical veneer is peeled away.
Unrelated: Sonion is also doing well.