Clowder 9 Ranch, Buhl, ID (2026)

11/12/2026

I think Benny has officially aged me about ten years in the past week. 😂

Every time I think we've got a handle on what's happening with this little guy, something changes. One morning he's uncomfortable, running a fever, and barely interested in food. A few hours later, he's practically bouncing off the walls, demanding dinner, and trying to climb everything he can get his tiny paws on.

It's exhausting. And honestly, a little maddening.

We're still dealing with some GI issues, inconsistent appetite, and temperature fluctuations that don't always make sense. We have some theories, but we still don't have all the answers.

But there's also a LOT to be encouraged about.

Benny is grooming himself again, sleeping more comfortably, playing, and showing increasing interest in eating on his own. He's even figuring out how to CHEW his food, which has been a struggle since he arrived.

He's also graduated to a larger kennel because he's becoming more active and needs room to move around.

And perhaps the biggest news? He's approaching 450 grams!

Considering he was down to 308 grams Sunday morning, that's a pretty significant improvement. He's still terribly underweight for his age, but we're finally seeing some progress on the scale.

We're continuing nutritional support, medications, and close monitoring while his little body works through whatever has been going on. Some days are better than others, and sometimes those changes happen within hours.

I wish I could say we've figured it all out. We haven't. And I wish recovery came with a predictable timeline. Apparently Benny has other ideas.

But he's here. He's growing. He's becoming more independent. And he's giving us plenty of reasons to keep hoping.

Thank you to everyone who's continued to check on him and keep him in your prayers. I truly appreciate it. I continue to thank God for the progress we've seen and pray that we can keep moving in the right direction.

Benny still has some challenges ahead, but we're making progress.

And if he could just give me a few consecutive days without something new to worry about, that would be fantastic. 😂❤️

11/09/2026

What a difference 5 days can make. 💜🐾

Benny came to the ranch on Wednesday at 9 weeks old, barely 350 grams and quite literally skin and bones. Could we turn things around?

The days blurred into feedings every 2½–3 hours, meds, fluids, supplements, weigh-ins, laundry...oh, and homework!

Sometimes he'd perk up, greet me at the kennel door, or curl up in my robe and purr. Other times he'd grow quiet, looking even more fragile.

By Sunday morning, despite everything, Benny had dropped to 308 grams.

For days I prayed for healing, wisdom, and strength. Somewhere between the exhaustion, uncertainty, and endless syringes of food, little things began to change.

His 💩 improved. His gums became pinker. He started taking little mouthfuls on his own, demanding room service, and his brightness returned.

Sunday evening: 351 grams. Hope?

Monday morning? 361 GRAMS!! 😭💗

Benny has a long road ahead. But today, we're celebrating this tiny miracle.

Many of you follow Hannah Shaw, The Kitten Lady, and cheer on Lucky Penny, another kitten battling starvation syndrome. I've followed her journey too, grateful for her ICU care and progress. Hannah has inspired me for years.

And then there's Benny.

His hospital? A fifth-wheel trailer in rural Southern Idaho, with heating pads, syringes, meds, and one sleep-deprived human. 😂

A far cry from an ICU.

As I work toward becoming a rural veterinarian, this reinforces something I believe deeply: the ability to afford gold-standard care shouldn't determine whether an animal deserves a chance. Compassionate veterinary medicine sometimes means working thoughtfully and creatively with what's available.

Different resources. Same love for these little lives.

To everyone who has prayed for Benny, checked in, encouraged us, and celebrated his tiny victories: THANK YOU. Your kindness means so much.

I give God the glory for his progress and thank Him for the gifts and abilities He's given me to help this little boy. 🙏 We're still taking it one meal, one gram, one day at a time.

Today, though, 361 grams feels like a whole lot of hope 💜🐾

11/07/2026

🐾 Benny Update: Still Fighting. Still Hoping. 💛

Our tiny little Benny could really use some extra thoughts and prayers right now. 🙏

It's been a roller coaster since bringing him home Wednesday. There have been so many encouraging little victories. His stools have improved tremendously, he's maintaining his body temperature, using his litter box, walking better, and even coming to the kennel door to greet us.

He loves his warm blankets, cuddles, and being tucked inside my robe, where he purrs his little heart out. ❤️

But despite those positives, we're facing one very frightening reality.

Benny is still losing weight.

At nine weeks old, he weighs barely 300 grams. He's quite literally skin and bones, and despite frequent assisted feedings, supportive care, fluids, nutritional supplements, and medications to address suspected infections and parasites, his little body is struggling to keep up.

He shows interest in food but has difficulty eating enough on his own. Whether we're dealing with intestinal damage, an infection, or something else entirely, we simply don't have all the answers.

And that's the hardest part.

We see progress. We celebrate it. And then the scale reminds us just how fragile he really is.

We're adjusting his feeding schedule to every 2½–3 hours, continuing his supportive care, and giving him every opportunity we reasonably can to turn this around.

We're not giving up on Benny. And as far as we can tell, Benny isn't giving up either.

But we're also realistic. Sometimes the damage is greater than our ability to repair it. Sometimes, despite everything, love and determination aren't enough.

And that's a heartbreaking reality of rescue.

But here's what I believe:

Love alone can't save them. But without love, we wouldn't even try. 💛

So please keep our little Benny in your thoughts and prayers. Pray for healing, for strength, for his little body to finally start absorbing the nourishment he so desperately needs.

And maybe, just maybe, for a few precious grams in the right direction.

One meal. One gram. One hour at a time.🐾❤️ We love you, Benny. ❤️

11/05/2026

💛 Meet Benny. 9 weeks old. 350 Grams of Fight. 🐾

He's got a long road ahead of him.

Benny and his siblings haven't had the easiest start in life. While the others have begun to thrive with some extra TLC, Benny has struggled to catch up.

He's severely underweight, battling gastrointestinal issues, and fighting something we haven't quite figured out yet.

And when his foster reached out to the organization for help?

The answer was euthanasia.

Not a treatment plan. Not an opportunity to investigate. Just euthanasia.

And here's where I might ruffle a few feathers. And lately, I don't care who gets their knickers in a knot about this, it needs to be addressed

It's easy to proudly wear the "no-kill" badge when the animals are healthy, adoptable, and require little more than food, shelter, and love. But what happens when they're not?

What happens when saving a life requires time, effort, resources, and a willingness to try something beyond the bare minimum?

Look, we understand limited resources. We operate on a shoestring budget ourselves. We also understand that not every animal can be saved.

But shouldn't we at least TRY? Especially for diseases or medical issues that have a treatment plan (and an inexpensive one at that).

So yesterday, Benny joined the Clowder 9 Ranch circus. 🎪🐈

He's receiving supportive care, medications, nutritional assistance, and enough warm blankets to make a tiny kitten burrito.

We've had some encouraging moments. He's eating with assistance, his gums look pinker, and he still has enough attitude to protest his medications and a much-needed t***y bath. 😂

But he's fragile. Very fragile.

We don't know how this story ends. And after everything we've experienced in rescue, we're certainly not going to promise a happy ending.

But here's what we do know.

Benny isn't a statistic. He's not an inconvenience. And his life isn't worth less because saving it might be difficult.

He's a tiny kitten who deserves a chance.

So welcome to the ranch, Benny. 💛

One meal. One p**p. One gram. One day at a time.

Because 350 grams of life is still a life worth fighting for. 🐾

10/30/2026

Well, we almost missed it…

But we couldn’t let the day end without saying:

Happy National Cat Day from the entire Clowder 9 crew! 🐾💛

To the couch thieves, blanket hogs, 3 a.m. zoomers, professional snack inspectors, medical mysteries, and tiny furry dictators who somehow run our entire lives — we love you more than you’ll ever know.

Here’s to the cats who make life messier, louder, furrier…and so much better.

Happy National Cat Day! 😻

10/25/2026

It’s been about 10 days since our last update, and apparently those 10 days came with bonus content. Enough to make it feel like it's been 60 days.

A weird kitty upper respiratory bug has been making its way through the house. Nothing life-threatening, but there has been an impressive amount of sneezing 24/7. It's fun waking up at 2 am to a kitty sneezing in your face. Everyone is eating, drinking, and mostly acting normal, but there's been extra sleeping, extra snuggles, and me staring at cats from across the room, asking 900 times a day, “Poor baby, are you okay?” We've boosted the vitamins and supplements to help, but with viruses, it's mostly a waiting game.

Thankfully, it seems to run its course pretty quickly, and everyone is doing okay.

C9R has also been a little quieter lately because, frankly, life has been LIFE-ING.

Requests for help haven't slowed down: Sick kittens. Pregnant cats. Cats hit by cars. People finding bleeding animals in parks. Rescues full. Veterinary care expensive. And somehow every phone call begins with a sentence that makes you think, “Well…crap. How can I help?”

Meanwhile, school is in full swing, chemistry has apparently morphed into a brain-eating parasite, and I have an exam coming up that would probably prefer I learn something better before I take it.

So we’ve been laying low.

C9R is Justin and me, our animal-filled household of special needs kids, and a nonprofit we somehow squeeze into the cracks of everything else. We help where we can, but right now we’ve had to get much more comfortably uncomfortable saying, “We simply can’t.”

Which is not my favorite sentence.

We’re not disappearing. We’re not giving up. We’re just going into protective mode. Taking care of the animals already here, dealing with the current round of kitty plague, keeping up with school, and trying not to adopt every problem in Southern Idaho.

Apparently that last one is considered “healthy boundaries.” Weird. 😂

So that’s where we’ve been.

A LOT tired. A little sneezy. Overly caffeinated. Slightly feral.

But still, slowly, keeping on. 🐾💛

10/15/2026

The last couple of months have brought some hard days, some losses, some scares, and a whole lot of “one thing after another.” So it never felt like there was a "right time" to post this...

But Miss Griselda has waited long enough for her moment. ❤️

Griselda came to us a few months ago with severe gingivostomatitis. Her mouth was so painful and inflamed that we ultimately made the difficult decision to remove all of her teeth.

Her recovery wasn’t perfectly smooth. The inflammation was stubborn, eating was uncomfortable, and some days we wondered what else we could do for her.

After trying an unconventional antiviral treatment, something finally shifted.

And now? Griselda is doing wonderfully.

She eats like a champ—and, hilariously, prefers dry food. She feels good. She wants attention. She wants cuddles. She wants to be wherever her person is.

And most importantly…She is ready for a home. ❤️

We don’t know much about Griselda’s life before she came to us. We estimate she’s somewhere around 5–9 years old. Her weathered little ears suggest she spent some hard winters outside, and we suspect she has two tiny, superficial BB pellets in her chest.

Whatever her story was before, she survived it.

Now she knows what it means to be warm, safe, loved, and indoors—and she has decided she is VERY much a fan. 😂 Although on warm, sunny days, she would love to have the opportunity to explore the outdoors.

She really doesn’t have special needs. She eats normal cat food, lives a normal life, and as a bonus, she will never need another dental cleaning. 😉

Griselda is sweet, affectionate, chatty, incredibly deserving, and ready for the part of her story where she gets to belong to someone forever.

If you think that someone might be you, please reach out to Clowder 9 Ranch. ❤️

This girl has earned her happily-ever-after.

10/14/2026

💔 Yesterday, we said goodbye to Princess Lola. 💔

For the past couple of weeks, Lola and her mom had been fighting hard. There were better days, little improvements, and moments when we truly thought she might be turning a corner.

But Lola began declining again, and when she returned to the veterinarian, her bloodwork showed that something much more serious was happening inside her body. Despite treatment and everything that had been done for her, she simply wasn’t responding anymore.

Sometimes there is another test, another medication, another treatment to try. And sometimes, heartbreakingly, there just isn’t.

Lola’s veterinarian did everything he could, and her mom never stopped advocating for her. There was never going to be a point where money, inconvenience, or effort stood between Lola and something that might help her. She was loved that much.

When Lola first came to C9R, she was an older kitty whose world had fallen apart. Her person had died, her future was uncertain, and for a moment it seemed there simply wasn’t a place for her anymore.

Then she met Jeni.

I truly believe those two were meant to find each other.

Jeni is one of the kindest, most compassionate people I know, with an enormous heart for cats. She gave Lola safety, patience, comfort, and a home where she could finally relax and know she belonged.

But Lola gave just as much back.

Sometimes we think we are rescuing an animal, and then somewhere along the way we realize they found a place inside us that needed them, too.

That was Jeni and Lola. They found each other at the right time and became each other’s family.

So today, I’m asking our C9R family to please keep Jeni in your prayers and send her some love. I am so proud to call this wonderful woman my friend. And beyond grateful for her kind and generous heart and the wonderful retirement life she gave this much deserving girl.

Rest peacefully, sweet Princess Lola. 👑🐾💛 You were so very loved — and you always will be.

10/06/2026

It’s been a week…and somehow it’s only Tuesday.

Actually, I think this week started sometime last week.

A few days ago, Princess Lola’s mom reached out because Lola had started declining again after what we thought was a good recovery from pancreatitis. We learned that she had gone home with only a few days of anti-nausea medication—no pain medication, no anti-inflammatory support, and a diet that really wasn’t appropriate for what she was recovering from.

So we’ve been helping where we can, with what we can, and after a couple of rough days, she is improving again. We’re moving in the right direction.

Again.

But there is another little life that I just can’t shake.

His name was Trooper.

I never met him.

He was only about 6 or 7 months old—a young, healthy kitten who ended up in foster care after one of those situations where someone “found” a kitten, couldn’t keep him, and passed the responsibility along to the person who couldn’t bring herself to say no.

About six hours after he came into foster care, Trooper began having difficulty breathing.

Here in Southern Idaho, veterinary access is already difficult. Emergency care is even harder to find. But one clinic was open that evening, and he was seen.

The diagnosis given was a parasitic infection.

His foster asked for bloodwork and X-rays.

They weren’t done...the vet refused.

Trooper was sent home.

He died overnight.

I keep coming back to that.

Would bloodwork and X-rays have saved him?

I don’t know.

Maybe they would have. Maybe they wouldn’t have. Maybe we would have discovered something devastating that we couldn’t fix.

But we would have had more of the story.

And maybe—just maybe—there would have been another option. A humane option.

That uncertainty is what hurts.

I don’t write this from a place of believing I never make mistakes. I do. I have made plenty of them, and I will make more. I am not yet a veterinarian. I don’t have all the education, all the answers, or all the diagnostic tools.

But I do know that when an animal is struggling, especially when someone is asking for answers and willing to pursue them, they deserve to be taken seriously.

Trooper deserved that.

Lola deserves that.

All of them do.

I’m getting ready to begin writing my veterinary school applications, and lately I keep thinking about every animal I’ve watched get passed along, pushed aside, turned away, undertreated, or lost in a system that simply doesn’t have enough time, people, resources—or sometimes enough willingness to look a little deeper.

I know I won’t be able to save every animal.

No veterinarian can.

But I can decide what kind of veterinarian I want to become.

I can listen.

I can ask another question.

I can investigate when something doesn’t fit.

I can explain what I know and what I don’t know.

I can treat the person standing across from me like a partner in that animal’s care.

And when I don’t have the answer, I can keep looking.

Right now I am sad. I’m angry. I’m frustrated. I’m confused. And I am still reeling from a kitten I never even got to meet.

But maybe that grief gets to become something.

Maybe it becomes fuel.

Because someday, when someone walks through my door carrying their Trooper—or their Lola—I want them to know that they were heard.

And that I tried.

Rest easy, little Trooper. You mattered. 🐾💛

And Lola…keep fighting, sweet girl. We’re still right here with you.

10/01/2026

💛 Princess Lola is home! 💛

We wanted to share a happy update on our sweet C9R alum, Princess Lola.

After spending about 24 hours at the veterinary hospital, Lola was diagnosed with pancreatitis, which fit very well with her symptoms and bloodwork. She received IV fluids, anti-nausea medication, pain control, and plenty of monitoring while they made sure she was comfortable and eating again.

And thankfully, she did exactly that. ❤️

Lola is now home with her wonderful mom, Jeni, eating her new diet, feeling much better, and—according to tonight’s report—already getting back to her normal little self (which includes sleeping next to her mom's feet).

We also want to give a huge shout-out to Jeni. She knows Lola well, recognized quickly that something just wasn’t right, and didn’t wait to have her seen. That quick response meant Lola was able to get the care she needed before she became even sicker or more uncomfortable. Knowing what is normal for your pet—and paying attention when that changes—really matters.

And to all of our C9R family, friends, followers, and supporters: thank you for every prayer, good thought, message, and well wish sent Lola’s way. We appreciate you more than you know.

This sweet girl is home, she’s happy, she’s eating, and we have a good plan moving forward.

That’s a pretty wonderful update. 🐾💛

Clowder 9 Ranch

11/12/2026

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