Murphy's Law Rescue - Arizona

08/03/2025

This right here is why spay and neuter is so important. It saves countless little lives that ends slowly and far younger than they ever should.

Momma was a stray fed by a lovely good Samaritan that found themselves in the hospital. With no one to care for momma Desert Cat Rescue & Sanctuary Arizona - DCRSA was contacted... When we saw they were in need of a bottle feeder we offered to assist. Thank you Cheryl Christensen for entrusting us with this transfer and these precious little lives.

Mamma is affectionately named Sahara (she has dried up, likely due to stress, and cannot feed her babies)

Orange little boy is Cacti
Orange female is Mirage (appropriate to those in the know)
Black male is Canyon and he appears to be fading and will likely not make it 24 hours.
Tan male is Dusty and he is actively passing.

As sad as these images are - their lives mattered and they deserve to be introduced and honored with their siblings. And maybe, just maybe, their little lives will help others recognize the suffering...

Many vets, included, offer free TNR for ferals because they all know this suffering all too well. Please consider helping those not yet even born by spaying and neutering your local colonies. The impact it will have on those you reach spans the generations.

07/22/2025

This kitten is being spayed. She is only 4.5 months old and she was pregnant. She is a baby herself, now thankfully spared the misery of raising a litter on the streets. This is the battle we are up against: babies who can have babies, cats who can get pregnant while already pregnant or as soon as two weeks after giving birth. This is why we implore you, if you see a cat, please fix a cat, pregnant or not. We fix kittens at two months, two lbs, following shelter medicine protocols in our clinic. We are begging you to help us help them. Feeding cats without fixing= breeding. Photo credit: Dr. Erica Unz, DVM.

07/22/2025

Welcome to the Murphy's Law Rescue family young Theo... He's named in honor of Malcolm Jamal Warner.

We believe Theo to be about 4 weeks old.

He seems to have a rather distended belly so deworming has already begun.

He's very sweet and snuggly.

07/11/2025

We will be at OK Feed on Ft Lowell road 10-3. We wanted to get some info out on the wonderful cats and kittens that will be joining us

Madame Pele is a beautiful four year-old long haired female. She just gave birth a couple of months back to a beautiful litter. Unfortunately, they came to the rescue with upper respiratory infection and despite all of our efforts and her efforts, we lost three of her kittens. She has one kitten, Hana, not ready for her spay and joining at events. She will join her mama in the near future.

Sable and Mabel are 3 year old sisters. Sable has white socks on her front paws, is very shy, but also very sweet and loving. Mabel has white mittens, is very very outgoing and playful. She recently had a litter of kittens, but unfortunately, the same upper respiratory infection took the whole litter. She has remained extremely involved with her sisters babies, Sable will have two of her children at the event Wardell and Vesta. All of these for play hard together and are very loving. The two kittens energy keeps them playing with adults or the two smaller kittens constantly. Sable might do best if she were allowed to go with one of her adult littermates.- Madame Pele, uncle Maui, or sisterMabel. We would allow two of the adult cats to go together if one is with Mabel) at a bonded buddy adoption fee of $200.

Maui is Madam Pele‘s son who is two years old. He is a super sweet and loving boy. He will lay in your lap for hours purring away. He plays with everyone from the group that he came from. He can be very talkative.

I will share with you pictures of Hana and YaYa but those two girls are not ready.Hana as mentioned is Pele‘s daughter. Yaya came to us as a foster while her normal foster was on vacation. We had her in a split kennel with the litter box and other weighted items separating the upper and lower halves. Determined kitties and mamas will find a way to be together. And Yaya kept making her way down with Madame Pele and Hana. Well, Pele is not nursing the kittens more than once a day, she is frequently grooming, both. Yaya appears as though she has always been Hana so we made the decision to just leave her with her current foster and the family. She seems to have “chosen”. Those two girls will be ready soon and can start coming to events. Both are extremely outgoing and loving, and by then should be ready to go to homes solo (or together if desired).

Everybody will have their shots, including rabies, be spayed, or neutered and microchip. If you have an interest in any of these or know someone who would be, please share this post.

The adoption fee is 150 per cat or kitten with a second kitten being adopted for the fee of 125. Except as noted with Sabel potentially being adopted with another adult for 200

07/05/2025

Is early weaning the foundation of separation anxiety in dogs?

I started working in the veterinary field in the 80s. I worked at a small 2 doctor practice on the west side of Idaho Falls. We did 2-4 surgeries each morning and saw a few appointments in the late morning and then started appointments again at around 1 pm in the afternoon. We washed and resterilized all the surgery gloves until they had holes in them and the syringes as well. The x-ray machine was a behemoth and it was dip tanks to develop. IV fluids came in glass bottles and thiopental was the anesthesia of choice. And, and most people didn’t wean their puppies until they were 12 weeks old.

I remember that it was just starting to change and people were starting to do it younger but for the most part babies stayed with the mom until she started kicking them off and making them grow up. It is kind of like when we parents are telling our seniors in high school that they need to go out and find a job and be prepared to live on their own. It was a slow and gradual process with increased training of the pups to learn how to be on their own and do their own and figure life out on their own with needing momma to show them. We didn’t seem to have separation anxiety back then.

When I graduated from veterinary school in 1997 the weaning age had become 8 weeks. Dogs were just starting to become more of a family member and less of an animal and more people were making them and having puppies is hard and takes a lot of work and they stink and so all of a sudden it was no longer about what was best for the puppy but what was best for the human and a few studies that could show that it seemed like physically it didn’t matter and *boom* all of sudden it was the accepted age to pull puppies away from their mom and send them out into the world. I will liken it to deciding that your 14 year old can go out and get a job and be on their own. We were just at the tip of starting to see anxiety issues but it was attributed to people who were too involved in their dogs life.

After a few year of mixed animal practice I started a large animal only mobile practice and drove around the state taking care of horses and cows and did not pay much attention to what was going on in the small animal world. Then, then I had kids of my own and so the conception and realization of Desert Cross Veterinary Hospital became a thing. I had been out of school for a little over a decade and the people bringing in puppies for vaccines were now bringing in puppies at 6 weeks and often younger. At the time I, like all the rest of us, assumed that since they were able to eat solid food, send them out the door. Once again, doing what is best and easiest for us humans mentally and economically but without consideration of what we might be doing to the emotional and mental health of the puppy that is barely figuring out life and is not thrust out the door and on their own with no mom and no siblings and just some human that leaves it in a crate for half the day because it isn’t old enough yet to have great control over its bladder and re**um and doesn’t know anything other than peeing and pooping whenever it wants to. Imagine now that you are shoving your 9 year old kid out the door and telling them to figure out life on their own.

I do think that anxiety, regardless of how one wants to define it or name it, is multi factorial. There is rarely ever just one cause. I believe that our overly processed and highly inflammatory diets play a big role in anxiety in our dogs as well as just how we treat them and cater to them and treat them like they are humans when they are dogs and while smart, they do not have the ability to reason and act far more out of instinct, an instinct that is severely handicapped because they were ripped from their mother before learning how to deal with and navigate their instincts.

There is not a single day that I go through any longer where I do not have people ask me about anxiety in their dog or tell me that their dog has anxiety. It is an epidemic, a pandemic if you will and it is all our fault, us humans because we want what is easiest for us and we want what we want right now and we do not want to wait. We selfishly demand puppies so that they imprint on us without realizing that by doing so we are destroying their mental and emotional health, all for us and our wants without considering what is best for the dog.

If you are going to get a puppy and you are paying a lot of money for it, shoot even if you are getting it for free, tell the breeder you don’t want it until it is 12 weeks old. I promise you, it will grow to love you and be all that you want it to be but it will be able to do that in a more mentally healthy way. If you are a breeder, consider keeping your puppies until they are 12 weeks old and allow for a more natural weaning process to take place. I know, I know some mammas hate their puppies but maybe those mammas shouldn’t be having puppies if they are not mentally in a spot where they can love them and train them?

Maybe, just maybe it is time that we humans actually consider what is best of the dogs and not what is best, easiest or what we want. Just some food for thought.

06/29/2025

I recently was in an exam room with a client who was complaining about all the feral cats that came around their property. I listened and then I mentioned that we have a feral cat program.

I told them that if they trapped them and brought them in we would fix them at no charge and then they could release them back. They looked at me incredulously and said that it was not their cats and therefore not their responsibility to trap them. “Let nature take its course.”

I looked at them and as nicely as I could explained that nature was cruel and having cats breed and reproduce and kittens die was not pretty and not really fair when we could trap and fix and decrease the population in a more humane way. They disagreed and that was the end of the conversation.

Feral cats didn’t ask to be feral. It is not their fault that they are feral. They are just trying to live and survive and they need some human help to do that.

If you are feeding feral cats instead of letting nature takes its course, trap them and bring them in, no more than two at a time, and we will fix and you can turn them back out.

God gave us the job to care for His creation, His animals, and it is my life’s work to do that to the best of my ability and that includes taking care of the animals that have no one.

Help us to help them. Trap and bring them in to be spayed or neutered and then take them back and release them. Thank you.

06/17/2025

Exciting news!!!!!

06/01/2025

https://youtube.com/shorts/xzAz1wzyPf4?si=BMkASVaNnYorCQw6

05/24/2025

Please watch!

Donate if you can, but please share! Let's get this message out there!

05/14/2025

Would you take a look at this little cutie!

Yesterday's intake. Once she is out of her initial quarantine she will join the other weeds, as she appears to be the same age.

05/06/2025

https://youtu.be/Bv9q5s2XYLM?si=YPOIF8DENqNFtkYd

Bottle babies playing with their foster sisters on bath day.

04/25/2025

April showers bring May flowers?

Well, when it rains it pours and her we have two more little flowers...

Tan and white is Larkspur a little 12 day old male... he has lost two sisters and we have him in quarantine until we know he's safe to integrate.

Black and white is Sombrero (name of a play on the flower (Mexican Hat Flower) and he estimated at about 4ish weeks based on weight and size of tiny teeth.