After their homes were destroyed and their paws charred, several cats brought to the UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital have found homes with the staff members who bandaged the animals' wounds.

“So many people were so deeply affected by this; there was an overwhelming desire to be more involved with the pets,” said Rob Warren, communications and marketing officer for the School of Veterinary Medicine.

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When the Butte and Valley fires swept through Northern California this summer, the school’s Veterinary Emergency Response Team sprang into action. Usually it treats animals at the site of disasters, but the devastation from the fires was so vast that 56 animals were brought to the Davis campus. Of those, 40 were cats; most had burns to all four paws, and their faces and ears.

As veterinary staff members worked around the clock to treat the massive influx of animals that forced the hospital to convert storage closets and waiting areas into burn wards, others sought out the animals’ owners.

'Barn cats' among the injured

Warren said many residents in the path of the fires had just minutes to evacuate, and it’s much harder to quickly gather up a cat when leaving than it is a dog or other pet. In other cases, cats brought to the hospital were “barn cats” who made homes on the properties of sometimes unwitting residents.

Warren coordinated a wide-reaching outreach effort online and with media outlets to reunite as many animals and owners as possible, and said veterinary staff “worked long hours on top of their other job duties.”

Many hospital staff members also took cats home as foster pets while the search for their owners continued.

“We didn’t think we were going to be able to keep him — someone must be missing him,” said Brandie Cates, small-animal emergency technician, who fostered a 6-month-old kitten that had suffered smoke inhalation prior to being rescued in Middletown.

Impossible to resist

A waiting period expired recently and UC Davis staff members who had been fostering the animals could formally adopt them. Four did, including Cates and Professor Erik Wisner, chair of the Department of Surgical and Radiological Sciences and associate director of the hospital.

“She was the last cat in one of the wards who had not had a volunteer to foster,” Wisner said. “How can you resist not fostering the last unfostered cat?”

The cat, who came in with the name Smudge and has since been renamed Ember, had burns “down to the bone” on all four paws and minor burns to her face and ears. Wisner said the adolescent cat was finally off pain medication and her personality was starting to emerge.

Other animals were adopted by the first-responders who found them. Area firefighters took some home, and earlier this month a California Highway Patrol officer adopted another.

Joyful reunions

In all, 17 of the 56 animals were reunited with their owners. Warren said the search process was exhausting, but it was made worthwhile each time a family came in to pick up its beloved pet. He recalled a family with young children who had lost their home but were able to pick up their two cats from UC Davis.

56 animals came to @ucdavisvetmed during #ValleyFire & #ButteFire. All adopted but 2 goats & a pig. Read more Tues. pic.twitter.com/pmtIjRLjfd

— Dateline UC Davis (@UCDavisDateline) November 17, 2015

“I can only imagine what it must be like for kids to lose everything,” Warren said. “They just looked so happy to see their cats again.”

All 40 cats are either back home or in new homes.

2 goats and a pig remain

As of today (Nov. 17), the hospital has only three animals remaining of the fire refugees, two goats and a pig. Officials know the owners, but their farms were destroyed by the fires, so they have no place to bring the animals.

Wilbur, the 550-pound pig displaced during the Butte Fire, still has a dinner-plate-sized burn on his shoulder. As fourth-year veterinary student Molly Liepnieks dressed it with honey last week, Wilbur ambled around the perimeter of his straw-covered pen, scratching the healing wound against the walls.

The goats, Middletowners Fraidy and Ernie, both sustained burns to their faces. The bandages have come off Ernie’s ears, and Fraidy — who lost significant portions of his ears, as well as skin around his eyelids and mouth, to the flames — still has a rumenotomy tube, a remnant of a recent surgery, hanging from his flank.

Veterinary staff is seeking homes for the livestock, and may have already found a new home for Wilbur.

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