Dawn & I walk on a trail by a river just outside of town here every weekday morning, we started our walk at 8:30 this morning & everything was normal, but by the time we came back over an hour later we heard the desperate cries of what sounded like a very tiny kitten. We left the trail & started trying to locate the kitten, searching through the bush it seemed to be in, but we couldn’t find it anywhere. Dawn climbed further down the embankment, moving the bush around, looking closer until she finally found the tiny, newborn kitten.

It was tiny, black (with white markings) & very hungry & scared, she picked it up & it clung closely to her, looking for milk & warmth. Fortunately, we have another friend, Vicki, who often fosters orphaned & abandoned kittens & was ready for this one, so Dawn took it over there & dropped it off. We’re all pretty sure that someone took the poor little thing out there & dumped it, because they weren’t prepared to handle kittens (how many there were to begin with, we have no idea, we only found one) or the responsibility of pet ownership.

Getting a pet isn’t like getting an auto insurance quote, you don’t just get it & forget it, there are responsibilities involved, like spaying & neutering & when you don’t get that done in time, you take care of the mama & the babies & make sure they get a good, safe home (I know, I have 5 kittens right now that are safe, well fed & healthy). You take them to the vet, you get vaccinations, you take care of them.Otherwise, why even have any pets?

I get so angry when I see these things happen, that poor kitten would have died today if we hadn’t been tenacious & looked until we found it, another woman stopped when she heard it, looked around a little, but didn’t search like we did. There was no way, after hearing that sad cry that we were walking away until we found it & rescued it. Take responsibility for Pete’s sake, people!

Caffeinate me!

 

One day, back in the fall of 1998 (it was about 2-3 days before Thanksgiving) , Rhi came home from playing at the school playground with a tiny, fluffy gray kitten that she claimed “followed her home.” We already had a cat & I felt that we just couldn’t take on another one without getting into trouble with our landlord & so she made a little brick house for him out in the yard & made him a warm bed. I heard him crying out there at about 11pm & caved in. I went out, brought him in & put him in bed with me.

His tail was twice as long as he was and he didn’t know how to purr or play or even act much like a cat, but he was loving & sweet & we ended up keeping him. He put up with unbelievable things when he was a kitten, things we didn’t know about until years later, but he never lost his sweet nature. Every evening, he’d come to me, and utter his funny “Meh!” at me, wanting to jump on my lap & have his “baby boy time,” when I’d love him & talk to him in baby talk for as long as he wanted. He never jumped up until he was given permission, and he would lie down on my chest, with one paw extended while he got his love.

This past weekend, we noticed that he seemed to be in a lot of pain & was moving pretty slowly, and with a stiff-legged gait. Troy picked him up last night to give him some love & he couldn’t seem to get comfortable, shifting  his position every few seconds & we had decided that we probably needed to start thinking about his quality of life & step in if he seemed too miserable. We got up this morning to feed the pets & didn’t see him anywhere, so we looked for him & he wasn’t in his usal spots, so we figured he’d come out eventually.

At around 11 or 12, I went in the kitchen to get a drink & thought I’d probably better try to find him, when I heard a pain-filled “Meh!” followed by another one that was slightly louder. I looked behind me & he was in the litter box, unable to stand up, crying louder & louder. Troy came in & carefully took him out, but he wasn’t able to stand or even move very much. Troy laid him on the floor & told me he was dying. I started crying & went to wake up Erin. He got up in tears & went in to love on him in his last minutes. I got a hold of Rhi so she could come over & tell him goodbye & we got him moved into a cat bed & off of the floor.

A few minutes later he stopped complaining & just let Troy & Erin pet him, and a few moments later, Troy started to cry too, and I knew he was gone, after so many years with us & that he was no longer in pain. I texted Rhi to tell her that he was gone. She was already on her way & wanted a chance to hold him for awhile & so we waited to give her the chance to do that. We took him to my parents’ house, which will one day be ours & buried him, so that he will always be close to us.

Goodbye my baby boy. I will miss you & your “Meh!” so very much.

Caffeinate me!

I’ve about had it with two of the cats. I’ve never had any that just refused to get along like these two, honestly. I haven’t really mentioned Buster a lot, mostly because I don’t really look at him as “our cat.” He was a stray kitten last summer or fall & another, much larger & meaner stray attacked him under our house after I told Rhi we couldn’t keep him. He had several large holes in his chest & side when it was all said & done, so I took him to the vet, paid the bill & we nursed him back to health. We agreed to keep him until we could find a good home for him, but he ended getting attached to Erin (and Erin to him) and so he continues to live here.

Buster has been terrified of Kaji from day one. Anytime they’re near each other, Buster starts hissing & growling, which of course, cause Kaji to start a fight with him because he really doesn’t seem to understand what’s going on if it isn’t a fight & before I know it, they’re going at each other like two motorcycle accident attorneys in a court room. I get up, yell at them, they stop, sometimes they start up again as soon as I leave the room, sometimes they really are finished. We’ve never had this go on for so many months before & while they really haven’t hurt each other (much), ut just gets annoying, listening to the hissing & growling all the time. I’m really hoping they’ll, at the very least, learn to tolerate each other.

Caffeinate me!

We just had a bit of a scare here. It was nice & quiet in the living room. I was watching videos on YouTube, Troy was playing Fallout 3, Rhi was in the bathroom and Erin is gone. Tiny was sleeping under the coffee table & Buster was playing in front of the loveseat. I have no idea where Diode was, but Tiny woke up, bumped her head on the table & went after her like shoppers going after a good deal on Seiko watches. It was crazy. She was running after her so fast that she was sliding in the kitchen floor & Diode was terrified, running just as fast in front of her.We yelled at Tiny several times & she didn’t seem to hear us, finally Troy got in between her & Diode & yelled at her again, and she stopped.

We have no idea if Tiny was dreaming & woke up, thinking that whatever was happening in the dream was still happening or what, but we were pretty sure that she was going to hurt Diode. It took me a few minutes for my heart rate to go back to normal, for sure.

Other than that, Troy finally figured out what to get for Jason for Christmas, so, other than stocking stuffers, we’re finished! We managed to somehow lose Erin’s stocking though, so I’ll have to buy one, since I don’t really feel like sewing right now. We have no idea how we did it, but there is no stocking in any of the boxes, so I know we did. It may have gotten thrown away or something, who knows?

Caffeinate me!

I’ve never had more than 1 kitten in the house at a time, I think. We may have had two for awhile before Rhi moved out in May, but it wasn’t for very long. Right now, we have two very active, older female kittens & little Buster, the male that we rescued from the yard when he got attacked by an alley cat. The little one is terrified of all of the other cats, so he’s always hissing & swatting at them, which makes them fight back. So, we have a lot of hissing & yowling right now.

One of the females, Booger-Bug, loves bags, so we can’t put a bag of trash anywhere that she can get to, or she’s inside of it, tossing the trash out. The other female, Diode, has decided that she doesn’t need to use the litter box anymore, which is making it really hard to get Buster box trained.

We’ve already ruled out having a Christmas tree this year, because we almost lost ours last year & we only had one kitten. I’m not sure what we’re going to do instead, but I know there’s no way we can have a tree with the three of them in the house! I know that they’ll all grow out of this & I won’t be as frustrated with them as I am this afternoon, I just wish they’d hurry!

Caffeinate me!

The kitten (we’re calling him Buster) made it through the night & Rhi & I took him to the vet this morning. The vet irrigated the wounds several times, put some antibiotic ointment on it, gave him some amoxycillan & a pain shot & called it good. He told us to keep it clean & make sure he drinks plenty & that he should be okay.

He was in a lot of pain earlier, but Rhi says he’s doing much better now.

Caffeinate me!

The first thing I do after I do my morning devotions, is to feed the animals. The cats all line up on the edge of the sink, sniffing the dishes & meowing for me to hurry, because they’re all starving. They don’t seem to notice that at least one dish always has food left in it, it only matters that they have no canned food in the dish. Tiny stands, waiting at my feet, hoping that I’ll drop some delicious, dry cat food on the floor for her to snack on or that I’ll throw a chicken in her own dish, instead of her boring old dog food.

So, I pour the dry food into the bowls, and open the very small container of canned food, all the while, I’m moving cats away from the dishes so that they all get their fair share. I divide the little cup between the bowls & put them back in place. Then I put Tiny’s food in her dish, she walks over, sniffs it, looks up disinterestedly and walks away. When I stand back up, the three cats are going at their dishes like miniature Sebo vacuums, making sure they don’t miss a single morsel of the canned stuff.

Kaji, my younger male will finish his canned food first and then he’ll wait for the other cats to walk away from their dish, so he can go over there & make sure they haven’t left any delectable morsels in there for him to clean up. Sometimes he gets lucky, but mostly, he walks away disappointed. It’s predictable,  but at least they amuse me.

Caffeinate me!

Do you like social networking sites? Do you also have pets? If so, then Zootoo.com just may be the perfect site for you! You can find other pet owners with similar interests, review services in your area, like how good your vet is, and review products that you use regularly, too. Each of your pets can have their own profile, complete with pictures, but that’s honestly not all there is to it.

I’ve been to other pet networking sites & it’s really all about the pets, and the focus isn’t on people, at all. At Zootoo, you can request & review samples of pet products for free, get answers to questions about your pets, meet people in your area with pets, and help your local shelters & rescues. I’m really happy with the site so far, and I haven’t really had time to really get into it fully, yet.

This is what the “control panel” type area, called “My Zootoo” looks like. It’s a hub of everything you can do on the site, including access to all of your pets’ profiles.

So far, besides the reviews, my favorite things on the site are the journals & the pet news areas. I love reading about other people’s lives & about things in the news that are actually pertinent to me & my family. (and that always includes my pets!) I was just reading a journal today that really upset me, did you know, in Ohio, there is a bill in the house (568) that gives the owners of Pit Bulls (or any dog resembling a Pitty) 90 days to move the dog from Ohio, or face having it seized & destroyed? I wouldn’t have found out about it without Zootoo, and their excellent navigation system.

I plan to spend a lot more time at this great social networking site in the upcoming days & hope you’ll join me there!

Caffeinate me!

It’s been a long time since we had more than 2 cats, and now we have 4. I keep miscalculating what we need for them, like food & cat furniture. I bought 3 beds, so now in the later afternoons, when they’re all napping, one of them prowls around trying to dislodge one of the others from a bed, so that he can lie down in it. Last night, Kaji went so far as to keep disturbing Mali, and he wasn’t even in a cat bed, he was on the loveseat. I have no idea why he didn’t just go to the bed in the kitchen, but he was bound & determined that he was sleeping where another cat already was.

They keep me amused most of the time, they’re each so different from the others and both of the younger ones (under a year) are so loud and whiny all of the time. They walk around meowing for a good portion of the day, but will stop when you tell them to, most of the time. I did put up cabinet locks the other day (the kind you getto baby proof the house) to keep all of them out of my kitchen cupboards. I got tired of cleaning up everything they knocked out of them every morning. They aren’t happy about it & sre still trying to figure out how to get in.

Caffeinate me!

If you have dogs or cats & buy their toys at W@lmart, you need to read this article: News for cats and dogs – Expertox Finds Lead, Other Toxins In Wal-Mart Pet Toys. I think I’m just going to have to start making toys and treats for my pets, its getting harder & harder to find anything that isn’t made in China & those products become less trustworthy with each passing day. I currently buy Beggar Dog biscuits for Tiny, but they have corn in them, which can cause problems for dogs who are sensitive to it. I’m also looking into changing their food to something better for them. It seems like every time I turn around something else is making our pets or children sick

Caffeinate me!