Author: Eric

For the past week we’ve been putting the boys together in the living room for 30  minutes or an hour or longer. Usually, we plan this to end with a feeding so we can lock the next one away.

As I recall there hasn’t been one occasion with a bad outcome. Intense butt sniffing we discourage. We feel it might lead to trousseling which could lead to Trask starting a fight. True or not it’s how we feel.

We’ve been encouraged greatly with the success so far. We keep Strassel up to date. We may have pushed farther than she wanted or advised. But there’s a time limit of some sort on this exercise. We originally set July 1st and without discussion let that lapse. We really don’t want to give one up.

The successes so far are what gives us hope. Just have to keep at it.

We were all in the kitchen this evening. Barbara was at the sink, I was at the island, Cadet was under her feet and Trask was at the scratching post.

Barbara stepped on Cadet someway, likely a paw. He yelpped loudly and ran to the screen door. Just then Trask dashed to him, pounced and started a real cat fight. Never seen one of these before. Terrible.

The went from the kitchen into the living room. Cadet trying to escape. Trask being mercilous. I had to up end the sofa to get at them.

Eventually we separated them putting them both in different rooms.

By the end of the night there were 3 fights.

Really nice litter. Dazzle, Midge, Topper and Bella. Off to the MSPCA on 170606. We’ve have them for a little over two weeks. Toe bitters.

We keep Cadet and Trask in a room a night so that they don’t get into too much mischief. It’s a reasonably large room with a cat tree, toys, fresh food and water, a litter box and more. We keep a full size bed in there too, no other place to put it. For three years things have been just fine. The other day we found a hair ball and poop on the bed. A perfectly formed log roll like hair ball and a perfectly formed log roll like stool side by side on the bed.

Ugh!

I cleaned it up, scrubbed the bed spread, used a protein spray to neutralize the odors cleaning the cover even more deeply.

Yesterday, more poop on the bed spread.

Ugh! again.

Barbara thought about it and it occurred to her that the litter box might be the issue. She emptied the litter box and scrubbed it out. We scoop out pee and poop from the litter box at least twice a day. We scrub out the box once a month or if needed.

Today, no poop. We have yet to see if this is the problem and solution.

Here’s the thinking. Cats are very sensitive to smells and keep themselves clean. We might think the litter box is clean but a cat might not. Even though we scoop out the pee and poop several times a day it may not be clean enough.

I should say that we have a little covered trash receptical close to the pan. We line the pan so that every day there’s a new liner in it. Therefore we keep the pan relatively clean by our standards. But to the cat’s standards? We never thought about it before.

So we’ll keep an eye on this.

What do you think about this? Have you have this problem and if so, what did you do?

Today is August 17th 2014 and it’s been less than two weeks that we have these two slightly ferral kittens from the MSPCA that Barbara named Hettie and Lana. My understanding is there was a litter of four kittens and their mother was gone. They were trapped and taken by the MSPCA for care and rearing.

Hettie has been the more bold of the two. She’s generally out of the cage and engages toys easily. Noise nor big people, me, don’t give her too much of a fright.

Lana is the more timid but adventurous one. Noise scare her into the cage but she can be petted more easily.

Both are good natured and have taken well to Barbara’s ministrations.

Tomorrow, Monday, they will be going off to the MSPCA to be spayed and then put out for adoption.

 

 

 

Two weeks ago, around July 25th, 14 I insisted that Barbara engage Kathleen and turn over ZaZu to a shelter. ZaZu was being kept in their basement full time because he was soiling the floors and doing other things they didn’t want nor should have to put up with. Brayden was coming and Kathleen didn’t trust ZaZu.

Barbara took him to the Nevins MSPCA and for 11 days he was caged and cared for. We’d visit him and he seemed like a different animal than Kathleen described. He was calm and relatively quite.

I noticed a growth on the side of his neck and asked Barbara about it. She didn’t know. Two days ago they finally got around to examining him and determined it was cancerous. He might have been in pain.

They put him down. I knew this was possible and wanted him to have a better life or be out of pain. One or the other.

We’re sorry we didn’t take a photo of him.

Rest In Peace

Barbara took a class on bottle feeding the really young kittens today. She’s not interested at this time helping with these particularly needy kittens. She’s keeping herself up to date on the procedures needed in these cases.

She told me that one shelter is in dire need of bottle feeding volunteers and when they fail to find them for litters they euthanize the kittens. This is sensible to me for without knowledgeable volunteers the kittens are going to die slowly of starvation. It’s just humane.

We once had a bottle feeder in our care and its tough. These kittens need food every 2 or so hours around the clock.

They need a formula like food that if administers wrongly the kitten will aspirate, likely choking on the formula in it’s lungs and possibly drown. It can be nerve racking.

We had to give up that kitten after a day or so, just too much work for us. We’ve never gone back to accepting another one. Perhaps in time we will.

Barbara took the kitten in to the MSPCA and Dooley was the featured kitten. They have to know he’s not putting on weight. The tech there wanted us to separate him and pay extra attention to him possibly syringe feeding him but Barbara can’t manage that now. She’s still working.

They’ve kept him to put him with another foster family. We’re sad but I take heart that he’ll get extra attention and he should grow.

Barbara tells me the lady taking him has a Pomeranian that loves kittens. She said “he’ll have something big to cuddle with”. Nice thought.

Barbara sent me a TXT message “Can I take home 3 four week old kittens?” and I answered of course you can. So the three of them came to us tonight. Two girls and a boy.

The names Barbara is giving them is Hogan, Dooley, Contesa.

Today’s the day that our latest litter goes back to the MSPCA for neutering and adoption. They’ve been a really nice couple