I didn’t finish reading and I have to go to work, BUT was Mr. Boogers’s tail short?
Mister Boogers had a stump of a tail, about half as long as an average tail. Like such:
When we were tossing around names for him on the way home after we’d adopted him, I really wanted to name him Stumpy, but Fred was all disapproving and said that that would be “making light of his disability” (can you sense me rolling my eyes here?), and that was when we were on our “All cats must have a name starting with S” kick, so he became Stanley for a while. (“Silent Bob” was a serious consideration for a bit, too.)
We – INCLUDING Fred – did call him “Stumpy” sometimes, since all our cats have to have 300 nicknames.
I recently got a new kitten, and as far as introductions to my grumpy old boy goes, things have been going swimmingly. Unfortunately, baby seems to like to eat my older cat’s food, and visa versa. For the baby it’s not so bad, but for my older cat, he has a sensitive stomach and also can’t really afford to put on the potential pounds from the kitten food (he’s not fat, but if he keeps this up he will be!)
You have so many cats; if you do, how do you keep them out of each other’s food? They both get fed twice a day, but they don’t always finish everything in one sitting, which leaves ample opportunity for one cat to go sampling the other’s fine food.
At this point, we’re lucky in that none of the cats are on any special food – Spanky does get a supplemental snack each night, which we give to him in the bathroom with the door closed so that the other cats can’t get to it.
I would recommend feeding the two cats separately for a set amount of time – give them each their food in separate locations, let them have it for 20 minutes, then take away what’s left. Ideally, you’ll have a place where you can shut one of the cats away so that they can’t get to each others’ food at all.
Readers? Suggestions?
Have you seen these pet adoption PSAs? (There’s several, but that link is to my favorite.) I see them on TV occasionally, usually on one of the obscure little cable networks I like, and they nearly make me cry every time. Yesterday’s post about taking the kittens to Petsmart reminded me of it.
Oh good lord, that is so sweet and sad and YES it made me teary-eyed!
Where did you get your game cam, and what kind is it? I would love to catch some of our garden invaders in the act!
It’s a Bushnell Trophy Cam, this one. I got mine, slightly used, off eBay for a little less than $100, but I just looked over at eBay, and I’m wondering if that was just a fluke – all the ones I saw that are available right now are around $200, which would make them actually cheaper on Amazon.
The picture function is good, but I think the video function is even better.
After all these years of reading your blog, I’ve never thought of this until today (not sure what sparked it either)…is Challenger’s House considered a no kill organization? I got to thinking about some of the cats that you’ve fostered that have been at Petsmart for a long time and wondered what happens if they’re never adopted? I thought about the Los Gatitos this morning and couldn’t remember ever hearing about their adoption (though it’s possible I just simply forgot). Thanks for the info!
Challenger’s House is absolutely a no-kill shelter. Cats who spend some time at PetSmart and aren’t adopted will eventually go to the shelter, which is a converted house. The shelter’s a free-roaming facility, and cats are not kept in cages there (except for new guys who need medication or are tiny and can’t go in with the general population). If a cat is never adopted, he or she will live out their life at the shelter. Any cats adopted from Challenger’s House will be accepted back into Challenger’s House at any time – there’s not a time limit, if a kitten is adopted out and 13 years later her owners can’t keep her for whatever reason, Challenger’s House will take her back.
Can you imagine how many cats we’d have here if Challenger’s House weren’t a no-kill shelter?
Oh, and about Los Gatitos, for anyone who doesn’t remember/ wasn’t reading at the time, they were the litter of white kittens who were only here for a week, since space opened up at Petsmart very quickly. Sofia (one blue eye, one green) was adopted straight from here, and I got an email a few weeks later from her new mom telling me how very much they loved her.
You know how black cats are adopted slowly and sit and wait forever sometimes? Well, with white cats it’s very often the opposite, especially blue-eyed white cats. All four of Los Gatitos were adopted, I believe, in less than two weeks.
Here, I whipped up a Los Gatitos collage for you!
(Side note, they all had Spanish names because they were estimated to have been born around May 5th, which is Cinco de Mayo.)
I got the Greenies email today… Gracie was ROBBED Miz Robyn… Robbed.
Yeah, as it turns out some way-too-happy looking dog named Ferguson won the Greenies Healthy Smile competition. When I broke the news to Gracie, she said…
“What’s a Greenie?”
Yes, now our dark, dirty secret can come to light: Gracie’s not a huge fan of the Greenies, at least not that we know of, because we’ve never given her Greenies. Not because we dislike Greenies (their pill pockets come in super handy with the cats!), but because we… just haven’t. Her teeth still seem pretty bright and white and pretty to me, so I don’t think her lack of Greenies has caused her harm. I was a little bit dreading having to come up with some LIE about how Gracie cries herself to sleep if she doesn’t get her nightly Greenies treat, so I think we can all rest easy now.
“I’m a fine upstanding Southern lady, so I’m not going to cast aspersions on anyone’s character, but is it just me who thinks that Ferguson fella looks just a little TOO perfect? ::cough::cough::cough::PHOTOSHOP::cough::cough::”
Sixty years ago my parents were living on Guam with a cat named Charlie, a Siamese. They tried to give him to someone else but he walked the length of the island to get back to them. There may be a whole colony of jungle-dwelling cats named Charlie.
I love the idea of this so very much! I know that Guam – at least when we lived there – had a large feral population. I like to think that descendants of my Charlie still roam that island.
How were the older Peppers when you dropped by?
They were just fine, plenty friendly, and enjoyed being petted and loved upon. I didn’t get much time to visit with them, because the morning cleaner arrived a few minutes after I did, and I wanted to get out of her way.
I need some advice/suggestions from you and the blogosphere: I want to get some shelves for my kid to put his toys on. He has TONS of lego things he’s built, and transformers, etc so instead of keeping them in buckets (which he has to turn upside down on the floor more often than not to find something he’s looking for) I was going install some shelves on the wall. As you know though – I have two active cats, one of which (a) likes higher places, and (b) is a chunky butt with clutz tendencies. So I want to keep them off these shelves. They’re going to be crowded with bunches of stuff, and I just don’t want the hassle of them knocking stuff off. I was thinking of putting foil on the edges of the shelves to discourage them from jumping up there, but didn’t know if that would work or if you had better suggestions. I need something other than a water gun though as we’re not home all day and the cats do as they please.
I told Sherry that her kid needs a Lego wall – isn’t that neat? – but of course I was kidding, because can you imagine the cost of something like that? We keep the cats off our bookcases by piling so much crap on the shelves that they can’t get on the shelves, but of course that’s probably not an option here.
How about it – suggestions, y’all?
I either said it or thought it before.. when those Sons get access to the rest of the house and allllllll those kitty tails, they’re going to go flipping nuts! There wont be a safe tail in the place! Can’t wait to see the mayhem!
I was actually saying to Fred the other day that the tuxies have had access to a tail – Jax’s – but that Jax has never had access to tails other than his own, so he’s going to go WILD!
That printer video is fabulous. And since you think nothing is funnier than a swearing cat, I assume you’ve met Sylvester.
Oh god yes, I ADORE Sylvester. And Gibson. And for that matter, I do love me some Steve. Warning, those of you who are about to click that link: Sylvester’s got a potty mouth, but he is HILARIOUS.
Aloha from the land of Surfing Goat Dairy.
Love it! I was in Hawaii for a week several years ago, and I would LOVE to go back, whether there are surfing goats there or not! 🙂
Check out these paws!
Catriona tweeted that very link at me the other day, and I tweeted back at her that amazingly enough, I have never had a single polydactl foster kitten, can you believe that? We thought briefly that Terry, of the True Blood Six, this guy here:
was polydactl, but as it turned out, he had the normal number of toes, they were just divided oddly. Like such:
See? Three toes on one side, and then two over there where the “thumb” would be.
My first-ever foster, Dublin, went off to his forever home on Saturday. His story is here.
I’m assuming you can reassure me that one does eventually get over the “no one can take as good care of him as I did” feeling. And of course our rescue group has another (single) kitten that they would reeeallly like me to foster. We’ll see.
You’ll get past it, I promise. If you’re really lucky, you’ll get an update from his new parents, and while you’ll be thrilled that he’s in a happy and loving home, you may think “But you said you loved ME, you little ingrate!”
The best cure for the missing-my-foster-kitty blues is more kittens, of course.
My husband and I took in a cat from his parents’ neighbors, who’d lost their home, and also had a dog or two that thought she was a chew toy (I can even feel a scar on her thigh, poor thing.) She hid in the deepest recesses of our house for a month before she realized, “Hey! There’s no dogs here!!
Anyway, they also had her declawed, which is something I would never, ever do, and now I’m finding out firsthand why. I think she’s the one who’s been peeing outside the litter box. I can’t leave any kind of fabric on the couch, like a blanket or a sweater, or it will get peed on. We actually watched her walk straight up to the Christmas tree and squat and pee on the skirt. (Good thing it was just a piece of cheap green felt!) Now last night, someone peed on the fuzzy rug outside the litter box in her room.
We are assuming it’s been her, because we caught her most recently at it, and I’ve heard that declawed cats remember the pain from trying to use the box when they were first declawed, so it makes them litter-avoiders. She’s been fine for a while, but I’m thinking that cuz it’s been cold, her poor, sawed-off toesies are hurting.
I am taking her to the vet today to rule out anything medically wrong, but does anyone have any ideas about how to get her to use the box again? I’ve been using precious cat litter, switched about 6 months ago from Arm & Hammer to cut down on the dust, I scoop every other day. The box in her room doesn’t get used too much, for some reason. (I say her room, it’s my husband’s office, but when we first got her, we kept her in that room to slowly introduce her to everyone else.)
I also think part of her problem is she is declawed in a house with 4 other cats who are not. They have staring/growling contests, and about once a week, I hear the screech of an angry cat. I think she feels unarmed in a land of fully armed strangers, and it makes her defensive.
My newest idea is to buy some cat Attract litter, and shut her up in her room again for a week or two.
If I don’t find a solution, I’m gonna…I swear I’m gonna…keep cleaning up cat pee, cuz there’s nothing else really I can do, I’m not an animal abuser or a ‘drop them off at the pound at the first inconvenience’ person.
I am throwing this one out to the experts out there, because I really am not sure what to advise. I know that very often declawed cats don’t like the feel of litter on their poor little paws, and thus avoid the litter box, but perhaps there’s a different type of litter to try? I don’t think it would hurt to keep her sequestered away from the other cats – is it possible that one of the other cats is messing with her when she’s in the litter box and she doesn’t feel safe? Not that they’re necessarily being bullies, but trying to play with her or just watching to see what she’s doing.
But honestly, I don’t have a lot of advice on the topic, so those of you out there with suggestions or advice, feel free to jump in here!
And Doodle Bean had some great advice:
Hi Beccity! You are wise to have a vet check her out. My cats are wonderful about the litterboxes unless they are sick. When they ‘miss’, I’m actually grateful since I know someone is sick. Figuring out which one is sick then becomes the problem, but my vet does 2-for-1 office vists, so sometimes I just bring them both in.
Keep in mind I have 4 litterboxes for 2 cats… The rule-of-thumb is 1 for each cat + 1, but my two cats needed 1 for each cat + 2. So adding more litterboxes / adding one more litterbox might be something to try.
When you introduced the rescued darling, did you introduce her slowly? If not, you may want to try again (if she checks out as healthy by the vet). Here’s a good source of information on introducing a new cat into a cat-occupied household. It may be worthwhile starting over — it’s totally up to you!
Also, for timid cats, having a safe place to go is important. Do your cats have cat trees or other ways to get above other cats? That can go a long way toward making them all calm down.
Does the new one have a special place of her own? In my household, the skitty kitty owns the bed and the more confident one respects that… so, when she’s feeling scared, she can go lie on the bed and calm down — and does!
Sometimes just adding a cat bed for the new cat in an unusual place – like on top of the washer or on a rack over your computur monitor – does the trick… sometimes it’s harder. Either way, it’s great that you are concerned about her and your other pets. Because of that caring, I know you’ll figure it all out and have a peaceful, cat-filled household again! Just keep trying new things and it’ll work out.
Good luck!!
(Thanks, Doodle Bean!!)
So the boys were all neutered yesterday, had their poop tested (no parasites, yay!), and their rabies shots. They are, as a matter of fact, ready and available to be adopted.
Unless something surprising happens this weekend or at adoption hours on Tuesday, the Sons will be going to Petsmart next Friday, and the black Peppers (Everett, Lucy and Sally) will be coming back here for a while to give them a break from the cage; I’m aiming to keep them here for about a month before they go back. Hopefully Jake will remember them and give them the full Loony treatment.
“Um….”
“This not funny, you let us OUT.”
When they got home from their neutering, they immediately swarmed to the food and water bowls. They were starvin’ Marvins.
“Somethin’s different. WHERE’D MY TAIL GO?!”
“Somethin’ else is missing, too…”
Tig, gazing out the window, reflecting upon how happy he is to have lived through that experience.
Seriously thirsty.
Are you ready for some Corbs, beautiful Corbs? You know you are!
Total stressball.
Can you stand the gorgeous? I myself cannot.
That is the basket I bought to put in the foster room. It’s occupied 24/7 by either Corbie, Newt, or Jake. Sometimes Tommy.
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Previously
2011: Sights from around a snowy Crooked Acres.
2010: “There’s a WHOLE ‘NOTHER bed here all of a sudden! And not only is it purty…. it’s SOFT!”
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.