I have a cat who was feral until he was six weeks old. He’s three years old now. He plays the sweet little tame house cat until it’s time to go in the carrier. Then he acts like a wild badger.
Do you have any tips on getting him in there?
I have cats who absolutely fight tooth and nail when I’m trying to get them into the carrier. If you don’t have one of those carriers that opens on the top as well as on the front – like this one – it helps a LOT. I usually get the carrier out the night before, open the top, and leave it out. It’s probably easier for me because I have so many cats, so they’re never sure who the “target” is, and they tend to let down their guard, which is when I swoop in, grab ’em up, and put them in the carrier before they realize what’s going on. With Sugarbutt and Spanky, I have to also make sure I hold them firmly at the nape of the neck so they don’t get away.
Possibly none of those ideas are new to you, but I thought I’d mention how I do it just in case.
How about it, y’all? Got any other suggestions on how to easily get your kitty into the carrier when he’s fighting tooth and nail?
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How do vets mess up a pregnancy diagnosis? If anyone would know, I would think it would be the vet. It baffles me.
Another thing that baffles me is how Crooked Acres doesn’t have any baby ducks with two males and two females occupying the premises.
As the vet tech explained it to me, after they felt Lilybet up and decided that she was pregnant, Lilybet peed. And then the vet tech couldn’t feel anything, but the vet said she still thought there was something there. I don’t know what she was feeling, but it wasn’t babies!
Crooked Acres doesn’t have any baby ducks because Fred removes the eggs that they lay, so that they won’t hatch. We have no need for more ducks – 4 is plenty!
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So I assume you need to keep Lilybet off of food and water after midnight. How does one do that with all the critters around? At our house everyone is off of food and water until the Prisoner Transport Device is populated with the victim.
Lilybet is still occupying the foster room, so I just put her food away when we went to bed Wednesday night. The few times we’ve needed to take food away from a permanent resident, we just put all the food away before going to bed, and then prepared for a night of not much rest. 🙂
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So… The is-she-or-isn’t-she tummy enlargement you witnessed would be the result of kitten food?
She ate voraciously when I first brought her home, then her appetite seemed to level off. She gained 4 ounces in two weeks, but really, she’s a small cat. She weighs 6 1/2 pounds. Most of what we were seeing was the fluffy fur on and around her belly making it seem like it was bigger than it was.
(But needless to say, girlfriend won’t be getting two huge snacks per day any more!)
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I’m not sure Lily is the bamboozler here. She’s not the one who keeps somehow reappearing at the spa. “Let’s see, if I dab a little hot sauce by my eye, I can make it seem like I–too much, too much!”
HA – I love this so much!!!
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We can call Lilybet’s imaginary litter “The McFakersons” 😉
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So just because there are no real kittens can we still have a naming contest for the McFakersons?
The name suggestions a few people made for the McFakersons are below.
Annabelle Bransford (from Maverick)
Danny Ocean (from Ocean’s Thirteen)
Frank Abagnale Jr (from Catch me if you can)
Henry Gondorf (The Sting)
Janet Colgate (from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels)
Johnny Hooker (The Sting)
Lily Dillon (The Grifters)
Milli & Vanilli
Myra Langtry (The Grifters)
Neil Caffrey (from White Collar)
Ponzi
Sawyer (Lost)
Wanda Gershwitz (A fish called Wanda)
I love “Milli” and “Vanilli” SO very much! I am, without a doubt, going to use this naming theme in the future, so if you’ve got a suggestion to add to the list, I’d love to hear it!
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I enjoyed seeing the chicks last week and then saw this today.
I really really really want a Frizzle!
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What’s going on with Baby Beans? Is anyone interested? He’s so cute with that triangle face and slightly angry ears. Of course I’m a sucker for the odd kitties.
No interest yet, though Lisa reported that at adoption hours Tuesday he had an admirer! He also let Lisa pet him and seemed to be enjoying it (though I suspect that he was just waiting for her to get close enough that he could rip her lips off.)
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Your Lilybet-distracting pics reminded me to give a big THANK YOU to you for your toy recommendations. First, it should be known that I only even have a cat because of your blog. Then I couldn’t help but be intrigued by the toys you have kicking around there. I bought the Kong Kickeroo for my guy and he LOVES the thing and bunny-kicks the heck out of it, it’s so cute. The other day Da Bird was on sale on Amazon for like $3, came to $7.50 with shipping, so I bought one. Holy cat crack, Robyn. We keep it in a closet and any time someone opens that closet, he comes bounding out of parts unknown, chattering frantically. He leaps and attacks and then after our play session he is a total lovebug to his mommy for playing with him, so it’s a win-win all around. One question, though. Do you go through “birds” really quickly? We’ve had it about a week and the thing is already tattered to heck so i’m going to have get a few replacements to keep on hand. I just wondered if your cats were that hard on it or if i’m doing it wrong. At any rate, thank you SO MUCH for the recommendations because they are both big winners in this house.
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I so need to get me one of those. Is Da Bird what it’s really called on Amazon?
We usually have to replace the “birds” every couple of months. When the cats catch the bird, we take it away from them pretty quickly to minimize the damage, but those cats have got some jaws of steel, don’t they? I’ve always got at least a couple of replacements on hand, though, just to be safe. I’m so glad your guy is enjoying Da Bird, AND the Kong Kickeroo! Also, I love that I’m the reason you got a cat in the first place. “Convincing people that cats are AWESOME, one cat at a time” should be my tagline. 🙂
And for those of you who don’t know about Da Bird, it is, indeed, called Da Bird and it’s always an instant favorite; in fact, Kennebec knows when we’re about to get it out, and he runs down the hallway meowing at us to HURRY UP. I bought this one (because it comes with a couple of extra “birds”), but there might be better deals around, it might be worth a few minutes on Google.
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Hey Robyn, have you ever had any cats that are overly aggressive with their own tails? My littlest, Duchy, is always fighting with her tail. It’s almost seems like it’s a separate entity over which she has no control. She’s always batting and biting at it violently and just last night she bit it so hard it made her yelp out and bolt under the bed. It’s really bothering me and I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced this before.
Kate said: One of my cats did the same thing and she had very sensitive skin as well (if I tried to pet her back she would twitch and nip at me). I went to a grain free cat food and it’s helped some. She isn’t as obsessed with her tail and her skin seems less sensitive.
And Elayne said: My parents had a dog who did this with her tail; she had nerve damage from abuse sustained as a puppy, but there can be organic issues that cause similar nerve damage. They feel the sensation of something stinging or biting or moving over part of the body, usually the tail or hindquarters, and attack (what they think is) the threat. I’d say if she doesn’t grow out of it by 12-18 months, have her evaluated by a vet. There are medicines that can help, and it’s a really miserable thing to live with.
My parents took Alyssa to the vet when they realized she couldn’t sleep for more than 30-45 minutes without jumping up snarling and snapping at her own (missing) tail. She’d bite her butt and legs in an attempt to get to the phantom tail, sometimes drawing blood, and she was visibly confused and distraught over it. She never got completely over it, but the medicine and acupressure techniques the vet gave my parents helped her a lot – she was at least finally able to sleep.
Thanks, Kate and Elayne! I haven’t had this issue with any cats myself (I should probably add “yet”!), if anyone else has suggestions for Russell, please chime in.
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I read somewhere that in the UK it is considered good fortune for one to have a Tortie in their home. Since you now have TWO of them, perhaps you & Fred should go buy a lottery ticket (or something). You never know… maybe they’re right. Really love Torties, any chance of getting them together in one pic (at least in the same room maybe)?
Probably in the next week or so I should be able to catch Miz Poo and Lilybet in the same general area of the house. I’m planning, this weekend, to start introducing her to the other cats in the house and see how she does. (I was in Tennessee yesterday, I totally should have bought a lottery ticket!)
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I just discovered the cutest kitty catnip toy…and their site has the funniest cat videos with music. Bet your cats would love this…or you could make one similar.
No, I hadn’t seen that site. Those are some big catnip toys, and the videos are adorable!
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It took me three read-throughs to realize that in the snippet, “Fred pointed out that Robin looks more pregnant than Lilybet does,” the “Robin” in question is Batman’s sidekick. I kept wondering why you’d spelled your own name wrong, and right before I realized my goof, I had decided it was because you were too distracted by your search in another tab for woodchipper rentals and bloodstain remover. (c:
HA – I’d like to say that Fred would know better, but I have my doubts!
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Corbie does look incredibly smug in that pic. All he needs is a smoking jacket and a pipe!
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LOL! That is exactly what he needs to complete the picture. Maybe a glass of cognac too.
Those comments made me think of a popular meme, and I had to make this:
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The Lunk pictures show a cord in the background which leads perfectly into my question of the day: How do you get cats to NOT chew on thin cords? She has ruined three of them now!
Lisa said: Get some of that bitter apple spray (just wash your hands if you touch anything you spray it with). It will definitely deter chewing. None of mine have ever chewed cords. The closest one comes is chewing plastic bags. Foster kittens once chewed through the sensor wire from my old Wii system. But they left other cords alone.
I buy 3/8″ black flexible split tubing from USPlastic.com – this stuff – and have put it around most of the cords in the house (just not the cord that you noticed in the picture – I haven’t gotten around to doing that cord yet, and none of the cats have been messing with it, so I’m not in a hurry to get it done). It is a pain in the butt to put the tubing on cords, but once the cord is covered, you don’t have to worry about it.
There’s a clear cord cover that’s made of thicker plastic, called CritterCord, a thick plastic cord cover which is made specifically to deter cats and other animals from chewing on cords. I don’t recommend it at ALL because (1) the price – $12 for a 10-foot cord? Wow. (2) The smell, OH MY GOD IN HEAVEN, the smell. It SUPPOSEDLY has a “light citrus scent”, but to me it smells horrific. Your mileage may vary – and I’ve seen it in the ferret/ rodent section of Petsmart if you want to smell it for yourself before buying, but I bought a pack of it, covered a few cords with it, and hated the smell so much that I had to remove it and toss it in the trash because it smelled so bad.
I’ve also covered cords with duct tape (before I found the flexible split tubing), and it works to protect the cord (and cats don’t seem to care for the taste), but it’s an even bigger pain in the butt than putting the split tubing on the cords.
And lastly, I’ve heard that you can coat the cord with Ivory dishwashing liquid and let it dry, and the first time a cat tries to chew the cord, it’ll be the last time he does, because the taste is so bad. I haven’t tried it myself, but if anyone else has, feel free to let us know how it worked for you!
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Does Lilybet recover with you or go straight to Petsmart?
She’ll be back here for a couple more weeks. She still needs her last vaccination before she can go to Petsmart, but once she’s had it, she’ll be ready to go.
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Remember Pearl, the kitten formerly known as Dandelion? She was one of the Weeds, and she was adopted by Amanda. She has a brother in the form of Duke, who is freakin’ ADORABLE.
Well, you better sit down, because I have a picture for you. Check this out:
Isn’t that a great picture? Amanda said that Duke and Pearl are best friends, and that he always has to know what she’s doing at all times. She calls Duke “The Sheriff.” So sweet!
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“Halloooooo, laydeez!”
“Halloooooo, I said!”
Such a Lunk.
As long as Lunk’s eye continues to improve, he’ll be going back to Petsmart on Tuesday. And Batman and Robin are ready to go back when there’s room for them, so they’ll be off soon.
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Wild thang.
Crazy eyes.
She decided to work on her parenting skills, just in case. “First, I bites the kitten on the head while kicking him.”
“Then I sink my claws into his neck. Discipline! That’s what kittens don’t get enough of, these days.”
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“There’s no need for another tortie in this house, lady. One tortie per house is PUH-LENTY.”
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Previously
2012: Okay, drama queen, dial it back.
2011: Fingers crossed!
2010: No entry.
2009: I wish they didn’t get nervous and run back upstairs if I run into their general direction, like they think they’re in trouble.
2008: No entry.
2007: Smackdown at the Anderson Corral.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.