Anyone ever have a kitten do a head tilt and keep it tilted? Four weeks old. Vet says no ear infection. Poor little runt has enough trouble keeping up with her giant brothers and sisters and now can’t see straight. Looking for ideas. On antibiotics and supplemental feedings but is still nursing. Also, uses the litter box and everything looks good.
I’ve never dealt with this myself, but surely someone out there has? If you have advice or suggestions for Gail, feel free to speak up!
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Gonna miss the Hodor & Brandon..any newbies coming in?
and
Are you going to take a “fostering rest” once the rest of the gang are settled into their new homes or Petsmart ? Or are you already “cookin” something up ? wink wink !!!
No fostering rest is planned – once all the Stark boys and Norbie are gone, then the room will be open for occupation. We might have something in the works, but at this point aren’t sure if it’s going to work out, so no details for you! When there are new fosters in residence, you’ll know it, I promise.
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I’m amused that Fred is the one who made you take a year off from fostering after adopting Sugarbutt (I think?) and now he’s the one who’s all, “Let’s keep *that* one, too!”
Oh, I KNOW! In fact, Fred’s first plan was for us to stop fostering altogether, but I negotiated us down to waiting ’til they were “older.” It was moving to this house that seems to have flipped a switch in Fred’s brain – now he wants to keep ’em all and I have to be the one to put my foot down and say no. I figure, as the one who scoops the litter boxes, I get the final word on adding new cats to the house, and I am determined not to let it happen (pay no attention to that Stefan behind the curtain.)
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Natasha said: My tuxie doesn’t play fetch, but he does have this habit of dragging our clothing (clean, dirty, doesn’t matter) and even small blankets through the house, keening or meowing loudly. Do any of your cats do this (anybody)?
Alyslinn said: Mine do it with toys, but a friend of mine’s cat will drag his dirty socks from the laundry. Then she keens and fusses, and he’ll find them all over the place.
Ibby said: My college roommate had four meezers. The female would steal rolled up pairs of socks, carry them up to the living room and then line them up by her belly like they were nursing kittens. Woe to anyone that tried to touch her “babies.”
Kim O said: My sister’s cat does this with a ball of yarn. My sister is a knitter, and to keep Karmella out of her yarn, she gave her a ball of yarn for her own. Karmella carries it around like a baby and “sings” to it, but only if she thinks no one is watching her.
I absolutely LOVE kitty stories like these, so I want to hear yours, too. Please share!
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You’ll like all the nose prints on that black refrigerator, too 😉
You say that like you think I won’t be able to completely ignore them. Have you SEEN my windows? 🙂
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Am I the only one who saw the kitten in the oven? How long do you bake before she’s done? I want to try making my own.
They just never bake all the way through. I think it’s all that marshmallow Fluff in their heads. Maybe I need a longer time at a lower temperature!
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WHAT?!?! No new kittens?!? I have been gone almost a whole WEEK! I waited special because I wanted an extra big litter, or either bottle babies this time. Robyn! You’re slackin’, lady… (c;
It’s probably because Fred has stolen my second foster room to use as his office now that he’s working from home. I did have a chance at two bottle babies, but someone else snapped ‘em up before I could claim them (which is probably for the best, because I don’t know where I would have put them!)
I keep meaning to mention (though I think I did complain over on Facebook at some point.) – Fred started a new job three weeks ago where he’s doing the same sort of work (he’s a Software Engineer), but he’s now working from home. We turned the second foster room into an office for him, and though we had a few conversations about possibly putting kittens in the office, it took exactly one screaming kitten fight while he was on a conference call to put the kibosh on that idea. Tommy and Miz Poo usually keep him company during the day (they have their own beds in there, even), and the kittens visit him from time to time, but when it’s important conference call time, out they go!
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Here’s an interesting (or not) fact: the same company makes Fresh Step, Scoopaway, and Everclean. Fresh Step is the dustiest; next is Scoopaway; and then there’s Everclean which is least dustiest of the three but costs twice as much.
I’ve been using Scoopaway forever, especially because it’s so cheap at Costco, but I think the litter has gotten dustier over the years. I don’t ever remember so much dust in the room as we see now. I did buy some Everclean and it’s better, but with my picky picky picky furball, any time I try something different she won’t go until she’s ready to explode! Arm & Hammer stinks at odor control, as did Precious Cat, and she hated any variant of Tidy Cat. ARRRRRGGGGHHHH!
What I’m finding out is that there’s just no one litter that works for everyone. But having said that, when you switch litter, are you doing the slow switch-over where you add some of the new litter to the old, and then increase it every few days? Or are you just completely changing the litter all at once? Because some cats can handle a complete switch-over and some need a slow introduction to new things. When I switched from Fresh Step to Cat Attract, I did one litter box at a time (we have three litter boxes together in the front room and three in the laundry room, so if they needed time to get used to the new litter, they could take their time with it), and we’ve been completely Cat Attract for a few months now. In the next week or so, I’ll be switching over to Precious Cat, and will do it the same way (even though it’s pretty much the same litter).
Now that I’ve babbled about that for a few minutes, my main question/suggestion: would you consider/ have you tried crystal litter? I know that Elayne (among others) uses it, and has high praise for it. If I didn’t always have kittens running around here, I would give it a try myself. (I’m mostly concerned that the kittens would try eating the crystals on account of kittens are dumb.)
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None of my cats have ever gotten stuck in a bag handle, but I always cut the handles anyway. I am always horribly afraid of less funny incidents involving a bag handle getting stuck around their little necks.
But…like most cats, my girls are fascinated by both bags and boxes, and Mrs.Parker, who is a burrower, has gotten her head stuck in empty tissue boxes. I know I should ‘rescue’ her and I certainly do if she looks like she’s starting to get really scared. But it’s too damn funny! And she actually knows how to kick the box off her head, but once she does, she’ll often just stick her head right back in it. I think it’s kind of fun for her. Here’s proof: (Please ignore me giggling like a lunatic in the background.)
I love it! And what I think you have there is a cat who would happily wear hats and little helmets!
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Sara says: I’m in the market for cat furniture (she’s a hider). My girl is 10.5 lbs, small framed. For the life of me, I can’t google if this is her size or not. Thoughts of cat whisperer? Have any of your readers purchased such an outrageous item?
That is so cute! It does say in the description that it’s meant for smaller cats (which your girl is), so I think it should be okay. But I’ll post your question in Friday’s post and we’ll see what other people say. So, y’all? What do you say? I personally think Sara should go for it because it’s so cute. 🙂
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I’m always going to think of Hodor with his little Heat Miser hair do when he arrived.
(Here’s the Heat Miser, for those who don’t know who that is!)
He was so TINY and so so so CUTE (I mean, he’s still cute. Um. A manly hunk of cat, that is. You know what I mean!)
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I just have one question for Sunny’s & Stripey’s mom: Did you stage those photos by the table or can you actually keep placemats (and other nice things) there? Every day we wake up to all the placemats on the floor, as well as anything else we plopped on the table.
Yeah, we’ve tried the no-running-in-the-house thing, but it doesn’t work!
I bet she keeps those placemats on the table, and I bet the cats don’t bother ’em at all! I, on the other hand, have cat beds on my table. If I tried to leave placemats on the table, they’d end up as cat beds. I envy people with beautifully decorated homes – and I know full well that mine could never be that way. (I do, however, fantasize about Jeff Lewis and Jenni Pulos coming over and fancying up the joint!)
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All I wanna know is who got the Rock Crawler Extreme? You, or Fred? That looks almost big enough to drive some kittens around, Roomba style.
Here’s how THAT happened: I bought a Hexbug Spider recently, with the express purpose of terrorizing the kittens, as documented in this video.
(My favorite part of that video: Arya stomping in and slapping the snot out of that Hexbug Spider. NO FEAR, is Arya’s motto.)
So then Fred decided that he needed to get a radio-controlled car to terrorize the cats AND the dogs with, something that moves faster than the Hexbug Spider. He went up to Walmart and bought a cheap little car, and the cats were properly fascinated by/scared of the car. But it kept sliding on the floors, so THEN he decided that what he REALLY needed was a radio-controlled car that (1) wouldn’t slide on the floors and (2) would move around in the rough terrain of the back forty. He looked around on Amazon and found this one, and I ordered it. And the cats were properly fascinated by/scared of the new, bigger car, and the dogs freaked out a little, and the chickens clucked and ran. But since then, the car’s been sitting on the bookcase waiting to be used, and the box the car came in is used CONSTANTLY. Who knew the box was going to be such a hit? I sure didn’t – and it was totally worth the price, just for that stupid box.
PS: I would totally let the kittens ride the Rock Crawler Extreme around, but they aren’t interested in getting that close to it.
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Pardon me, Norbs. You appear to have a kitten in your armpit.
Sleepy Hodor.
“How did I end up here?” Jon Snow wonders. (That’s Stefan in the bed with him. Jon Snow was laying there, asleep, and Stefan jumped up and flopped down in the bed. Stefan loves (to torture) those kittens.)
I love Hodor’s spots.
Jon Snow is such a pretty boy, isn’t he?
Hodor really really wanted to jump from the cat tree to the bed.
He thought and thought about it, but ultimately decided the jump was too far.
He went off and chewed thoughtfully on his red toy instead.
Hodor and Brandon are off to Petsmart this morning. It’s always hard to take kittens to Petsmart, but when you’ve had them since they were 10 days old and bottle fed them and wiped their behinds many times (and that was just yesterday! Ba DUM chhh!), it’s especially tough. Fingers crossed for super-fast adoptions!
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Corbie loves to lay on the random blocks of wood in the back yard. Why do we have random blocks of wood in the back yard? Ya got me! I have no clue where those came from or what they’re meant to do. But if Corbie’s happy, I’m happy.
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Previously
2012: Meredith Grey (in the front), disapproves of such shenanigans, as do her judgey cohorts.
2011: They were all just like ::shrug:: “yeah, it’s Buster. So?”
2010: God, Corby. I wish you’d learn to relax a little. You’re stressing me out!
2009: I told Fred the other night that if we were going to keep Sam (which we’re not), I’d have to rename him Tigger, because he bounces! all! over! the! place!
2008: No entry.
2007: Later, when I relayed the experience to Fred, he said “You realize that during your entire story, the Benny Hill music was playing in the back of my head, right?”
2006: Meeting Maddy.
2005: What is it with kitties loving to chew on wet hair?