Sights from around Crooked Acres.
The pecan trees are dropping these catkins EVERYWHERE.
“What do YOU want?!” Hens are so rude sometimes.
Keeping their eyes on the man with the cookies.
It’s nice to see the ducks in the water without having to herd them there.
George keeps an eye on us from a distance.
The Privet is blooming and it smells SO GOOD.
Hens trying to decide whether it’s worth their while to come running over to me (it wasn’t; I had no snacks for them).
Gracie, trying to decide if she’s excited to see me.
She is!
She IS excited to see me!
“O joy, it’s my second-favorite human!”
Playful pups.
I finally harvested the carrots that were growing in my small raised-bed garden. I planted them last Fall and they grew all Winter. We ended up with about five pounds of carrots – which isn’t bad at all. I sliced some of them and cut some of them in big chunks, then blanched and froze them. Fred was so impressed at how many carrots we got from such a small space that he’s talking about making long, narrow raised beds to plant them in next time.
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“Don’t look!”
“Don’t listen!”
“BRING IT ON!”
“THAT’S RIGHT, I SAID IT! BRING IT ONNNNN!” (He did not, in fact, bring it on. THIS time.)
Lap full o’ Noms (with Darwin in the background).
::chomp::
“Oh no! Logie’s in the litter box again!”
Darwin loves that yellow “tiara” SO much.
You make kitteh skeered.
Eye on the feather teaser.
Logie looks a little cross-eyed in this picture (and the one before it), but she’s not. It’s just the way she was looking upward.
Tabby trio.
(These pics are from before the move. I’ve got more to share, so it’ll be a few days before they show up in the guest bedroom.)
The move went okay yesterday. I got the room all ready in the morning, then shut the door so that none of the other cats can go in there. Alice Mo is NOT happy with this turn of events, but she’ll get used to it.
As far as I can tell, Emmy could not possibly care less than her babies were brutally stolen from her. The babies, on the other hand, having NEVER been out of the room they were born in (I am thinking this was a mistake on my part) are freaked out. They slowwwwwly walked around the room, sniffing at things, and when I went back to check on them half an hour later, they’d all found the bedside table and that’s where they’re all staying. Except for Razzie the Brave, who comes running out when she realizes I’m in the room with them.
I’m going to give them a bit more time to adjust, but if they’re still under that table this afternoon, I’m going to move the table out of the room.
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*Note: I know I said I was going to profile each permanent resident from the oldest to the youngest, but I think what I’m going to do is profile them in the order in which they joined the family – that makes it easier for me, anyway!
Warning: There’s some poop talk in this section. Nothing overly detailed, but if you have a weak stomach and/ or you’re eating, you might want to just scroll down and look at the pictures.
About Sugarbutt.
Sugarbutt will turn 7 at the end of June.
Sugarbutt came to us in the same litter as Tommy, in September of 2005, in a litter of four kittens. His name was “Sad Eyes” at the time (I didn’t name this litter). The whole litter had giardia and coccidia, but in addition to that, poor Sugarbutt had what we thought was a slightly prolapsed rectum. He also had a horrific case of diarrhea, so bad that it “burned” the fur off the backs of his legs. Despite being so sick, he was sweet and playful and active. I had to bathe him at least twice a day and he hated it, but as soon as I let him loose in the foster room again, off he’d go to play.
At one point, his back end was so swollen and painful looking that I asked the shelter manager if there was anything I could do to make it less swollen. She said that she’d heard you could take a warm, damp cloth, dip it in sugar, hold it against the swollen part, and it would help the swelling go down. I tried that several times, and it seemed to help a little bit.
And that’s how he got the name “Sugarbutt.”
I eventually took him to the vet to see what, if anything, they could do about the diarrhea. The vet examined him and realized he had impacted anal glands, and they took him off into the other room to express them. Which made that poor kitten about as unhappy as a kitten can get, I could hear the poor baby screaming from two rooms away.
I took him home that night, and the next morning when I walked into the foster room, there were HUNDREDS of little droplets of poo all over that foster room. All the kittens had poo on them, Sugarbutt was coated in poo. It was like a poo bomb had gone off, and I stood there and stared for a long minute before I stepped back out of the room and shut the door.
I might have had a tiny bit of a conniption, but when I calmed down, I called the vet’s office. They decided that probably his poor little system had been backed up due to the impacted anal glands, and now that they’d been expressed, all that had been backed up was now vacating the premises. They thought it would resolve itself in a day or so, that I should try to keep him confined, and if it was still going on after a day – or he was acting like he didn’t feel well – to bring him back in.
So I gave every kitten in that litter a bath, put Sugarbutt in a carrier (and later moved him to a cage), and spent hours scrubbing the carpet in that room. Eventually he stopped dribbling poop everywhere. He’s never had an issue with diarrhea since then, but I will tell you what – if you walk into the laundry room after he’s used the litter box, the smell is like a living thing that attaches to your face and takes you DOWN. He’s a healthy boy, but it doesn’t matter what you feed him. Apparently his intestines are routed through the pits of Hell; fire and brimstone have nothing on the bowels of Sugarbutt.
ANYWAY.
When the rest of the litter (except Tommy, who was faking a leg injury) went off to Petsmart, Sugarbutt went with them. He was actually adopted pretty quickly, and then a few days later the guy who adopted him brought him back saying that he’d found blood on Sugarbutt’s back end. The shelter manager called me, and I went to pick him up at the vet (the vet said he had another round of Coccidia going on, o joy).
There was really no question that Sugarbutt was going anywhere; he and Tommy had a good time playing with each other, and I loved Sugarbutt so very very much that it was a given that he was staying with us.
I always say that if he were a human, Sugarbutt would be a pot-smoking surfer dude. (Not to pigeonhole surfers but, y’know, come on.) He is such a happy, happy boy. Sometimes he sits in the cat bed next to my computer and gives me the Love Eyes and reaches out with one paw to grab my hand and pull it to him so I’ll pet him. (Sometimes he does this using his claw, which is why he’s the one cat in the house with regularly trimmed claws.)
Sugarbutt has no use for any other cats except Tommy – every now and then I’ll see Sugarbutt snuggled up to Tommy, but most of the time he’s a loner. He likes to hang out on top of the fridge with his paws dangling over so that I have to pick them up and move them when I need to get into the freezer.
For the first year and a half of his life with us, Sugarbutt would come up on the bed with me in the middle of the night and knead on my arm while licking my neck. It wasn’t my favorite thing (cats have REALLY rough tongues, you know), but I didn’t mind it. Eventually he stopped on his own. It’s been years, but I still kind of miss being woken up like that. Weird, right?
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Previously
2011: “Hey, you guys, I haz THREE FEET, and you don’t got none! Ha ha ha!”
2010: “How YOU doin’?”
2009: Maximum occupancy: four kittens.
2008: Hissing babies.
2007: “This dressing looks odd,” I said to myself. “I wonder if it’s out of date?”
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
I love all the pics today. Those carrots look so yummy. Tell me-in the last pic labeled “Tabby Trio” are they Darwin, Newberry and Razzie going counter-clockwise (like from back to front)?
I’m pretty sure you’re right! You get the Nom-spotting prize, I had to look hard to determine that you’re right. 🙂
So, in two of those pictures, your lap holds a nom nomming another nom.
The Noms like to nom, that’s for sure. 🙂
Sugarbutt is beautiful! I love me some orange kitties.
Poor baby!…but Lord, that description of his litter box made me laugh out loud!
Can I tell you? The image of a poo bomb going off cracked me up! Lalala…play play play…POO BOMB!…play play play… Aw, poor little man!
Yeah, my Gandalf loves to remind me that there’s nothing like the smell of napalm in the morning.
Um…so dumb urbanite question. Do carrots typically grow in the winter? Or is that just a Crooked Acres thing?
My Anna leaves an odor that will knock you off your feet – and she’s the one who doesn’t cover it up! Her littermate sis, Bella, is a little more discreet, and covers the poo up for both of them lol!
Poor Sugarbutt! Fortunately he outgrew the cause for his name, but I have no doubt that he still is sweet.
He is definitely a sweet boy still. 🙂 The ones that have a rough start seem to turn out to be total sweethearts, it seems!
It’s amazing how you can take a sickly, skinny little kitteh and turn it into a huge, healthy and HAPPY grown cat. Lucky Sugarbutt! Hard to believe that itty bitty sickly kitteh is now the gorgeous Sugarbutt. You’re a great cat whisperer!
OMG, I was in HYSTERICS reading about Sugarbutt’s litter box bombs! My Astrid is also a stinky girl, who actually farts too!!
Cannot… catch… breath… laughing… too… hard… His intestines are routed through the pits of Hell???? Poor, poor, wonderful Robyn for having to clean up all of the poo bombs. And poor, poor Suggie for having to be so close to the smell when he makes them. (And just so I can keep up my streak… orange kitty = Simba = my laid-back stoner dude).
I’m glad to hear that Emmy did well with the separation from the kidlets. Of course, there are times when my husband takes the kids to grandma’s for a few days and I spend the entire first day thinking “Oh, this is wonderful… it’s so quiet in here!” I get bored by the end of day two and I’m ready for the kids to come back. I hadn’t thought about it being more difficult on the munchkins. Good thing Razzie the Brave is there to lead the way.
My cat Bill is named, not for the Bloom County “Bill the Cat (‘Ack!’)” character, but for Bill Pardy, Nathan Fillion’s character in the B-movie-spoof Slither.
There’s a scene where, in the middle of the Alien Zombie Monster invasion, Sheriff Bill Pardy (NF) is in his patrol car with his unrequited long-term love, Starla; the mayor of the invaded town; and I think someone else. Then the dispatcher calls him over the radio and says something like, “Sheriff, your mama called in, and she wants you to go over her to house when you get off and unplug that downstairs toilet.” Sheriff Pardy is all, ‘okay yeah fine whatever’ and the dispatcher continues, for all the inhabitants of the car to hear, “She says it was on account of what you done in there on Sunday that it’s blocked up in the first place, so it’s only right that you be the one to fix it.”
The three seconds of awkward silence that follow, where everyone in the car cuts their eyes over to the Sheriff and he tries to pretend that didn’t just happen, is one of the best scenes in the movie. He continues to stare straight ahead through his humiliation, and mumbles something about “You know, mama and them, they use a lot of toilet paper, backs everything right up.”
So, we were trying out names for the new kitten and hadn’t settled on one yet. My son had been away for the weekend, and he asked about the kitten, had he done anything funny or interesting. I said, “Nothing other than gassing me out of my office” (where the litter boxes are) and TJ said to the kitten, “Aww, she doesn’t love you anymore, on account of what you did in the litterbox on Sunday.” That cat’s been Bill Pardy ever since. And he continues to live up to his namesake…
Elayne, that’s hilarious, and now I shall have to see that movie, being a fan of Nathan F.
Me too!
For the Nathan fans.. https://twitter.com/#!/NathanFillion/status/195152219492990976
(and I so totally remember that line from that movie!!)
Ha, I love this!!!
I laughed so hard at the poo explosion story,that I basically started crying.I think people at work think someone I love has died 🙂
OH MY GOSH!!! Laughed so hard at the bowels routed through hell. I swear Dunkin’s are also!!!
Awwwww, poor Sugarbutt. Kind of a rough start, but he landed in cat heaven with you!
Sugarbutt is my favorite! He reminds me of an orange creamsicle.
I LOVE SUGARBUTT. Is it weird that I have favorites of your cats? Sugarbutt is number 1, followed by Miz Poo, then Jake. Although I have fallen hard for Emmy and if I lived closer, I would totally adopt her myself no matter how feral she seems. Anyway, there is never enough posts about Sugarbutt – that needs to be rectified; such a beautiful orange boy needs to be talked about more often!
Nah, it’s not weird at all! I do tend to forget to take lots of pictures of Sugarbutt (as I should!) because usually he’s right up in my face demanding that I pet him. 🙂
lol. ‘rectified’ *snort*
HA!
As always, lurv them pups!
Saw this and thought of your wee kittehs:
http://www.zooborns.com/zooborns/2012/04/ferocious-black-footed-kittens-at-cleveland-metroparks-zoo.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ZooBorns+%28ZooBorns%29
OMG, SOOOOO cute!
Robyn,
I’m sorry, but those kittens do not have nearly enough toys..
And don’t feel bad about them freaking out, as freaking them out now makes much better adult cats. Freak them out a few more times if you can..
If it means they’ll floof up, I’ll freak them out as often as possible. 🙂
I heart Sugarbutt. Sorry, but he is my favorite of your cats. I think it is so sweet how he only snuggles with his brother. Awwww!
Don’t be sorry – I love it when people favor one of my cats over the others. That’s probably weird to admit! 🙂
There were so many things about Sugarbutt’s story that had my laughing my own butt off. Thanks for always making my day!
*me (laughing my own butt off)
Haaaaaaa! Ha! Ha! I picked the wrong day to cosy up to my netbook with a rueben. Fortunately I had finished eating by the time I made it over here from MoleVille. I didn’t use to have a delicate stomach. Hmm…
I remember the Sugarbutt poo explosion story! Still funny this time around.
So glad you showed the carrots. I really wanted to see them. You should try growing parsnips too. I love them so very much. They are the bomb diggity oven roasted with seasonings and butter or olive oil. Parsnips are tastier if they are harvested after fall frost. Even better if you over-winter them like you did with the carrots. I have never grown them myself so I might not be right on all the facts. I used to help out a elderly neighbor by going out to her garden with her and digging up parsnips that she deemed ready to harvest. I really wanted those parsnips. Hee. Did I mention I love parsnips?
I do like roasted root veggies, I think I’m going to make a note to give growing parsnips a try!
I just wanted to clarify I wasn’t being all helpful to get parsnips from an elderly woman. She never gave me any, nor did I ask.
Gah! Good grief.
LOL, suuuuure. “An elderly woman was robbed of her parsnips harvest! Tonight at 10!”
So Miz Poo really isn’t stinky and Sugarbutt is! Next you’ll be telling us Jake is actually quite sane… Needed this laugh today! And belated love to Tommy!
awww i can’t believe someone returned sugarbutt because he had a sore butt. you don’t return a cat just because he needs a vet trip and medicine! a cat isn’t a pair of jeans! all three of my cats needed meds after i adopted them but i certainly didn’t take ’em back and get another less sick cat. now my babies are all healthy. i’m glad you kept sugarbutt because he seems to really really appreciate what you did for him (and his caboose). poor little man! all orange and fuzzy.