7-22-11

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I have lurked FOR YEARS but have never commented but I had to let you know that my three year old loves looking at photos of cats so she always looks at your site with me… Now she wants me to “go and get Clove!”. I was also wondering, with all the cats you have had is there ever one that just got on your nerves like no other? I am keeping my brothers cat while he moves and fixes up his house and I have to tell you that back when I had four cats all four of them together didn’t get on my nerves like this cat. I am an animal lover and I feel so guilty, but I can’t wait until he leaves!

Oh, without a doubt there have been cats who get all over my nerves like that (and I typically respond by giving them more love because I feel so guilty!). I don’t think every animal lover is going to wholeheartedly love every animal – just like you’re not going to like every person you meet, you’re not going to love every animal. Just be glad that your brother’s cat will be going back to your brother instead of staying with you!

Give your daughter a kiss from Clove!

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Last night I dreamed that I went to get new tires and sat in the waiting area holding a sleeping kitten. It was Clove! Now that is a brilliant idea! Include adorable kitties available for adoption for people in waiting rooms to snuggle. I wouldn’t even mind waiting an hour for a 5 minute oil change then.

That is the BEST IDEA EVER. They need to have kitten waiting rooms EVERYWHERE!

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Please tell me that Cat-on-Top-of-Fridge is not going to…leap…down…to the…floor…!! (Although it’s been done here.)

No, she (that’s Stinkerbelle) usually jumps from the top of the fridge to the counter and then to the floor from there. If someone were chasing her, or she was suddenly overwhelmed with the need to see her beloved Tommy, she might jump from the fridge to the floor, but I think I’ve only seen that happen once or twice.

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How is the beautiful Corbie doing health-wise? He looks like he’s faring well, hopefully he’s only been improving all along!

Corbie is doing well – he’s not better than he was, but he’s also not worse than he was, he’s pretty much staying the same. We treated him with Taurine and L-Carnitine for 4 months, and there was no difference at all. We’ve stopped giving it to him, because it was stressing him out a lot and not making any difference.

Corbie was recently at the vet, and his opinion is that Corbie’s physical condition was caused by his mother being FIV positive (for those of you who weren’t reading at that time, Corbie and his brothers were found near Fred’s office. We trapped his mother and took her to the vet, and she was not only FIV positive, but also very ill; I had her euthanized.) Fred pointed out to the vet that Corbie was perfectly normal when he was a kitten, that it wasn’t until he was about a eight months old that we noticed something was going on, but the vet seems pretty convinced that the mother cat’s FIV status is what caused it. So who knows? I’m just glad that he’s getting around so well and that it’s not getting worse!

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I was trying to figure out what kind of spider that is, but I can’t see close up enough. It looks like it has a light-colored stripe down the cephalothorax and thorax, so it could be a baby grass spider. If it’s an adult, I have no idea.

I think it’s just a grass spider – all I know for sure is that it wasn’t a Black Widow or a Brown Recluse, thank god!

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All about Elwood.

My mom was over and walked past the computer and said… Why is that bear wearing a collar?

Ha!

My goodness Elwood is a big kitty!!! He doesn’t look fat just like a big-boned kitty! :0) Maybe it’s just the pictures…

Let’s just say that he weighs one pound less than Tommy (Elwood’s 14 pounds) and Tommy carries his weight a lot better than Elwood does. He’s fat AND big-boned!

Elwood, I iz skeered of u!!!

Aww, don’t be skeered of the Elz. He looks mean and like he’d slap your mama and steal her cake, but in actuality he’s a big ol’ lovebug who has a sweet, squeaky purr. Just don’t squeeze his belly; he’s sensitive about his gut.

Elwood is gorgeous! And full of cattitude. What is that on his collar?

That is the collar that goes to the in-ground fence around the back yard. If he gets too close to it, it beeps to warn him. If he keeps going, he gets a short zap from the collar. Most cats (Elwood included) only have to be zapped once (it doesn’t hurt them, but it does startle them unpleasantly). Most of the cats don’t need the collars because they are GOOD cats and don’t try to escape the back yard. Elwood, Kara, Tommy, and Sugarbutt, however, are naughty cats and must wear the collars. Which I personally hate, because I think the collars ruin otherwise perfectly nice pictures! But we’ve gotta keep ’em safe, whether they like it or not.

The Elwood box is the best box ever!! What is it from?

That’s a shoebox with the lid attached. Elwood’s actually laying in the lid, and then the box part is behind him. There’s another box behind that, because I had gotten a couple of packages in the mail that day, and I usually toss them all in the kitchen and wait to see which one they’ll like before I take the others out to the garage.

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So do your fosters never come back from PetSmart? When mine go off I know if they don’t get adopted after a week or two (depending on how many cats/kittens the rescue has needing time in the adoption center) I’ll likely get them back for a bit. Makes it a little easier to send them off…even though I know the little kittens are likely going to be adopted sooner rather than later so probably won’t be coming back….

They do come back from PetSmart occasionally – if, after a few weeks, they aren’t adopted, then they can come back here for some R & R for a while before they get another try. We’re lucky that most of our fosters are adopted pretty quickly.

Back in 2007, we had a litter of five sisters who were five months old. I don’t know how many times those cats went to Petsmart and then came back, then went to Petsmart again. One of them, Elle, absolutely stole our hearts and the last time she went back to Petsmart, Fred and I agreed that if she wasn’t adopted within two weeks, we’d bring her home and make her ours. She was adopted the day after I took her back to Petsmart.

This is her:

Oh, look. A brown tabby. How shocking that I loved her, right? She’s on the list of our fosters who, if they are ever returned to Challenger’s House, we will likely snatch her up and keep her forever. One of my favorite videos is of her, sitting on a cat bed and kneading:

YouTube link

It cracks me up that Fred sounds like an old Southern lady when he says “Elleh Belleh!” (And yes, she was the original Ellie Belly!)

HG is another one on that list:

Basically, if Fred knows the kittens’ name by the time they leave us, that means they’re probably on that list. Four years after Elle was with us and three years after HG was here, he immediately recognizes their names and (most telling) even remembers that Elle was a brown tabby and HG was a tuxie.

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What is the watermelon sitting on?

That’s landscaping fabric. It helps protect against weeds (though you’re supposed to put something on the fabric to protect it from the sun) and this is the first year we’ve used the fabric and also the first year our watermelon and cantaloupe plants haven’t been swallowed up by weeds!

Do roosters get aggressive to the chicks if one is another male?

Roosters won’t get aggressive toward male chicks until they hit adolescence (for want of a better word). Since the last thing we need out there is more roosters, any chicks who turn out to be males will go off to freezer camp before it gets to be a problem.

And isn’t Maggie desexed? Can she still lactate?

Yep, she was spayed, but she kept on lactating until about 10 minutes before I took them off to Petsmart. In fact, I put a note on her cage telling the cleaners and adoption counselors that it was okay to let Maggie see her babies, but not to let them nurse. Five bucks says that if any kittens tried to nurse on her right now, she’d probably start lactating immediately.

Doesn’t unripe tomato taste “bluchh?” Must try some this summer.

I wouldn’t eat green tomatoes in slices the way we eat ripe tomatoes, but coated in a cornmeal/ flour/ parmesan coating and oven-fried, or cooked with spices and other vegetables, they are very, very good!

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Cilantro loves Joe Bob’s scratcher.

Clove and her incredibly long arms.

Sweet Miss Cori.

“You woke me up for THIS?”

Ciara shows off her stripes.

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Who, him? Oh, just some cat. Nothin’ special. Corbie, I think they call him. ::shrug::

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Previously
2010: He’s gotten past this whole “feral” nonsense at breathtaking speed.
2009: No entry.
2008: Kitten, mid-jump.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.

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