8-12-15 Wednesday

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Shecky update! Sheckdate! Well, except that his name is Gir now, so it’s a Girdate! Girpdate?

John said: So it has almost been a month since we brought Gir/Shecky home and I thought it was time to give everyone an update. Gir is most definitely one of a kind! He is the most curious and random little guy. He still has a fascination with the bathtub. He has even surprised me a time or two by getting in the shower…while I was in the shower. He is a great help when it comes to doing laundry and daily household chores…or at least he thinks he is being helpful.

And two weeks ago he became a big brother! We adopted Kes and the two are inseparable! We were hoping that Gir would teach Kes how to behave but it has been the reverse, lol. Gir is just simply the sweetest little guy! He loves to cuddle, loves to give kisses, has never met a stranger and loves to test the limits of what he can or can’t do.

Thank you so much for the update, John! I love seeing Gir in his role as big brother. 🙂

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Look who it is!

“You think you will get any work done on your music?–Ha Ha, foolish human!”

Yes, that IS the cat formerly known as Mama Lucy! Pam posted on Facebook last week to say:

I knew that Gilly (aka Mama Lucy) was getting plump, so weighed her and compared to the last weight you had posted–up more than 2# to 9.6oz! So I guess that girlish figure is gone. She is the sweetest, funniest little thing! Follows us around and “helps” me with everything, always meets us when we come in, gallops madly around the house at playtime.

You had commented in your notes about her that her estimated dob was 3/19/2012. Do you know where she was prior to coming to you as a pregnant stray?

Her name has gone back and forth from “Tiggah” to “Gilly” depending on which grandchild is here. The girls in the family (including me) like Gilly. Bill will call her kitty no matter what her name turns out to be, and as long as she gets some lovin’ she doesn’t care.

I told Pam that the age we gave Lucy was just a guesstimation – the vet thought she was between 2 and 3 years old, so I subtracted 3 years from the date I got her. Aging cats isn’t that easy once they’re past about a year old, so it’s entirely possible that she’s younger than we thought. Or maybe she just feels so free from her previous life of caring for kittens that she’s feeling her oats!

(Thanks for letting me steal that pic, Pam. I just love that look on her face!)

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So, a few people have asked how I get all those kittens fed several times a day, and I thought it would be fun to do a “Day in the life” post. And then I realized, when I reached noon, that I had about 30 pictures, and the day was only half over.

I combined pictures into collages and stopped taking pictures of every single thing I did, in hopes of making this a little more interesting and a little less image-intensive.

These pictures were all taken yesterday, with my cell phone (and edited and collaged using PicMonkey).

Yes, that’s early and makes my inner slacker/night owl cry.

Snack time for the permanent residents (not all of whom are in this picture, obviously. Tommy gets his snack in the dining room, Maxi, Newt, and Stefan on the side stoop, and I think Joe Bob was partaking of his morning meal in the computer room. Stinkerbelle was atop the pantry, because she doesn’t mingle with the peasants).

Bottles filled with pre-made formula, and set in mugs of water to warm up slowly. The mug on the left (“Everything tastes better with cat hair in it!”) is for the Swimmers; the one on the right (the big bottle) is for the Squash Bugs.

Dennis snoopervises from atop the fridge.

The Swimmers get their bottles first, for no reason in particular, that’s just the routine I’ve gotten into. After they’re full, I snuggle with them until they get sleepy, then put clean blankets in the tub, and head out for round two.

The Squash Bugs get their turn (not shown in these pictures: the syringes of canned food mixed with formula. Calabash initially showed interest in eating off the plate, but after that wouldn’t even think of it. No one else is interested in eating off the plate either, so I syringe-feed them canned food mixed with formula and then top them off with formula from the bottle.) After they’re full and have run around the room a while, I bring Pattypan downstairs where we remove her bandage, put a warm compress on her leg, and put a clean bandage on. Then she gets a little more of the bottle and goes back into the cage with her siblings.

Alice to the vet for a dental cleaning. Then to the grocery store for a few groceries, and then to Dollar General, because it’s the only place I can find plain non-clumping clay litter. I bought two 20 pound bags for $7.

Home again, greeted by Stefan on the side stoop and Archie in Fred’s chair.

Rescue operation wherein a cricket (on the bathroom floor) was scooped up into an empty Rolaids container, and released outdoors.

Dishes, laundry, put chicken on to boil, breakfast made.

Keeping an eye on Archie and Stefan, because it kinda looked like they wanted to be startin’ something.

Bottles on to warm for 11:00 feeding.

While bottles were warming, 5 minutes to answer email and check Facebook.

Feeding the Swimmers.

Feeding the Squash Bugs (those faces are killing me dead. Such DRAMA).

No pictures of: lunch, vacuuming, editing pictures for today’s post. Hands-on time with the permanent residents (I make a point of literally getting my hands on all the permanent residents (except Stinkerbelle) at least once a day so I can see how they’re doing, get a little love, and just generally check in). This took the better part of the early afternoon. Ordinarily there would have been a nap in there, but I didn’t have time for a nap because I had an appointment:

Pattypan had her follow up appointment at the vet. The appointment was at 4, but I managed to show up half an hour early because I spaced on the time (it was at 4, I needed to leave by 3:30, and then somehow I started thinking the appointment was at 3:30. Duh.) Zuke, Ambercup and Calabash got roped into being travel buddies, and they were WILD. They raced around the carrier, they screamed their little heads off, they peed in the carrier. I guess they’re over this “travel buddy” nonsense!

The good news is that Pattypan’s leg is looking really good. It’s healing well – she’s to stay on the antibiotics for another week, just to be safe, but it doesn’t look like there’s going to be any more problems (fingers crossed)!

Was almost 5 when I got home, which is an hour later than I usually feed them. They seemed none the worse for wear, though.

Feeding the Swimmers. And yes, that IS a litter box in the tub with them, and they DO use it. Not all of them, and I usually have to replace the pad in the tub once or twice a day because someone peed on it, but they’re already hitting the litter box more than I’d expect at this age, so it’s all good.

Feeding the Squash Bugs. Yes, I did take more pictures of the Squash Bugs today than the Swimmers; my only excuse is that the light in the bathroom is awful.

TV time with Fred (and Dennis, who didn’t show up in the picture I took). We’re working our way through Mr. Robot, and I really like it.

Last feeding for the Swimmers at 8. Fred helps out with this feeding, and we do it at the dining room table (and have to move cat beds to make room). We’re both of the opinion that the Swimmers are ready to give canned food a try. They are some super fat and healthy little kittens, and though they’re at least a week younger than the Squash Bugs, they’re all bigger than Pattypan, and are probably going to be bigger than all the Squash Bugs before long. I’m starting to think that they’re going to be really big cats when all is said and done.

Last feeding for the Squash Bugs.

After the last feeding for the night, and a whole lot of kitten-kissing and snuggling, I had a ton of dishes to do, more laundry to fold (I swear I do more laundry when I have kittens than I did when I had a newborn human in my house almost 27 years ago!), and more pictures to go through, edit, collage, watermark, and upload.

Things I needed to get to today, and didn’t get a chance:

*Responding to blog comments – I try to check in at least once a day; I read them all via email, but don’t always get a chance to respond, unfortunately.
*Work in the garden (the tomatoes desperately need some serious pruning, the squash plants need to have their boundaries enforced, I need to decide what to do about my raised beds, I need to beat back the wisteria), there’s a lot of pruning that needs to be done in the front flower bed and in the greenery around the cat houses in the back yard.
*Paint the cat shelves that have been sitting in the garage for months. I slap a coat of paint on here and there, but I need to just get it DONE.
*Blog housekeeping: pages for the Swimmers and the Squash Bugs, and… well, a whole list of stuff. I have it all written down here somewhere!
*And a million other things.

The babies will grow up and require less time out of my day (but never less snuggling; it’s a rough job, but someone’s gotta do it). I’ll eventually get all the important stuff done, and let the less important stuff slide. It all works out in the end.

(This was a particularly busy day for me; I’m not sure that I thought my cunning plan through. If this post seems slapped together pretty quickly, well, it was!)

And now it’s 11:00 and I am really really tired, so I’m going to schedule this to post at 5 am, then I’ll pop out my contacts, wash my face, brush my teeth, and go to bed. I’ll read for about 10 minutes before I turn out the light. The morning always comes too soon!

PS: I only glanced through this post and have likely missed egregious typos or other mistakes. If you spot any, please let me know so I can fix them. Otherwise, 2016 Robyn will see them and be horrified when she’s linking back to this year’s post.

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Previously
2014: Orlando gives me the face of “What you doin’, weird lady?”
2013: Puff (now Hook) goes home.
2012: No entry.
2011: The way you’re asking the question makes me think that there might be people out there who don’t decorate the house to flatter their cats, is that what you’re telling me?
2010: Here at Crooked Acres, it’s business as usual.
2009: Oh, he’s so spoiled but he is SO sweet.
2008: These kittens are KILLING ME.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: Good thing he’s so cute!

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