2-13-15

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Don’t know if you watch Downton Abbey but there is an actor whose real name is Tom Cullen! But the actor is nowhere as cute as your Tom Cullen

Downton Abbey is on my to-watch list. I wonder if the actor’s parents were fans of The Stand. Hmm… he was born in 1985, and The Stand was first published in 1978. It’s a possibility!

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So what you’re trying to tell us is, that 10 AM is nap time? Because that’s a cause I can support!

I’m pretty sure that nap time takes place from about 7:30 to 12:30, a short break to wander into the kitchen to see if the humans will share their lunch, and then back to nappin’ ’til around 4:30 or 5. It’s a rough and rigorous schedule, but they stick to it pretty well!

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Where did you get those big self-warming beds? They look so cozy I want to get in one!

Amazon! This is the smaller one (the one on Sugarbutt’s doll bed), and this is the really big one, that Archie likes to sleep in on the dining room table, and Miz Poo likes to sleep in in the computer room. They’re definitely always occupied!

Fred always says that he wishes they made beds like that for humans.

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I wish Fred would share his kitty-taming ways. My parents have a family of kitties living in their backyard, and while the mama is pretty friendly, the two kittens are super-scared. Any advice for how to get the kittens to come around? One of the kittens is slowly starting to warm up, but the other one takes off and hides every time a person comes into the backyard.

I’m pretty sure I can speak for Fred when I say that luring them closer with food (the stinkier the better), petting them as much as you can, and then eventually grabbing them up for forced cuddling, is what works. It’s a lot easier when they’re confined in a small space, though!

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I wonder if Alice will have any issues sharing her daddy?

She’s handling it pretty well, actually! As long as Archie realizes that she’s got first dibs on their daddy (and Archie seems to be understanding it), she’ll let him have the occasional snuggle, too.

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Cracks me up. Archie on top of the cabinets. I wonder how Stinkerbelle liked that!!

and

Archie sure is a brave boy 🙂 I hope there were no scuffles with the Belle !!

There have been no scuffles and surprisingly little anger from Stinkerbelle regarding Archie. I suspect that part of it is that she’s very clear about making her boundaries known via a low growl, and he’s really good about hearing and respecting those boundaries. I honestly don’t know the last time I heard one of her scary wildcat screams (of course, now that I’ve said that she’ll wake me up with one tonight!)

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So it appears to me that Stefan has two modes, sleeping on the table and stealing kitten food. Is that it or does he actually ever play or anything? lol

That’s pretty much it – though every once in a while he’ll ask to go out the side door, whereupon he’ll immediately climb over the fence into the back yard and come in the cat door. I think it’s his form of exercise.

Oh! And yesterday he killed a vole the size of a kitten, brought it inside, and raised one eyebrow and nodded toward it when I walked into the kitchen. (It was completely untouched. Probably died of fright.)

PS: It’s times like that when I’m particularly glad that Fred works from home. I mean, I COULD have picked up the vole and disposed of it, but I don’t particularly like touching dead things, so if Fred’s in the house, that’s his job.

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Just read the 2007 Joe Bob urine saga too! Laughed and laughed (kindly) at: “(Y’all just SHUT UP. No, we’re not adopting him!)” Glad you didn’t stick to that!!

In my defense, we actually did NOT adopt him at that point. He went to Petsmart and was adopted and then returned. It wasn’t until early 2008, when we said goodbye to Spot, that Fred came up with the idea of adopting Joe Bob. I’m glad Fred remembered that Joe Bob was back at the shelter – I sure do love that sweet boy.

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So…. having read all the other comments, I had to go read the 2007 entry. And I thoroughly enjoyed every little vignette so entertainingly described. BUT, what is a gaum????? I looked up the definition online, and it didn’t make any sense to me in the context. Please to educate this immigrant whose first language was not English about this? Thanks!

That’s a word I picked up from my mother, who was born and raised in Maine. This page says that “gaummy/gommy” means “not very coordinated”, and that’s kind of how she always used it: someone who was kind of an uncoordinated goober. I can’t find that definition anywhere, though, and to be honest she’s the only one I ever heard use the word (well, aside from my sister), so I’m not sure where she picked it up.

Oh, I just searched back through my email, and back in 2005 I wrote this, which explains it pretty well: According to dictionary.com, “gaum” is defined as “To smudge or smear”, but my mother always used it as a substitution for “klutz” – ie, “What a gaum.” I think it works well in the sentence “…when he gaums around on my desk and knocks stuff over”, don’t you?

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Did you really only have 3 cats beside fosters in 2007? That seems so WRONG somehow….

No, we had (I had to make Fred help me remember, because 2007 was SO LONG AGO AND I AM SO OLD) six cats back in 2007. We had Spot, Spanky, Miz Poo, Mister Boogers, Sugarbutt, and Tommy.

What really shocks me the most is my mention of “the litterbox.” THE litterbox. We had ONE litterbox for six cats, and somehow that seemed okay to me. 2015 Robyn would like to respectfully suggest that 2007 Robyn ADD ANOTHER LITTERBOX, STUPID. Preferably DOWNSTAIRS.

When we moved into this house (and Maxi and Newt came WITH this house, which gave us a total of 8 cats), we had two litterboxes, in the laundry room. That just amazes me.

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This is irrelevant to the blog post, but last night as I was torturing my cats (aka forehead kisses), I remembered you writing something about making sure that your fosters know how to be kissed. Neither of mine do. Sleep under the covers, check. Come when called, check. Fetch, check. Kisses? It’s like I’m trying to give them a bath (and they like water, the freaky siamese they are). Anyhow, I said to the more gregarious of the two: “Are you low on kisses? Do I need to check your kisses dipstick.” and for some reason, it struck me as something you’d say.

That is TOTALLY something I’d say!! 🙂

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Alicia said:

Hi all, I usually lurk instead of posting but I need some help. We have two little feral girls who were so full of worms that one had to go to emergency. They are allowing us to cuddle them and are quite comfortable with humans.

The healthier little girl has become very comfortable with us and is now brave enough to head into the big room. She’ll play once in there, but if there is ANY sound (laundry door opening, cabinet shutting, someone laughing) she freaks and latches onto me. As much as I enjoy that she trusts me, there are eight other cats who need me to care for them and I can’t do that with a kitten surgically attached to me.

Not to mention, since her sister (formerly the brave and affectionate one) came back from the vet (prolapsed anus from deworming and dehydration from diarrhea plus it didn’t help that she and her sister were already malnourished from the parasites), she has become significantly more fearful. Before she was first to make an escape attempt. Now all she wants is to hide in her bed. In short, I want to get them brave enough to socialize and explore without fleeing or clinging everytime the phone rings. Any suggestions?

You didn’t mention how old they are, or how long they’ve been with you, but I think that the main thing that will help is time. I wonder if separating them (if you have the space to do so) will help, too – almost always, separating really skittish kittens seems to help. I think that they feed off each others’ fear when they’re together, and so when they’re apart they become braver.

Feliway might help (I think the spray rather than the diffuser works better), and Rescue Remedy could help, too. I’m sure you spend time with each of them alone, snuggling, petting and reassuring, but I’m mentioning it for anyone else who might stumble across this page.

Hopefully there are other suggestions out there – y’all, please chime in!

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Silly boy.

I think I mentioned that they found the Bada Beam raaaather interesting.

I like the look Simon is giving Garfunkel here. All “CLEARLY it is coming from that green thing, dummy!”

Sweet boy.

Track toy snugglin’ time. Track toys need a lot of attention.

Like most kittens without full-length tails, Simon is a little tail-obsessed and can often be found playing with Garfunkel’s tail.

Luckily, Garfunkel doesn’t seem to mind.

Flirty boy.

Checking out the ceiling fan.

I just love the way it looks like flames are shooting out the ends of his ears.

Om nom NOM.

“This thing is TASTY, lady.”

Archie goes a-visitin’.

“Seriously, lady. You’re a cat hoarder, right? You have like 138 cats out there?”

They were interested in Archie – Archie was mostly interested in checking out the places to sleep.

I like how you can see the sunset out the window.

The boys did well on their trip to Petsmart last night. I put them in their cage (after snuggling them and giving them a bunch of kisses), and they went into the litter box pretty quickly to hide. Kathie and Winnie set up a little tent for them, so they’d have a place to curl up and feel safe. Simon went into it and curled up, but Garfunkel actually curled up in a bed outside the tent, and went to sleep. They both dealt with being handled by strangers (Winnie and Kathie) pretty well, so I have high hopes for those sweet boys.

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Last of the naptime collages! I should do this again in the summer, to see if their favorite places to sleep change with the warmer weather.

Left row from top to bottom: Sugarbutt in the doll bed in the dining room; Jake in my recliner in the front room; Stefan in the cat bed on my bed; Miz Poo in the self-warming cat bed near my computer.
Middle row: Archie in the self-heating bed on the dining room table; Tommy on the back of my recliner in the front room; Newt in the bed next to my monitor.
Right row: Alice in her pile o’ beds on the dining room table; Dennis atop the platform in the front room; Kara on top of the pantry in the kitchen; Stinkerbelle atop the cabinets on the opposite side of the kitchen.

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Previously
2014: Throwback Thursday: 2009.
2013: Some of them slept. Some of them gave me the stink eye.
2012: As soon as they hear me wake up and roll over in the morning, though, they’re all crawling on me, purring, and asking for love.
2011: No entry.
2010: No entry.
2009: It’s absolutely stunning what separating a couple of skittish kittens will do to their personality.
2008: And then Joe Bob wasn’t even interested in going outside.
2007: We call him Popeye when he does this.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.

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