Ok…you seem to have knowledgeable and intelligent readers…anybody out there know where I can buy…
(1) a heated water bowl…something solar that does not require being plugged in.
(2) a heated shelter…again, something that does not require being plugged in…my feral cat feeding station is in the middle of a field with no access to power.
Any suggestions would be appreciated : )
Oldcat has this suggestion: Maybe what you need is a battery powered weatherproof converter that gives you normal power in the field. Then you can just get normal outdoor pet items.
Maybe campers have that kind of stuff.
I myself have no ideas, but I know you guys out there must have some suggestions – we’re all ears!
Who says you can’t train cats?
The funny thing is that I didn’t actually realize I was training all the cats to go to their different places for snack time. It was just through several days of taking the big Peppers upstairs and not letting the little Peppers in their room, and then putting the little Peppers in the guest bedroom with their snack (and not letting the big cats go in there) that the cats all figured out where they were likely to get their food, and staying there. Kind of neat, isn’t it?
This makes me wonder what each individual kitty sounds like. I picture Alice with a dainty little kitten mew, Miz Poo with a loud but loving meow and Stinkerbelle with a gruff, throaty mrow!
This gives me an idea – I’m going to do my best to get each cat’s meow on video and make one video with each of them meowing!
I can tell you, though, that Alice actually sounds almost exactly like Marty in this video:
Which is why Fred is 100% convinced that Marty and Alice were from the same litter.
Also, if you watch the Snackin’ Time video and forward to one minute and 59 seconds, you’ll hear a high-pitched “Me-ewwww!”, and that’s Stinkerbelle. She has quite the imperious meow, that one.
You’re right about Miz Poo, though – she certainly does have a loud but loving meow!
Robyn, I met a guy named Marty at the vet’s office on Saturday that has 35 cats!! Well — “only” 32, really… he has four of his mom’s on a temporary basis. So, 32 permanent indoor cats, almost all rescued from the street or from abusive situations. He showed me pictures of all the cats on his cell phone (they looked healthy and happy)!! So there you go, another person you can refer to when someone questions how many cats YOU have… hey, it’s definitely not as many as are at Marty’s house!!
(and then)
I just had to correct the above statement, before anyone accuses me of being mathematically challenged. Reading the above, you’d think the cat total should be 36 — but I should have said that Marty has “four of his mom’s animals on a temporary basis”. And the animals from mom consist of 3 cats and 1 dog. So… the cat total is 35 🙂
My newest best friend Marty, you mean?
“How many cats do you HAVE, Robyn?”
“You know, it’s funny you ask that, I was just thinking about my best friend Marty. Would you believe he has 35 cats in his house right now? Boy, I could never imagine having that many cats, but they all seem happy!”
Have you ever noticed that we people who have TOO MANY cats will always qualify the answer? “Well, I HAVE 13 cats, but two of them are outside most of the time and one of them is kind of feral, so she spends all her time on top of the kitchen cabinets and only comes down to eat and use the litter box. Actually, they can all go outside during the day, so it’s not like ::embarrassed laugh:: we have 13 cats inside all the time, because THAT would be complete lunacy!”
I’m still overwhelmed by the care that goes into snacktime at Crooked Acres! (Speaking of which, it was great to see that shy beauty Stinkerbelle in action.) And how many times daily does your dishwasher take a beating?
I only run the dishwasher once a day, at bedtime, believe it or not. I do wash the cats’ snack dishes, too, or if the dishwasher is full, I wash them by hand. Usually they’ll all fit in the dishwasher, though.
My DVR is filled up with all the Walking Dead episodes from this season i haven’t gotten a chance to watch a single one 🙁
Well, don’t be too sad – you’ve got ’til FEBRUARY to catch up. February. Seriously. I object!
Are you or Fred watching American Horror Story? I’m loving that one too.
We watched about half of the first episode. Fred wanted to keep watching it, but I wasn’t feeling it. We may give it another chance at some point. Pretty often, we don’t get into a show when we first watch it, then we give it another chance and end up falling in love with it. Case in point: we didn’t care for Arrested Development when it first came on, and then decided to give it another try once the series ended, and have since watched the entire series at least twice.
Can Newtles Bing BE any funnier??? 😉
This made me LOL. Newtles Bing!
The drawing of the rescue kitty reminded my of this photo from Good Morning Kitten of itty-bitty wittle ‘Stormy’.
Oh my god. So so so so SO CUTE!
What’s the Walking Dead?
Zombies! I’ve never been a huge fan of zombie movies, but I really like this series (which is based on a comic book, or so I hear.)
I like Friends, too. Robyn, why not just buy the dvd’s? or is there no storage space for dvds?
There is storage space for DVDs, but I’m all about the instant gratification. You meant I have to GET OUT the DVD and put it IN the player and then SIT ’til the menu pops up and then CHOOSE the episode? I don’t want to do THAT!
Although I did recently figure out that I could buy the entire series through Amazon and then watch it on my Kindle Fire. I am very tempted.
I have to say thank you. I adopted my cat as a 4 or 5 year old, and so I never got to see her as a kitten. Now I have, because she looks EXACTLY like miss patty! Although in personality she’s more of a Miz Poo. She has no truck for other cats.
::fume::
“She. Is. TOUCHING. ME!”
Miz Poo is no fan of Miss Patty – but you’ll note that Miss Patty is not fazed in the slightest.
Stress runs in the family.
Hanging out in the foster room.
It’s CORBIE TIME!
“What?”
“You can’t move this basket up to the foster room. It’s MINE.”
I may have mentioned in the past that one of the toys we have for the cats is a mink tail. I got several of them from my sister many years ago – someone gave them to her for her cats to play with, and they weren’t interested so she passed them along to me. My cats and fosters always really liked them, would carry them around and growl at the other cats and just basically act like the mink tails were their prey.
So then.
When I got back from Pennsylvania last month, I noticed that the cats had a renewed interest in one of the cat tails, they were playing with it all the time, carrying it around, and so on. But one day I happened to take a close look at it, and. Um.
It’s not a mink tail in that picture with Corbie. It’s a squirrel tail. Apparently, at some point while I was gone, the cats caught a squirrel in the back yard and, shall we say, separated it from its tail, and brought the tail inside for super fun playtime.
A squirrel tail, for some reason, grossed me out in a way that the mink tails don’t, and thus I tossed it out the door (the side door, not the back door. They can’t get to it in the side yard.) They were SO mad at me, but they got over it next time snack time came around.
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Previously
2010: Here’s some cute to tide you over ’til then.
2009: Christmas shopping – I HAVE THE SOLUTION FOR YOU!
2008: I guess she’s mellowing in her old age.
2007: Stinkerbelle seethes.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
Yeah, nothing like snack time to make the world right again. Hee hee… But ew. Dudes. Squirrel tail? Ew.
(Every time you write “It’s CORBIE TIME!”, I keep thinking of the Family Guy episode where Brian does the “Peanut Butter Jelly Time!” song and dance. I don’t know why. I can’t remember my name most days, but I can remember obscure Family Guy snippets.)
Ha, ha, ha – a squirrels tail!!! (And ewww, too, though) I have a vintage fox fur stole and mink coat (family stuff from wayyy back in the 40’s and 50’s) that Trixie goes crazy over if I leave the closet open. I was moving Christmas boxes out the other week and she almost had a hole worked in the fox before I grabbed her out! She does the same thing with my fur lined gloves if she can get to them. But Jinx could care less about fur. He’s a feather man, himself!
LOVE that first photo of Corbie, with his front feet crossed all poshly!!
and maybe the squirrel survives, but then again, have you seen any tailless ones (Beatrix Potter’s Squirrel Nutkin comes to mind)? our cats love the little play mice that are real rabbits fur but Ellie always chews the tails off. One of the daughters speculates that she’s nailing them up somewhere to prove her ‘kills’!
oopssss. was it Mr/Ms Squirrel from 12/8/11
anyway I refuse to think about Squirrel..
If only we can be as stress as Kitties!
My parents had a squirrel in their yard with a partial tail. We always wondered what happend to his tail. I think we know the answer now. They had several strays they had neutered and cared for.
Love that first photo of Corbie! He is such a beautiful boy. Any word on the Peppers gang at Petsmart? Is it only Miss Molly that’s been adopted so far? I wish I lived closer.
Oh, the card DOES top Loony Jake from last year! I didn’t think it was possible! 🙂 Thank you so much, Miss Robyn!!!
We love our cats but they’re still little predators! I’m actually happy with that since my two oldsters are still catching mice.
Oh my gosh, I’d totally freak out at a squirrel tail! I’m shuddering now… bleh! Still, Corbie is beautiful!
Okay your picture of Miz Poo and Patty had me giggling for so long and so hard my cat got mad b/c my stomach, which she was laying on, wouldn’t stop moving.
Oh and Marty is my new friend too.
I just wanted to give my offical permission to show as many Corbie pictures as possible in every post. If I ever head out your way I will sneak into your yard and steal Corbie. I love him! He is so handsome and I think he would get along with my two boys so well.
I was thinking, that’s not a mink tail. Glad you figured it out. Poor squirrel. I hope he misses it tail, if not, he’s probably in other pieces. Ick.
Ewwwwwie — I probably would have freaked too. Poor squirrel, bet those kitties were quite proud of themselves though!