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Sarabeth needs some suggestions!

We moved to this small town in Idaho a few months ago, and have been really struggling to get by; our neighbor’s adult son had a cat who is now the neighborhood “stray”. This cat is a very well mannered un-neutered male tabby. We cannot have a cat! My husband is allergic and our lease is very strict that there are no pets, under any circumstance.

So, we love our “DogCat” who comes around regularly to say “Hi!” and we’ve made sure he’s got a little box with wool blankets to sleep in on our cold nights… It’s super cold right now, like 20 at night, but no precipitation whatsoever… SO!!! Last night, after I put my kids to bed, I went outside to smoke, and here comes DogCat out of the bushes SOAKING wet; his tail, belly, everything! There was a small circle of dry fur around his mouth and eyes, but even his ears were wet.

So I went screaming for a towel and moved his “bed” into the bathroom at least until he got warm. He dried out and my husband eventually put him outside, and he’s fine today.

What I am thinking about: someone deliberately did this to the cat, and turned him out into the freezing cold to… freeze. He doesn’t “belong” to anyone. He’s a really nice cat. He’s un-neutered, so he sprays around the yard, but never in the house (not that I would have ever had a chance to watch him inside because, you know, I already said my husband’s allergic, and it’s not allowed per our lease… ~ahem~). But, even though he’s pretty happy generally, someone tried to kill him…

But, I’m so finished by the end of the day, I don’t even know how to go about finding him another home. Seriously, the town is so poor, I’m confident that euthanasia is the go-to answer for unwanted kitties at the pound. Do you have any other ideas or suggestions or do any of your readers have any ideas about how I can help this cat? I’m super broke, but I can’t stand this. We’ve done what we could to make him comfortable and safe, but we’ll get kicked out of here if we get caught even feeding him on our porch.

Sarabeth lives in Lewiston, Idaho, and added: I’ve been trying to think what else could have caused DogCat to get soaked, but we’re not close to the river, and everything else is totally frozen. I thought maybe he’d fallen in someone’s undrained swimming pool, but I smelled him as soon as I picked him up (thinking maybe someone gave him a bath???) and it was just wet, dirty cat, no chlorine or chemical of any kind.

So if anyone in that area of Idaho knows of any shelters that might be able to help out, or anyone anywhere has any suggestions for what she and her family can do to help this sweet cat, please leave a comment!

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On Sunday, I amused myself FAR too much. I have a tin of catnip that needed some sort of label so that I’d stop walking by it and saying “Oh, what’s in here?” and having to open it to see. I kid you not, I’ve had to open that tin and look inside at least six times since I put all the catnip in there. So I thought I’d look through Mister Boogers’s pictures and find a sufficiently hateful one, then I’d put “catnip” in script below it, print it out, and affix it to the tin with the wonderful substance known as Mod Podge.

I went a little astray from my original idea, but when I was done, I laughed and laughed like a big dork.

(Aside from the picture, it’s “nippe” that gets me every time. Seriously, I am typing this and snickering.)

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I went by Petsmart on Friday when I was running errands, not because I needed to buy anything there, but because I wanted to see how Charlie and Patty and Everett, Sally and Lucy were doing. The morning cleaner was still there when I went by, playing with Everett with a feather teaser. He was his usual crazy self, flying around after that feather teaser. Charlie was watching from his cage, and Patty was in the litter box taking a bath. A few minutes later, the cleaner opened Charlie and Patty’s cage, and Patty heard the cage door opening and came out to see what was going on. I would have expected her to run to the back of the litter box to hide, so seeing her go toward the door made me happy. I’d say they’re adjusting okay.

(No Peppers adopted over the weekend.)

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It took the Sons a few days to be comfortable with the idea of coming downstairs. Well, not Clay – Clay is fearless, and he was down and exploring pretty quickly. Sunday morning, Opie, Jax and Tig finally started coming down and looking around.

It’s funny, there’s always a pattern to the directions that fosters go when they’re set free. When they first get to venture forth from their room into the rest of the upstairs, they invariably head left into the bathroom, then come out and run into my bedroom, which is across the hall from the bathroom.

When they’re released into the rest of the house, they largely ignore Fred’s bedroom at the end of the hallway and head downstairs and straight into the guest bedroom. Since the guest bedroom sometimes doubles as a foster room (and the permanent residents enjoy hanging out in there the rest of the time), there are lots of toys and cat beds in there. Also, it gets some nice warm morning sun, so it turns into a favorite hangout for the kittens.

Opie, trying to decide whether it’s safe downstairs….

..or whether he should just go back upstairs, where he knows for sure that it’s safe.

Jax, on Fred’s desk. You see how high his tail is? He pretty much walks around with his tail up that high all the time.

Sniffin’ pencils.

Jax found a toy to play with.

Clay supervises.

Jax, mid-jump.

The leg kicked out to the side is just killing me dead.

Shall we dance?

He swings! He misses!

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Sugarbutt likes to hang out on top of the fridge. He can keep an eye on all the goings-on, but the kittens can’t bother him (well, at least not until they get big enough to figure out how to get up there!)

“How YOU doin’?”

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Previously
2011: No entry.
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: Humans are just so stupid, that’s the way they is made.
2007: I think it’s possible that Newt, who is Not Our Cat, might end up becoming an inside cat. (HA – ya THINK, 2007 Robyn? You really think he might? Here’s an update: he spends 99.999% of his time inside, piled up in an overstuffed cat bed like a big ol’ slug.)
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.

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