I have a question. I brought my 8yr old cat in for a check up and of course she is developing tartar on her teeth. The vet sells a product called Oxyfresh Pet Oral Hygiene. It is a odorless solution that you put in their drinking water. It is suppose to health with the tartar and fresher breath. Anyone ever try? It is $20.00 a bottle.
I haven’t tried (or even heard of) it, but GD said: I looked it up on Amazon and it got good reviews. The only warning was to not buy it from OxyFresh directly as they will send you a smaller bottle than what you paid for. It was recommended to buy it from a pet store or such. Everyone loved the product…just not the distributor.
Has anyone out there tried it? Chime in and let us know!
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What’s the kitty poster in the kitten room?? Looks cool, the bits I can see!
Oddly, I had JUST taken pictures of all the stuff hanging on the walls in the foster room (except for the cross-stitched kitten picture, I just realized), in order to post them. So here you go!
Keep Cats and Kitty On. I got this from Cathy Peng on Etsy, back in 2011. I read about her on ModernCat (now Hauspanther) and thought it would be perfect for the kitten room. Unfortunately, just after I took this picture, I taunted Toto a little too much with the laser, and he managed to sink his claw into the middle of the poster and put a big rip in it. Which was actually okay, because then I replaced it with…
I slapped this picture together quickly (which shows, I think!) because I had a Groupon that was about to expire. It’s printed on metal. It makes me smile every time I look at it. That’s Maddy, who was my very first bottle baby, and still one of my favorite pictures. I was actually going to arrange the picture differently so that I could use two pictures (the other one being this picture of Hook), but I couldn’t make it work out, so I just used the one. That picture is also on…
The clock, which I made via CafePress.
I saw this poster on the wall of a vet’s exam room, and thought it was so neat that when I got home I tracked it down on Amazon and ordered one. Not only is the chart itself neat, but it’s laminated so I don’t have to worry about the edges curling up, or the cats getting hold of it and ripping it (though I’m sure they’d be happy to leave lots of teeth marks.) You can find it on Amazon here, or at ShopMedVet.com.
As soon as I saw the cartoon on The Oatmeal, I hoped it would be available in poster form and voila! It was! (I framed it myself with a frame I bought at Michael’s.)
Fat Cat Capsizing, by Richard Watherwax. I actually bought it at the mall in Portland, Maine, and had them frame it and ship it to me. I really like the job they did framing it. I think I’ve had that picture for about 10 years, if not more.
Guide to Cat Colors, bought off of DeviantArt. I love this poster, but I’m thinking of taking it down and storing it for a while and maybe moving everything around, just ’cause I can!
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I know you call Kara “Sheriff Mama”. I think you call Maxi “Outside Mama”, or maybe did at one point. Didn’t you make one of those little videos for her like you did Alice Mo?
I certainly did!
Porkin’ along/ singin’ her song/ it’s Out! Side! Mama!
(Just a note that Maxi is not in the least bit overweight, but she’s so short and muscular that she totally waddles!)
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I just found some info about flushing litter I thought would be good to share with your readers since I saw a previous post of yours on it (comments closed) and no one mentioned T Gondii (the parasite that actually creates the “crazy cat lady/guy” – literally (Google it)). This quote only mentions pregnant women being at risk for other obvious reasons, but T Gondii can literally make anyone insane. Excerpted from an article that also has interesting info on other litters as well.
“Don’t flush! Although most of these green litters are septic- and sewer-safe, it’s best not to flush them into our waterways. Cat feces contains the Toxoplasmosis gondii (TG) parasite, dangerous to pregnant women and marine life, particularly sea otters. Unfortunately TG is not filtered out in most water treatment plants, so don’t flush your used litter. You can throw it into the compost bin but only it you intend to use the compost on trees, shrubs, flower beds or in outdoor potted plants & no vegetables or fruits.”
I hope that helps someone, for what it’s worth!
Edited to add: Connie left this in the comments, and I wanted to be sure everyone sees it (I’m sharing it in next week’s post, too, to be super sure!)
Toxo..
First off, not every cat has it. Second, infections are more likely to come from ground soil undercooked meat.. Third, where do you think your cat gets toxo? it comes from the environment, so if you flush ‘waste’ you are simply returning it to the environment that it came from AND.. just to make this topic all that much more of a pet peeve of mine, once a cat is infected with it they only shed for two weeks..
so not every cat has it, if they have it they only shed for a short time, and the myths surrounding how deadly and dangerous it is are blown so out of proportion that it lands in the ‘the cat will suck the life out of a baby category’..
http://www.aspca.org/pet-care/cat-care/toxoplasmosis
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Came across this post today. Do you think Fred might be up to the job of duplicating it?
I think he has the ABILITY to do something similar, but not the DRIVE. He did say that it was neat, but that the bridges look too “swingy”, and that he’d have a heart attack watching one of our cats run across them!
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Regarding the heating pad, I bought this one for my elderly cat.
It has a heating element/pad inside it, but it barely gets warm. My 21-year old cat LIVES on it. It is less hot than a human heating pad on warm/low, and the cat has to be on it for warmth to happen (there’s a thick foam layer). She never liked the self-heating crinkly pad, but adores this one. I leave it on 24/7, even when we’re gone!
That’s actually the warming pad we had in Maxi’s house. Fred was convinced that it wasn’t getting warm, though (it’s been out there for a couple of years now – we unplug it in the spring, then plug it back in around late November), so he brought it inside, and we plugged it in to make sure it was getting warm. It’s been sitting on the couch, occupied, ever since! (We put a different warming pad in Maxi’s house, of course.)
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Maxie asked: Can anyone answer this one? Why do cats always barf where it hits the most surfaces and/or it’s next to impossible to get it cleaned up? Or why always on the carpet when the tile is 2 inches away?
Rebecca said: There’s a theory out there that they prefer to be able to steady themselves – so a rug is something they can dig their claws into rather than the hardwood. Or they are just little jerks!
One of my started doing a windmill-vomit recently! She shifted with every retch, making a circle of vomit, which she would then walk in and drag everywhere. We now have to run over and “steady” her!
Alma added: I always thought that they might be looking for a place where to hide their traces, like in tall grass.
I had never considered that it was because they were steadying themselves, but it certainly makes sense!
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Looking for some real-life advice about cat water fountains…Who has them or tried them and do your cats really use them?
I had forgotten this, but I actually made a page about pet water fountains so that I could keep the information retained in one place, and then completely forgot about it until I was doing a search to look for the last time I’d mentioned the Cat-It. SO, that page is here, I’ve updated it, and the comments are open, so y’all feel free to chime in on the subject! Maybe some day I’ll get my act together and put that link in the sidebar, ya think?
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Look at poor Toto, taking a bath, minding his own business, not a CLUE what lurks behind him.
Until it bites his neck, that is.
By the time he gathered himself for a retaliation, Tricki was over it.
Bunnie turns on the smug.
Sweet girl.
Toto and Tricki, admiring my FABulous slippers.
Bunnie doesn’t sniff slippers. She’s got more CLASS than that, yo.
Kittens, flopped everywhere.
Bunnie slid through the scratcher so she could grab Tricki.
Tricki pulled free and skipped away.
Bunnie takes a rest.
Then turned on her Ears of Annoyance.
“What doin’, lady?”
Bunnie, thoroughly annoyed by me and that stupid camera.
Bunnie and Toto were distinctly UNHAPPY about going back to Petsmart. Toto sang the entire way there, and Bunnie chimed in a few times. I know they’ll relax after a bit, but hopefully they won’t have to adjust for too long, surely they’ll be adopted soon (I HOPE!)
John Smith and Tricki seem to know that something is different in the foster room, but they aren’t sure exactly what. They were both very happy to see me when I went in to visit with them, and for the first time, Tricki climbed into my lap! She didn’t stay there, but she did rub back and forth against me, purring like crazy.
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Corbie, doin’ his thing, hangin’ out in the Corbs cave, trying to stay warm.
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Previously
2013: Baleful (Baby) Beans, purring up a storm.
2012: The vacuum’s put away, so it’s safe.
2011: “There appears to be a Cindy FAR too close to me!”
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: Even though I never did look ratty, and I hate her.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
I have used OxyFresh for years and it really does work. All five of my cats drink treated water. My oldest are eight and have never had dental problems. An added benefit is that no one has bad breath.
My cat refused to drink the water with OxyFresh in it. But that does remind me to try adding it to the fountain!
We use the Pioneer Cat Max fountain. Our younger cat sometimes drinks from it, but the old cat loves it (gosh that cat loves everything!). I actually have a picture of her sleeping next to it. I agree that it is loud; you can constantly hear the water, like a leaky toilet.
A friend swears by the Cat-It bucket, saying her cat wouldn’t use the ceramic fountains.
Cats are such picky brats, aren’t they? 🙂
Where did you get the Corbs Cave? I have been looking for exactly that and have yet to find one.
I got it at Walmart. Their web page only shows a red one, but I was there yesterday, and they had several different colors and patterns.
Now I really want to see a video of Maxi waddling, but I guess that has to wait till she emerges from her little house in spring. And that Corbs cave adequately frames Corbie’s beauty!
Love the posters! Especially the new one, that’s a great picture!
I use the Drinkwell Lotus 360 – one of my cats is VERRRRRRY picky about her water and lets me know if it’s not clean enough by throwing the water all over the floor (brat). It is loud, but I personally find it soothing, and it’s on the main floor where I can’t hear it upstairs. Everything goes through the dishwasher except the pump itself, which I have to scrub by hand. Disassembly and reassembly takes some practice but isn’t too hard.
I love that baby picture of Prince Hook. He still gives me that look all the time. Stinker.
love the posters….someday when I have an actual “foster room” (geez I should have bought a bigger house)
The number of fosters you have will expand to fill the space you have available. I’ve been telling Fred that we need to win the lottery and buy a bigger house, ’cause this one-litter-at-a-time thing is for the birds! 🙂
I have not tried any electric heating pads for my kitties but I did just recently buy some Mysterious Purr Pads. It took my kitties about 5 minutes to find and sniff them and they have not been empty since. My eldest cat even switched from sleeping on top of the cable box in its cubby hole to one of the pads, so they must be good. Also on the subject of water fountains, I use a Drinkwell fountain and they love it. They tend to drink more water than when I put out just a bowl for them and the water stays cleaner and fresher with the charcoal filter. I just put a water fountain (decorative) in our bedroom. My eldest watched me set this up with great excitement. After that she decided I got it for her so that she did not need to go aaaalllll the way to the kitchen in the middle of the night for a fresh beverage. Silly kitties!
That made me smile!
Love it! 🙂
Thought you might get a kick out of this…
http://io9.com/this-medieval-manuscript-curses-the-cat-who-peed-on-it-1502884468?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook&utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
That is awesome. 🙂
OMG — that’s incredible!! Hysterical too — as were many of the comments.
Robyn — please, please post this again next Friday so that everyone can see it!
We use OxyFresh for our dogs and it works great. They had what we lovingly(?) referred to as “poo-breath” and this has helped SO MUCH. We actually notice it when we forget to add it for a couple of days. One suggestion I have (and this may be common sense for most) is to start adding it in small amounts and then building it up. My husband bought it, brought it home and dumped the full, recommended amount into the dogs water bowl and the dogs went on strike. They were so pathetic- drinking from puddles or any standing water they could find in the back yard instead of their bowl. I finally convinced my husband to start adding it slowly and building up the amount and they still don’t love it but they haven’t gone on water strike.
POO BREATH. That made me laugh out loud. 🙂
Challenger’s House has been using Oxyfresh Pet Dental Hygiene Solution in the water bowls for many years. With 25-35 cats in the catroom at any given time, I’m not sure if it is effective for all of them but I haven’t had to take anyone from that room to the vet for teeth/mouth problems. I’m still a distributor for Oxyfresh so if anyone wants to buy it using our number it is 180669120. Just saying.
I am going to miss seeing pictures of Bunnie. She’s the first torti-tabby I’ve seen in years that looks so very much like my beloved Kitling, whom I lost almost ten years ago. If you weren’t so far away, Robyn, I could have so easy been tempted even though my house is already full of cats. (Including one sitting at my elbow now thinking, “I’m here and you should be petting me now, not touching that stupid flat thing.”)
Kitling was the first cat I had as an adult as she was adopted when I was in college. I’ll never forget going to the shelter to look at kittens. I had been told that there was one little baby they were keeping up front in a carrier so they could keep her company.
Now, I had been hoping for a little gray kitten, maybe with green eyes, and I had never seen a torti-tabby before. But they told me this sad story about how she had been found outside their door, crying, scared, and hiding in a bush. (No siblings were with her.) She was so terrified they had kept the carrier with them to try and comfort her. Of course I was feeling sorry for her.
So after priming me with this sob story, they reach into the carrier and lift out this multi-colored, stripey bundle of fur. As I said, I had never seen a torti-tabby before and to my eternal shame, I actually thought she was a little funny-looking at first, though I quickly learned better. She definitely wasn’t what I had had in mind. But they handed her to me – she fit in one hand – and she was purring. Looking back, I think my heart surrendered right there. I looked at the friend who had accompanied me there with tears in my eyes and we both knew I had my cat. And as much as I love and utterly adore all of my current furballs, Kitling will always be my heart-cat.
I want all the kitties to find awesome forever homes and hope that Livia, Tony, Melfi, and Toto have that happen for them soon. But I can’t help but want someone super-special to find Bunnie and fall in love with her like I did with Kitling. Thanks for giving her a wonderful break to relax, Robyn. Hopefully now she can shine and find her human.
My cubicle must be awfully dusty because my eyes are watering.
Delaney – I am so glad you had Kitling and she had you.
Thank you, Ibby. I miss my cat-child, but it was good to think of her today. 🙂
Such a lovely story. You came along just at the right time!
This is so sweet. I’m with Ibby, what’s with the dust today? 🙂
I love that term you used: “heart-cat.” I’d never seen it used before, but it perfectly describes that one very special cat above all others. I too have a heart-cat, and now I have the perfect term to describe her! Thank you!
I so wish I hadn’t asked that puking question. Within a day or two we had two days of barfing all over the house, coupled with lethargy (well, lethargy for a cat–it’s sometimes hard to tell). I was starting to freak about this “being it” and getting ready to take her to the vet (She’s had a long life of health problems), when apparently she overheard us talking and decided she wasn’t ready to go just yet. To prove it, she became her old self at 2:00 A.M.! Don’t you just love living with cats?!?!
Oh, they ADORE making you worry and then looking at you like “What? I’m fine!” Miz Poo loves to act really lethargic and move slowly, and then as soon as I start worrying, she races around here like a kitten!
If any of you donated toward Achillies’ cause, I want to send my most sincere thank you to each of you. Our goal was met and he can save his dog’s life. I was the one who told him to set up a pitchIn account but he didn’t want to take anyone’s money. I told him that at times we have to swallow our pride and now was one of them. Yesterday he looked at the account and sent me an email stating that he had tears in his eyes and was going to run and get his dog out of that “hell hole”. In this county, if a dog ever bites/nips anyone and it breaks the skin, and it is reported, the dog gets labeled as “vicious”. I was bitten by my friend’s dog and it broke the skin. It wasn’t my fault nor was it the dog’s. It was just circumstantial and one of those things. In no way was that dog vicious and this is the case for Achillies. Anyway, the owner has looked into rescues that he can “pay it forward” to. So, everyone with a dog or a has a friend with one….be very careful…accidents do happen and they have dire consequences.
Robyn, thank you ever so much for your willingness to put the link to his page on your blog. You have a wonderful heart, as we all know. Thank you again. Now I will be able to fall asleep tonight without worrying about this poor dog and his stressed out human.
That is awesome, GD!!!
Oh, that’s wonderful! I wasn’t in a position to do so but spreading the word helps too.
I still would like to see “Dangerous Dog” signs tacked to the ACPS’ doors.
I laughed at the puking question, because I always wondered about that. Not only do my cats only barf on the carpet, but they like to do it on the stairs, so it has the dribble down effect! One time, I made the grave mistake of trying to move our cat Simba, in between pukes to the linoleum-he ended up spraying it everywhere!
I tried that once too, Maureen, with the same effect. Now I just let them puke wherever they happen to be, and I don’t even get up or panic (which has the effect of making them run off to puke in a second location). However, I would prefer if my one cat would not puke off the side of the cat tree, or the side of the bed (etc) as it’s such a pain to clean up! 🙂
Or on the dining room chair and it runs off the top cushion and down the leg. That is always ever so lovely….
I slide paper towels under their mouths and gently hold their sides so they don’t run to a towel free zone to finish puking!
Ah, just beautiful, beautiful photographs all!!! Who could not love these cats?
Robyn, I was watching Cats 101, they were featuring the American Curl and mentioned a term you need to know about: “ear furnishings” aka floof.
I know that term. My kitten Rhea Silvia has the biggest ear furnishings of all time!
Toxo..
First off, not every cat has it. Second, infections are more likely to come from ground soil undercooked meat.. Third, where do you think your cat gets toxo? it comes from the environment, so if you flush ‘waste’ you are simply returning it to the environment that it came from AND.. just to make this topic all that much more of a pet peeve of mine, once a cat is infected with it they only shed for two weeks..
so not every cat has it, if they have it they only shed for a short time, and the myths surrounding how deadly and dangerous it is are blown so out of proportion that it lands in the ‘the cat will suck the life out of a baby category’..
http://www.aspca.org/pet-care/cat-care/toxoplasmosis
Two thumbs up!