memo
June 23, 2007 l 2 Comments
To: Stephanie
From: the Zookeeper
Your back claws are sharp. My shoulders are not a launching pad.
I would appreciate your future consideration in this matter.
he’s handsome, and he knows it
June 22, 2007 l 3 Comments
remembering
June 18, 2007 l 1 Comment
Inga was our first dog, and God couldn’t have given us a better fit for our family.
She was sweet and loyal, gentle and loving, patient and understanding.
She was a dog any little girl would have wanted. And I’m missing her a lot tonight.
My dad’s best friend lives in Florida and calls on a fairly regular basis. When we’re not home he has a tendency to leave long, and rather amusing, messages on our answering machine. And when playing them back we noticed an interesting phenomena: the cats love his voice. Scully in particular.
He came up to visit last month, and (as Scully purred away on his lap) we told him about the cats affection for his messages. Now when he calls and gets our machine, over half the messages are for the cats. I’m sure that’s one of many the warning signs for having a cat-run household, but who’s counting? This was his message this morning:
Good morning P***** family, this is your crazy friend down in Florida calling. How’s Scully-kitty this morning? Get all the other kitties around, we’re gonna have a Bible Study this morning. Uh, let’s see, open up your Bibles to 2nd Hezekiah 3:12*. We’re going to be studying about the purrrrr-fect verse. Okay, well, say ‘Hi’ to your father. Pray for him, and your mother, and all the rest of your people there. And be good kitties, okay? And we’ll talk with you later. God bless, bye-bye.
* not an actual verse
and this is why I have gray hairs
June 17, 2007 l 3 Comments
When you have a multiple cat household, it’s just not possible to know where everyone is all the time. Generally, I know they’re in the kitchen at mealtimes, running around like crazy in the early morning and late evening, and at all other times snoozing somewhere cozy. There are times when we’ll do a headcount, just to be sure. For instance, in our small home going longer than ten minutes without seeing a single feline is considered highly unusual and worthy of inspection.
However, it can take longer to notice when just one cat is MIA. Which is exactly what happened this morning when I happened to notice that the cat food wasn’t disappearing as quickly as usual. I then realized that I hadn’t seen Miko when I was serving the cats their breakfast, and backtracking further, I didn’t remember seeing her anytime in the half hour since I’d been home from work.
Pet mommy panic settles in quickly. I scoured the house. Once. Twice. No sign of a fluffy tortie. Part of me was recalling that Miko is the queen of the disappearing kitties and if anycat could manage to hide somewhere completely obscure, it would be her. The other part of me was terrified that she had gotten outside. She has never spent more than ten minutes outdoors in her nearly three years. To say she’d be poorly equipped would be an understatement.
Beeper was crying for her breakfast, so I went out into the addition to feed her while glancing around for any sign of Miko. Nothing. My next course of action would be to go over our house with a finetoothed comb. It’s a small, open-concept home with very few places for a cat to totally disappear.
Any cat that isn’t Miko.
Because when I went back into the house, she was sitting in the middle of the living room carpet as though she had been there all along. With a slow blink she said, I’m fine, mum.
Tell that to my racing heart, you lil’ twerp.
hell hath no fury
June 15, 2007 l 4 Comments
We’ve been through this before, of course. Peanut decides to sit smack dab in the middle of all the action, regardless of the risk of being tripped over. Tonight she was in the litterbox when I needed to clean it, and after I moved her aside she thought it might be nice to chew a few holes in the garbage bag full of dirty litter.
“Peanut, stop it.” *pushes head aside*
“Peanut, do not chew that bag.” *firmly pushes head aside*
“Peanut, no. Stop.” *pushes entire bunny aside*
“Listen, if you think you’re going to get special treatment just because you’ve got some mobility issues, think again.” *picks rabbit up and places her several feet away*
A few minutes later the quiet was disrupted by the sound of a litterbox grate being tossed onto the floor. Cheeky rabbit.
and now for something completely different
June 9, 2007 l 1 Comment
tagged by Elzabet…
Rules: After posting these rules, each player proceeds to list 8 relatively random facts/habits about himself/herself. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, leaving them a comment on their blogs to let them know.1. I’m not a dog person. Don’t get me wrong, I love dogs – I just don’t like to live with them.
2. I worry constantly about my pets in the event that something happens to me.
3. The one pet-related chore that I dread the most? Clipping nails. I’m pretty sure that’s the one the pets dread the most too…
4. While remaining committed to my ideal (and current track record) of adopting vs. buying animals, my dream pet is still a Velveteen Lop.
5. I have been known to keep small stuffed toys near my bed to toss at Rex when he’s making noise too early in the morning.
6. I happen to think my furkids are completely fascinating and wonderful and I adore them completely. I’m amazed when I find people that don’t.
7. I am allergic to my mice (I’m also allergic to rats).
8. When taking photos of the rabbits, I regularly Photoshop out any extraneous poopies. Rest assured, my room is rarely that clean.
I tag…whoever happens to be reading this post!
back to ground
l Comments Off
The cats have been eating whole prey for several months now, and for the most part I’ve been very happy with that style of feeding. I do think that whole foods are the ideal diet for any animal, be they carnivore or not. But just as Peanut can hardly tolerate a single fresh vegetable without terrible stomach upset, what is ideal for our pets may not be what is best for them. And so it goes…
Whole prey (versus ground foods) is rather contingent upon the cats actually eating whole meat, bones and organs. Many will. I have three that won’t. Miko, bless her stout soul, will eat whatever I put in front of her. But her mom and siblings have slowly been turning their noses up at their food, organ meat in particular. Organ meats like liver are a critical part of their diet and provide key nutrients not found elsewhere – they can’t live only on muscle meat and bone.
Over the past two weeks the food strike intensified, and I became genuinely concerned that their finickiness was going to hurt them. So tonight I got the meat grinder out of storage and mixed up a batch: thirteen pounds of chicken meat (breasts and leg quarters), a dozen egg yolks, and a pound of chicken liver. Not a perfect mixture, but for the next week or so it’s an improvement. For some reason I couldn’t find the Taurine capsules, and we’re out of salmon oil; they’ll have to be added later. The taurine is really only necessary because I didn’t happen to have any chicken hearts. Always good to have those handy, you know.
The cats have never transitioned well to new foods, and I was of course expecting some resistance. I portioned out four plates worth and set them down, spaced generously, around the kitchen. Miko, Stephanie and PJ immediately settled down and polished their plates within just a few minutes. Gone. All of it.
And you know, I actually felt bad to see them wolf it down that fast. I’m sure they liked gnawing on bones, and I loved that they had the opportunity to eat as God intended, but I think even they recognized that the ground mixture provides good, solid sustenance. Scully was the only one who remained skeptical. Not that she’d suffer for a few missed meals or anything.
summer project #1: the pets’ closet
June 8, 2007 l 1 Comment
I wish I had ‘Before’ photos to show you, but imagine if you will a jumbled mess of boxes and bags covered in blankets and whatever else had been haphazardly tossed in there. This closet stores nearly all of our pet supplies, from medicine to litter to bedding to…everything else. When I emptied it out yesterday, it nearly covered our back deck (have to be prepared for all eventualities, you know). So it really goes without saying that this is a huge improvement…
nokatman said: Wow! You really are ready for almost any pet contingency!
Yes, I realized as I began to sort through things that I have enough supplies right on hand to not only handle most medical emergencies, but also to house another half dozen small animals. I rarely throw away old pet supplies – you never know when you might need them again.
the prince
June 6, 2007 l 3 Comments
It only took him a year, but it seems like PJ has come to terms with the fact that yes, we are his family and yes, he is staying. First 12 weeks with us, then a year in a new place, and now a year with us. It’s enough to confuse anyone.As the year has unfolded, he’s seen what it’s like to be a cat in our home. He doesn’t startle when hands reach down to pet him all the time. He’s become much more talkative and seems to love knowing that we’ll talk back. And when one cat tires of him, he knows there’s still two more he can torment, er, play with.
I often wonder if there was a moment that he remembered us: remembered that Scully is his mom, Stephanie and Miko are his sisters, and I was the first human he ever snuggled with. Did he recognize our home? Recognize the bunnies he used to snuggle with? When he acts standoffish, is it just PJ being PJ, or is there a part of him that’s still unsure of us?
It took Scully, a scraggly street kitty, over three years to really relax around us. So if there’s more of PJ still waiting to unfold, I’m definitely willing to wait.
