More Kittens

Boy, it's been a long time since I posted to this!  I've been too busy to even mention that Ringtail surprised us in late August.  It turns out when she brought one set of kittens in from the storm, she was already working on another set.  She presented us with five new kittens, two ginger boys, a tabby/tortie boy, a tabby/tortie girl, and a black girl with white socks.

They are all adorable and are wandering about exploring their world.  The older kittens don't know what to do with them, but Wabble thinks they're wonderful.  We let them out for a couple hours at a time a few times a day so they can get socialized, but put them and their mother back in the nursery when the hissing starts.

A Whole Nuther Famiily

Yesterday, the remains of Tropical Storm Barry came through.  Ringtail, the female feral I've been taming gave us quite a surprise!  Diane called to me to come quickly, so I came running to see what she was on about.  I'd seen Ringtail up and about a little earlier and now she was up again, in the rain, with a kitten trailing along after her.  Diane and I went out to see, and Ringtail let us come right up to her, as she has been doing for some time.  The kitten, however, ducked beneath a car and climbed up into the wheel well.  Diane reached up into the wheel well and pulled the kitten out.  Meanwhile, Ringtail diappeared back down the storm drain.  Not knowing what else to do, we brought the poor bedraggled kitten inside.  About an hour later, Ringtail appeared again with another kitten.  This time we brought both her and the kitten inside.  Once she had settled the kittens in, eaten a couple of cans of food, nursed the kittens and got them to sleep, she jumped up on the window sill and called repeatedly out the window.   On the advice of a friend who does animal rescue, we took her back outside and she promptly went right back down the storm drain.  It was another couple of hours before she reappeared.  Diane said she had seen her running across the yard.  I went back out to see if I could find her.  Eventually, I went over to the storm drain to call her and saw her peering out, with another little nose peeking out beside her.  She came out and rubbed against my legs, calling to the kitten as if to tell her I could be trusted.  Eventually, the kitten came within reach, and I picked it up.  I heard a mewing, looked down, and saw another kitten coming out.  This kitten, however, was too scared to come out and kept ducking back down the drain.  About this time, Di came out to see what I was doing.  While she tried to persuade the kitten to come out, I brought the one I had caught inside and tucked it in with its siblings.  When I went back out, Diane handed me the fourth kitten, still struggling and spitting as if to convince either us or itself that it wasn't scared.  We brought the kitten and Ringtail back inside, and she settled in with the kittens.  She seemed quite content to stay in the middle room with her kittens until it started to get dark.  Then she went to the window and started calling again.  This time when I took her out, she only stuck her head into the storm drain and called, then repeated the process at the other storm drain.  Then she came back to the patio near the steps where I put the food for the ferals, calling all the while.  After a little while, the new tom, whom I call Young Tom, to distinguish him from Old Tom who passed away over the winter, came wandering up, and Ringtail went over to him.  I don't know what he said, but she whapped him on the nose, and they wandered off for a while together.  In the meantime, I brought out food for Tom and went back inside.  When I came back out, she was standing at the door crying to get in to her babies.  Tom, meanwhile, was eating; and when he finished he ran off into the night yelling loudly as if he couldn't believe what she had done.  She came back in with me, and now the whole family is safely ensconsed in our middle room with our resident cats safely shut out of it.

We are planning to foster her and the kittens until the kittens are old enough to be rehomed and then find homes for them.  In the meantime, I have the delicate balancing act of looking after and socializing Ringtail and her four kittens without our resident cats getting jealous.

Tags: cats, rescue, feral, kittens

Quality Control

I am very upset by the Menu Foods recall -- or rather, the reasons for it.  I hope they don't try to weasel out of compensating pet owners whose cats got sick and/or died as a result of their food.  I had a cat with chronic kidney failure, and that can get very expensive.

My point is, where was their quality control?  Why were they not testing their ingredients before to see if there was anything in there that shouldn't have been?  Also, why did they have so little idea of where the ingredients were coming from?  First they said the wheat gluten came from Canada, and now they are saying it came from China.

I do hope they find out how the poison got into the food in the first place and make sure it can't happen again -- at least without them finding out about it before they seal up the cans & pouches!  According to the news, no criminal charges have been filed.  In my view, somebody is guilty at least of criminal negligence.  If it turns out that someone put it in there on purpose, they deserve the death penalty (not to mention rotting in the special corner of Hell reserved for people who do that sort of thing).

My cats are my children, and it's only the pure luck that they don't like Iams or Eukanuba canned foods that has spared me from losing one or more of my cats.  My heart goes out to those who have lost pets to this poison.  I know what it is to lose a pet, and it is that much harder when you find out it could have been prevented if people you trusted to know what they were doing had been doing their jobs.

Tags: Menu foods recall, tainted cat food

A Lot of Catching Up

It's been longer since I wrote than I thought! In the time that has passed, the kittens have grown up a bit.  Two of them, GB and GG, have moved out to live with my friends in Manassas, Benjamin and Lisa, who have renamed them Jaime and Zoe.  They have grown quite a bit and are doing fine.  They've even won over Pearl, Lisa's 16-year-old moggy.

Of the remaining three, Star developed FIP in early September.  When Jazzle had it in 2005, she only lasted two weeks.  However, Star had a new vet who was willing to try new ideas and do some research.  She drained the fluid from his tummy twice a week and gave him a vitamin B shot each time.  We also had him on Predinsolone, Cytoxan, vitamin C, and pulsed dosing of antibiotics (one week on and one week off) to ward off secondary infections.  With this treatment, he was feisty and active for six weeks! When the crash came, it was overnight.  One night, he was fighting me over his evening meds, then overnight he kept shifting around as if he couldn't get comfortable.  The next morning, he was nearly comatose.  We took him to the vet, and I held him as he crossed the Rainbow Bridge.  His ashes now rest in a little box on our bookshelf with the notation:

Star
June 18, 2006 - October 12, 2006
One Feisty Little Bugger

Since the other two, Blaze and Wabble MacTabble, have been exposed and are susceptible until they are two years old, we decided it would be unfair to rehome them, so we are keeping them.  To date, they are very healthy and went in to be snipped and chipped a few weeks ago.  Blaze had her stitches out just before I left for the International Builders' Show in Orlando.  She is up to 6 pounds, and Wabble is a 10.2-pound boy -- as big as Freddie, and Freddie just turned 6 years old!  We recently had them all checked, and the biggest of them is 1-1/2-year-old Finn Mac Cool at 14.1 pounds.  Then come Freddie, Cocoa Puff, and Wabble, all tied at 10.2, then Romana at 8.9, then Mittens at 8.6, and Blaze at 6 pounds even.   All are currently healthy, and I hope they stay that way.

Now I'm in Orlando at IBS, running the exhibitor reg desk.  I've been down here a week, and I miss my kitties dreadfully.  I talked to Di the other day, and she said Finnie kept jumping up on the back of the green chair and whapping her in the head every time she sat in it.  She thinks he's decided she got rid of me so she could sit in my chair!  He jumped up on the arm of the chair, so she held the phone up so I could talk to him, and he purred at me.  He has a very soft mew for such a big boy, but he's got a purr-motor like a mack truck.  Every time Di tried to take the phone away so she could talk to me, he whapped her on the arm as if to say he wasn't finished.  She couldn't talk to me until he was good and ready to let her!

I also miss playing fetch with Blaze.  When we're in the bedroom and she wants to play, she will bring one of her tinsel buddies and drop it on the bed of whomever she wants to play with.  We throw it, she chases it around and brings it back until she gets bored with it and just wants petting and cuddles.  Oh, well.  I fly home in two days, and then I have a whole week off to play with my kitties and give them lots of cuddles.

On the subject of tinsel buddies, they are the worlds best cat toys.  They are actually tinsel pom poms that you buy at Wal-Mart or craft stores for about $2 for a bag of twenty, but every cat I've had has just gone nuts over them.

Tags: cats, siamese, meezers, cat toys