I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one with a secret Two and a Half Men lurve going on. The show cracks me up every time – and is it just me, or is that the dirtiest show on TV? I’m constantly surprised at what they get away with on prime time.
Hey Robyn – for those of us who listen to podcasts can you share the suggestions you were given? Maybe the rest of us out here would like to find new ones to listen to as well. Maybe you need a link to a podcast list or something.
I believe this is a complete list of all the podcasts y’all suggested (if I missed any, leave a comment and I’ll add it to the list).
That’s What She Said (a podcast about The Office)
Fresh Air from NPR
Stuff You Should Know
Drink ’til We’re Funny
Kevin & Bean
Dan Savage
The Moth
StoryCorps
Radiolab
The Sound of Young America
Never Not Funny
Jordan Jesse Go!
Geek.Farm.Life
CraftLit
Forgotten Classics
Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!
The Porn Identity
The Splendid Table
Hey Robyn, where did you end up finding your ceiling swag lamp you mentioned yesterday? I’ve been looking for something like that for a while now, and a google search didn’t yield anything as inexpensive as you mentioned.
On eBay, of course! The one I got looks a lot like this one (that link may not be good for long – just go on eBay and search on “hanging lamp swag”).
Come to read the antics almost every day. We use a product called Blue Coat. We get it at the Hen Yard (our local feed store). It has multiple uses including ring worm of all things. I use it on the horses, chickens, cats and sometimes on the humans in our house. Does the trick almost every time. They also make a Red Coat . . . but I haven’t tried that one yet!!
We use Blue Kote on our chickens, but it specifically says not to use it on dogs or cats – is there a kind that’s okay for use on dogs and cats?
I made Fred call the vet yesterday to ask what the blue stuff they used on Sugarbutt’s toes was, and found out it’s called Methylene Blue. Applying it to bloody, scabby toes is apparently an off-label use for the stuff – they asked us to let them know whether it helps his toes or not. So far, it seems to be doing well!
Given that the majority of your wildly adorable group of fosters (and I’m more than happy to join you in the squeezin’ of the stuffins) have some sort of physical issue, is it possible they might be the result of… um… how to say this delicately? An “unwholesome familial relationship” perhaps? Is anything about their parentage known?
As far as I know, there’s nothing known about their parentage, and god only knows if they’re the product of inbreeding (I certainly wouldn’t be surprised). For more information about what’s going on with their eyes, scroll on down to the foster kitten section.
I have a chicken question please. With larger livestock, manure is always an issue. My sister has horses and “shit shoveling” is just one more routine chore around the farm. What about chicken shit? Does it have to be cleaned up? Or does it just lay there and degrade? Does it build up? Thanks!
The stuff that ends up on the ground around the coop and through the chicken yard basically stays there and degrades – it starts off pretty dry to begin with, so it doesn’t take much time until it’s turned to dust. In the coop, Fred keeps a thick layer of shavings on the floor. The chickens kick the shavings around, so most of the time the chicken poop ends up mixed in with the shavings and the smell isn’t terribly bad. A couple of times a year, Fred cleans out the chicken coop, puts the shavings and chicken poop on the compost heap, and puts down fresh shavings.
With all that chicken poop around, you’d expect it to smell worse than it does, but honestly it’s not so bad. The flies that it attracts is annoying, and I bought some diatomaceous earth to sprinkle around the coop to help get rid of the fly population, but I haven’t done that yet (and we haven’t tried it in the past, so I can’t say for sure whether it’ll really help or not. I’d like to think it is, but diatomaceous earth is one of those miracle things that supposedly cures all ills, so I’ve got a healthy dose of skepticism going on as far as it’s concerned).
I’m wondering what cat food you guys use and also what’s served at snackin’ time. Love the fosters.
We have two large plastic storage containers where we store cat food. In one of the storage containers is Taste of the Wild cat food. That gets scooped into two food bowls (there are a total of four filled food bowls in the laundry room area at all times). In the other storage container is a mix of Purina U/R (I think that’s the name of it) – it’s a urinary tract health food. I mix that with Nutro Natural Choice Complete Care for Seniors. That mixture gets scooped into the other two bowls.
We give them the Purina U/R because of Joe Bob and his weird bladder issues, but the Taste of the Wild and the Nutro, they get solely because I think it’s a fairly good quality food and they like the taste of it.
At Snackin’! Time! I used to give them Fancy Feast Elegant Medleys, two cans split between them all. That got to be a little more than I wanted to spend, so we’ve tried several different kinds, and are currently bouncing back and forth between Nine Lives and Friskies, one can split between them all (the Friskies and Nine Lives cans are much larger than the Fancy Feast cans. In case you were worried that I’m starving the little bastards.) They all seem to like the Nine Lives and Friskies, so we’ll probably stick with those for now.
I listen to KATG because of you. Have you shared the pictures of the foster kitten namesakes with them? The “Brother Love” cat sniffing the other cat’s (Patrice, I think) butt cracks me up.
I emailed them when I had the first bunch of KATG kittens, but I’m sure they get a ton of emails a day, and I never heard back. I didn’t email them when I had the second bunch, but in retrospect I’m thinking (since I named some of the kittens after regular forum post-ers) I should have posted something in the forum!
Is this the picture you’re thinking of?
That’s Brolo and Chemda, I believe. Speaking of Patrice (the kitten), Nance totally fell in love with her, and still occasionally mentions her from time to time!
I have bats that move into my attic space every May to have their babies. And move out in October. So at least once a summer there has to be a bat rescue. Best piece of advice I ever received… Bats need to be up off the ground to take off… so what ever I’ve captured them in goes up on the ladder outside… Wind beneath their wings and all that I suppose !
I had no idea – but it makes sense! I’ll keep that in mind for next time (while hoping and praying that there will BE no next time!).
Does the black chicken meat taste different from other chicken meat? I’ve seen them in Asian markets but never bought one. Can you disguise the color in some kind of sauce, like cacciatore?
and
That meat looks completely bruised! How does it taste?
We haven’t eaten it yet – I have to get up the nerve to cook it, it’s currently sitting in the freezer. I’m told by Fred (who was told by people on a forum he frequents) that it doesn’t taste any different from other chicken. But we shall see!
And yeah, I’ll likely cook it in a way where the color of the meat is covered by some sort of sauce.
Just an FYI, I was recently told (after a dog attack) that if a pet animal has EVER had a rabies shot, that the likelihood that they will ever contract rabies is damn near zero percent. We overvaccinate to be on the safe side, and it’s important to keep the vaccinations up-to-date, but yeah, they won’t get rabies. 🙂 This is just to set your mind at ease the next time the cats get into some critter. 🙂
I recently read that too, but I cannot for the life of me remember where I read it. Alabama law decrees that cats have to have rabies shots every year, but since other states allow once every three years, I was just making sure all our cats had gotten theirs in the last three years (and they had!).
Fred didn’t touch the bat with bare hands, did he? I ask because a close friend had to go through rabies shots earlier this year when she accidentally touched (just touched with her hand) a bat who was hanging out the outside of a cereal boxes on top of her fridge. The bat didn’t bite, but she was told that rabies can sometimes be transmitted through skin contact, not just a bite or scratch. I never knew that before that happened to her.
I didn’t think he did, but I double-checked with him, and he says no. I think he was using a stick or the edge of the bucket to move that bat around.
J’s first day of school was today – I have a 4th grader and a 4yr old Pre-K kidling. Made me wonder, how’s the Spud and her studies?
She’s doing fine – is working full time and taking two or three classes at a time. She likes some classes more than others (don’t we all!), and is thinking of going into social work.
Does Mr. Wonky Paws (Terry) have 4 toes and a dew claw or 5 toes and a dew claw? If it’s the later, he is polydactyl and that’s just plain cool. I always wanted a polydactyl kitty – I was a “polydactyl” baby. I had 6 fingers in each hand when I was born. In humans isn’t not called polydactyl, but I want to be just like a cat so call me Ms. Polydactyl.
I think actually what he has is three toes and two dew claws – that’s what it looks like to me.
I must hear more about the 6 fingers on each hand! Were they real fingers, or just little finger nubbins that couldn’t really be moved like regular fingers? Did they remove the 6th fingers immediately, or did they wait ’til you were older? (I’m assuming they were removed.) Man, I could use a couple of extra fingers. I bet I’d be the fastest typist EVER.
Have you and Fred ever watched the series Freaks and Geeks? Jason Segel is one of the stars, and it was such a great show. This is one of my favorite DVD series ever!
We actually tried watching Freaks and Geeks, but it didn’t click with us. Don’t take that personally – sometimes it takes repeated viewing of the first episode of a show before we fall in love with it. I know we had to try The Office a few times before we even thought it was funny, and now we adore it. We’ll give Freaks and Geeks a few more years, then give it another try! We did watch (and like) Undeclared, which is where we first saw Jason Segel and immediately liked him.
Okay, so. These kittens. After a few days of putting Terramycin in their eyes, and the goopiness going away, I came to realize that there was something odd going on with their upper eyelids. It’s hard to describe, but they kind of looked like there were pieces missing – like something had taken chunks out of their upper eyelids, or they’d gotten torn – but their lower eyelids were just fine. I made an appointment with the vet on Monday and took them in.
As it turns out, they all have something called “Eyelid Dysgenesis”, which basically means that their upper eyelids began forming correctly*, but at a certain point they stopped – so where it looks like there’s a chunk of eyelid missing, there’s no eyelid, just fur growing down to the very edge. They all have it, some more severe than others. Terry’s the worst of the bunch – he can’t actually close his right eye all the way, which isn’t good for the eye; it gets dry and you can see that already his corneas are cloudy. There’s obviously some sort of damage to his vision at this point, but he still manages to get around pretty well. Bill’s the second worst, then Sam – and then the other three have much milder cases.
Right now, I’m not sure what’s going to happen next. The vet is going to consult with an ophthalmologist and see where we need to go from here; possibly there’ll be surgery for some if not all of them. For now, I have to put artificial tears in all their eyes to be sure that their eyes stay moist.
So, that’s what’s going on with these kittens and their eyes. Poor little Terry is just a mess, between the hernia, the wonky paw, and the eyes, but he is just the sweetest little guy on earth, and I do believe that all it’s going to take is someone to spend a few minutes with him and fall in love.
*FYI, “Eyelid Agenesis” would have if they had no eyelids at all.
Lafayette’s right eye is normal, but he’s got a spot on his left upper eyelid, if you look closely.
Hoyt’s left eye is pretty normal, but if you look at his right eye, you can see about halfway across, the fur grows right down to the edge; there’s no eyelid on that half. Here’s a really good closeup picture, if you want to see detail.
Bill’s got it pretty bad in both eyes. Add to that that he’s pretty cross-eyed, and he’s a mess. He’s a sweet little lovebug, though.
You can see how bad Terry’s got it, too (you can see this picture large if you really want to see the detail). He’s the sweetest boy on earth, though.
Sookie’s got it on her left eye, but her right eye is pretty normal. Is she not adorable?
I managed to not get a closeup of Sam, but he’s got it on both eyes – not nearly as badly as Terry and Bill, though.
And to hear the sad and demanding way Terry howls at me when I’m petting him:
Wah! Wah! I’m a baby kitten, pet me! from Robyn Anderson on Vimeo.
And if you can’t see Vimeo videos, here’s the YouTube version:
The video itself isn’t that great, but you get the full sound effect of poor baby Terry objecting to my teasing him.
NOT a look o’ love I’m getting from Tommy.
Previously
2008: (Upon looking at Alan Cumming’s Internet Movie Database profile, I read this interesting fact: Has his own cologne called “Cumming.” and snickered like a 12 year-old boy.)
2007: I said “I’d find their plight more interesting if they weren’t quite so ugly.”
2006: DON’T YOU HATE IT WHEN A JOURNALER SAYS THAT?
2005: No entry.
2004: No entry.
2003: “Motherfucker!” was Fred’s response.
2002: Why yes, it IS a rough life, thanks for asking.
2001: No entry.
2000: Because I was so overworked over the summer, you know.