7/8/11 – Friday

If people haven’t heard, there was a horrific case of kitten abuse in Florida and it would be great if people could sign the petition for the Florida AG to prosecute the woman who beat two kittens with a bat and encouraged her young sons to abuse the kittens as well. One of the kittens … Continue reading “7/8/11 – Friday”

If people haven’t heard, there was a horrific case of kitten abuse in Florida and it would be great if people could sign the petition for the Florida AG to prosecute the woman who beat two kittens with a bat and encouraged her young sons to abuse the kittens as well. One of the kittens died and the other was rescued by some brave children in the park. The story and petition are here.

The petition is important since there is some pressure from the alleged perps relatives and neighbors to let her go. It’s so bad, that the mother of one of the children who rescued one of the kittens was surrounded by about 30 angry people on the day of the incident. They were yelling at her for calling the police, if you can imagine.

Let’s support her, her brave son and decency by signing and publicizing the petition. I’ll get off my soapbox now with a link to the Facebook page for the surviving kitten, who is named Dexter and is slowing recovering from his injuries. He’s as cute as a very cute button!

I signed the petition! How about y’all?

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I don’t know how you do it Robyn – I would just sit around and cry every time I had to let go of a batch of those adorable babies. I have often thought that I’d like to foster cats but I don’t know if I could just foster them – I’d want to keep them all.

Well, you’ll note that we only had five cats when we started six years ago!

It is awfully hard to take them to Petsmart, but I try to keep in mind that they’re going to go to homes where they’re adored to bits. I know I’m going to miss these guys something awful and this house is going to be awfully quiet without them here!

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I’m guessing from previous July 5 entries (spider drama notwithstanding) that your holiday weekend at Crooked Acres was relatively peaceful? Quiet neighbors are the best thing ever.

Actually, the neighbors were pretty annoying this year. Now that we’re out in the country, there are more neighbors shooting off fireworks, but they’re further away than they were when we lived in a subdivision in Madison. It still makes my blood boil, the way our Madison neighbors shot off fireworks in the street in front of our house (we were at the end of a cul-de-sac) and then left fireworks shit all over our lawn for us to pick up. I don’t think there’s enough money on earth to convince me to move back to the ‘burbs, even if it WAS awfully convenient having the grocery store and Lowe’s three minutes from the house.

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I had a crooked acres dream the other night – and I think it ranks up there as one of the weirdest! I dreamt that you died (sorry – I’m not usually morbid!) and Fred decided to keep running your blog. No one knew you were dead until a bunch of your readers decided to come down for an impromptu visit. We were all duly impressed with how well Fred was able to imitate your writing style.

I am charmed by the (wronnnnng) idea that Fred would ever try to keep my blog going, and further that he could ever capture my writing style. Well, unless he got drunk and typed “Awww, look at the KITTY!” over and over again. 😀 But yeah, that’s an odd one!

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Funny how you mark the time – I clicked in this morning thinking to myself – “I think it’s the anniversary of Mr Booger’s passing.” Why? I really don’t know, other than I do know he had always been my favorite. A cat I’ve never met! How insane is this? Anyway, wanted you to know I am thinking of him. And I do truly adore Looney Jake for probably just the reason that in my mind, he and Elwood are Boogie descendants 🙂

It has, indeed, been two years since Mister Boogers died. (It was actually June 30th, 2009, but I wrote about it on July 1st.) We still miss him, and talk about him from time to time. He had such a personality, and it was a shock to lose him so unexpectedly. After Coltrane died, I told Fred that obviously June is a cursed month for us, and I was glad to see June FINALLY end. I think that next year we need to just bring all the cats inside and hole up in the house for the entire month of June!

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I had my first Crooked Acres dream. I’ve been reading since 1999 and haven’t had a dream, but I finally broke the seal last week (does this mean I’ll now have a Crooked Acres dream every 5 minutes?). I don’t remember a lot of the details but a few things still stand out. There were a lot of your readers at the house, all hanging out in the yard like it was Woodstock or something. It was like they were waiting for you to come out onto the porch/stage and start the show. For some reason, I was in the house and had to take care of some of the cats in a small side room. I ended up spilling something – can’t remember what but it was apparently a Bad Thing To Spill. I got all freaked out, cleaned it up, and then screwed up the courage to tell you that I spilled something. You seemed like you would have been super pissed if I hadn’t cleaned it up, but as long as the situation was under control, you’d just settle with a warning glare. Then I went out to tell the crowd that we could stay the night, but we’d have to sleep outside.

I think this was one of the nights that I drank blueberry tea before bed. That stuff gives me weird dreams!

Have I perhaps mentioned that I LOVE IT when you guys have Crooked Acres dreams? They crack me UP. (Also, I don’t even know what kind of show I was going to put on!)

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The bit about cats burying their food bowl made me think about our cat Henry’s annoying habit of purposefully dumping food in his water bowl. When we first got him, we thought he was just a sloppy eater, which he is, but my husband & I have both seen him move his food bowl next to his water bowl & scoop food out of the food bowl & into the water bowl. We can’t imagine why he does this, because it makes his water really nasty. A friend of mine said she thought she heard somewhere that big cats “wash” their food before eating it, but I don’t know if that’s true or not. It seems that Henry likes the taste of the water better when there’s food in it, maybe. Of course, he gets most of his water from lapping at the tub after we take showers, so maybe he’s just being a brat. He looks just like your Corbie, by the way, and is the friendliest cat I’ve ever met, so we can’t get too mad at him. Anyway, I’m curious if you or any of your other cat owning readers have encountered food dunkers!

I usually have to rinse out and refill the water bowl in the laundry room most mornings because it has a piece or two of food floating around in it. I feel like someone told me that cats will put food in the water bowl so that they can tell where the top of the water is, but I’m not sure if that’s true or not. Anyone out there know?

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But have the little “hellions” as Doodle Bean (who I seem to follow around the blog world) called them, had their “little operations”? How did I miss that? Really? Hmm…must be geting old.

Yep, they were spayed (Ciara) and neutered (the rest) on June 2nd. Challenger’s House doesn’t adopt out kittens unless they’ve been spayed and neutered and are up to date on their shots!

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I’m starting to think Clove is a “hidden” Cali-tabby but can’t be sure just from photos. Of course, since she’s not ever going to be a Mommy Cat, this doesn’t matter the way it would as it does when cat breeding. Then you hope to be able to predict if the Mother has “the red gene” or not; but even then sometimes you don’t know.

and

On the calitabby – the real test is not to look at the background hairs, but at hairs of a stripe. These will be all black all over for a brown tabby, or will be two shades on a calitabby.

Okay, I FINALLY picked Clove up last night and took a closer look at her brown-or-are-they-orange? spots. The hairs on her orange / brown stripes are two colors. So this means she’s a “hidden” calitabby?

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Love the pic of the black kitten jumping for the feather toy! Expecially the face of the orange tabby. She looks like she is cheering him on and in awe!

and

Every time you post a picture of the black kitten with the crossed paws in mid-leap I start humming a chorus of Kung Fu Fighting! Oh the concentration on that little face!

I should have mentioned (and maybe have mentioned in the past, I don’t remember) that that picture? This picture right here:

That black kitten is our very own Tommy. And on the ground cheering him on are Sugarbutt, and their sister “Little Cal”!

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Are you ever tempted to get Gracie & George severe summer trims for the heat? I can’t recall any pic’s with extreme haircuts but that doesn’t mean anything.

We’ve talked about it, and in fact last year we went to Petsmart and bought a trimmer that the guy working there assured us would be strong enough to deal with their coat. It didn’t trim worth a damn, and we ended up returning it. Fred called around to groomers in the area, and was quoted a price of $150 PER DOG, which just isn’t going to happen. What we do now is brush them regularly, and then a couple of times during the summer Fred goes out there with the brush and a bottle of dog shampoo and really concentrates on getting them wet and clean, and uses the brush to get out as much undercoat as he can. It actually makes a big difference!

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If you don’t read the Love & Hisses Facebook page (and why NOT?), you won’t have seen the post from Wednesday night where I announced that as there’s room for Maggie at Petsmart, she’ll also be going later today. Ciara is still a bit under the weather, so she’ll stay here at least through the weekend.

It’s going to be awfully quiet around here without Maggie and the boys! I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they go in pairs. Preferably this weekend. PREFERABLY tonight, but I know that’s probably a little much to ask.

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“I am NOT faking it. Stop looking at me like that.”

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Cilantro and Fergus Simon, flirting.

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Siesta time for Macushla, on the kitchen floor.

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Macushla watching the big cats run around in the back yard.

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Smug Miss Cori.

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Declan and Cillian, snoozing on my desk.

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“What?”

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You can’t really tell from this picture, but Macushla has a bit more of the ear floof than the other cats do.

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I love Fergus Simon’s spotted belly.

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Fergus Simon learned a new trick. O joy.

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Fred has taken a shine to Cillian. He calls him “Simba” and talks about how beautiful he is.

I have a bunch more McMao pics on my hard drive, so will likely be sharing those through all of next week!

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Your weekly reminder: Corbie is beautiful. That is all.

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Previously
2010: Sights from around Crooked Acres.
2009: Garden pics
2008: Boneheaded things I have recently done
2007: No entry.
2006: Just a quick picture to let y’all know what we did with our Saturday morning.
2005: I turned and gave her the Bug-Eyed Look of Annoyance*, to no avail.
2004: “Agh!” I yelled. “I hate you kitties! I hate you all!”
2003: Do motherfuckers retain water?
2002: “Your cheatin’ heeeeeart…”
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.