Category: Fostering

I have loved the crap out of my web host since I switched over last Fall after a horrifying attempt at hosting our own web sites for several months. Here’s a tip for you if you’re thinking about doing that: if your internet goes down, so do alllllll those sites you’re hosting. When I think about how often our internet service went down when we were with PCL Cable (which was bought out by Knology just before we went screaming to Charter), it makes me mad all over again.

HOWEVER, for the past three Mondays, my sites (which are all hosted on the same damn machine) have been down for a couple of hours. It’s getting on my NERVES, and when I put in a trouble ticket yesterday, I made the subject “It must be Monday.”

They got it fixed – they always do – but OH how it pisses me off. Which, I know, first-world problems and all, but EXCUSE ME, WEB HOST, THERE ARE PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO NEED TO KNOW IF MY FOSTER CAT HAS BIRTHED SOME KITTENS YET!

Also, I usually write my entries the night before and set them to publish at 6 am (my secret is out! Are you horrified?), so that’s why this is going up so damn late.

If you were wondering.

I have an utterly idiotic question that I’m hoping you guys will just answer and not judge me for: is Guinness Extra Stout something I can buy in the grocery store? As I understand it, it’s beer? Is it something I’d find around here, or must I go somewhere special? I’m wanting to make a batch of this, because I sense it’s something Fred would enjoy.

Any tips (or alternate recipes for spicy mustard!) would be appreciated.

I think I mentioned, didn’t I, that I planted radishes, carrots and cabbage last Fall? As it turned out, the radishes were ready to be harvested, but because I’m a dumbass I didn’t harvest them before it got cold out, and they froze. The carrots never got big enough to harvest, and the cabbage didn’t either – in fact, there are three or four cabbages still sitting in the big garden trying valiantly to get big. The winter didn’t kill them, so we’re going to let them grow and see if we can actually harvest a couple of them, which would be pretty neat.

The carrots are still in the raised bed where I planted them, and when I pulled a couple of them up last weekend, there were these tiny little carrots on the end of the stalks. I think I’m going to leave about half of those in the raised bed and see if they grow to harvesting size, and then plant fresh carrot seeds in the other half.

I kind of hoped that maybe the radishes survived the winter, but when I started pulling them up, there was nothing on the end of the stalks but some radish skin; I guess the radishes pretty much composted themselves over the winter.

Okay, enough yammering about the garden. Let’s get to the kittehs.

!!!!!!!!!!!

Last week on Facebook I linked to Barking Deals, which is one of those sites like Groupon or Woot, where they offer daily (actually, I don’t think it’s every single day, but it’s several times a week, at least) deals on dog snacks and toys. At the time, I said “They need to have a site like this for cats.”

WELL HELLO, MEOWING DEALS! Do you hear the beep-beep-beep of the money truck backing up to that web site (not that a truck can actually back up to a web site, since web sites are made of glitter and magic, but you know what I mean.) When I claim poverty in a couple of months, you’ll be able to trace it directly back to this moment.

Love & Hisses now has its own Facebook page, here. If I did it right, you can see it without having a Facebook account or being Facebook friends with me (not that I don’t think you should be FB friends with me, just not everyone wants to be friends with everyone, or so I’ve heard.)

Do you see this face?

And this?

He looks SO relaxed, but we couldn’t lure that boy out of the guest bedroom for anything. I’ve let cats in to visit with him (Alice spent pretty much the entire day in there with him yesterday and Corbie went in several times) and he seems to like seeing them. So when I left the door open yesterday afternoon, I expected he’d be out exploring in no time.

Not so much. In fact, he stayed as far away from that door as he possibly could, and even though I left it wide open for two hours, he stayed on his bed and just watched the cats come and go.

Last night I said to Fred “I think I’m going to just leave the door open all day tomorrow and see if he’ll venture out.” What Fred heard was “Please open the door before you leave for work tomorrow morning and don’t tell me that you’ve done so, so that when I get up, I’ll see the door open and go on a frantic search for Rufus, finally finding him huddled under the couch.”

He’s still under the couch at the moment. If he’s still there in a couple of hours, I’ll pull him out and make sure he knows where his room (ie, the litter box and food bowls) is located. Hopefully he’ll see the other cats running around and won’t be able to stop himself from coming out to play with them.

Oh, Maggie. When you gonna give us those babies?

She certainly likes the belly rubs, but I always feel bad for her when she flops over on her side and I immediately put my hand on her belly to feel the babies moving. She’s more than a baby machine, you know! She has hopes (“You’ll bring me snacks?”) and dreams (“You’ll hold the scratcher so it doesn’t slide while I sharpen my claws?”) too!

“This is so undignified. Just for that, I’m going to hold on to these babies for another week!”

Tommy (left) and Elwood (right) snuggle up for the evening.

Previously
2010: “YOU DIDN’T USE THE COOOOOOOOOOOUPONS?!”
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: “What’d you do, come up with some new exercise plan?” he asked.
2006: Why do I feel like an ass all of a sudden?
2005: Damn. He saw through my wily scheme!
2004: She stood and let it sink in, then turned and flounced off.
2003: No entry.
2002: Cat pee, by the way, is the vilest-smelling stuff on this planet.
2001: Don’t you hate it when someone tries to be reasonable in the midst of your tightly choreographed hissy fit?
2000: “Of course they do, they like soft toilet paper. It’s the mafia, babe!”

Three more episodes of House watched on Friday, three more suggestions of Amyloidosis. For the love of god, do they mention it in every single episode and it just took me a super-long time to notice?

On Saturday we went for a drive. Fred shopped for XBox games (but ultimately decided it would be cheaper to buy them from Amazon) and I wandered around the dollar store, then we picked up lunch and came home. We both puttered around the house for a few hours, and then he went into the living room to play a game on the XBox, and I went upstairs to visit with Maggie and read for a little while. After about 20 minutes of reading, I could barely keep my eyes open and ended up taking a two hour nap.

I was out cold for most of that two hours, and it was a GOOD nap.

Of course, Saturday night I couldn’t fall asleep to save my life, and when I was still tossing and turning at 1:30, I thought “I should just take a painkiller. THAT would knock me out!” So I did, and it did.

So let’s just say that Sunday, there was no nap in my afternoon, no matter how much I wanted it.

Before lunch, Fred loaded up the wheelbarrow with compost and potting soil and wheeled it over to the side porch, which is the perfect height to use as a potting station. I looked through our bag of peat pots and starter pots, and I did some math, and I concluded that we didn’t have enough peat pots and starter pots for the (doing math….) 80 plants I wanted to start (plus another 20 later this week – I’ve got tomato seeds on the way).

I thought and pondered, and then I remembered.

When Fred’s sister got eggs from him on Friday, she gave him egg cartons that she’d been saving. Some of them were styrofoam 18-egg containers.

I have no comment about the fact that Eggland’s Best eggs come from hens who are fed vegetarian diets despite the fact that hens are omnivores. Our hens will cut you for a worm.

And so I started my seeds in the styrofoam egg cartons despite the fact that I loathe styrofoam because our recycling center refuses to take it and thus it ends up in the landfill. Hey, at least this way it’s serving a useful purpose, right?

Fred, watering.

Fred’s got his work cut out for him next weekend – it’s time to top off my small raised beds and fill my large raised bed and put up a fence to keep the cats out of my raised beds, because I’m ready to plant my carrots, radishes, purslane, romaine, and spinach.

This is totally the best time of the year.

Finally finally FINALLY I got my LG Optimus V from Virgin Mobile! So far, I think I like it. It was nice to be able to peruse Facebook when I was waiting for Fred to come out of GameStop the other day.

One thing is that the battery doesn’t last for shit. I’ve had to recharge it every single night, and I haven’t spent THAT much time on it. Another thing is that there’s apparently no damn such thing as Snood for the android NOR is there Bookworm, and those are my two favorite games. DAMNIT. This phone was supposed to make it so I didn’t need to carry my iPod Touch everywhere with me, but if I’ve got an appointment or will be sitting in line at the bank, I need my Snood and my Bookworm to keep me occupied.

On the other hand, the SWYPE texting tool is fairly easy to use, even for me, and flipping back and forth between screens is fairly easy for me to figure out.

I’ll try to remember to report back when I’ve had the phone a bit longer and have used it for real. I did talk to my brother for about an hour on it, and could hear him perfectly fine, so that’s a plus.

::slurrrrp::

::slurrrrp::

“Lady, I find your food offerings tasty, but I’m not quite sure they’re good enough to induce me to provide little squalling poop machines for you just yet. I’ll think about it and get back to you.”

No babies yet – BUT, I can report that between Saturday and Sunday, I went from being able to feel faint movement in Maggie’s abdomen, to being able to feel very strong movement. I can also see her belly moving if I watch very closely.

Her appetite MAY have dropped off some. Fred and I were in there with her for a while yesterday afternoon, and she just let him rub her belly and never went over to the food bowl to eat. That’s a first!

So, we’ll see. I’m hoping it’s soon, but I’m not holding my breath!

Saturday, I tested out the camcorder function on my new phone. Takes a pretty good video, as it turns out.

I also took a couple of pictures with the camera and posted them on Facebook – you can see them here and here.

I’m not sure why it is, but if I go in to visit with Rufus during the day, it only takes a minute or two for him to get up and come over to me and flop against me. However, if I go in to visit with him at night, he just lays where he is – usually under the bed – and watches me. Doesn’t come to me. MIGHT allow me to pet him, but then again maybe not. I’m not sure what’s going on in that little head of his.

“I likes to keep you guessing, lady.”

I really think Miz Poo has a bit of a crush on Alice. The two of them can be found play-fighting, and I always thought Alice was the instigator, but the other morning Miz Poo kept following Alice around…

Alice flopped down for a bath, and Miz Poo flopped down next to her.

Then Miz Poo got flirty.

Then Miz Poo got grabby.

Then Miz Poo got all “I AM THE BOSS OF YOU!” and stomped off.

Later, Miz Poo was laying in the middle of the living room watching House with me (she really likes Wilson, and I can’t say as I blame her, hubba hubba) and Alice came running into the room, threw herself at Miz Poo, sat on her head, bit her on the shoulder, and then ran off while Miz Poo was still flailing around trying to figure out what happened.

I’m pretty sure the lesson here is that you don’t go messing with Alice or she’ll get you back when you least expect it.

Previously
2010: I love me some Bookworms, if that wasn’t already obvious!
2009: No entry.
2008: “I think you mean ‘oaf’,” I said.
2007: That is a monster shredder.
2006: Someone kill me now. NOW.
2005: And THEN in the car on the way to Mom and Dad’s, I was thinking “Well, THAT was rude, to tell her she was being too loud!
2004: No entry.
2003: Miz Poo has an infection.
2002: And if you unsubscribe from the notify list? A reason for the unsubscription is neither necessary, required, nor desired. Thanks so much.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.

Hey, Maggie, you gonna give me those babies today?

“Well, lady, it’s like this.”

“Today’s not your day, and tomorrow’s not looking so hot, either.”

Those of you who’ve asked whether Maggie’s really pregnant, all I can say is that they checked her over at the clinic and told me she was ready to pop at any time. Last year, Maura was tested, but I don’t think she was actually examined. All I can say is that Maggie’s nipples are way more prominent than Maura’s ever were and that I spend way more time than I would have ever believed possible discussing a cat’s nipples. Fred has counted Maggie’s nipples and informed me that there are eight. Which is nice to know. I think.

Only time will tell whether she’s really pregnant; I believe she is. But how likely is it that I’d end up getting TWO cats that I thought were pregnant but really aren’t, after all?

(Oh, wait. We’re talking about ME, aren’t we? That certainly increases the odds!)

Princess Alice of Smugonia in her favorite tongue-and-fangs pose.

Previously
2010: “Wait and see” is my favorite move when it comes to feeling poorly.
2009: In an alternate reality I was bellowing “Well NO ONE INVITED YOU TO DINNER, PRINCESS!” and smacking her upside the head.
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: It’s like I’ve never met myself before or something. “Yeah, I’ll let the spud take the car to school, and I’ll be stuck at home, thus NATURALLY I will feel compelled to do housework!”
2005: Old pictures.
2004: (Bwahaha! That’d be the shortest study in the history of mankind, eh?)
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: Takes all kinds, I guess.
2000: A life of excitement, thrills and chills, lemme tell ya!

AS OF LAST NIGHT, THE LG OPTIMUS V WAS AVAILABLE AT VIRGINMOBILE.COM! IF YOU’RE WANTING ONE!

(Of course, it’s $149.99 plus tax, which is kind of expensive, but I’ve ordered mine and I wanted to let y’all know.)

So, as soon as I reported last week that I was sleeping really well, I immediately started having problems falling asleep. So Friday night I took a melatonin before I went to bed and I slept like a rock, but I was really damn sleepy all day Saturday. Then Sunday night I thought I should give it another try to see if it really had that effect on me or if it was more that I was tired because Fred woke me up early (5:30! God!). As it turned out, I spent most of yesterday lazing in the recliner in front of the TV, so either I need to cut my melatonin dose in half (I took a 3 mg pill each night) or maybe melatonin just isn’t for me.

I’m going to tempt fate by announcing that most of the time, I’m luck that I don’t have any problems falling asleep or staying asleep.

(This time next week I should be telling y’all that I haven’t slept more than an hour at a time since I wrote the above.)

I’m back to doing the cooking these days, for which Fred is thankful, I’m sure. All the meals I cooked ahead of time worked out really well, and we even have some chimichangas left in the freezer. Sunday for dinner I made a pork roast, spaghetti squash, mashed summer squash with onions and garlic, and oven roasted okra. Except for the spices on the pork roast and the onions and garlic in the mashed summer squash, everything was grown here. And that was one tasty meal!

I’m planning pork chops, corn on the cob, and baked beans for dinner tonight and tomorrow (didn’t grow the baked beans here, but I canned ’em myself!), and then Thursday will be a New England Boiled dinner, which I make every single year on St. Patrick’s Day. LOVE that stuff!

Last weekend, we bought some of the seeds for the garden, and Fred started his pepper seeds. We’re growing Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Chiles), Cayennes, and a LOT of Jalapenos for a friend who has a particular fondness for sweet pickled Jalapenos. It’s a long way from here to the point where the Jalapenos will be ready for picking and pickling, but it’s the first step!

As always, I did what I say every Fall I’m not going to do. I get so caught up in the different things we could be growing, that I buy way more than we really need. New things we’re growing this year include purslane, butternut and acorn squashes, garlic chives, cilantro, dill, and brussels sprouts. We’re also going to make another run at growing sweet potatoes (this time with real seed sweet potatoes rather than a sweet potato from the grocery store. That one grew pretty well, but gave us very bland sweet potatoes.) and I’m thinking about growing potatoes in straw. Oh, and onions!

See how I am? The more I think about it, the more I want to grow! This year I’m taking a more active role in the gardening than in previous years. Last year I mostly took care of the tomatoes and peppers and occasionally picked some okra, but this year I want to keep an eye on all of it!

I have about six different kinds of tomato seeds, too. Last year I said “We do NOT need to plant so many tomatoes!”, this year I’m saying “We have the room. Shut UP, 2010 Robyn!” I read an amazing post somewhere (I don’t remember where, though!) where someone saves the ends from her tomatoes when she’s canning, and she dehydrates them and grinds them into powder, sifts out the stem ends, and then when she needs tomato paste she adds some water to the tomato powder and voila!

This is totally the best time of the year – revving up for gardening season is awesome!

Corbie’s afraid you might have forgotten how beautiful he is.

Goofy Corbs.

Thanks, you guys, for your kitten name suggestions! I have to weed through them and pick out my favorites, then double-check that they haven’t already been used before I enter them into my serious-consideration list.

STILL no babies, and Maggie is still eating like a horse. Is it too much to hope that she’ll wait ’til Thursday? Because that would be kind of neat. I mean, not that it matters what I want (GOD, Maggie, so selfish!) or anything, she’ll birth ’em when she wants to.

Every time I go into the foster room, I say “Where are my babies, Maggie?”, and she talks to me, then comes over to be petted, flops over for a belly rub, and then moseys over to the food to graze.

We set up a big carrier in one corner of the room, and put a towel over it to make it nice and dark. I lined the bottom with several towels to make it comfy, and yesterday when I went up to visit with her, she couldn’t hear me coming because it was raining outside (otherwise she would have met me at the door), and I found her hanging out in her cave. I got kind of excited, but she came right out to greet me, and there were clearly no babies nor did she spontaneously go into labor or anything.

What makes me think that perhaps she’s got a little way to go is that when I rub her belly I don’t feel bumps and points like I’d expect, just solid muscle mass. You’d think I’d remember what it was like when Kara had her babies, but that was three years ago, and one of my charms is that after about two weeks any kind of knowledge I have about pretty much everything goes right out of my brain.

I do know that I felt the very faint movement of a kitten in her stomach, so that was neat. Felt like a muscle spasm.

“That was gas.”

Such a sweet girl.

Yesterday, for the first time, Rufus actually climbed into my lap. I wasn’t expecting it, and in fact wasn’t even trying to get him to climb into my lap (usually what I have to do is pull him into my lap, then he stays there, perfectly happy), but he was sitting there letting me pet him, and he was purring like mad, then suddenly he’d climbed into my lap!

We can occasionally hear him in the guest bedroom playing with the toys in there, but I haven’t been successful in getting him to play while I’m in there. I guess that’ll be the next step, when he’s comfortable enough to play while I’m in there.

Such a sweet boy!

Tommy looks like he’s startled here, but he was actually in the process of kneading. When he kneads, he does it for a long, long time. He stares off into space and just kneads and kneads. I always announce “Tommy’s begun the long, slow march to nowhere! Still marching. Stillllll marching,” etc.

Previously
2010: “GIVE TO ME THE PREGNANT CAT!”
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: Mad Boog disease!
2005: MY BOX!
2004: (”He sighed at me, your honor, and then I had to kill him.” “Case dismissed!”)
2003: No entry.
2002: Bastards.
2001: You’re thinking If you had a clue how to tell which hamsters are girls and which are boys, you wouldn’t have this problem in the first place!
2000: Yes, I’m a goober, I think we all know that.

It was really nice to be able to unwrap my arms and take that damn head garment off, but by the end of the first full day of going without having my arms wrapped, I noticed that they were hurting. I put the bra/ arms compression garment on to sleep in, and that was pretty comfortable. I left my arms unwrapped during the day Friday and Saturday, and then (because I overdid it a bit on Saturday. Hush, now, I couldn’t stand the sight of the kitchen counters and the stove top and the sinks. It was truly horrific, and you would have cleaned them, too.)(Also, I might have gone on a cat pee search-and-destroy mission in the front room Saturday evening.)

I am doing well, but still wishing I could get back to completely normal without having to ask Fred to do all my lifting and such. I had a list a mile long for him yesterday, and he spent the morning doing everything on the list AND vacuuming, too. God bless that man.

My Week in Cats.

Remember how about a week and a half ago, I told you how two new cats showed up within a day of each other, and I hoped they weren’t dumped? Well, as it turns out we’ve only glimpsed Newman once or twice since then, and both times he was heading to a particular house down the road. I’m guessing that he belongs to them (that, or maybe they offer better food than we do!) and was just coming by here to visit.

Rufus, on the other hand, stuck around. We weren’t seeing him all the time, but we were seeing him several times a day, and very often he was either watching or hunting birds in the side yard. He had no interest in making friend with us – any time we set foot outside, he ran to a safe distance and kept an eye on us. But any time he saw one of our cats in the back yard, his tail would pop straight up, and several times we saw him rubbing against the fence with one of our cats on the other side giving him disgusted “I don’t KNOW you, stop that!” looks.

The more I watched him, the more concerned I got. “If that isn’t a pregnant female, that’s a female getting ready to go into heat,” I fretted. And “Doesn’t that LOOK like a pregnant cat? Look at the belly!” Finally, around dinnertime on Sunday, with bad weather on the way, I looked out to see Rufus sitting under one of the bird feeders, eating bird seed that had been knocked to the ground.

“Oh god, he’s so hungry he’s eating bird seed!” I said. “I think maybe you need to get out there and trap him. He’s going to go off and have kittens in the woods, and we’ll never get hold of them!”

“There’s cat food on the side porch!” Fred objected.

“He’s too scared to come up on the side porch because whenever he does, you rush out there and try to touch him!” I said.

We dithered about it for a while longer, and then finally I gave the go-ahead for Fred to trap him. Fred went out to get Newt and bring him inside (so he wouldn’t end up in the trap), and Rufus ran off behind the garage. Fred set up the trap, baited it with mackerel, and then came back inside.

Literally, in less than three minutes, Rufus was inside that trap, freaking out about being trapped.

We got the foster room set up, and then Fred brought Rufus – trap and all – upstairs, opened it, and let him out.

This was Rufus on Sunday.

Fred kept going in and spending time with Rufus Sunday evening – we were still unable to get a look at Rufus’s back end, so didn’t know yet whether we were dealing with a pregnant female or not – and Rufus was pretty freaked out. When we first let him out of the trap, he jumped up onto the window sill in an attempt to get out. He finally ended up under the cat tree for the most part.

At one point, Fred was in there with Rufus, and I was in the bedroom changing my clothes, and he called “I… I need some help in here!” As it turned out, he needed paper towels and cleaning spray, and I brought them in to him, expecting to see that Rufus had had an accident.

Rufus had had an accident, alright. There was poop ON THE WALL five feet up, and several feet away there was more poop on the window sill. Fred mumbled something about how Rufus had jumped up on the window sill and pooped, then jumped up on the cat tree and… actually, I don’t remember exactly how he explained away the wall poop. But he later confessed that he’d tried to pick Rufus up, and Rufus lost his mind, did some ninja moves, and Bob’s yer uncle, there was poop on the wall. Not a small amount either, mind you.

Fred was able to pet Rufus on Sunday and put Advantage on him to kill any fleas, but that was about it.

Monday afternoon, he was able to determine that Rufus was not, in fact, a pregnant female but a male. Rufus wasn’t actually coming out to be petted or anything, but if we pulled him out of his hiding place under the cat tree, he’d sit in our laps and purr.

Rufus Tuesday:

By the time Fred got home from work Wednesday, Rufus was coming over to us (with some coaxing) to be petted. With Fred’s permission, I made the appointment on Friday to have Rufus tested and neutered. Fred and I approach the whole visit to the vet thing completely differently when it comes to the cats who show up in our yard. I prefer to whisk them off to the vet immediately to have them tested and (if they’re old enough) fixed, to get it over with. Fred, on the other hand, doesn’t want to “traumatize” them, and prefers to wait. Since he’s in charge of taming semi-ferals, I usually let him have his way.

Rufus tested negative (thank god) and his fecal showed that he only had some easily-treated worms. This was an amazing bit of news, because almost every cat we have coming through here tests positive for either giardia (HATE giardia) or coccidia (HATE coccidia).

We brought Rufus home and settled him in the guest bedroom. He reverted to his scaredy-cat ways at first, but now he’s pretty much coming out and letting us give him love. Since we know he’s safe for the other cats to be around, we’ve let Jake in to hang out with him. Rufus was very excited to see Jake, but Jake takes a little while to warm up, and so far is only hissing and smacking at Rufus. I’m sure that’ll change in time.

We’ll work with Rufus, and when he’s tamed enough (and there’s room at Petsmart), he’ll go to be adopted.

The vet estimated his birth date as August 1st of last year, which puts him at about 7 months old. Fred prefers to think that Rufus is from the same litter as Alice, who he prefers to think of as from the same litter as Marty.

On Tuesday, I got an email from the Challenger’s House manager. We’d emailed back and forth since we brought Rufus inside, getting her permission to make him a Challenger’s House foster, and she wondered if we wanted a pregnant cat to foster as well.

Did I? Of course I did! BUT Fred is still doing the bulk of the work around here, and so I told him it was up to him. That I wanted a pregnant cat, but if he didn’t want to, I wouldn’t give him a hard time. He hemmed and hawed about it, but ultimately said that he didn’t want to put Rufus in the guest bedroom, thus closing off a second room and perhaps causing our cats to go on a rage-induced peeing extravaganza.

So I told her no, but that in a few weeks I’d take any pregnant mamas or kittens that came along.

She understood, of course, but she is a wily, wily one. Because she sent out an email on Thursday to a bunch of Challenger’s House foster moms saying that in recent days she’d had calls from various places and needed foster homes for two pregnant cats and a cat with some 4 month-old kittens and two additional (almost year-old) kittens. I forwarded the email to Fred.

He said that if I wanted to take a pregnant cat it was okay with him, but he was NOT ready to let go of Rufus yet (Susan had said in the email on Tuesday that if we wanted to take the pregnant cat, Rufus could go to the shelter, but Fred is determined to keep Rufus here ’til he’s ready for Petsmart). I said we could put Rufus in the guest bedroom and just deal with the fallout from our cats. He said that as long as getting the cat into our house didn’t make extra work for him (in other words, he didn’t want to have to make a special trip to get her or anything), then okay.

So when we picked Rufus up from the vet on Friday, we also picked up one of the pregnant cats (who had been delivered that morning to be tested) and brought her home, too.

Her story, quickly, is that her owners moved and left her. (Grrr.) A guy who lived in the neighborhood fed her for a few weeks and another local organization referred him to Challenger’s House.

She’s a sweet, friendly girl, to my relief. We brought her home and set her free in the foster room, and she explored, hissed a few times, and then decided we were okay.

She’s carrying low! Must be boys!

I love how it looks like she’s wearing a caramel-colored bikini bottom.

She loves a good belly rub.

Honestly, I kind of thought that by the time I got this entry written and posted, I’d be reporting not that we have a pregnant cat, but that we have a momma cat and kittens! She is huge, and as they said at the vet’s, she’s ready to pop.

She’s eating a LOT. Saturday I gave her a small can of food, and she’d eaten it all in less than two minutes. She’s constantly visiting her bowl of kibble.

Given that Thursday is St. Patrick’s day, I’m going with an Irish naming theme. Momma kitty has been named Mary Margaret McMao, and we’ll be calling her Maggie.

I have a list of Irish names suggested last year that I’m planning to pull from. I’m going to list them below, but y’all feel free to add more! The names that are crossed out can’t be used because they’ve been used in the past by previous Challenger’s House cats.

Girls
Maeve
Aoife
Aileen
Ciara
Aislinn
Tara
Siobhan
Fiona
Shannon
Kelly
Meg
Chloe

Boys
Murphy
Fergus
Liam
Finnegan
Cillian
Ryan
Clancy
Seamus
Brady
Patrick

As a note, the first name that came to mind when I knew we were getting a pregnant cat was Siobhan. I emailed Fred and asked his opinion, and he said:

Absolutely not. a) that name annoys me. If it’s gonna sound like it has a ‘V’ in it, it better have a ‘V’ in it. b) Hell’s Kitchen

(He loathed Siobhan, who was on Hell’s Kitchen last season or the season before or whenever the last season was that we watched it. I don’t remember that season and I don’t remember who won, but I certainly remember Fred’s hatred for Siobhan.)

So those are the names under consideration (obviously, I have no clue how many or of what sex kittens we’ll end up with); if you have a favorite, feel free to suggest it!

And now we’re officially on BABYWATCH 2011.

Signs that she’s ready to go into labor NOW: She’s restless and when we visit with her, she doesn’t spend much time sitting or laying down, she’s always on the move. She’s got prominent nipples (I feel like a perv saying that, but it’s TRUE.)

Sign that she’s planning to wait a while: She’s eating like a horse, and I’ve heard/read that her appetite will drop off in the day or so before she goes into labor. Her nipples are pale pink (I feel like someone told me they’d get dark before she went into labor) and her milk sacs, though defined if you really pay attention and feel around, are not full.

Hopefully it happens soon. I can’t wait to get some babies in this house! (Assuming all goes well, she’ll be taking care of them for the first few weeks, and I get to just swoop in and be Fun Auntie Robyn, with the petting and kissing and none of the bottle feeding or bottom wiping!)

Maggie has a very distinctive “voice.” When we walk into the room, she comes over and talks to us. I had to get it on video, of course, so y’all could hear her too.

Loony Jake, enjoying the sun and warm weather. His little face just cracks me UP.

Previously
2010: True Blood updates.
2009: No entry.
2008: I sound, if I might be frank, like a blithering idiot, especially when I ask Newt if he’s alive. “Are yew ‘laaaaaaahv?”
2007: No entry.
2006: They are SO pretty to look at, but my GOD do they stink.
2005: Questions answered.
2004: No entry.
2003: Yeah, don’t look at me. I have no idea what goes on his head, either.
2002: I think I could kick her ass, personally, and I’d be happy to do it. Bitch.
2001: “That’s okay,” I said cheerfully. “Those things are a pain in the big butt, aren’t they?”
2000: Fred sings again.

Andrea asked:

I’m a long-time reader of your blog, and I’m hoping maybe you (and the other readers) can help me. We have two female cats, 3.5 years old and 1 year old, and three weeks ago, we adopted another 6 month old female. My older cats seem to be used to the kitten, but the kitten still seems deathly afraid of my older cats. Feliway Spray has calmed her down some, but she’s still scared. I’m not sure how to help her, and I’m very against returning her to the shelter. Should I try secluding her again, and reintroducing after another period of time? Or do you have any other experiences/tips to share?

and I said:

Andrea, I think I’d recommend separating them for a while. Spend as much time as you can both with her and with your other cats, and after a few days bring a blanket or bed that has the scent of your other cats into where you’re keeping her. Let her get used to the scent of your other cats, and then if you can, put a hook on the door so that it only opens a few inches. So your other cats can see and smell the kitten and vice versa, but she still has her safe place. If she handles that well, then start allowing her a little supervised time out with the other cats, and then let that stretch to more and more time. I think that a slower introduction to your cats might freak her out less.

and Lita said:

Andrea, can you not wait it out a while longer? Have the older cats ever attacked the kitten that she should be so scared? I think supervised “get-to-know-each-other” times and just patience might be all you can do. If the house cats aren’t threatening the kitten all you can do is wait for her to get used to them. Maybe wipe them down with a towel and put it in the kitten’s bedding or actually put one of their blankies on the kitten’s bed?

and Doodle Bean said:

Hi Andrea, it’s very important to take a lot of time to introduce a new cat to an existing cat household. This guide is helpful and recommends starting the process over again if things go awry, as they have for you. Hope it helps!

and THEN I stumbled across this:

5 Tips for Getting Your New Cat Used to Your Family

Which means we’ve given poor Andrea lots of advice, but if anyone else out there has anything to add, please feel free to do so!

Truly, it’s almost embarrassing, just how much time I spent telling this boy (and all of you) how beautiful he is.

And he is. He really, really is.

He’s become accustomed to waking up and seeing me standing over him with a camera. It doesn’t even startle him anymore.

“How YOU doin’?”

If he were human, he’d have taken out a restraining order against me. He’d haul my butt into court for stalking him. But I can’t help it. I lurve him. He’s so purrrrrrrrrty. I just wanna touch him with the fangers.

He puts up with my weird stalkery ways because he knows he’s got me wrapped around his little finger. Um. Little claw?

So I haven’t told you exactly what’s going on with Corbie – don’t worry, it’s not bad! It’s just that he’s a thin cat, and in the past couple of months, we’ve noticed that from the waist up (not that cats have waists, but you know what I mean) he looks perfectly fine. But from the waist back, he looks like he’s starving to death. Which he’s NOT, let me tell you, boyfriend can eat when he wants to.

He also has this kind of knock-kneed thing going on that’s hard to explain – he walks fine, but his back two legs kind of go one in front of the other (I’ll attempt to get it on video so you can see what I mean). I originally mistakenly told Fred that Corbie was bowlegged, which triggered a memory, and I thought “What if he has cerebellar hypoplasia?”, but I went and read about it, and watched some videos, but that’s not it. He also can’t really jump – he can get up on the couch if he wants to, but that’s by pulling himself up by his claws rather than jumping. Though he can jump from one surface to another – he jumps from the table next to my recliner, to the back of my recliner – if they’re roughly the same height, but he just can’t jump UP.

This is not something that was going on when he was little – we would have noticed it. It’s something that has come on gradually as he’s grown. Several days before I had surgery, I took him to the vet. She looked him over, took some blood, and then took an x-ray.

Structurally, he’s okay. He’s got a perfect skeleton (and have you seen x-rays of cats? Aren’t they just the neatest things?). The night before I had surgery, the vet called and told me that his blood looked okay, but he had an elevated level of… something (my notes on the topic are hiding in my desk somewhere and I don’t want to go looking for them) and long story short, we should try giving him Taurine and L-Carnitine to build up the muscles in his back end.

Then, of course, I went off and had surgery. About a week and a half later, I remembered about the Taurine and L-Carnitine and I went online and looked around to see what I could find for supplements. There are these treats that have the right amounts of Taurine and L-Carnitine in them, but we’d have to give four treats, twice a day, to Corbie and that seemed like an awful lot to get him to eat, especially considering that we didn’t know if he was going to like the taste. So we ordered L-Carnitine in powder form and Taurine in capsules, with the intention of sprinkling them atop a scoop of Gerber chicken baby food and letting Corbie eat it.

Well, the problem was that to make sure Corbie was the only one ingesting it, Fred had to take him into the guest bedroom. Being locked in the guest bedroom freaked Corbie out, and he wouldn’t touch the stuff. We dithered about what to do for a few days, and then finally Fred just tried mixing the powder with water and shooting it in the back of Corbie’s mouth.

Corbie’s not crazy about it, but he handles it just fine. So he’s been on Taurine and L-Carnitine for about a week, morning and evening. Fred doesn’t think there’s any difference in Corbie, and he’s probably right, but to ME (you know, the woman who stalks Corbie relentlessly), he looks a bit bigger. A bit more muscular.

We’ll keep going with the supplements and see how it goes. It’d be nice if this took care of the issue – though I need to check with the vet and see if this will be a lifelong thing or if we can discontinue the supplements after a while. Whatever the issue is, I can tell you that it hasn’t slowed Corbie down at all. He runs from one end of the house to the other just fine, he plays, he snuggles, he’s a happy boy.

He might have a skinny back end, but he’s perfect to me!

(For the record, Corbie is still officially available for adoption.)

Wouldn’t you think Newt wants in? Doesn’t he LOOK like he wants in? Like he’s thinking “Brrr, lady, it’s cold out here! Let me in!”?

Not so much. He and Maxi both drive me nuts. They hunker out there and stare at me and they look completely miserable so I go running over and open the door and try to coax them in, and they look at me like “Are you NUTS? I’m not coming in THERE!” and then ignore me. Brats.

Previously
2010: Hoyt goes home.
2009: (Nance is laughing at me right now, I guarantee it.)
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: So when I reached down to pet his head, IT WASN’T HIS HEAD I GOT. ::shudder::
2005: Killing the messenger.
2004: Howling and hissing and growling and yowling ensued.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: Gather ’round, younguns, and hear the heartbreaking tale of farts and betrayal…
2000: You still love me, though, right? Um, right?

Am too cranky to sit in front of the computer today.

I’ll be back tomorrow with some Crooked Acres pics. For today, I sit on my ass in front of the TV and sulk. Good times.

In the meantime, here’s some Corbs for you to admire.

Like I say to Fred, every single day, how could you possibly see that face and not think he’s the MOST gorgeous boy in all the land?