Caregiver's cats behaving badly.

Pam, so sorry and such a sad event for all involved. It was very nice of the family to show responsibility for their dogs.

Veronica most of cats were "arrivals'.. in fact our current indoor/outdoor just came on in one night when hubs opened the door to the house. Hubs yelled up to me "you won't believe what just came in the house" I yelled "put back out whatever it is".. Nope never happened and we have had Merlin for about 10 years now. He was this pathetic kitten, and we are about 1/2 mile from the road. So now we are down to him, and a very fat black cat ( we had him fixed) who also arrived young, but was too wild to let in the house. Ebony has a pretty cushy life in the garage.. hopefully no more lose dog events.

Pam thats such an awful thing to happen. One of our farm cats simply disappeared years ago. Another cat we think commited suicide. he was brought into the clinic at the Vet school at cornell where my daughter and her soon to be now ex husabnd were students. he was very badly injured froma aroad accident and the professors thought it a good idea for the students to pracice their surgical skills on him .They were actually very successful using bits and pieces lying around and he recovered but looked as though he had a mechanical leg. The kids brought him to the farm for me to take care of. He was not allowed outside but escaped and was recaptured. Next time he was not so lucky we found him on our quite country road dead having been hit by another car.
i cannily think he deliberately ran into the road. Our catpopualtion varied a lot during those days with only the first kitten being adopted by us. The otheres just wandered in.

Oh Pam, how dreadful. I'm sorry that I didn't see your post before.

Just awful for everybody involved. Even right down to the now single Great Dane.

Poor pusscat. I sort of hope they pretty much got her before she properly woke up. Sort of.

Hydrotherapy for cats. I'd get myself some metal workers gloves!!!!!!!!!!!!!
vet techs and the SPCA seem to be able to manage it.

Ohmygod! I was just checking FAQ's on hydrotherapy for my Staffie (searching for: "what if my dog thinks water is the work of Satan?") and came across THIS...

Can cats have hydrotherapy?

Yes. It is not as common but with some cats it is possible.

In happy news, I am going to attempt spending the weekend in my own home, first time in 7 months! (I've had it subletted while I've been staying with mom, but my friend just took a job up north and cleared out on the 15th.) And I'm taking Bruce and Carmella with me for the weekend!

I know Carmella is going to be soooo glad to see our old home. And Bruce has only ever seen it once, for a couple of hours when we visited my friend. I'm so excited for him to get to know where we REALLY live! Mom's place has NO nature views at all, and it's 6 floors up. I live on the river, on the 2nd floor....I'm so excited for him to see all the wildlife we get there! My windows are, like, the best television ever for housecats, lol!

Thank you all so much.

Oh Pam, how awful. Poor baby :( Being she was feral, you were wonderful to have taken her in and given her a good home so that she would live to be 15 years old instead of only 2 or 3 if she was left out in the wilds.

So sorry, Pamz. It's always hard to lose a pet. I hope your cat didn't suffer. It's good that the dog is getting another chance but I hope the aggressive behaviors go away.

Oh no, Pam! That sounds like an awful situation! I'm so sorry for your loss!

It sounds like Bruce is going to a large cat. Big or small
I love them all. My Charlie cat will not leave a collar on.
Matter of fact he would take them off of the other cats
too.

I could not post this a few days ago as it was too harsh,, but here goes. Hubs opened the garage door a few days ago to find a St Bernard and Great Dane sitting outside.. seemed friendly,, and we live in the sticks so he just mostly shut the door and figured they go on their merry way. Nope,, they somehow got into our garage, and killed our elderly deaf mostly feral but loving maine coon. Dug her bed out, and seeminly "played with her". Hubs called the neighbor when he found this so they could get their small dog in, and called animal control, and took our cats remains to the vet for creamation. Animal control found the owners ( they had reported the dogs as missing) who said their new electric fence had failed. Here is the even sort of feel even badder part... The owners are very nice and very upset. THey came over tonight and paid us for the creamation, and gave us gift certificates for a dinner and for Lowes. And they are rehoming the St Bernard as it was the aggressive one ( we have pictures of the dogs on our property on our game camera) Oh boy,, there are still some decent people out there. And we feel bad that we lost a beloved pet ( had FArrah for 15 years as an outdoor feral who we vetted and cared for and homed in our garage) and now they are losing a dog they had for 5 years and rescued. It's a no win situation all the way.. but hopefully the St Bernard will be in a more controlled envirement. THey did mention it had killed one of their cats also.

If I had the start up money, I think I would open a senior's residence and cat shelter/foster. It would be so good for the residents to have the animals around, and good for the cats to stay socialized, especially if they are being adopted out. Maybe a place where seniors can bring their cats, too, and not have to be separated from them. And then I'd have someplace to go when it's my time, lol.

Be nice if there was a place for dog owners and their dogs, too, come to think of it.  Dogs are much better at sharing territory than cats!

Edit:  there's a biggish lot for sale behind my mom's building, apparently already zoned for apartment residences and some commercial space.  It would be the perfect location.  Too bad they are asking TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS!  Which is ridiculous.  You can still buy a house in this neighbourhood for 260,000.  What do I know about commercial property, though.  I guess it must be all about the zoning?

Bruce got microchipped and tattooed when he had all the other stuff done a couple of weeks ago.....even though he only goes out with me, on a harness. It's all part of my long term vision to be that weird lady who travels with her cat. Oh, and he got his hernia stitches out today and they said everything looks good. :-) 

I had to buy him a bigger harness today! He's only 5 months old....but when he had his procedures, they weighed him at 8.5 lbs already! I think he's going to be a monster-sized cat.

When my wild child Charlie was a younger cat he use to lose a collar a week... these were the "break away" collars, thus apparently he was getting into a lot of things outside or wrestling with other cats. Eventually as he got older the missing collars were being less.

I always kept about 3 break-away collars in stock at all time. And for the name tag, I used a label maker where I could place the strip through the collar and attach the ends together, then trimmed the ends. One strip had his Name and telephone number, the other strip had the street # and street name, plus zip code. The labels would last about least 6 months, if he kept that collar long enough, before I needed to replace the labels.

Our newest cat is micro-chipped via the animal shelter where we got her, and it looks like she had never worn a collar, as one couldn't see a collar line of no fur around the neck if she did. I haven't had the guts to try a collar on her yet :P

Yes Veronica, I agree, it’s so good for residents to interact with critters and kids also. The place I visit is part of a large chain, about what you would expect, big fancy entrance but understaffed and a bit threadbare.

But I’m always amazed at how good the staff people are in these places. It’s such tough work at the lowest wage. They do the best they can.

As for these big kitties, at least they got a collar and name tag on Peaches. I didn’t see Bengal today. I’m hoping he’s tagged as well. Micro chipping would be better but ya take what ya can get sometimes.

PS I think animals in NH are a very good idea.

The NH where I was sent for rehab had several cats and a couple of very elderly dogs. that was about the only good thing about the place. Well the outside looked OK but all the doors were locked and had keypads for the staff except the front door which was guided by a receptionist.
Try getting me to agree to NH care!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nursing home....not My...

Hope the MY got those big kitty boys microchipped.
I really enjoy reading about our animal friends adventures.

Well, Bruce managed to get the collar off about 5 times during the duration. After the 3rd time, I attached it to his harness and put that on him, and it mostly stayed on that way. (He got it off twice in one day even with the harness, but I had made it very loose, so I just tightened it back to normal.  He didn't get it off again.)

He was able to do most everything with the cone, except wash himself, which drove him around the bend! (Imagine not being able to shower or bathe, or even wash yourself with a cloth for 10 days! Now imagine you are a fastidious cat!) A couple of days after hernia surgery he had a poop explosion.  I didn't realize at first, but he kept coming up to me with his head hung low.  I finally smelled it after about an hour - he was so embarrassed!  I let him out of the cone and put him up on a towel by the sink so I could wash his bum. He gave himself a bath at the same time, and seemed happy enough even when the cone went back on. So after that, I started letting him out of the cone for about an hour a day for supervised "bath time," which seemed to satisfy him.

Anyway, I "let him out of prison" a day early, on Saturday, and he is back to his old spunky kitten self. He'll get the stitches out later this week, but he seems to be leaving them alone now. All looks good!

What I didn't know about neutering is that it's done by injection now, instead of testes removal. So it doesn't get rid of as much testosterone as the old way. He is back to his fighty-bitey stuff! I watched some Jackson Galaxy videos, and he insists fighty-bitey happens when you don't play with your cat enough. I'm a bit annoyed at this because I DO play with him - he just gets bored with the toys and only wants to fight! Like a normal kitten, I suppose.

I found a big thick oven mitt in the back of a drawer yesterday. Trying to use that on my hand to "wrestle" with him. He's not sure how he feels about it yet.

So I’m visiting my last Hospice lady today (I’m not officially a volunteer any more, had to quit to deal with my folks, but I still stop by and visit this one long time patient) and there are 2 cats in this nursing home, brothers, Peaches and Bengal. They are big pretty boys.

Well, peaches somehow escaped for about 2 weeks. The nursing home put out a small ad in the local paper. This is a very small,town, or village in Michigan, about 300 people in winter.

Peaches is a big orange kitty. People brought every orange stray in town to the nursing home. Finally someone caught the real peaches and brought him in. He was skinny and beat up, they took him to the local vet and then back to the nursing home.

He’s now sporting a nice collar with a name tag. He had just come out of my patients room when I got there and was doing the crazy kitty gig, running and jumping all over the nurse station desk and being a general nuisance.

What a great sight. Turns out my patient keeps catnip in her room and he’d just had a snoot full. Big kitty cat buzz going on.

the squirrel and I were having a great visit, she was lying perched atop the porch railing for quite some time after having had enough peanuts for today. A feral grey cat was staring us down, watching, sitting very still, stalking the squirrel. I chased the squirrel away saying run! She went to the back yard wall and waited. I went to convince the cat to move on, and it too went to the back wall through a neighbor's yard.
I went to check, and she greeted me from the wall, thinking this is all fun! I still in my pajamas, went back up the ramp, and she followed. O dear, no. The cat, there is a cat stalking you! I closed the door, no more peanuts today, so you can be alert to danger.

There can be real heartache befriending nature. First, one may be forced to take sides between two precious creatures. Second, predators may hurt the one you have befriended. Third, neighbors may turn you in for breaking the rules, and there she sits, on the railing. It is no longer safe to put the peanuts on the back wall, as that is the cat walk too.
What to do, recalling when first moving in a cat attacked a turtle dove by my front steps, and the cat's owner ridiculed me for being upset about the bird, picked it up in a plastic bag, discarded it alive in the trash bin.
I got it out, took it to animal control, it survived, and they said it was illegal to dispose of a live or dead animal/bird in the trash. But, I was in the wrong for being upset!

So, this may worry me as Ritatouille and I take evasive maneuvers from the cat.
OH, I hope the cat does NOT need a home!

Dorianne, oh my gosh the "cone". I remember when my wild child Charlie was wearing a cone last year for an eye issue, the poor boy just couldn't navigate wearing it. We would hear him scrapping along the walls, then we would hear a "clunk" when he ran into a piece of furniture.

Then I noticed he couldn't eat or drink water wearing it. So I had to cut out a section so he could finally eat. After 6 hours we all gave up and took off the cone.... [sigh]

It was so sad coming upon this tiny brown thing in the street. My heart sank.
While exiting the parking lot, there is was, all soaked by the rain, separated from it's body, ground into the gravel from the street.
I slowed before turning right, rolled down my window to find out what this 12 inch thin thing was. There was some red, but not blood. I looked closer. Strange. It was just lying there.
One side of a reindeer antler was lying on the ground, wet, cut off from the car where it had been perched all Christmas, no doubt. A red piece of ribbon was still attached.

So very sad, Christmas is over, the reindeer antler forgotten.
Crying now.....

Hubs took Chloe to the vet for her first visit yesterday, and she is very healthy and over 6 lbs already! Had several shots, but today she is her feisty self again. They even cut her nails, and already are comparing her to Bella ( our drama queen Chihuahua). When he got back she was sitting on the front desk eating mini bones and entertaining everyone.

Dorianne! How could you!

If we don't hear from you again within 24 hours I will assume that you have been turned to stone by The Eye Basilisk.

New pic of Bruce as my profile pif. He is wearing the "cone of shame this pic, and hates every second of it!

Had to go out of town overnight last night. First time I've left Bruce that long. It sure was nice having him to look forward to coming home to! I mean, I love my mom and my other cat, don't get me wrong. But I haven't felt that "pull" towards home since the cat love-of-my-life, George, passed away in January.  

He was so sweet when I got back! He was right at the door like "OMG where have you BEEN?" And snuggles and "kisses." (I've gotten his "love bites" down to him gently mashing his gums together on my chin. Instead of his teeth!) 

The kittens ate the antler's off my dog's treat she got for Christmas,so she went and tore up their mermaid cat toy that Santa left for them.Now they're all happy.