After a restless (and for some of us, sleepless) first 2 weeks, Hat’s settling in nicely!

• He’s not having the nocturnal crazies any more (well, just a little bit, but it’s not so bad)
• He’s starting to relax and PLAY!
• He and Kacey touched noses through the baby gate today – nobody hissed!



Isn’t he handsome? I think he’s a gorgeous cat despite his poor little ears. It’s so hard to get a picture of him though – he always has his face right in the camera!

His injuries have healed and he’s starting to act like a happy little house-hat. Sometimes I go upstairs to sit with him – he jumps in my lap, head bumps for a while, rolls over for belly rubs, then takes a bath and purrs himself to sleep. Too cute! Did I mention I LOVE this cat ?

Next on the agenda – introduce him to Ambika (who’s taken a peek or two from the stairs) and start letting him see the rest of the house.

Explaining that last, somewhat incoherent post:

Hat is one of the trio of outdoor cats I’ve been caring for over the last several years. He’s very friendly and had become quite the homebody, following the sun from my front to my back porch and back during the day and sleeping in an old cat carrier on my front porch at night. On a typical day he would leave to do his business, stretch his legs or hang out with his friends for a while, otherwise he was always here.

Last night when I went out to “tuck him in” and give him a bedtime snack he was in his “bed”. I reached in and he shied away from me – VERY unlike him. Then he came out, but instead of going to me, he went under my car. He was limping!

I freaked out. At first I thought he’d been hit by a car, but I couldn’t examine him while he was under MY car. I was really afraid he’d do the typical injured cat thing – run away and hide.

So I ran inside and got food. All kinds of food. He still wouldn’t come to me, but I wasn’t going to leave him so there I was: middle of the night, about 20 degrees out, in my PJ’s, sitting in my driveway, fingers covered in smelly cat food, trying to coax a frightened cat out from underneath my car!

Finally I put some in a dish and stepped away. If there’s one thing Hat likes it’s food and the temptation was finally too much for him to resist – he came out to eat.

I grabbed him, carried him into my house and shut the door. By this time he seemed to have stopped limping, but it looked like he’d been attacked by something – there were spikey areas in his fur, a cut on his ear and under his eye, maybe more. The eye was tearing a lot. He also cried when I picked him up, which isn’t typical of him. I sat there pondering the situation for a while, then I picked him up again and carried him up the stairs to my spare room – simple as that.

He spent most of the night meowing. I tried sleeping on the floor with him – that idea worked out better for him (he was all too happy to snuggle up with me and my blanket) than for me (Ouch! – Apparently I’ve reached the age where I’m Too Old to Sleep On Floors). Went downstairs. Heard noise – went up, he’d knocked some books off a bookshelf. Sat with him again for a while then went back to bed. That was around 2AM. Bryce got me up again around 5:30.

Called my vet first thing in the AM and sleepwalked brought him over to be boostered, antibiotic-ed, have his ears cleaned, his nails trimmed, get checked for FELV/FIV (negative !) and have some icky stuff squeezed out of the cut under his eye. He was such a good cat at the vet – I wish my other cats were half that good! Fortunately my vet has a “deal” for treating stray cats so the damage wasn’t as bad as it otherwise might have been!

So he’s upstairs now, closing in on his first 24 hrs. He’s eating, he’s sleeping, he isn’t quite himself and he seems pretty tired, but that’s to be expected – so am I!

“‘Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
“Come in,” she said,
“I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”
(“Shelter from the Storm” – Bob Dylan)

I can’t save them all, but I can save this one – I got a “wake up call” last night and realized it was high time I did.

Don’t know if this will ultimately simplify my life or complicate it – probably a little bit of both. Smart move or stupid move? Yep – probably a little bit of both. Life’s funny like that.

For better or for worse, it’s a boy! Welcome home, Hat!

(More after a trip to the vet about his eye, a trip to the store for another litter pan, and maybe some sleep!)

A few months ago I spent some of my Amazon mad-money on a video input adapter, with the intention of copying all my old videos off tape and onto DVD’s,. Unfortunately, I was too busy to do anything with it when it arrived, so I decided why not save it for Christmas. I finally got around to messing with it today!

Still not familiar with the software and having problems getting my REALLY old VHS tapes to copy, but I got it working with my 8mm tapes.

The first tape I’ve copied is from 1996-1997 – before Bryce was so much as a glimmer in his father’s eye! It features my “second generation” – Tiffy, Sally, Jasmine and Kacey. Of the 4 girls, only Kacey is still alive. Watching it, at first I didn’t know whether to smile or cry – smiling won out . There are some classic clips on it, a few of which will be going on youtube, but meanwhile here are a few still frame captures from way back when:

Tiffy at 8-9 years old. When she was 5, Tiffy was badly injured in a household accident so she was a little lopsided the remainder of her 15.5 years. Hard to tell from this angle and the grainy image, but she was a very pretty girl. She was only about 13.5″ tall – Raven’s height. Doesn’t look that small, does she? She was built like a tank!

Sally at 6 – just a sweet young thing! In this clip, she wanted me to get out of bed and FEED her! Instead, I laughed at her and grabbed the camera. (She was a little annoyed – can you tell?)

Jasmine, the 3rd of my 3 little “redheads”, shown here at about 3 1/2 years old. (Jasmine never did like having her picture taken.)

Kacey … as a kitten! (7 months or so)

Proof that I once had a dog with a start line stay …

… but really crappy contacts!

(Not that my handling was anything to write home about either …)

More on the way !

Happy 2010!

Here’s the obligatory New Years dog photo (the cats never cooperate)…

(Yes, it looks like Raven may have either had some personal hygeine issues or was passing gas since the others refused to sit that close to her… but at least they’re all looking nicely at the camera and it only took me 4 tries ! )

2009 had it’s good points and it’s bad points. On the good side, Bryce is still with us and doing pretty well. On the minus side, Jasmine is gone. Wasn’t a bad agility year.

It was however a very EXPENSIVE year right up to the end ! The week before Christmas, Kacey suddenly got sick – frequent vomiting, not eating, acting miserable. Now since Kacey’s tongue is always in places where a cat’s tongue shouldn’t be, she gets a nasty GI upset or two every year (though it’s usually the other end that’s affected) so I went with my usual strategy – took her to my vet for fluids and some shots to help her stop vomiting.

Eight hours later, she was still vomiting every 1.5-2 hours, so on the recommendation of my vet, off she went to the $$$ 24 hr hospital. $$$ Got there just in time to catch the $$$ ultrasound technician $$$ on her way out the door. The good news was that there were no blockages, however she had a mildly inflamed pancreas and a VERY badly inflamed stomach. $$$ Spent the night there $$$ on IV’s.

Of course, she didn’t vomit once after she was checked in! The next morning found her biting the techs – not something you usually want to hear and I’ll probably burn in hell for giggling about it when they told me, but it was the best sign possible that Kacey was feeling well enough to act like herself. She wouldn’t eat for them, so I went over and managed to coax her to eat a few licks of baby food. After a few hours to make sure that stayed down she came home – indignant, freaked-out, and sporting what can only be described as a semi poodle-clip (apparently they needed to shave THREE legs to find a vein?) but as happy to be home as I was to have her back!

So far so good – what a relief but what a scare! Kacey’s my oldest (2 yrs older than Bryce) – she’s kind of a badass, but I really love her and am not ready to see her leave us any time soon!

Coming right on the heels of Bryce’s “episodes” this was really rough on the already-hurting checkbook as you can well imagine! If you’re ever in a similar situation, I highly recommend checking out CareCredit, which lets you make payments interest-free as long as you make monthly payments and pay off your balance in full within a certain time period (in this case, 90 days).

So here’s to a slightly less-crazy 2010!

Raven’s scheduled to be spayed on Tuesday. I know it’s what has to be done, I know that it’s the best thing to do. And I hate it!

I’ve had far more female dogs and cats than male, I’ve been through this half a dozen times – you’d think it would be easy for me by now, but it isn’t. Actually Bryce (the only male dog I’ve had as an adult) was the only one of mine ever to have any post-neutering “complications” of any sort, and that was just because he pulled his e-collar off on day #2 while I was at work and ate ALL the plastic tabs off of it (it took him a couple of weeks to expel them all from his stomach!)

It’s going to be tough to see “Little Miss Happy” hurting after the operation and sad when I can’t let her play with Jayda or have her usual freedom to jump on the bed and the sofa for a couple of weeks, but wish us well and we’ll get through it.

Here’s a not-very-high-quality but cute video of her with Hat. Hat LOVES the dogs, especially Raven – they’re almost the same size! She usually doesn’t mind being on the receiving end of his kitty-love displays, but by the time I’d gotten the camera she was starting to get a little tired of it.