Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Pumpkin Festival


This past weekend my husband and I went up to LLBean in Freeport to enjoy Camp Sunshine's Pumpkin Festival.
We have been to the Keene, NH Pumpkin Fest and this one was much smaller than that one, but it was also much less crowded.. which was nice.  We could have shown up earlier for the whoopie pie eating contest, but we preferred to show up a little later to see the lighting of the pumpkins.  They actually light them all with candles instead of battery operated things or glow sticks, so the smell of the flames on the pumpkins and scents of the candles were interesting..

This one was HUGE!!

There was a little pumpkin cannibalism going on.. 
Meow
and a lot of kitty pumpkins
nom nom nom
There were a few casualties.. 

Wordless Wednesday - Ella



Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Sandy


Well we got through hurricane Sandy pretty much intact.  There are a few shreds to the ego, but nothing that can't be mended.

We lost power at 6:30 PM-ish.. my husband wanted to go to the store for dinner and by the time we got back it was out.  It was relatively warm, we have no power lines to our house (the entire development has underground wires) and no trees to knock us over.  I knew it wasn't going to be 'fun' but I didn't need to stress over losing power.. we ended up finding a place to eat, ate, and called it a night.

sadly I didn't sleep a wink.  The Crew was ALL over me.. quite often I felt slightly claustrophobic so I tried to move to be able to breathe . to which The Crew said, "OHAI, your awake.. PURR PURR PURR.. "  It was sweet if not a little bizarre.. they did not seem stressed at all by the storm as I have seen all of this behavior from them before, but not from all of them all at once.

The morning we still had no power.. and with no power comes no water (oh what fun) and since I don't have a cell phone I had no access to the outside world until I left the house.  There was quite a bit of evidence that there was quite a bit of damage out there, but the crews obviously had been hard at work, and most of the major stuff was well on its way to being removed.

We were lucky.. just about all of our problems were self made and total #firstworldproblems
Silly woman..


Elsa and Ella survived just fine too.  it was just another day for them.  Ella is starting to look like she might be turning into a cat instead of the puffball she has been.  So freakin adorable to see that.. I must get decent pictures.. that iTouch only goes so far..

Monday, October 29, 2012

National Cat Day


According to Catster:

National Cat Day was founded six years ago by Colleen Paige, a pet and lifestyle expert and animal welfare advocate. She wanted a day to draw attention to the number of homeless cats in shelters and rescues still waiting for their forever homes, and give cat lovers (like us!) another special reason to celebrate our own cats and the unconditional love and companionship they give us every single day.

Her goal — and it's a big and GREAT one! — is to get 10,000 cats adopted on National Cat Day each year. How wonderful would that be?

That would be wonderful.  But being as it is a Monday and a great deal of the country is dealing with hurricane Sandy, I'm sure a lot of kitties that would have been adopted today won't be.

But there are still many wonderful adorable friendly, aloof spirited, calm, floofy, hairless kitties at shelters across the world waiting for homes.. If you have room for one more, a kitty and a shelter who is housing it would be very greatful..

There is also a facebook page

Iams on ingredients... sorta..


Sorry for the lack of cute photos today.  I so want to take a video of Ella playing and I didn't get to it this weekend.  I'll try to get to that ASAP.

But this post is going to be about something completely different.

Back on September 6th, Pam over at Pet Blogs United announced that she would be meeting with Iams and asked if we had any questions we should ask them in the comments.

Well my questions are pretty much always the same:
I understand the "logic' behind putting plant based ingredients in cat food. Because cats are obligate carnivores and eat animals that eat grains (which is debatable just how much grains vs grasses but lets just pretend they eat all grain) How do they justify putting more than 2% in any diet? Because the digestive contents of any given mouse or bird is about 2% and that's IF they just ate to capacity.

I just don't understand why they add more and say it is healthy, especially when they need to add acidifiers such as l-methionine.

I also do not understand why they use carrageenan which is known to cause problems. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1242073/

And what about garlic? It is known to cause Heinz body anemia. I had one company say there wasn't all that much in the food, but if a kitty has health issues even a little could be a problem. Not to mention you want pets to eat one food exclusively and thus get that 'not much' dose over and over and over. Why on earth put something else in the food that is know to be harmful. http://www.cvm.ncsu.edu/class/2012/files/clinpathNAVLE.pdf

I'm sorry Pam. These probably weren't the questions you had in mind. I could go on all night, but I'll stop here
Imagine my shock when Pam recently posted the answers to three of the questions asked..  I generally don't watch talking videos while at work, and I try to stay off the internet at home during the week to make sure The Crew, the fosters and DH get enough attention for me, so I didn't see the video until yesterday.    At first I thought there was another Connie who asked a question, then the question sounded so much like something I'd say, and then I blushed furiously at the fact that they actually attempted to tackle part of my question.

I'll let you decide if she answered it or not..



Maybe I should start asking how they justify saying grains are health to an obligate carnivore.  And if they are so darn healthy why don't they feed it to larger obligate carnivores in zoos.. and how do the kitties who don't eat 'healthy grains' in the wild survive??   *sigh*

Enough of us are out there saying "obligate carnivore" that the pet food manufacturers are starting to hear it.  I see Iams commercials saying that they (now) do not add plant protein

So they accept that kitties are not vegetarians... but here is the ingredient list for one of their dry foods:
Chicken By-Product Meal, Corn Meal, Corn Grits, Ground Whole Grain Sorghum, Dried Beet Pulp, Powdered Cellulose, Chicken, Animal Fat (preserved with mixed Tocopherols, a source of Vitamin E), Dried Egg Product, Natural Flavor, Brewers Dried Yeast, Sodium Bisulfate, Potassium Chloride, DL-Methionine, etc (removing from the list a number of supplements)

Remember, these ingredients are listed by the one weighing the most in the recipe first.  Second would be the second heaviest ingredient by weight, etc.  You can't really tell if the chicken BPM is 90% of the diet and everything else is only 10% making it mostly meat based ingredients (although BPM is everything but the white meat of the chicken, so a good part of that is bone and possibly feathers and under developed eggs) but somehow I doubt it..   While I don't see this as a vegetarian diet, I most certainly do not see that as an acceptable diet for an organism that derives its energy and nutrient requirements from a diet consisting mainly or exclusively of animal tissue, whether through predation or scavenging, let alone an Obligate carnivores or 'true' carnivores depend on the nutrients only found in animal flesh for their survival

I do know that a lot of people, and vets, are just not ready for cats to be obligate carnivores.. and pet food manufactures are more than happy to supply their products to these people.  Hopefully as the human food movement moves further and further away from prepackaged and highly processed fortified and overly packaged foods, so will pet food.  But even then there will be people who prefer to feed themselves and their pets out of a bag.  It's easy and they are told it is nutritious.. I get it.  But that doesn't mean I have to like it or agree with it.. and I will continue to spread the word that there is a better different option out there if you want to learn.  I just wish the self proclaimed experts would stop telling us that corn and sorghum and beets (or cranberries, or spinach or wheat, or rice, etc) are healthy for cats..

Because it all comes down to those two words.. one scientific principle..

obligate carnivore.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Saturday Squee


are you ready?




are you sure??




I did say she is unbelievably dangerous cute??




well she is...




proceed at your own risk...




you were warned..



Stop it Ella, these people can't handle this much cute!! ~Elsa
Sorry Momma, I just can't help it!
She'll be ready for adoption in November..  the line starts to the left..



Thursday, October 25, 2012

I helped your kitty this weekend


I helped your kitty this weekend, and you will never know.  I can't help but wonder if you will ever know what truly happened, or if you will just be left wondering..

wondering what happened, or even wondering where your sweet kitty is..

because this weekend I pulled your kitty from the middle of the road and laid it down next to the telephone pole near a local business.  There are no houses near by but there are some down the road.  When you realize your kitty is missing, will you walk this far to find it?  Will you not even realize until after the sanitation workers stop by and pick up the body?

These are questions I can't continue to ask myself, because they break my heart.

I want to yell and scream at you, but I can't.  I too lost a kitty to the great outdoors. Tig was abandoned outside as a kitten and then found and brought to a shelter.  I found him there and brought him home and he was frantic to get out.  It was November at the time, and we lived with in a professional pitcher's throw of a major interstate.  I so wanted to keep him in, but he was miserable and so we were miserable, so we let him out - of course he was miserable and wanted to get back in immediately.  Flashbacks of not having a home haunted him, but flash backs of defending his territory also haunted him and I was too inexperienced at the time to help him understand that being an indoor only kitty was a good thing.  So we helped him become an indoor/outdoor kitty by standing in the cold with him, and letting him in each of the 100 times he asked those first few days.  He was fine next to the highway.  Then we moved to a rough part of another town.  No trees, no grass, but he still refused to stay in. We moved in with the in-laws and he was out in the middle of the woods and in heaven with all the moles and mice to catch and bring home.  We moved again to another new town, with its own challenges.  This one had trees and birds, but it also had a heavily traveled road and I worried, but he was fine.  We finally bought out own home and moved to the country.  All my fears were eased.  I figured he would be safe out there.  Well one day he did not come home.  I did not worry about him until two days later because it was common for him to spend the night hunting.  15 or so years later I still have a small bit of hope that he found a new home to live in.. but now when he would be 22, I have come to accept that he is dead.

Will you wonder?

or will you know.

It looked like your kitty did not suffer.  It looked fairly peaceful laying there on the road.  When I realized what it was I had to turn around and go to help.  Animals on the road are often fair game to people who think it is fun to run them over and make them as flat as possible.  As I was pulling over an 18-wheeler was coming up on the body.  I flashed my lights and sent up a silent prayer and then... it was gone and your kitty was still intact.

Your kitty was also still warm.  It had been a while, but not all that long.  It could have easily still been alive save for the tongue hanging out of its mouth.  Still to be sure I called softly to it, no response.  I approached carefully, again to be sure, but still nothing.  In the very dim light the kitty held a strong resemblance to my Muffin.  White with a gray cap and cape and on the larger side of healthy.  Yet some how I did not cry.  I did what I had to do; I had no other choice.  The thought of your kitty there was something I could not bare.  It would have haunted my dreams, and I would have obsessed all night if not for days.

Just so you know, you are not alone.  This was the fifth kitty I have carried to the side of the road.  Many did not look as good as yours did.  Then there was the kitty I found in a ditch when I was still a school child delivering the afternoon papers.. She was alive, but she did not survive.  And when I let myself, I can only begin to image what happened to my Tig..

All I can allow myself to say is:

I'm so very very sorry for your loss.  you have my deepest condolences..
and your kitty has my tears.



Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Another Fund-Free Fundraiser


well now this is fun..

In conjunction with BarkWorld, the Social Media Conference for Pet Bloggers and Industry,Petco is donating $1.00 to selected pet rescues and shelters for every Tweet or Post that helps spread the word of Be the Change for Animals from October 22-27, 2012.


So for every tweet and blog post feathring the #BTC4A hashtag during this time, Petco is donating a dollar!! I can tweet.. :)

I checked out the blog hop, and all of them were doggies - which kinda makes sense since this is happening at BarkWorld, but I felt the need to stick my kitty nose blog in there and help! :)

See the blog hop here 

or tweet this..
Rescue pets receive $1 from  at  for each tweet from Oct 22-27! 

Wordless Wednesday


Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Elsa


I think there is a little confusion about Elsa's "condition"..

She is not feral, but she had absolutely no manners.  She is very loving and wants lots and lots of attention, but in her world (prior to coming to me) everyone was most likely (and I'm guessing because I really don't know) was a cat or some other animal.  They express affection by biting and wrestling with one another.  When they settle down they do groom one another and snuggle up to one another, but Elsa is so high energy that I almost never see her laying down let alone sleeping.

Play sessions where I get her running around and jumping up on the couch and the box help drain some of that energy and make it a little easier for me to read her body language because it isn't going a 100MPH any more..

Wearing "armor" of sweaters and gloves protect my skin and allow me to get close enough to her to help her understand that biting human flesh is NOT acceptable.  When they are kittens they don't have the jaw strength to penetrate skin so it is much easier to train kittens how to properly interact with humans - I mean no matter how big their floofsuit is, they just don't intimidate me like a full grown cat with its powerful jaws that can exert up to 100 psi.

She runs to me.  If I try to move she runs to get in front of me.  She loves to rub against me.  If I am stopped near or sitting next to a blanket she will 'make biscuits" on it.  But she is unpredictable   she runs VERY fast, her movements are jerky, so it is hard to tell when she's just moving around or moving to strike.

Fortunately she hasn't done a strike since the first time which of course resulted in my being bitten.  And again, I do NOT believe she bit me because she was frightened or cornered, but I firmly believe that she bit me in play - not understanding that it would hurt me.

So we are doing that complicated dance people do when they are trying to communicate with someone who does not speak their language.  Her language of love is bite and wrestle.. Mine is cuddle and pats.

She is smart.  When I'm feeding her she gets all up in my business, and I tell her to get down and she immediately gets down.  Of course she turns right around and comes back up and I have to tell her to get down again, but she gets right down.

But being full of hormones it hinders things..

speaking of which..
*makes phone call*
*runs home then to shelter then back to work*

OK, so Elsa is at the shelter being neutered..   I didn't want to leave Ella at home alone and I figured if she came to work that she'd sleep easy tonight and leave Elsa alone.. well my newest co-worker has fallen in love and everyone is absolutely GUSHING over her.. I think she was going to faint from cuteness when Ella pounced on something.  She's already sending photos to her husband.. lol.

Toesday with Ella


I've decided to open up my commentathon to all posts from the blogoversary post till I close it next month.  So I hope you all get a commenting!  Remember, I am going to donate twenty five cents for each comment and you can comment more than once.  I just ask you not commentbomb a post :)

Ella does have the cutest toes going, she's just not a fan of being on her back so this might be the last you see of them.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Nail trim


I took Elsa to the shelter on Friday for a nail trim.  I figure if I'm a little less afraid of her it would make things easier.

I was horribly impressed that the staff member took her out of her carrier right in the lobby and she and the manager took care of them right there.  There was talk of getting her spayed - hopefully on Tuesday - and then I brought her back home.

She freaked out on the way to the shelter, but on the way home she was all calm and happy..
After getting home I left her in there to quickly pick up the room.
Ella was unimpressed that her mom was gone..
Party Time!  Excellent!!
Oh, she's back.. OK.


after the trip I thought I would push the envelope and try picking her up.  The first time went not so smoothly, as she didn't trust me and had no idea what I intended to do, so I very quickly put her on the floor.  After that I tried again and got her up off the floor and transported her and it went very well.  I'm no where near ready to do the cuddle hold.. but maybe in time.

I also brought my husband down into the room.  That went good too.  She was over active as usual  but he stayed still and nothing more happened than her asking to be patted.  Ella however did her best to take him down.  She bit his foot, rabbit kicked it, and worked her cute charms on him.. it was really sweet.
While I was at the shelter I noticed that both Tiki and Niki were still up for adoption.  I so hope they went home this weekend..
Pat me, hold me, snuggle me!! ~Tiki

Niki has a toy
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