Goodbye little house panthers

I got a phone call from the shelter yesterday asking me how I thought the kittens would do at PetSmart since the shelter has a satellite adoption center there. The kittens have shown themselves to be pretty resilient after showing up here, so I said yes. In order for them to go up for adoption at PetSmart they needed an additional vaccine, so the shelter needed me to bring them in there first then up to the store.

Well the vaccine was an injectable unlike most of their vaccines which are nasal. The shelter manager injected in their scruff *sigh* which I was none too happy about, but I kept my mouth shut. The next time I see the vet who works at the shelter's spay and neuter clinic I'll talk to him about it and let him deal with it if he feels the need.

They then went to PetSmart. There wasn't an official place for them as the portable cage needed to be brought out, so I didn't get to see them off.  I did meet a very sweet 3 year old girl who was unfortunately twice the size she should have been. I would have loved to snapped her up and brought her home for kitty weight loss on proper diet, but there is no room at the Inn o' Casa de Gato, thank you very much, so I left here there.  There was also another beautiful cat named Creamsicle, which frankly if you had asked me I would have called her Mocha Latte Swirl..

I walked around the store looking at all the cute Halloween stuffs. I bought The Crew a new mouse (because they SOOOO need new toys) and Skippy a new bow tie (because it was on sale) and saw this.. If this isn't an over-saturation of the market of holiday stuffs, I do not know what is.

I think only halloween toilet paper would be worse

I was about to leave the store - in fact I had gotten all the way out to my car, when I needed on e more peek at them. I was bothered I couldn't put them in the cage (stupid thing to be bothered with, I knew full well they were in good hands) so I ran back in.  The woman who was going to be taking care of them was about to leave on lunch break, and they were let out of the cage with the foods I brought them because I hadn't given them breakfast yet. It is better to hold off on foods when transitioning a cat so that they are hungry enough to consider food during the stress. Getting a cat to eat is huge in getting them to relax.  So they were eating, and they were exploring, I couldn't really have wanted more for them.. so I left (and yes, my eyes leaked on the way home.. but better I cry for having loved them than cry because there was no where for them to go)

Yup, those are the adoption cards on top of that cage.. 

Good luck you house panthers you.  May you live long and happy lives..

They're back..

Well the three little house panthers are back. I'm glad to see them, and they were very glad to see me, and Happy Bear. However I am disappointed that they are back because it was the original plan that they go back and go up for adoption because I am becoming overwhelmed with the bottle babies and these fosters and my own cats and my full time job and this blog. Not to mention that the longer they are here the longer it takes for them to find their families.

*sigh*

ah well, maybe it was mean to be. Maybe their people just aren't quite ready for them yet, and for them to be where they need to be they need to be here now.. Yup, that's what I'm telling myself.. I'm kitten sitting for their people..

Beef: it's what's for dinner - or for playin..

Since the black kittens are scheduled for surgery today I had to make sure they made weight. They REFUSED to eat pate food, to the point where they started losing weight, so I brought down some raw food - which went over well. I bought some beef chunks for my cats for chewin on to help clean their teeth, I thought I would bring a few down to the kittens to see what they would do with them.

The smaller pieces they chewed up and ate, the bigger pieces became toys

This is very typical with kittens. Mom would bring home prey for them to practice on and get used to killing for their food. Cats play with their prey to make sure it is dead and to make sure that the prey won't hurt them. Mice bite, birds peck.. hunting can be dangerous business. It might seem cruel when you see a cat play with it's prey, but it is for their own safety.

My thoughts will be with Fiji, Brooklyn and Paris today as they go in for their surgery and then as they go up for adoption. They are really outgoing kittens, so I bet they are snapped up before the weekend is up.

Wordless Wednesday - Small, Medium and Large Edition

Pool Party - kitty style

I was sharing around my last post about the goodies Chewy sent me and Frankie Furter saw it and contacted me about joining in their Pool Pawty link up. A number of people who received summer fun boxes from Chewy thought it would be fun to do a link up to say thank you to Chewy for all the fun treats through out the year.

It was originally suggested that I reshare my old post, but I thought that's not much fun for you my readers, and since y'all had comments about how Traveling Jack used his Can Cozy wrong, he thought he'd give it another shot.

We also decided to try inviting a few additional friends..

Hey, we want to come!! ~Fiji, Paris, and Brooklyn

Um, yeah, no, I'll watch from here.. thanks ~Eli

I hope you guys had fun ~Fleurp

Are there any left over treats? ~Jack

Zzzzz  ~Skippy

Thank you again Chewy, I appreciate the gifts and the opportunity to review products each month. If you are interested in joining the Chewy Blogger program, you can contact Andrew at ab@chewy.com

Black Cat Appreciation Day

Years ago animals who went into the shelter had a worse than a 50/50 shot of getting out. Black cats and dogs had a far worse time of it. Thankfully the word has gotten out that black cats aren't bad luck, and the stats no longer say that black cats are more likely to die than others in a shelter.

But cats are still dying in shelters.. black, white, tabby, tortie.. they are all dying. I think instead of highlighting 'black cats' we should be highlighting the awesome cats that end up at the shelter. They are not broken or damaged or nonredeemable.. okay some are broken and some are damaged, but all of them are awesome. Some of the best relationships I have had with cats were the ones that needed more from me than a 'normal healthy cat'.  Out of the 370 fosters I have had I remember the ones who had serious health issues more keenly. My time taking care of Em after she became diabetic brought us closer.

So take another look at the black cat (little black cats go with everything you know) or the diabetic, or the three legged cat.. because money can buy you love when you use it for an adoption fee.

And, as it just so happens, I happen to have three wonderful friendly happy, purring cuddly black kittens that are going back to the shelter for adoption on Thursday.. so lets get to the appreciatin..

Cats just like these, or like your own, are dying because people do not understand how awesome shelter kitties are, so tell us about your experience with a rescue kitty.

Boy does Fiji like to play

I broke out the fishing pole toy the other day, and Fiji went NUTS over it. It freaked Paris out quite a bit and she ran and hid from it, and Brooklyn wasn't quite sure what to make of it..

Yes, he is dangling in the air.. he REFUSED to let it go!

Paris hoping that Happy Bear will protect her

Sadly I didn't have a way to take video with me at the time, so I went down last night with my phone and took this. Fiji wasn't nearly as possessive of the toy this time, but poor Paris is still freaked out by it

Is it Monday again?

Oh my goodness.. is it Monday again??

I say maybe a Monday will be better with cuddles.. 

Yes, cuddling is nice, but is it enough?

Well it is still Monday!

I think I'll just hide out till Tuesday.

Yup, me too.. see you later!

Sorry about being scarce last week. I took some time off to clear up some clutter in my home. I tend to collect things. Projects I want to work on, recipes I want to try, bits of ribbon that I know I will want to use in a craft project one day. Sadly I'm also not that good at finding a home for everything, so I "lost" the use of my office because I was afraid to let the cats in there knowing they would want to knock things over etc. I made tremendous progress, and while my house isn't exactly 'company ready' at the moment, it is much much closer.

The kittens are finally starting to fill out. They aren't sneezing any more and are eating. They aren't eating nearly as much to make me happy, but enough that they are all over 2lbs.  The shelter wants them to be 2.5 so they'll be here a bit longer.

Mondays are better with kittens

I have to say these three are becoming cuddly kittens, which is nice. The first day they would scatter when I walked in the room, now they are climbing up on us and snuggling with us. I took them home with me to put a little weight on them. They felt a bit straggly, a little light for their size, so I offered them some canned food, and well this was their reaction to that:

They act hungry, but they were not eating well at all. I tried some goats milk, and they weren't interested in that either. Then we had vomit, so yesterday I went to the shelter and asked for some deworming meds. Hopefully we are dealing with a simple round worm issue and things will turn around nicely from here.