Shortly after we moved into our home I wanted to plant some pussy willows. We did, and it took a few years for them to do their thing. Every year I miss their cute pussy willow stage and I don't realize they have bloomed until they have totally bloomed.
I have to admit ignorance when it came to pussy willows. I had no idea that they bloomed. I also didn't know they have a very nice light scent.
I also planted a wisteria vine that I had at the previous house. It has been doing well here but I have to remember to hack it back quite a bit each year in order for it to bloom. I didn't know that originally and wondered why it never bloomed. I always feel back cutting it back, but it thrives on it. I just wish that I could do something with the vines I cut off each year. I was thinking I should learn basketweaving as I saw the pile that was left behind, but I need one more hobby like a hole in the head, so they went off to the compost heap. (sorry no pictures, the thing seriously looked dead)
I also planted a couple of lilac bushes.. they are starting to bloom as well.
I also have another plant/bush/tree in the back that I thought was a pussy willow at one point, but when I got up close, I realized it wasn't. I have no idea what it is.
This year I want to plant a chestnut tree. They were once very plentiful in this area and now they are not, so I thought I'd do one small little thing to fix that.
In April 2014, I brought home two kitties from the shelter that was diabetic. I had offered to foster Chandler who I met at the shelter with a bum leg and when I went to pick him up Abby had shown up and needed some care as well.
Fortunately, they got along rather well and I fostered them for a while, got them stable, and returned them to the shelter. Chandler was adopted and lived in a home for a while before he was returned to the shelter and then passed away.
Abby sat in a cage for nearly a year and deteriorated. When I realized she hadn't been adopted and was getting cage aggressive, I would go to the shelter to work with her to try to get her walking around. It was not a solution because I worked full time. It took some work, but we were able to get her into HART who has a number of diabetic cats in their care and a robust network of foster homes who were happy to care for them.
Almost a year after she was in my care, she was in theirs. April 2015 was when I got the last update. Occasionally I would see her networked on social media, but I hadn't heard anything in a while.
I received a message a few minutes ago that Abby had been a nice stable foster home and had been doing very well until recently. Earlier this year she was diagnosed with cancer and it progressed to the point where they felt it was in her best interest to let her go today.
My heart breaks at this news. Not only because of her passing, but also for those people who had been caring for her for the past two years. It is always hard to lose a loved one.
I really stink at looking back at what happened in the past year. I've really only done it one other time in the fifteen years I've been doing this blog, but we has a few major losses this year and it has been weighing on me that I no longer talk about Kit. I figured this might be a way around that 😊
Also, reviewing the year is hard, because kitten season skews the year up entirely. What year do I add kittens that started with us in December but are still here in January? Do I mention them twice? See.. such weird questions you only ask yourself when you run a blog and you are thinking of doing a year in review post..
ANYWAY.. without too much more adieu..
~*January*~
January started off with the continued fostering of Gandalf the Gray
He was such a fun little boy. It was a pleasure to have him here.
February saw the adoption of Gandalf and the arrival of Lemon, Sprite and Wryn. Lemon was a really sweet kitty but she lacked communication skills and tended to growl at me instead of purr. As some of you know, Lemon's daughters went on to be adopted by a woman I have made friends with and they have popped up on the blog a few times post adoption.
This month I also became really annoyed at an internet meme that basically told people not to take any advice off the internet when it comes to your pets. Yes, there are sources on the internet that are less knowledgeable than others, but if you can tell the difference between fake news and real news, then you can probably figure out a good source of information on the internet. (apparently, I am still bothered by this)
Raffe, my four-foot giraffe in the kitten room, underwent his first of two major surgeries to straighten out his neck. I did a pretty good job the first time, but the internal structure was just no match for two pound cats hanging off his head, so a second was necessary - but that was much later.
I also went to a shelter meeting where they talked about improving the shelter and the upgrades they had coming and I believe this was one of the first "shooting at the shelter' series where I try to take pretty photos of cats at the shelter to share with you. I do it to work on my photography skills - taking photos of kitties in the shelter environment is challenging because the lighting is often not very good and I don't want to hinder other people looking at the kitties.
I blogged about the dangers of lilies. I think it a shame that florists aren't required to put a warning on lilies considering how toxic they are. I thought it was just because cats are still considered second class pets, but I found out they are also toxic to dogs. I also did a post for declaw awareness day.
It also saw the start of the short lived 'random photos from my phone' series of posts, which I think is an awesome idea and I REALLY should get back to it because I take a bunch of cute photos on my phone and it would get me to back up my phone photos more often.
~*April*~
No joke, on April 1st I blogged about feeding your cat a vegetarian diet. I occasionally run into pockets of people who think this is a good thing. You can read the post or you can just accept "obligate carnivore" (and yes, I ran into a vegan who actually said the words 'the myth of obligate carnivore', and yes, it really hurts when I bang my head onto my desk)
Wryn and Sprite were adopted at the end of March and then I kitten-sat for them for a short while. Their new mom was moving and her house wasn't quite ready for kittens. Once she took them home, I went to the shelter and I brought home "Skinny" who I quickly renamed Art3mis. She was very unhappy with absolutely EVERYTHING going on and spent most of her time behind the couch.
As Art3mis' kittens grew, I could not restrain my grabby hands. Seriously, I should have gotten a medal for leaving them alone as long as I did!
~*May*~
Art3mis' kittens were still with us and things were fairly uneventful until it came to litter box training. And then it hit the fan. If there had been a fan in that room I would joke that it litteraly hit it because those boys .. well it wasn't fun
It took all the way to May 10th for the CatMan to feel comfortable meeting the kittens. He said he was afraid of stressing Art3mis out, but I think he was just afraid of Art3mis.
Muffin, Jack, and Fleurp went to the vet for a check up. Muffin's routine blood work found her SDMA levels were a little high. I searched high and low to find out exactly what I should do to help her. The only thing my vet had was to give her fish oil and consider a low protein renal diet. Since I object to Rx renal diets on several different levels (I don't believe low protein is appropriate and I hate the ingredient list) I opted for the fish oil. I'm not very good at it and subsequent tests had her SMDA actually dropping... so while I do believe she is in the beginning stages of renal failure there isn't much more to do than to watch her. Sadly, she also has some serious muscle mass loss in her feet and some arthritis in her bones, It aches to know my time is drawing short with my 15 yr old girl.
Art3mis' kittens were still with us in June and were becoming obnoxiously adorable. Several of my posts held warnings about extreme cuteness. They thought climbing Raffe was super fun and was the reason he needed a neck transplant later on in the year.
I got another bee in my bonnet about cat food, having see too many people say that kitten food is vital for kittens to the point of making other people feel bad that they were feeding adult food to kittens. Is there a difference between cat food and kitten food? In a word, no.
I created another post about fostering and how hard it can be when foster families are told they should so totally keep a kitten. It happens to me and I try to explain that right now it is not a good idea for me to keep other kitties due to Jack's health. People seem to forget that their reasons for not adopting another kitty are valid reasons for other people too. It hurts when I see it happen to friends more... and I wrote this in response to a number of comments on a friend's situation.
The new kittens were quite afraid of humans and would often attempt to hide from me. I had a few different people stop by to visit them in an attempt to acclimate them to new people.
There was a small glitch with the surgeries with the kittens. We do not know exactly what happened, but I have my suspicions.. as a result, Corrie spent a couple of days disorientated and having some issues with her coordination. I was worried about her and said so on my blog. That post got in front of the right set of eyeballs and happily, a friend of a friend adopted her and her bonded sister Lily (they are now Rose and Lily). The rest of them were doing well and were adopted quickly.
August is the height of kitten season and I wasn't being offered kittens so I thought I would contact the other shelter in the area to see if they needed any help. They offered me two kittens, Emma and Elsie.
~*September*~
Emma had a bit of a health scare, but September saw her in good health and we just coasted until their scheduled return date.
We celebrated National Teddy Bear Day with a Happy Bear retrospective. He is really starting to show his age.
I did a post on my diagnosis of Lipedema. It still floors me that 10% of the women suffer from this disease but yet conventional medicine still blames women for eating too much. If you can't buy a match set of bra and panties, you might have lipedema. Even if you don't have it, Please, educate yourself on it. There is a good chance someone you know does. Ten percent.. that is about the same as breast cancer and awareness for that is EVERYWHERE!
Cinnamon and Cayenne weren't here long, so I was once again without kittens. I decided to celebrate National Cheeseburger Day, and boy were my cats happy!
~*October*~
There were still no kittens at Casa de Gato. Fortunately, my friend had some, so I went to visit them.
(it is at this point in creating this blog post that I am seriously jonesing for kittens) In the second week, we brought home Benji who looked so much like Skippy I couldn't resist sticking him in a bow tie. He just needed a short stay to get caught up on vaccinations before going up for adoption.
It was also at the end of October that I came clean about Kit's health issues. She had several bouts of illness over the year, even having one blood test that came back that made the vet say FIP. I have a history with FIP, and I KNEW you couldn't diagnose it with a blood test and I KNEW she didn't have it, but the vet kept saying it. I finally had to stop him and say since FIP is incurable, let's pretend she doesn't have it, what else is there? He mentioned cancer and wanted to do x-rays and other tests. Since Kit is my husband's cat I wasn't making any decisions without him and after talking to him, he decided to treat her conservatively. We went back for the followup appointment and redid the blood work and were going to pursue x-rays when her blood work came back markedly improved. It was decided that she didn't have FIP or cancer that it was most likely just an infection. She did well for quite some time, then had another downturn.
Well, at the end of October she became ill again. She had some congestion and some sneezing so we just assumed she caught a cold. We put her back on conservative treatment, but she did not improve. One night I found blood. I pulled her aside and gave her a good once over and found a lump on her throat. I don't check my cats over every single day, but I do give them a hands on rather frequently. I can't say how long it had been since I had felt her neck and it was 'normal' but it couldn't have been more than a couple of weeks. It floors me that she would be gone two weeks later.
One thing I never shared with you was that the only way I could cope with her entire illness was to write blog posts in my head. I shared everything with you guys. Unfortunately, the thoughts in my head never made it to the computer.. which actually is probably a good thing because this would have been one of the saddest blogs ever.
They were under socialized, so they hung out with me for a few weeks.
~*December*~
I spent some time socializing the P kittens and they did very well. They went back to the shelter pretty quickly as well.
I decided to sell some catnip toys to raise some funds for vet visits; the sale went pretty well. I didn't get a lot of feedback so I'm unsure if this is something I should do on a regular basis or not. I also sent out TFK Christmas Cards.
I decorated my Christmas tree with cat toys once again. I doubt I'll ever decorate my tree with anything else ever again because it just makes me smile. (seriously, go to that post, you get to see the tree in all of its glory)
I ended the year without kittens, but I did create a post on why I feed raw food to my cats. I have talked about it on and off throughout the years, but never really put it all down in one place to have a cohesive explanation of why I do what I do and how it has helped.
~*The Wrap-Up*~
285 blog posts, 27 kitties fostered with just one birth at the house. It was a very long year and it had its share of heartbreak. Hopefully, we won't be going through that anytime soon. *knock wood*
What was your standout memory of my blog from 2016? What would you like to see more of in 2017?
Easter is fast approaching and I know there are people out there who are thinking of making a gift of a rabbit to a loved one. If you haven't decided on one yet, please consider making that rabbit a chocolate one in honor of the Make Mine Chocolate campaign.
Don't get me wrong, I am completely okay with gifting a pet *IF* it is done right. Everything that comes into play with adopting a rabbit or a cat or a dog still comes into play when giving one as a gift. You need to know what you are getting into. You need to know that the animal is wanted and will be cared for its entire life.
I know that rabbits appear to be 'easy' pets because they are sold in a cage. People wrongly assume that if it is in a cage it is easy to take care of. You give it food the store provides, you clean out the bedding once a week, you make sure it has clean water. Sadly, this is a misnomer that often leads to bad pet experiences and it leads to a lot of misinformation and shortened lives for the animals.
Rabbits need room to run around. The cages that are generally provided for rabbits are not big enough for proper exercise. It is recommended that you create a play area for your rabbit so it is safely contained and it has some room to run and jump around. The reason the rabbit should be 'safely contained' is because they like to chew on everything. Rabbit's teeth never stop growing, so they need to constantly chew on things to wear them down. There is nothing that is safe from a bunny: electrical cords, baseboards, books, magazines, photo albums, table legs, just to name a few.
Proper nutrition is also a bit more than putting down a bowl of pellets. Rabbits need to continually eat to maintain proper gut mobility. Providing them with fresh hay is vital to their health, and some would argue that pellets are completely unnecessary. Fresh veg is good for a bunny, but only certain ones. Some fruit is also good, but not all fruit. Understanding what your bun can and can't eat is important.
I loved my rabbits and miss owning one quite keenly. If you honestly want a rabbit, Easter can be an adorable time to bring home a rabbit. If you decide to do it, please keep the rabbit's well-being in mind. If you have a lot of obligations on Easter and your house will be chaos, you might want to consider waiting and adopting one later. There will be a flood of rabbits to shelters in the coming weeks. Take the opportunity to discuss with the entire family the obligations of owning a rabbit, the complications and the needs of the rabbit. Buy a book on rabbit care, spend a few nights reading it and making a plan. Look up plans for rabbit enclosures so you can pick which one works for you and your family before you go shopping.
Tobin with Eli and Bri with Skippy
Bunnies are wonderful pets, but they are far from an 'easy' pet.
Read some of my other posts for Make Mine Chocolate a mission of the Columbus House Rabbit Society - here or individual posts:
