11/13/09 – Friday

I am from Austin, TX and this area, like most, is flooded with abandoned and homeless animals. The Centex Humane Society is about 90 minutes north of here near Fort Hood and is one of the only no-kill shelters serving this part of the state. Last week a fire occurred in the middle of the night and over 100 animals (99 were cats) were killed and it destroyed a large part of the building, severely limiting the ability of the shelter to keep animals until they find a forever home. They are really in need of donations to rebuild and get back on their feet.

Read more about the fire and see a picture of the aftermath here and here.

Go read about the Centex Humane Society shelter and donate if you can!

 

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FOAM 5: Food: Eggs, fresh from the coop, just washed. (We don’t usually wash eggs, but these needed it.)
Outside: The Poltergeist tree in the side yard. My favorite tree.
Abstract: The comforter on my bed. I adore it, but it’s getting old and dingey.
Myself: Look, me with a kitten! What a shocker. That’s Orange (Lorna Doone), and we’re hanging out on the bed in the Cookie room.

 

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Hey Robyn-about the water fountain. Do any of your other cats use it to drink from? I am contemplating buying one, only because my cat Basil (who is the spitting image of Sugarbutt) LOVES to drink from the tap in the bathroom. I hate leaving it dripping-he and his brother Monkey get paw prints all over the counter, and then they shake their head and get water spray all over the mirror.

One of my clients told me that her cat won’t even look at it, so i am having second thoughts. (since they go for $40 a pop)

I have two of the Petmate fountains upstairs (one in the foster room, one in the bathroom) and a Drinkwell downstairs in the laundry room near their food. They all get plenty of use. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen all our cats use the fountains at various times – some of them drink from the top, where the water comes out, and some of them drink out of the “bowl” part at the bottom.

The fact that your cats like to drink out of the faucet certainly makes me think they’d like the fountains. And hey, think of it this way – if you get it, give it a try, and they don’t like it, you can always sell it on eBay. 🙂

Personally, I prefer the Petmate fountains, because they’re quieter. The Drinkwell, on the other hand, doesn’t need to be filled as often.

We did have a Cat-It fountain for a little while, but Miz Poo was the only one who’d use it, and then I broke the globe when I was cleaning it, and that was it for the Cat-It as far as I was concerned.

 

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So what’s the Crooked Acres opinion on chicken tractors?

I have 4 chickens in a chicken tractor. It was moved over the summer but it’s parked (on top of my former garden site) for winter. They get scratch and kitchen leftovers for entertainment, in addition to chicken feed. You know…they seem happy enough but they are also dumb, dumb animals. 😛

I would like to have a bigger yard for them or free range but I couldn’t be sure of their safety/suffering avoidance that way, either.

Oh, I think chicken tractors are awesome! I’ve tried for the last couple of years to convince Fred to build a few so the chickens could keep down the weeds between the rows of plants in the garden, but he just hasn’t had a chance. My usual gripe with chickens who don’t get space to roam is that they’re generally confined to one small space, they peck all the bugs and grass and weeds up, and then they’re left on this little dirt-covered space. With the chicken tractors, they can be moved so that they get fresh ground and all that healthy greenery and bugs, and I think that’s pretty cool.

 

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not.a.skimmer.swear! I haven’t seen any posts or pics lately about the pigs….. what’s up with that? Are they gone to pig heaven (the butchers?).

No, not yet – the latest two pigs are going to freezer camp at the beginning of December. We’ve opted to go back to the guy who did our second set pigs, because we like the job he did (though we truly don’t have any gripes about the job any of the three places we’ve taken pigs have done), he’s the closest to us, and (most importantly), he’ll process the pigs. The other butchers in this area stop processing anything but deer this time of year; this guy doesn’t do deer at all.

I probably should write about the pigs more often, but I tend to forget to take the camera out to the back forty with me, which is a reason you don’t see a huge number of pictures of the dogs and chickens, too!

 

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Robyn, I was just checking my Twitter feed and Whoorl recommended a site new to her and I wondered if you knew about it? Foodzie is like Etsy but for food. People place their home made food items there to sell. You probably do OK selling stuff directly from your own website but I just thought of you as soon as I saw Whoorl’s recommendation.

Oh, I know about Foodzie – I try to stay away from it, because I’m pretty sure I could spend $200 there without thinking twice. That place makes me DROOL.

The main reason I don’t sell stuff on Foodzie is because I feel kind of, well, outclassed by the sellers there. I mean, look at my jar of jam. Now go look at this fancy shit. I COULD go the fancy route, but I’m not that creative when it comes to that sort of thing and honestly? I don’t got time.

Of course, $4 for mine buys you 8 ounces of jam rather than the 4 ounces you get from them, so there’s that.

 

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Hey. Remember how we weaned the Wonkas and I was all “Yeah, I don’t think I want any more bottle babies” and then God laughed and sent me the Cookies?

Well, we’ve gotten the Cookies mostly weaned (except for that spoiled rotten Pink, who really could be perfectly well weaned by now, but when you’re faced with the Eyes of Hope and “Ba ba? Ba ba?”, only the most heartless person would deny the little princess.) I said to Fred the other day “Oh, thank god, the bottle feeding is now mostly at an end!”

Fred’s even feeding the Cookies when he gets up in the morning and giving Pink her bottle so I don’t have to get up at 4:30 any more! It is GLORIOUS.

So then.

The day before yesterday I was in the kitchen, and the phone rang. I saw by the caller ID that it was the shelter manager.

“Hi,” she said when I answered the phone. “Is this the kitten daycare?”

“Oh, god,” I groaned. “Whaaaaat?”

Two 11 day-old kittens had been abandoned by their mother on this woman’s patio. She wasn’t necessarily looking to get rid of them, she was doing okay with bottle feeding them, but she has a job and can’t take the kittens with her.

Susan reassured me that I didn’t have to, that I could say no, but honestly, I didn’t mind taking them for a few hours. I mean, I get them for the day, I feed and snuggle them and kiss their little faces, and I hand them back over.

AND I don’t have to get up at 4:30 to feed them!

(Seriously, though. God really wants me to have bottle babies in my life, huh?)

She dropped them off yesterday morning, and they ate pretty well, they pottied just fine, and they purred like mad for me. They’re not named, and I don’t know if she’s planning to give them up – she said she was going to try to find a home for them because she travels a lot, but then she said she might get attached to them – but they’re awfully cute.

(I wasn’t able to get good pictures of them this time around, but they’ll be back Saturday, so hopefully then!)

The all-black one (I think it’s a girl, but I didn’t look that closely, so I could be wrong).

The black and white one – definitely a boy.

Mr. Black and White has a ring around his tail. It’s so cute! (I was calling him “Ringo” in my head, of course.)

They’re adorable, but I have to admit – at this age, all they do is eat and sleep and they’re kinda boring. Shhh, don’t tell anyone I said that! They’ll take my Crazy Cat Lady title away!

 

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My poor Wonkas. They had their vaccinations on Wednesday, and all day yesterday when I’d pet them, I’d accidentally pet the injection site, which was still sore, and they’d cry at me, and I’d feel like the most evil person alive.

They forgave me, though. They always do, thank god.

Kitty yoga.

Violet practices her awesome karate moves.

 

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The Cookies are doing well. I put them in the bathroom for a little while yesterday so I could get their room cleaned. Have I mentioned that the way they track food and god knows what else all over the hardwood floors drives me nuts? I finally convinced Fred that we should move the desk out of that room and then put all three litter boxes where the desk was. I vacuumed and mopped the floor, and it looks a million times better in there.

Now that they’re mostly off the bottle (except, of course, for Princess Pink, who’ll give up that bottle when we pry it out of her cold dead paws), we put the kitty condo over next to the bed, so they can climb up on the condo, and then climb up on the bed. They don’t do it when they’re in there alone, but when I go in and lay down on the bed, they about have a shoving match to see who can get up on the bed the fastest.

Pink and Hydrox both require a little help to get up on the bed, but they seem to have no problems getting down.

Did I mention that I weighed Hydrox two days ago and he’s at a pound and a half? He is one solid little guy.

“I HAZ A COMPLAINT!”

“EXCUSE ME HI I HAZ A COMPLAINT AND MY COMPLAINT IS MORE COMPLAINY THAN HERS IS!”

When you mix canned pumpkin with canned kitten food and feed it to light-colored kittens, you inevitably get orange noses.

Is it just me, or does she look strikingly like a Gremlin?

 

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Snoozin’ Spanky.

 

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Previously
2008: (You should imagine that I was swearing at the top of my lungs, this entire time.)
2007: Well, of course. Of course he was in the house. Where else would a squirrel be, after all?
2006: In lieu of an entry today, you get a plea.
2005: No entry.
2004: No entry.
2003: I’m not holding much love for Tubby at the moment, believe you me.
2002: And also, I have short and stubby legs.
2001: I think that our dog thinks she’s a Mexican jumping bean.
2000: In fact, my new motto is going to be “Bitch, whine, moan. Lather, rinse, repeat.”
1999: I would name her Molly.