1/14/10 – Thursday

Today, because I have a hair appointment in a little while, followed by an eye appointment, and because I’ve got nothing else for you anyways, since I’m spending all my time sitting around waiting for it to be time to have my uterus dragging, kicking and screaming, from my abdomen, I present to you a picture entry, spurred by (1) A number of pictures saved in my “tmp” folder that I’ve been meaning to share with you, and (2) A request yesterday (and previously at some point also) for some pictures of the Anderson kittehs instead of all those stupid fosters. So, random pictures. For you. Try not to be too excited.

The cats got a huge-ass cat tree (from us) for Christmas. This thing is HUGE, 7 feet tall, and I got it from eBay in order to put in the foster room, but then I got the package this tree was in and the smaller tree (the other Christmas present for the cats) mixed up, so the fosters have the smaller tree. And when I tried to convince Fred (after he’d put this monstrosity together) to help me carry it up to the foster room, he was all “NO WAY! The fosters always get the good trees! OUR cats are gonna get this one!” Fucker. In any case, they really like this tree, especially the seat way at the top, as you can see.

Outside Mama, aka Maxi. Gorgeous, yet evil.

Upstairs Mama, aka Kara. Also gorgeous and badass. We have two female cats who previously gave birth. Both female cats are completely fucking nuts. Coincidence? I THINK NOT.

Crazy Jake in his Playcat centerfold pose.

Sugarbutt blends nicely with the leaves in the back yard.

Tommy in HIS sexy Playcat centerfold pose.

George and Gracie – you can see that he’s quite a bit bigger than she is. She’s the brains of the operation, though.

Kara in the back yard. She’s In A Mood.

Dressing up cats in a chicken hat: always lots of fun. For us, anyway.

Stupid Sugarbutt jumped up on the mantel in the front room, where my Willow Tree collection is (WAS) kept, and knocked this one off onto the floor, where it broken into two pieces. I would have glued it back together, but a shard went missing, and it would look funny, so I bought a replacement off eBay. I was surprised to see that Willow Tree figurines are not solid all the way through.

We brought this temperature/ humidity gauge into the front room to see just how cold it gets in there. It’s been at 59 most mornings lately. The fucking unhappy face is because the humidity’s so low. Shut up, stupid judgemental humidity gauge.

Jake (left), Elwood (right). Elwood’s quite a bit bigger than Jake. That, and the fact that Elwood’s tail is shorter than Jake’s (and Jake’s tail has a crook at the very end), not to mention the super loony nutball look Jake’s always got on his face is how we tell them apart.

See what I mean? Total lunatic, this one. Good thing for him he’s so sweet.

Stinkerbelle has no love for you.

Maxi would like to know where her bowl of food is. (Answer: I took it away because Elwood would jump up on Fred’s desk, knock one piece of cat food out of the bowl, knock it onto the floor, and bat it around for several minutes before eating it. Then repeat. And it was driving me NUTS.)

 

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Does anyone have advice on how to get adult cats to get adjust to each other? A reader has two 17 year-old cats and recently added a 2 year-old to the mix. There’s fighting, but the worst part is the marking. Here are the details:

We have already tried letting the new guy have his own place upstairs, and only letting them interact when one of us was here. They kind of slink around each other at this point, sometimes growly and hissy, sometimes scrappy. New guy has been here almost 10 days. Starting Monday, we left the upstairs door open (upstairs is carpeted, down is not, so up is where the pee is and we have closed all but the new kid’s doors) and it looks like they sleep during the day (what else?) and get riled up when we get home from work and feed them. It appears as though they are all using ALL the litter boxes (4 of them, do I need more maybe?). When I get home and start scooping the 2 older ones follow me around so they can pee in the fresh litter. The younger one would too, I think, but that’s when the snarling and growling begins. The occasional scrap, fewer now, but sheesh, even the littermates (bro and sis) fight with each other now, which never happened before. Oh yes, one of the older ones has gone deaf, so yelling his name doesn’t get a reaction.

I’ve never introduced an adult to other adults – only kittens to adults already living here and that went smoothly. These two older ones are the last kittens we adopted since we had (before we adopted these two) 2 other cats, who lived to 25 (died of old age mostly) and 20 (renal failure, but lived 3 years after the initial diagnosis). Heh. I thought *I* was a crazy cat lady with 4! Indoor! Cats! until I read you.

Honestly, I had no advice to give her (aside from maybe giving Feliway a try).

If y’all have any good advice (or even just halfway good advice!), please leave it in the comments!

 

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A few of you have asked what the story is with Steely Dan and Fagen. They were found in a storm drain with their feral mother. The boys were turned over to Challenger’s House, and their mother is going to a great cat haven in Florida.

I suspect that their mother very well might be a tortie – Miz Poo pushed her way into the foster room the other day when Fred and I were in there (the door wasn’t latched), and both boys went running over to her, chirped at her, and rubbed up against her. When we brought Tommy in, they weren’t interested in him at all. Yesterday I brought Miz Poo in again, and again they ran right over to her. Too bad she just smacked at them and went to check out the food. Heh.

So anyway, yesterday I went into the foster room, picked Steely Dan up off the cat tree (he resisted for a second, then gave in), and sat down in the chair with him in my lap. He purred and purred and purred while I petted him, and finally Fagen couldn’t stand it anymore, and had to jump up to see what was going on. I petted him too, but he didn’t stay long.

Steely Dan climbed onto the back of the chair, and I petted him a few times, then stopped.

And he climbed back down into my lap.

Sucker!

 

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Previously
2009: George and Gracie are home from the spaying and the neutering.
2008: Negative. Good news or sad news, I wonder?
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: Y’all rock.
2004: So many books, so little time.
2003: Ah, good times.
2002: So, you know what I hate?
2001: No entry.
2000: I was a tad peeved.