Kitten in the Bronx still looking for a home!
Saturday morning I got up a little after 6, showered and dressed, and then started my usual morning routine, which consists of scooping litter boxes and giving kittens snacks. After I’d given the Spice Girls their morning snack, I start scooping their litter boxes, and found a spider running around in one of them. I scooped it into the bag I was scooping everything else into, and continued on to the other litter boxes.
When I was done scooping, I handed the bag to Fred and told him there was a spider in there. And that I was 99% sure it was a Brown Recluse. He took the bag outside, and looked, and then he scooped (with a litter scoop, not his bare hand, we’re not ANIMALS) it out onto the driveway, and we snapped a few pictures of it. Then I stomped it dead.
Since I thought it was possible I’d been bitten by a Brown Recluse in the garden a few weeks ago, I’d recently seen pictures of them. Which is the only reason I even considered it might be a Brown Recluse – not because of the “fiddle” on its back (don’t tell Fred, but I still don’t see a fiddle shape), but because it’s a particularly leggy spider.
Fred came inside and looked around online, and decided that it was, in fact, a Brown Recluse.
Now, okay. Brown Recluse spiders are scary and all. But the man has lived in Alabama his entire life – for several years in his father’s house, where a LOT of Brown Recluses were known to show up IN HIS BEDROOM – and never once has he been bitten. But finding out that there’d been a Brown Recluse in this house made him FLIP the fuck out, as if he suddenly had concrete proof that there were at least 50,000 of them living in the walls of our house, and every one of them was gunning for a big juicy bite of Fred Anders0n.
I think of it this way: the Brown Recluses have been IN the house whether we knew it or not, and neither of us was bitten until a few weeks ago when I likely jammed a feed bag up under my armpit and pissed one off. They’re not going to SUDDENLY start coming after us. From what I’ve read, as long as we’re careful where we stick our hands, we don’t need to be too terribly worried.
Fred, on the other hand, wanted to move all the damn cats to the garage and spray every inch of the house. And then he wanted to bug-bomb the house. Then he wanted to follow that up by maybe going through the house with the torch and burning anything that looked like it might possibly think about being a bug, in this life or the next.
We compromised. He closed the doors to my room, his room, and the foster room, and sprayed. I also ordered a buttload of glue traps, which should be here later this week. When they arrive, we’ll put them in all the out-of-the-way places where Brown Recluses like to hide, where the cats can’t get.
Pic of the Brown Recluse is here, since I know some of y’all would have the screaming tizzies if I posted it here.
YOU ARE WELCOME.
(Now watch. I’ll be bitten by seven Brown Recluses in the next week because I am not showing them the proper amount of fearful respect.)
If you haven’t “liked” Love & Hisses on Facebook, you might have missed my announcement Sunday night that the McMaos are going to Petsmart this afternoon.
Now, don’t give me the sad faces. Y’all knew this was coming. It’s time for those rambunctious, leggy monsters to go off and find their forever homes.
Maggie will stay here and recover from the three months of constant mothering and nursing, and eventually she will also go to Petsmart.
Today, when I’m not snuggling with and loving on those McMaos, I’ll be burning their baby pictures to DVDs to go with them to their new homes and making up bags of toys to send with them, too. This afternoon, I’ll be taking all six of them to Petsmart and getting them comfy in their new (temporary) digs. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they all go to their forever homes very very fast.
Y’all feel free to keep your fingers crossed, too!
(There will be McMao pictures for the rest of the week, since I have so many left on my hard drive!)
I love my Declan.
Please, Declan. Try to relax. I hate seeing you so tense.
::om nom nom nom nom::
“Try it! It’s tasty. And good for you!”
::om nom nom nom nom::
The vinegar box from Sam’s: BEST. BOX. EVER.
I love Declan’s pretty white ruff.
Declan and Ciara, chillin’.
Cillian, taking up as much of the bed as possible. I love his little smiling face.
Miss Cori in the sun.
Smilin’ Joe. Have you ever seen a happier cat?
Previously
2010: Greetings from Maine!
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: I like me a crisp pickle.
2006: One more year, and we get to move out to the country where we will hopefully be acres and acres from the nearest neighbors, and children will not treat our yard as their very own. One more year, one more year, one more year…
2005: I’m all about the quick and easy, wink-wink-nudge-nudge-har-har.
2004: If you set off fireworks for three hours straight, starting at 7:30, you are not only an asshole, you live near me.
2003: No entry.
2002: A bunch of links that are probably no longer good.
2001: Pictures from Maine.
2000: Unfortunately, I forgot that when I say things like “Let’s go skinny-dipping and watch the fireworks”, what I actually mean is “Let’s go skinny-dipping and watch the fireworks”, but he hears “Let’s go swimming naked and get frisky in the pool under the fireworks.”