8/19/11 – Friday

Dexter was adopted by a staff member at the clinic he was treated in. Sadly after 8 weeks he was put to sleep. He had been getting better, we all watched as he moved in with Tiffany and got to live a great life. Was a shock when we all found out his fits had … Continue reading “8/19/11 – Friday”

Dexter was adopted by a staff member at the clinic he was treated in. Sadly after 8 weeks he was put to sleep. He had been getting better, we all watched as he moved in with Tiffany and got to live a great life. Was a shock when we all found out his fits had returned. Sadly the fits couldn’t be stopped and Dexter was allowed to toddle over to cat heaven where I’m sure his bro was waiting. There is a petition still going so do please sign. Don’t let Dexter’s death be without any real justice

Sign the petition!

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Just discovered this story: Pennie And Steve Lefkowitz Charged With Animal Cruelty After Nearly 700 Cats Seized.

The video at the bottom is just heartbreaking. I had to walk away for a few minutes around one and a half minutes in, when they showed the cat with the out of control rodent ulcer on his top lip. Miz Poo has had an issue with rodent ulcers in the past, and if she hadn’t received care, it’s pretty likely that’s what her upper lip would look like. So sad.

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With the clock right in the path of the kitty’s shelves, do they ever knock it down? I know my cats are fascinated with the second hand movement of our clock. It’s positioned right below a banister and every now and then I catch one up there, leaning over and batting at it.

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The clock that was there before got knocked to the floor a couple of times before it was broken and we had to toss it. I don’t think they’re batting at it – though Clove was VERY interested in that second hand! – I think they were just brushing by it and it was knocked down. This clock has a square of putty holding the bottom of the clock to the wall, so hopefully that’ll help extend its life.

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I’m not sure where information about a shortage of animals in the northeast came from but I can assure you that is not true in any sense of the word. Our shelters up here are bursting at the seams as well. There are so many stray/feral cats it breaks my heart. Shelters are constantly begging for money!

Lisa, I picked it up from this article, these quotes are what caught my eye:

When the van pulls out of Animal Services parking lot Thursday morning, it will be loaded with 38 dogs and puppies and 27 cats and kittens being taken to their no-kill shelter on Long Island, where people are waiting in line to adopt animals, especially puppies.

“By the time the puppies hit the floor, they are gone,” said Gleason while checking out some kittens he was considering taking with him.

Sheppard said there is a shortage of dogs in the northeastern United States because of strict spay and neuter laws enacted 30 years ago.

I should have known it was too good to be true. :/

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Nicole: Inquiring minds want to know…. did you name Lucy Peppers after Lucy Liu, another cross-eyed, exotic beauty? Or is it merely coincidence?

Elayne: Lucy Liu is cross-eyed? When did that happen? (45 minutes of staring at imdb photos and google images later)
One of her eyes is a bit differently shaped than the other, a bit narrower, but I don’t think she’s cross-eyed…

Nicole: Maybe Lucy Peppers isn’t cross-eyed, either. But they are both very pretty.

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Lucy Peppers is definitely cross-eyed, but she wasn’t named after Lucy Liu (I do call her Lucy Lu, though, of course, because everyone’s gotta have a nickname.), she was named after Lucy from Peanuts. Actually, Lucy and Sally’s names were stolen from another blog, where there’s also a Patty.

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I just had to share this video with you. Visa and Spike are just too cute together. Guess this must be Share a Video day!

That is one fearless little kitten! I love the sideways hops down the hall.

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OMG. Have you met Maru yet?

I’m pretty sure that these days, they’ll take away your blog if you’ve never heard of Maru. Love him!

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I never ever comment even though I have been reading you since 2004 or 05 (!!!!) – but I just have to delurk before Clove gets adopted away… If I could possibly adopt just one cat (I live in Ontario, and am going away to Europe for the year next week, so it’s impossible), I would jump on a plane today and scoop up Clove in a heartbeat! She is just the most beautiful cat ever seen on this Earth, IMHO – please tell her I said so before she goes off to her forever home! I look forward to new photos of her every day – and I do hope that whoever is lucky to adopt her stays in touch with you and sends on photos from time to time… She is the foster I will miss most of all you’ve had, and you can tell her that too! Big hugs from up North!

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“Will this box hold my toys, too, or should they buy me new toys when I get to Canada?”

(Clove thinks you have excellent taste.)

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Does Cilantro talk a lot? My Yenta has an oral fixation too, licks EVERYTHING and man, does she chatter, hence the name Yenta. Just wonderin.

She doesn’t talk a lot, no. She does, however, get “lost” when you’re more than ten feet away from her, and if she doesn’t know where you are, instead of looking for you, she meows until you call to her. (Right now, she is under the desk licking my feet, by the way.)

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Oh no – Jake is so skinny. What’s wrong with him? Did he have food poisoning? Is he allergic to his food? Poor guy. I hope he gets better sooon!

and

Look at Jake and Elwood! Elwood is, um, quite the portly man, isn’t he?

and

Elwood’s…bulking up. Lifting weights, is he? 😉

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There’s nothing wrong with Jake, he weighs what he and Elwood should BOTH weigh. Elwood weighs almost 5 pounds more than Jake, and it’s obvious in that picture!

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For the record I love and buy hot pepper jam or jelly from our local farmer who does up jams. Its delicious with cheese and crackers. I never get enough peppers from my garden to make jams, Canadian summers just aren’t long enough if you don’t have a greenhouse.

As for the Ghost peppers, there is a great spice shop in Charleston, SC that makes ghost pepper salt to sell. It has quite a kick (but I love hot) and I use it as a substitute for regular salt when I want to heat something up. I’ve never made a flavored salt, but I guess it’s the same as making a flavored sugar??

Well, I make Jalapeno jelly and Habanero jams, but the thought of working with the Ghost peppers has me a little nervous. Fred decided last night that he wants to use the first of the Ghost peppers to make a hot sauce, then he’s going to have me make a batch of strawberry-Ghost pepper jam, then who knows?

(For the record, I can eat Jalapeno jelly, but cannot eat Habanero jam because it’s too hot for me and I don’t like feeling PAIN when I eat!)

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Maybe I missed it, but did all the McMaos and Maggie find forever homes?

They did! The last two to go were Maggie and Fergus Simon, who both were adopted two weeks and one day after the whole bunch went to Petsmart (but weren’t adopted together). The only McMao left unadopted is Ciara, who goes to Petsmart in a little while with the Spice Girls.

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I’m glad that Ciara and the sisters will be heading off tomorrow — though only because they’re growing so quickly. Hope they can be paired off in cages and then permanently. Godspeed, lovely girls, and here’s wishing that Robyn will let you keep her up during your final night at Crooked Acres.

I did let them have the run of the house last night, and they were a bit calmer about the whole thing. Ciara settled down in the cat bed at the foot of the bed, and the Spice Girls took turns laying across me, laying against my legs, and curling up next to my head and purring loudly.

There’s a large cage available at Petsmart, so all four of them will be going into that cage together. I would love it if they were adopted together in one configuration or another. Fingers crossed!

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All three petitions signed. Dexter is breaking my heart. I know pretty much all of us wish we could beat this woman senseless with a baseball bat. I have special words for her. I am a prolific curser as well (I remember you saying this awhile back about yourself) and, to paraphrase from A Christmas Story, I have woven a tapestry of profanities to describe her to my other cat-loving friends.

I am too familiar with this closing of helpful cat shelters. The Humane Society here raided one about 50 miles southwest of St. Louis. This woman had owned the shelter for more than 20 years. (In fact I adopted Luanne from them in 2007, from a Petsmart.) She was given a certain amount of time to reduce her numbers by x amount. She’d gotten about half of those out and had scheduled the other half to be shipped to a few other no-kill shelters. The Dept. of Agriculture wasn’t satisfied even though she was doing what she could (despite low funds and the fact that she was sleeping on a cot at the shelter). They told her she had to euthanize 60 animals and she said she spent 2 sleepless nights making up the list (how AWFUL). She and her lawyers got the euthanization date pushed out for a few weeks and she was continuing to schedule some of the animals to be transferred. When she was out of town, the Humane Society here and the Dept of Ag raided her place, took film, said it was deplorable and the animals were all sick. (Please tell me what shelter has animals that are all healthy and glowing??? That’s why they’re in shelters.) So this woman was completely shut down. They took 165 animals, including the lab (her pet) she’d had for 10 years. They eventually gave it back. But all of these other animals who would’ve been spared (and who WERE spayed and neutered; this is where all her funds went) were taken in by the Humane Society. Petsmart canceled their contract with her before finding out all of the facts. I’m sure tons of the animals were eventually euthanized. The HS is now the Wal-Mart of the animal world. Instead of another no-kill shelter getting funds for doing good work, the HS can get more funds to kill animals. WHATEVER. I will never support them again. I have given money monthly to North Shore Animal League for more than 3 years now.

Sorry for my soapbox. I just hate these types of situations; they are so unfair.

Definitely unfair!

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“Today’s headlines: Civilization is breaking down, unemployment is at 110%, and a litre of petrol now costs more than your children’s college education. And now here’s Tom with the kitten report.”

It would make the news so much more bearable, am I right?

I think they ought to just televise kittens playing, and have the human anchors do the news in voiceover! (Also, you can scroll down in this entry to see the cats doing a news report.)

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I love the photos (and loved yesterday’s btw), but do wonder why the bed of Princess Smug of Smugonia is so plain. Shouldn’t it at least have rhinestones on it… oops! I meant the finest diamonds, of course.

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It is very plain, isn’t it? I just put that thing together earlier this week, and I’m trying to decide what exactly I want to do with it. I’m considering painting it white, and perhaps making some sort of floofy mattress-type bed for it. Then again, maybe I’ll paint it pink or blue. Orrrr maybe I’ll just leave it the color it is and talk about making a cute cat bed for it, then never actually doing anything at all. That last sounds most likely to happen.

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By the way, just in case you wanted a reminder, now you have a bunch of baby kittens, you could take a closeup picture of their faces once a day or once a week, and we could see how their face changes as they grow up?

I’m going to do my level best to make that happen!

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My Frankie is 1 year 3 months old now, and is still really scared of everything around him. If he’s sleeping next to me, he jumps up off the couch every time I get up, and he jumps and runs away at the smallest of sounds. Even still,he loves to be scratched and getting a body rub, but he is literally a scaredy cat. I don’t really know what to do to make him more relaxed. Any ideas?

If anyone out there has any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. I think that some cats just have a more nervous nature than others, and despite the fact that they live with you and you would never hurt them in any way, they still get nervous when you move around.

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I can now exactly see why one needs to wear jeans to the foster room, I can just imagine how needle-sharp those little claws are!

SO true – I went into the guest bedroom yesterday morning to give the Peppers Gang their morning snack, and I was stupidly wearing shorts. Molly didn’t care one little bit that I didn’t have jeans protecting my legs, she climbed right up my bare legs to my shorts, then finally stopped climbing when she reached my stomach. Suffice it to say that I have learned my lesson!

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My cat Luna was frosted like that when we got her. Her tail even looked like a raccoon tail! That’s how we named her, those little white hairs along her back made me think of moonlight on a lake. Anyway, she doesn’t look like that anymore, her tail is just fluffy solid black, along with the rest of her. Well, brownish black. Also, I have a white cat that had two teeny black spots on her head when she was born, then just one, now none at all. Her mom had a few black hairs on her head when we had her (we fostered her out & kept 2 babies) and I’m assuming she also had a larger spot that was slowly going away. What’s up with that? How is it that they can change colors like that? Anyone know?

Oldcat? I think this might be a question for you!

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“Shares of Boston-based Carbonite Inc. jumped more then 23 percent yesterday in the company’s first day of trading after its initial public offering. The online computer backup service priced its shares late Wednesday at $10 per share. The stock closed yesterday at $12.35.”

I am actually gonna put a (small) chunk of change on the stock for its entertainment value. Will give it a year and then donate any earnings to Challenger House! Anyone else want to see what comes of one of Robyn’s Favorite Things? 🙂

Very neat idea!

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Lori sent me the link to this video, and it cracked me UP!

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All five Peppers, hangin’ on the cat tree.

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Lucy and Sally, chillin’.

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Harlan haz a complaint. “This platform is too smaaaaaall, and everyone keeps trying to cram themselves on the platform wiiiiiiith me, and I don’t liiiiiike it!”

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Smilin’ Molly.

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The Peppers girls – and Harlan’s foot.

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Molly haz a complaint. “Sally keeps biting my taaaaaaail, and it huuuuuuurts and I don’t liiiiiiike it!”

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Something hath disturbed the Ciara.

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Cilantro’s looking for her next licking victim.

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This really doesn’t look like the most comfortable position, does it?

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Ciara and Clove, all stressed out.

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Ciara checks out the dryer.

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::thlurrp::

I’ll be heading out of here to take Ciara and the Spice Girls to Petsmart in an hour or so. Adoption hours take place this evening, and I like to let them have the better part of the day to become accustomed to their new surroundings (though I am certainly hoping they won’t be their surroundings for long!) I will, of course, let y’all know as soon as I know they’ve been adopted.

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“Hello, I am beautiful.”

(Your weekly reminder.)

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Previously
2010: “Because I feel like I can’t get a good, deep breath, so I’m pretty sure I’m going into multi-system organ failure.”
2009: I adore stories that talk about what a pain in the ass Gwyneth Paltrow is, and I always cackle when Dlisted refers to her as “Fishsticks Paltrow.”
2008: Or… is that how learning curves work?
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: she’s got the skank lines rolling off her, doesn’t she?
2004: Fred is just amazed that one portly cat can have so many health issues.
2003: ::Sproing!:: he went, leaping at least a foot in the air, and I watched, impressed that he’d contained that much energy in his dry and dead-looking little body.
2002: “TUBBY GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!” I ordered, and grudgingly he did.
2001: No entry.
2000: Being completely, one-hundred percent useless in the slightest emergency, I slapped my hands to my cheeks and let out a horrified scream.