P.A.W.S. Wakefield, an animal rescue shelter in Wakefield, Massachusetts, just rescued eight mothers and thirty-five kittens from one house (let me repeat: FROM ONE HOUSE) in Melrose, MA. They desperately need funds to get the cats spayed/ neutered and cared for,
and if there’s anyone out there in the Melrose-Wakefield, Massachusetts area, I’m sure they could use more foster homes, or adoptive homes for kitties! Their website is here, and you can donate here.
Y’all help out if you can, and help spread the word, please?
No Crooked Acres pics today – it’s been kind of overcast and drizzly all week, which doesn’t lend itself to great picture-taking. There’ll be pics next week, I’m sure!
The baby robins have moved on, it appears. Or they’re learning to fly – I went out to check the mail yesterday morning, and stopped by the tree to look in the nest. I saw no babies in the nest, but two robins were squawking and diving at me, so they may have been in the tree somewhere.
I did make Fred stop feeding the babies so we wouldn’t interfere with the natural course of things, but he insisted on going out to the front yard and tossing worms for the parents to snatch up and carry to their babies.
Those worms, let me add, were not worms he was able to dig up, because it’s been so dry here (well, at least until the last couple of days). They were worms that he bought at a convenience store (some convenience stores around here sell bait)(you know you’re jealous), which cost him $10.
Do you think I’ll be bringing up that $10 (FOR WORMS) every single time he tries to give me a hard time about money I’m spending on toys for the cats? Oh, yes indeedy I will. I look forward to it!
So, on Sunday I was out working in the garden. I was laying feed bags down around the peppers. Fred had been piling feed bags in the blue coop all year long so that come this gardening season, I could use them to block weeds. I carried 10 bags from the blue coop to the garden, carrying them up under my arm. I worked in the garden for a couple of hours, and when I was done, I was headed back to the house when my armpit started itching like crazy. I scratched at it a few times, but the problem is that half of my armpit area is still numb from the surgery I had in February, so even though it was itching, scratching it wasn’t really helping. Which was odd.
It itched for a while longer, and I asked Fred to look at the area and tell me what the hell was going on, but he couldn’t see anything. The itching finally went away. Sunday evening, it started to hurt, alternately aching and stinging. I actually took a hydrocodone to make it stop hurting and also because I figured it’d help me sleep.
Monday morning it was neither better nor worse than it had been the night before, so I decided to just keep an eye on it and go without a bra.
(What? The bra strap was irritating the swollen area. And any excuse to go without a bra, amIright?)
Tuesday morning, Fred looked at it before he left for work, and said he thought it was getting bruised-looking and that I should go to the doctor. I did – well, saw the nurse practitioner – and she prescribed an antibiotic and told me to come back if it got worse.
All this time, Fred had been INSISTING that I probably got a bite from a brown recluse, that there MUST be brown recluses living in the piles of feed bags in the blue coop, that my side was going to rot off. I would say, in fact, that he was disappointed the nurse practitioner didn’t insist I immediately check myself into the hospital and undergo lifesaving surgery (or whatever). He was also disappointed that it wasn’t anything that had to be lanced so that gallons of crap would come shooting out.
He was mostly disappointed, though, that he had to stop on the way home and pick up my antibiotic prescription for me because I didn’t want to wait around for it. (He was NOT disappointed that it was free, though. Gotta love Publix!)
As of last night, the swelling had gone down considerably. I think I’ll live.
Someone Fred knows was actually bitten on the cheek by a brown recluse. He had to have skin removed from his butt to replace the necrotic tissue caused by the bite. Gives a new meaning to “butthead”, no?
Tuesday afternoon, I had to take Declan to the vet. I noticed that he wasn’t playing with the other kittens, all he wanted to do was lay in the cat bed near the back door and watch the kittens run by. He also seemed to be favoring one paw, and felt warm to me. He howled and howled on the drive to the vet, only quieting down when he realized he could crawl under the blanket in the carrier. Once he did that, I didn’t hear another peep from him.
The vet looked him over thoroughly – he did have a temperature – and couldn’t find anything obviously wrong with him. She prescribed antibiotics in case he had an abscess forming. By the evening, he was hanging out on the couch next to Fred, chasing his tail.
Tuesday evening, I made dinner. The veggies have started coming in from the garden, most especially zucchini. I decided to make baked zucchini fritters (I use plain panko bread crumbs, though, because I’m not crazy about the Italian herbs. Don’t look at me like that, I just don’t like them! I think it’s the basil. Did I mention don’t look at me like that?). Sooooo we were eating dinner, and Fred went into the kitchen to get something, and he called “She ate one of the fritters!”
“She” would be Maggie, who is pretty much a stomach on legs. I can’t blame her, she is letting nine kittens nurse, for the love of god, but it’s kind of annoying that if I even think about walking near the kitchen, she appears and gives me the bright-eyed hopeful look.
We’d stupidly left the leftover fritters on the counter while we were eating dinner, and Maggie saw her shot and took it. The problem is that there was not only onion but also garlic in those fritters, both of which are toxic to cats.
(Human foods to avoid feeding cats.)
Now, there wasn’t much onion in the fritter she’d eaten – the recipe calls for 1/4 of an onion, which was spread over 8 fritters – but I didn’t want to take any chances. I called the vet and talked to her, and she suggested that since it had just happened, we should try to make Maggie vomit. If we weren’t able to, we could check her red blood cells every couple of days to make sure there was no damage.
We grabbed Maggie and took her into the bathroom, then gave her 3 cc of hydrogen peroxide. She was surprisingly good about letting Fred shoot it down her throat, and then she paced around the bathroom, licking her lips and swallowing. After 10 minutes, we gave her another 3 cc, and then both left the bathroom to get some evening chores done. Five minutes later, Fred went to check on her.
“You have GOT to see this!” he yelled, and I went to see.
I’m pretty sure she vomited up everything she’d eaten over the past week. It was awe-inspiring, to say the least. And there, in the middle, was every bit of the fritter she’d eaten. She recovered pretty quickly, and by bedtime was back to her usual “You have food for me?” self.
For dinner last night, I made more fritters (we are seriously getting quite a bit of zucchini from the garden right now and we both like these fritters). This time, I made two without onion and garlic, and let her have one of them. It’s not anything we’ll make a habit of, but after making her vomit the night before, we figured she deserved a treat.
It’s always something around here, y’know?
“Here, here, pass it here! PASS IT HERE!”
“PASS IT TO ME, YOU STUPID CENTER!”
So close, and yet so far.
Doesn’t seem to bother her that she keeps missing, does it?
Clove loves to stand there and watch Maggie lovingly as she eats.
Clove.
Coriander.
Cilantro (couldn’t get her to look at the camera!)
“Why yes, I AM sitting in the basket watching my brothers drink. What of it?” (Declan in the basket, Macushla front left, Finnegan front right)
Have I mentioned that they love this cat tree beyond all reason?
Ciara, up close.
Macushla, up close.
Fergus Simon and Finnegan. I love how FS has his big ol’ rabbit feet pressed against Finnegan.
It’s time for your weekly reminder: Corbie is gorgeous. That is all.
Previously
2010: All the fosters, ever.
2009: (A story we recounted, and I do not exaggerate here, at least five times over the course of the weekend.)
2008: Taking a few impromptu days off.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: I’ll try to drum up some drama for tomorrow, m’kay?
2004: (For the record, I do vacuum out there every couple of months…)
2003: A Day in the Life
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: I will be hurting bad tomorrow, though.
I’ve never heard of using hydrogen pyroxide as an emetic for cats! Is there a weight-related dosage? Very useful info.
I’m sure there probably is – the vet asked how much Maggie weighs before she suggested we start with 3 cc. Though, Fred looked around via Google, and most of what he found suggested a teaspoon of it.
Fred was surprised that the vet told us to give her hydrogen peroxide, because he’d been under the impression that it was poisonous to ingest the stuff.
My sister’s vet had her use hydrogen peroxide for her dog when her puppy gulped her older dog’s accidentally dropped medication one day.
Maybe the vet wanted to give her a slightly smaller dose because she’s nursing – less strain on her system = easier recovery? (But then I’m assuming the vet knows as much about your cats as we all do… heh.)
Heh – glad to know my husband isn’t the only one who buys worms for birds! He finds three or four young birds every season (last year, it was 8 ducklings) and always goes out and buys them whatever they need, without a thought, then pokes fun at me for buying the occasional pig ear for our dogs.
“PASS IT TO ME, YOU STUPID CENTER” Did you mean Quarterback? 🙂
Of course not. Coriander is CLEARLY a basketball player. 😉 She does look like she’s poised to catch a football in that second picture, though, doesn’t she!
Do you recarpet your cat trees? I have a couple that need it, and I have a nice piece of carpet my neighbor gave me when he recarpeted his bedroom, but I’ve never done it before. Do you take off the old carpet? Do you glue it down (what kind of glue?) or staple it or both? I figure if you don’t know, some of your readers will! 🙂 Thanks.
I never have, actually, but I’ll post your question tomorrow. Hopefully someone out there will have a helpful tip or two! 🙂
The adorable picture of Macushla up close, decorates my screen today!! We were wondering when Maggies babbies will go up for adoption?