Category: Fostering

Warning: This entry contains much poop talk. Not that I describe the stuff in loving detail or show pictures or anything, but if the talk of poop grosses you out, you’ll want to skip down to the pictures and call it a day, ‘k? So, yesterday. What a day, I tells ya. I thought I was going to have a chance to sit down and write an entry, but round about 11:00, it became clear that that wasn’t going to happen. The night before last, I was sitting in the kitten room snuggling with kittens when I watched Sugarbutt get into the litter box, pee, and then get out, sit down, stick his hind legs in front of him, and pull himself along the carpet with his front legs. It was simultaneously amusing and horrifying, because if you’ve never seen an animal “scoot”, as they call it, it’s a funny sight. On the other hand, he was, basically, using my carpet for toilet paper, and suddenly it explained all those brown streaks on the carpet. Nas. Tay. I kind of shrugged it off, thought that maybe there was an itchy butt issue, so I gave him a quick bath and put a dab of Preparation H on his behind. Later that same evening, the spud and I were sitting in the kitten room, and he did it again. Clearly, it wasn’t a one-time thing. I emailed the shelter manager and told her what was going on, and asked if there was something I should be doing. Then I did a Google search, and most of the links I found indicated that scooting is caused by itching due to worms. I gave him Drontal last Wednesday as a deworming medication, though, so surely that wasn’t the problem…? While I was Googling around, I got an email from the shelter manager. She told me that scooting is usually caused by either worms or an inability to get clean. She said that since Sugarbutt’s got a prolapsed rectum, it might be due to that, but if I was worried, I could run him to the vet. So I got up around 7:30 with the intention of showering and getting dressed, running to Target for litter (I’ve bought my weight in litter lately, I swear), then being home so I could call the vet shortly after they opened at 9, to see if I could get an appointment for Sugarbutt. What actually happened is that I started some laundry, cleaned out our cats’ litter box, went in and let Callie and Bear out of the cage, cleaned out the litter boxes in the kittens’ room, did some kitten snuggling, and by the time I stepped into the shower, it was 8:30. Once out of the shower, I got dressed and decided to wait to hit Target until later. I ran to McDonald’s for a Diet Coke (mmmm, fountain soda. Nectah of the gahds.), did some more laundry, and then called the vet’s office. They had an appointment available at 4:30, so I took that, went upstairs to check on the kittens, and then headed out to Target. I know y’all know the issues with Callie and her suckling urges, and how I feel too bad to keep her in the cage all the time. My idea at first was to get a webcam set up, and let her stay out of the cage as long as she was behaving herself; I’d keep an eye on the situation via webcam, and when I saw her rooting around I could run upstairs and put her in the cage. Only, webcams can be kind of expensive and Fred wasn’t showing much interest in setting something like that up for me, so I got a better idea. While I was at Target, I went into the baby section. Did you know that they make video baby monitors? Target only had one kind of video baby monitor (not this one, but very similar to it), and it wasn’t priced too badly, so I bought it. I got home, got it out of the box, and plugged it in only to find that it wouldn’t work. I fiddled with it for half an hour before giving up, putting it back in the box, and calling Fred to whine about it. “I’m over this,” I told him. “I’m just going to let her into the house to run around, and her brothers can stay in the kitten room, and then I won’t have to worry about her causing irreversible damage to him.” But you know what letting her out to run around the house means, don’t you? It means that I’d have to set up another litter box for her to use, because the litter box we use for our cats is kind of big and hard for a little kitten to climb into, I already feel like I spend my entire day dealing with poop. Kittens, in case you’ve never been told, are little poop machines. They will poop and pee all the live long day, secure in the knowledge that someone else will clean out the litter box. While I was pondering the situation, I went upstairs, where I cleaned out the litter box in the kittens room for the second time. And I sat down to get some kitten snuggles, and as soon as I sat down, the kittens lined up to use the litter box. I got a firsthand view of how everyone’s bowels were moving. AND THEN I CALLED FRED TO REPORT WHO HAD DIARRHEA AND WHO DIDN’T. What have I turned into? I wasn’t this fascinated by my own child’s bowel movements when she was three months old, but with these kittens I can barely tear my eyes away while they squat in the litter box. So I scooped out the litter box again (good thing they’re so cute), and snuggled with them some more, and then I decided to go back to Target to return the baby monitor, then run to WalMart to see what they had for baby monitors. So I did, and when I got to the baby section of WalMart, would you like to hear what I found in the way of video baby monitors? Nothing. Nada. ZIP. I couldn’t believe it, because if you go on their webpage, they have scads and scads of them. Okay, scads or ONE. You choose. I thought about it for a while, tossed a couple of cheap fleece baby blankets in the cart (I’m going to make a cat bed for Spot because he’s getting old and creaky, and deserves some extra comfort), and then headed over to the electronics department. My thinking was that since a video baby monitor is an electronic gadget, maybe that’s where they’d keep them. They had all kinds of monitors, actually. They had a webcam! Alas, it wasn’t a wireless webcam and I’m not up for 60 feet of cable running through my house, so I kept looking. What I eventually ended up with was a monitor that consists of a camera and a little tv-looking monitor (which can actually be used as a TV if you so choose to use it that way), and basically it was the same exact thing as the baby monitor I’d bought at Target, only it was cheaper. It wasn’t as pretty, but who needs pretty? The kittens don’t care what the camera looks like. As long as it did the job, I was going to be happy. It was a Homeland Security camera and monitor, by the way. (Here’s where I’d make an inappropriate joke about keeping Smitty’s homeland secure, but… oh, wait. I just did, didn’t I? I imagined it being funnier. Or even funny at all.) So I left Wal-Mart, went home, and ate lunch before dealing with the damn thing. I got the camera and monitor plugged in and set up… and no picture. NO PICTURE. I was royally pissed off, and looked over the incredibly unhelpful instructions and swore and stomped and swore some more. And then I realized that there was a cap on the camera. SIGH. I took the cap off the camera, and instantly got a picture. I plugged the monitor in by my desk (but I can carry it from room to room with me, as long as there’s a plug nearby) and went upstairs to set up the camera. I got it set up, had it knocked over by the kittens, set it up again, and then a third time before they lost interest in it. I went back downstairs and read for a little while, glancing over at the monitor every once in a while to see what was going on. They played for a while, then settled down to snooze. I watched, wondering if Callie was going to do her thing, but she fell asleep on top of the condo, and I didn’t have to go up and toss her in the cage. Later, right before I left for the vet, they settled down to sleep again, and Callie jumped on Smitty and started sniffing around, and I ran upstairs, put her in the cage, put Sugarbutt in the cat carrier, and left. My appointment, as I mentioned, was at 4:30, and I got there a few minutes early. The woman who runs the front desk saw Sugarbutt and oohed and aahed over him, and told me how cute he was, and asked if she could hold him. He was so good – the entire time he was in the carrier, he just looked around and checked everything out. When she took him out of the carrier, he purred and looked around. She took him over to weigh him – 2 pounds, 4 ounces, which means he’s gained 5 ounces this week – and we discussed the fact that he doesn’t look anything like a three month-old kitten usually looks (but then, he IS the runt), and then I sat for a while waiting for an exam room to open up. Sugarbutt continued to be his sweet self. I’d glance down at him, and he’d be looking up at me, his head tilted to one side, and when I’d speak to him, he’d start purring and kneading. After about half an hour, an exam room opened up, and we went in. I opened the carrier, and he came to the door of the carrier, checked out the table, and decided that instead of walking around on the cold exam table, he’d stay in the carrier. The vet came in, asked what the problem was, and said he’d take a stool sample to check for… oh, all the stuff they always check for. But he got a look at Sugarbutt’s butt, grabbed a baby wipe and said that he thought Sugarbutt might have infected anal glands. He did something with the baby wipe that probably involved squeezing of said anal glands, and Sugarbutt’s response was to cry and claw his way up the front of my shirt. “Infected anal glands,” said the vet. “I’m going to take him in here and” something. Squeeze them, I guess. I called Fred to let him know what was going on, and I could hear Sugarbutt crying loudly in the other room. Poor baby. A few minutes later the vet and his assistant came back in the room with poor traumatized Sugarbutt, who immediately ran into the carrier and hid at the far end. The vet told me that he’d squeezed Sugarbutt’s external anal glands, but because Sugarbutt’s so small, he couldn’t get ( ::shudder:: ) inside to do the internal ones. He prescribed antibiotics, gave Sugarbutt an anti-inflammatory shot, and after talking to the shelter manager who was at the store to do Wednesday night adoptions, I picked up some cat food for our cats, and we headed for home. I got home around 6:10, and Fred immediately came out to get Sugarbutt and take him up to the kitten room. Apparently while I was gone, he’d let Callie, Bear, and Smitty out of the kitten room for a while and let them sniff around the upstairs. When I went into the kitten room to see how Sugarbutt was, Bear ran out, and I just shut the door behind him, figuring I’d let him run around while I was hanging out in the kitten room. Sugarbutt was belly-up to the food bowl, and there was a trail of little poo drops from the cat carrier to the food dish. I cleaned them up, and then gently used a Tuck’s pad to clean his behind. I went up again to check on him a few minutes before 7, and there were still more poo drops, and his butt needed to be cleaned. “Do you think the universe thinks I don’t deal with enough poop already?” I asked Fred, who had no good response. I cleaned up the drops, cleaned up Sugarbutt, and hoped aloud that the poo drops would STOP ALREADY. I went downstairs to check my email one last time before we started watching The Amazing Race, and glanced at the monitor to see Callie attempting to misbehave. I ran up, put her in the cage – and she sat looking at me with an expression that clearly said “HOW does she know?” – and went back downstairs to watch TV. After The Amazing Race was over, Fred and I headed upstairs. I leaned over to turn the monitor off before I went upstairs, and saw Fred’s legs cross the kitten room. When I went up, he was standing there holding Smitty, and I saw… I can’t possibly do justice to the sight. Take a large handful of cat food, toss it up in the air so that it lands in a scattered fashion on the floor. Now imagine that each piece of cat food is actually a DROPLET OF POOP. There was poop EVERYWHERE. STINKY poop.I spent the next half hour using rags soaked in bleach and hot water to clean up all the droplets. I thought about giving Sugarbutt a bath, but settled for wiping off as much poo as I could with Tuck’s pads. When I was almost done wiping up the droplets – and make no mistake, I wasn’t actually getting the carpet CLEAN, I was just wiping up as much as I could, with the knowledge that this morning I was going to have to bundle them up into the carrier and spend an hour spot-cleaning the fucking carpet – Sugarbutt jumped into the litter box, did his business, and then dipped his butt down into the litter so that it would coat just about his entire hind end. THEN he jumped out and ran around the room, dropping litter-encrusted pieces of poop wherever he ran. I thought about putting him in the cage for the night so his nastiness would at least be a little bit contained, but then I’d have to leave Callie out with her brothers, and over the past few days it’s become clear that if she can’t get to Smitty, Bear will do – I am an evil woman, who put poor little Bear in a cage with a very aggressive penis-sucking kitten. – so that wasn’t an option. I considered putting Callie in the cage by herself, and putting Sugarbutt in the downstairs bathroom, since poop is – I imagine – much easier to clean off a hardwood floor than a carpet, but I felt like it would be mean to separate him when he’s feeling (PUN INTENDED) poopy. I decided to wait and see if he was continuing with the poo droplets when I went in after Fred went to bed (I wait until as late as possible to put Callie in the cage, because I feel mean doing it). When I went in, there were a few droplets, but not nearly as many as I’d been worried there would be. I cleaned them up, cleaned Sugarbutt’s butt, snuggled with all of them for a while, and then when Callie started sniffing around Bear’s butt, I put her in the cage, gave each of the kittens a kiss goodnight, and went to bed, hoping that I’d get up this morning to find that the poo dropletting was done and over with. Believe it or not, rather than spending the entire night waking up every hour or so to think about the fact that a potential poo bomb was going off in the other room, I slept like a rock and actually forgot about the whole situation until I woke up a little after 7:00. I thought about going back to sleep until 8, but the more I lay there, the more awake I got, and I finally rolled out of bed and put my cleaning clothes on (a bleach-stained t-shirt and a pair of shorts) and went in to see what was going on. The drops of poo weren’t as numerous as the night before, but there was poo all OVER the cat bed (actually, the towel I’d put on top of the cat bed) and smears all over the floor. And in a corner of the room, one of the kittens (not, I assume, Sugarbutt) had left a pile of poo. The kittens gathered around my feet and squeaked at me, and I picked up Sugarbutt to assess (ha! ASSess!) the situation, and found that his back end was covered in poo. Smitty had poo on his tail, and (ugh) on his whiskers. I had to step out of the room to catch my breath and decide what I was going to do. I decided to get Sugarbutt clean first, so I gave him a bath – and let me tell you, dried poo? So easy and simple to get out of a cat’s fur. NOT. – and then put him in the cat carrier and put him to one side of the landing. Then I put the other three in the cage and half-carried half-dragged it out to the landing. Then I went in and sprayed every single spot of poo with a good soaking of Oxi-Clean and water. While I let that soak in, I carried out the litter boxes and dumped them, dumped the bowls of food, carried all the towels and cat beds into the laundry room, and during all that I had to shoo Mister Boogers away from the cage of kittens, because he kept running over to them, sniffing at them, and then hissing/ growling at them. He’s such a pain. Once the Oxi-Clean had had a chance to soak in, I got the carpet steam cleaner out of Fred’s room (Fred’s room is basically the place where we put all our stuff that has no other place to go), went into the kitten room, shut the door (so the noise wouldn’t hurt their ears) and spent the next hour and a half going from spot to spot with the hand attachment and cleaning every single spot. Some of those spots were extremely difficult to get up and required numerous soakings with Oxi-Clean. After an hour and half of cleaning, the rug looks pretty good. Not perfect, but MUCH better, and it smells a lot better in there. When I checked on Sugarbutt, there were three or four little piles of poo in the carrier with him. I felt bad for him, but there was just no way I could put him in the cage with the other kittens while he was pooping everywhere. I cleaned him up with a wet rag and left him in the carrier. By this time, the vet’s office was open, so I called Fred and said “If the vet wants to see Sugarbutt, can you come get me?”, and we embarked upon a five minute coversation wherein it was discovered that Fred was in the middle of a crisis and then that there was a misunderstanding in that he’d thought I wanted him to come get me, go to the vet with me, and then bring me home, whereas what I’d really meant is that he should come get me, I’d take him back to the office, and use his car. So I called the vet and told the woman at the front desk what was going on, wildly exaggerating the number of poo drops I’d had to clean up (I said 300, because it sure FELT like 300, but in actuality I’m sure it was no more than 75). She sounded shocked and went to talk to the vet, came back to ask me a few questions, then finally told me that the vet said he thought the problem was that Sugarbutt hadn’t been pooping because it hurt to poop, and now that it didn’t hurt so much, the poop was coming out. She said that it might continue for a few more days, and that I should put him in a confined area until it was done. If he wasn’t better in a few days, bring him back in. I was, to say the least, relieved. Because I’d worried that he’d just lost control of his bowels, and who is going to adopt a kitten who has no bowel control? I called Fred again to let him know what the vet had said, and we talked about what we could do. Clearly I had to put Sugarbutt in the cage, but I couldn’t put the other kittens in the cage with him, and I couldn’t put them back in their room, because the carpet was still damp from the cleaning I’d done. Finally, we decided that I’d put Sugarbutt in the cage, in the kitten room (the cage has a bottom to it, so he wouldn’t be on damp carpet), and we’d put the other three in the guest bedroom for the time being. I spent another 45 minutes setting up the guest bedroom for Bear, Callie, and Smitty, and cleaning out the cage, dragging it back into the kitten room, and setting it up for Sugarbutt. And then giving Sugarbutt another bath, which he didn’t care for, holding him (wrapped in a towel) for a little while, and finally putting him in the cage. While he got settled, I scrubbed out the litter boxes, scrubbed out the cat carrier, and started a load of poopy towels (on hot, with bleach). I checked on Smitty, Bear, and Callie – they were fine – and came downstairs to eat breakfast. Sugarbutt seems okay in the cage, though he’s not thrilled to be there. If I keep the door to the room closed, he howls, but if I leave the door open he’s quiet. Mostly because our cats – especially Mister Boogers – keep going in there to check on him, and he’s very interested in the big cats. Now I have to go vacuum the entire upstairs, throw the cat beds in the washer, and take a shower. Did anyone actually read this entire thing? If so, bless your heart. You must be really bored today, eh? Edited to add: I went in to check on Smitty, Callie, and Bear, and she was misbehavin’, so I let her out into the house to run around. She ran around and explored while I took my shower and did some laundry, and then Sugarbutt was howling so loudly and incessantly that I took her into the room with him (the carpet’s mostly dry) to see if that would quiet him down. It did, so I made sure she had litter, food, water, and toys, and closed the door. So now Sugarbutt’s in the cage, Callie’s in the room, the door is shut, and Bear and Smitty are in the guest bedroom. It keeps Sugarbutt quiet and Callie away from temptation, so I guess I’d say it’s working out well for the time being. Please send happy healing un-pooping thoughts to Sugarbutt, won’t you? Uh, yeah. THIS doesn’t make me feel mean or anything. Callie jumping down from the end of the bed to attack her brothers. Fightin’ brudders. Smitty finds the most comfortable spot in the room. (Does that afghan look familiar, Nance?) All of today’s uploaded pictures are here.

* * * Previously 2004: Which makes me think he’s out there talking shit about me, of course. 2003: He’s an awfully cute little kitty. 2002: No entry. 2001: I swear, my work is NEVER done. 2000: No entry.]]>

baby! He insisted that I should get him nothing for his birthday, but please. As if! If he doesn’t know by now that that sort of thing doesn’t fly with me, he never will. Happy birthday, baby. You don’t look a day over 43! (Ha! That joke just neeeeever gets old!)

* * * Currently reading: Maneater. I had no idea until I read the bit about the author on the backleaf that this was written by Brian Grazer’s wife. I’m not very far into the book, but so far it seems tolerable. The main character seems to be an all-surface-no-depth kind of gal, and so I suspect the whole book’s going to be very tongue-in-cheek. Sometimes that works; sometimes it doesn’t. I’m not sure which this one will be. Finished yesterday: Other People’s Dirt, which was sent to me by awesome reader Dawn. It’s not a bad book – it reads very fast – but I think I would have liked a bit more in-depth gossip about the people the writer cleans for. Worth a read, but I’d get it from the library, a second-hand store, or borrow it from a friend rather than going out and buying it new. * * * The spud is on her way to the O.C as I type. Actually, she just text messaged me that her plane had landed in Dallas. She has a 2-hour layover in Dallas, and then a three-hour flight to Orange County. Until now we’d forbidden her to use her phone for text messaging, because those babies cost 5 cents a message, and T-Mobile doesn’t appear to have a plan that includes unlimited text messaging (another reason we’re switching to Verizon at the end of the year – though the main reason is that Consumer Reports ranked it the highest, and I am ALL ABOUT the Consumer Reports these days. Even though they has NO USE for my kind of car. Fuck you, Consumer Reports! You don’t run my life!). But there is a 1000 text messages per month for $6.99, and since she’s going to be gone for just about the entire summer, I told her she could text message her friends – and me! – while she was gone. So we did a test run with text messaging while we were waiting for her plane to leave. I got her text message just fine, but when I tried to respond, the fucking predictive text input HORSESHIT made it impossible to figure out how to type in the message I wanted to. So I told her I’d check the book I got with the phone when I got home, and text message her while she was in the air. I did check the book when I got home, and I got all frustrated and swore at the phone, and then I figured out how to set it so that only what I typed in showed up (fucking pain in the ass phone), and I text messaged her. And here’s something you might not know about me – I hate it when people use “u” instead of “you”, “2” instead of “two”, “gd” instead of “goddamn”, etc. in email. Because there’s no reason for it! It really and truly and honestly does NOT take that much fucking longer to hit the extra keys. I just find it extremely annoying. But by the time I was about three words in to the text message to the spud, I was using “u” and “2” and “gd” with abandon, and it STILL took me 4-fckng-eva 2 get th gd msg typd n & snt. Then, after I’d sent the first message, I remembered that I hadn’t actually signed her up for the 1000 text messages per month, and I went online to do so, and realized that I didn’t know her password, so I had it sent to her phone, and went to text message her to let her know that she needed to send it to me so I could sign her up for the plan. And THEN I remembered what the password was, so I text messaged her AGAIN to tell her nevermind, and so when she landed in Dallas, she had three text messages from me and one from T-Mobile with her password, and I’m sure she was thinking “Oh, HELL NO. She’s not going to be doing THIS every fucking day, is she? Because I wanted the text messaging so I could send and receive text messages from my FRIENDS, not my clingy fucking mother. CUT THE CORD, WOMAN!” Oh, she just called. She thought it was funny that I’d text messaged her so many times. Heh. She found her gate with no problems, and actually asked a woman in a uniform for help. Now she has almost two hours to kill before her flight to the O.C. leaves. Another five hours, she should be in California (the theme song for The O.C. is playing in my head right now) and I can stop worrying! * * * I just spent half an hour text messaging with the spud. My last message to her was “K, call asa u r n cali. Luv u!” I think I’ve officially reached the highest level of dorkdom. Though a truly proficient text-er would have said “ca” instead of “cali”. * * * She flew out to California (“Califorrrrrnia! Califorrrrrrnia! Caaaaaaaaaaliforrrrniaaaaaaaaa!”) on American Airlines this time – Independence Air doesn’t fly to Orange County – and the agent who checked her in asked if I wanted to pay the $75 to have a flight attendant take her to her gate in Dallas. It was with great pleasure that I said no. Because the tickets were expensive enough – I had no desire to add $150 ($75 each way) to the total. I think the spud would have preferred me to pay the extra money; I know she was a little nervous about being responsible for finding her own gate. To be truthful, I think if she had her way I’d be paying the $75 ’til she’s 32, but I think she’s old enough and smart enough to figure it out on her own. And she did! Since she was traveling as an unaccompanied minor, I was able to get a pass to go to the gate with her. The security line wasn’t long at all, and we got through the metal detector pretty quickly, but apparently they felt the need to run my purse through the x-ray machine a second time (perhaps it was the bottle of Benadryl?), and people started piling up behind me while I was waiting for my purse, so I had to move to the end of table. Now, the whole process of putting my purse on a conveyer belt so that it can be x-rayed and then passed even further along a conveyer belt is something that fills me with a bit of anxiety. I don’t like being so far from my purse, and I especially don’t like the bit where my purse has to ride along the conveyer belt, because any yahoo could come along and distract me while someone else grabbed my purse and took off with it. I always have my cell phone, all my keys, and my wallet (which includes my driver’s license, credit cards, and – most importantly – my Gold Crown (Hallmark) card), so if I lost my purse I’d be a tad screwed. And I know security keeps an eye on things, but I haven’t got much confidence in them. Because I know things at the airport are SECURE and all, but let’s be honest – things have relaxed more than a little in the last 3 1/2 years. When Fred and I flew in the summer of 2002, they all but gave us enemas and analyzed (ha! ANALyzed!) the contents before they’d even let us through the metal detector. These days? Things are a bit more relaxed. I know it, you know it, and the terrorists know it. Thank god we have Jack Bauer to keep us safe! So I stood at the end of the table (which was next to the conveyer belt) and saw my purse come out of the x-ray machine, and I glanced up the conveyer belt, and I realized that there are in fact two sides to the conveyer belt, and so I walked along the back of the conveyer belt in hopes of grabbing my purse. Which is when Barney Fife popped up from his station behind the woman running the x-ray machine, and bellowed “MA’AM! PLEASE STEP AROUND TO THE FRONT OF THE CONVEYER BELT TO RETRIEVE YOUR ITEMS!” And then he put his hand on his skinny hip as though he might be required to pull a gun on me and shoot me three times in the gut and twice in each kneecap, just in case. I put my hands up, said “Oh! Okay!”, and backpedaled as fast as my stupid ass could move. Then I went around the front of the conveyer belt, elbowed my way to my purse, and grabbed it. Then I rolled my eyes, shook my head (BECAUSE I AM A REBEL) and pulled the spud toward the escalator. And yes, I felt as guilty as if I’d been planning to hijack the nearest plane. Because all you have to do if you are in a position of authority – or think you’re in a position of authority – is glance at me with some suspicion, and I’m ready to confess everything down to the time I was driving the riding lawnmower around the front yard and ran over some flowers in my mother’s front flowerbed (because I am a KLUTZ) and then pretended I had no idea how that had happened. SORRY, MOM! * * * The section about the kittens. Yesterday afternoon I was hanging out in the room with the kittens, rubbing bellies and kissing little heads and just generally having a good time, when Snoopy, who’d been attacking my feet (these cats have a real thing for feet and the attacking of) got a strange look on his face. He backed away from my foot, thought for a moment, and then walked toward the corner of the room which is located behind the door. And then DO YOU KNOW WHAT HE DID? He climbed INTO the small litter box which was located as close to that corner as I could get it, and he hunkered down, and he BEGAN TO POOP. Y’all, I was so proud, I about burst. Then I noticed that Snoopy was having some problems. I don’t know if he was constipated or what, but he climbed back out of the litter box and the poop didn’t stay behind IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. I watched him, and he wandered around with a somewhat pained look on his face, so I picked him up and put him in one of the big litter boxes and rubbed his belly, then squeezed him gently, in hopes that that would help coax the rest of the poop from his poor little system. What? WHAT? Oh, shut up. Constipation is hard enough if you’re an adult; if you’re a month-old kitten, I’m sure it’s about excruciating, because you don’t know WHAT THE FUCK is going on. I was just trying to help. Snoopy hunkered down again, and he gave me a look as if to say “What the holy fuck is going on here, woman?”, and then he started to climb out of the litter box, and I said “Momma, are you going to HELP THAT POOR BOY?”, and she looked at me disinterestedly, and I had to leave the room, because if I had to watch that poor baby walk around the room with an inch of poop sticking out, I don’t know what I would have done. When Fred got home from his hike half an hour later and headed upstairs to change his clothes, I asked him to look in on the kittens and let me know if there was poop everywhere, because I needed to know whether or not to take a bucket of warm water and lots of rags to clean up poop the next time I went in there. He reported back that there was no poop to be seen, and Snoopy had not a smidge of poop on him anywhere. After dinner, I went back up to do some more visiting. The kittens were wild last night, jumping on each other and biting, then jumping on me and biting, and running around and jumping some more. While I was holding Flossie (whom I have taken to calling “Miz Flossie”, big shock), I looked up to see Snoopy walking toward the litterbox with purpose in his step. He climbed into the litterbox, hunkered down, and pooped with no problem at all. While he was doing his business, Peanut climbed in next to him, looked him over, and I swear I saw a little lightbulb go on over his head. Ten minutes later, Peanut climbed into one of the big litterboxes, peed, ate a piece of litter, and climbed back out to attack one of his brothers. This morning, Flossie peed in the litterbox. It appears that they’re getting the hang of it, THANK GOD. Oy’s lookin’ a little wild. Edgar shows off one of his sharp little teeth. Flossie cracks me up when she eats. She always looks so intent. Eating is HARD WORK, PEOPLE! Peanut wishes he had a paper to read. Did I mention that the kitties love to attack feet? Flossie always looks worried, doesn’t she? “Somethin’s not right, but I don’t know what it is…” He is the POOPIN’ KING! Another yawn pic! King Oy looks down upon his subjects. And then he jumped on them and bit their tails. This picture makes me laugh until I snort. More – lots more – kitten pics over at Flickr, and there’ll be more going up later. Speaking of Flickr – can someone tell me what exactly a “set” is? Yeah, I know, I’m a dumbass. But should I be posting these fosterkitties pics to a set rather than using tags? Use small words and speak slowwwwly, if you would. * * * Apparently there’s a nest of young swallows around here somewhere, and every morning several of them like to hang out on the ledge directly outside the study room (the room upstairs where the spud’s computer is). They drive Mister Boogers cuh-ray-zee, because they’re SO CLOSE and yet so far.]]>

IN REALITY THE URBAN RAT IS A DIABOLICALLY CLEVER RODENT, I would totally buy it and wear it with pride. Hell, if someone wants to send me a rat drawing, I’ll make the shirt myself at CafePress. On a side note, “Diabolically Clever Rodent” would be a great name for a domain, band, OR a novel.

* * * There’s a lot of really dorky, annoying slang in this world, but after watching The Shield last night, I can report that hearing “The PoPo” over and over and FUCKING OVER AGAIN makes me want to jam a pencil into my eardrums so I never have to hear it again. It’s fucking idiotic. “The PoPo”, my ass. * * * It’s been a busy, busy day for me. I didn’t want to say anything until it was a done deal, but Fred and I are now foster parents, at least for a little while. Last night we cleared out the guest bedroom and set it up for our new foster children. Today I went and got supplies, and now the children are comfortably installed in the guest bedroom. You can’t really tell from this picture, but there are four of them. The fifth. That’s right, five kittens in all. The others were sleeping, but this one was awake and let me hold him – her? – for a little while. Strictly speaking, I guess you could say we’re not actually foster parents, since the mom is still around. The mom’s story is that she lived at a junkyard, but when she came up pregnant, the owners of the junkyard didn’t want her anymore. Fuckers. So they gave her to a vet clinic way out in the country, and one of the employees of the vet clinic has been taking care of them. They are awfully damn adorable, and I have a feeling they’re only going to get cuter. I know I didn’t get any really good pictures of them, but we’ve only been home for about half an hour, and I wanted them – the mother, at least – to get comfortable in her new home before I snap ten thousand pictures and harass them. The mother is very very VERY protective of her kittens when it comes to other animals. She was perfectly happy to have me petting the kittens and holding the one, but before that, when we walked into the house, she saw Mister Boogers and went into protective-mommy mode, hissing and growling and spitting at him. I’ve mentioned before that we’ve never seen Mister Boogers knead or hiss. Well, today? He hissed. And he looked just as dorky as I expected he would. I’m not going to be required to do much but scoop litter boxes and make sure they have plenty of food and water. The director of the shelter said that oftentimes kittens who are with their mothers will go directly from mother’s milk to hard food, but she gave me canned kitten food, just in case. I have to keep an eye on their eyes to make sure they don’t get goopy (and if they do, I have drops). I have to give them deworming medicine once a week, keep an eye on the litter box for bloody poop, and at six weeks I start giving them vaccines. Other than that, the mother will take care of making sure they have enough food, and know how to use the litter box. The mother isn’t terribly friendly, but she did let me pet her. She’s very sweet. There are four boy kittens and one girl kitten. The woman who’d been taking care of them said she thought the girl was going to be a real spitfire. Oh, and I have to check with the director of the shelter to be sure I heard her right, but I do believe I get to name them. I may need y’all’s help with that! Okay, I’m going to go check on them and make sure they’re settled in okay. You KNOW there’ll be more tomorrow! See you then. * * * “Kittens? Bleh!” ]]>