Tuesday, January 31, 2006 , early afternoon
Online shopping is da bomb
We do almost all our shopping online. We even have our groceries delivered now, and I love the convenience of browsing through stores and products while sitting in my pajamas and sipping tea. I also fine online shopping is great because you can find incredibly obscure, one-of-a-kind things, like rare books and toys. Here’s a small list of stores at which I often spend my money:
If you have a favourite online shopping site, please write and let me know about it!
Rampant Consumerism • (0) Comments • (1) Trackbacks • Permalink
Saturday, January 28, 2006 , late at night
6 week mug shots
I’ve been completely bogged down with the whole “website sale” thing, and I’m very behind in my cat anecdotes. I’m especially bothered because I didn’t post on the kittens’ 6 week birthday, which was this past Wednesday. I figured I’d post their 6 week photos next to their 1 day photos, just to show how wonderfully they’ve grown, but you know what I realized? We’ve raised a bunch of little hooligans. Just look at the mug shots! Would you trust any of this gang with your fine china or antiques?
Wednesday, January 25, 2006 , the wee hours
It’s never too early
It’s never too early to teach your young charges about the joys of Starbucks, even if all they’ll ever get to experience is the paper bag:
The above is a photo of the kittens playing in their Rubbermaid container, which I use as a sort of “playpen”. I won’t be able to do it for very long, because they’ll soon be able to jump out, but right now they just love it when I put them in there to run around, play with toys (and bags), and wrestle. Now, I know we’re not supposed to mix the kittens with our other household cats, but the kittens have had two fecal tests turn out negative, and all our other cats are indoor cats with all their vaccinations. Because of that, I’ve allowed Frank to hang out in the kittens’ room, as he’s the only adult cat who shows any interest. Not only does he show interest, he seems downright fatherly towards the kittens, leading me to believe that he fathered a few litters of his own during his former days on the street. He grooms the kittens, plays gently with them, and tonight he climbed into their playpen and they all had a nap together:
I do supervise Frank when he’s with the kittens, but wow, he shown himself to be surprisingly gentle and responsible with them. I’ve read that male cats help raise their litters, and I’ve read that male cats will try to kill their litters (to prevent competition), but Frank’s attitude causes me to think that the former is probably most accurate.
I’ve got one last photo to post today. We bought the kittens a little fleece “car”, which was designed for ferrets but which is the perfect size for our little guys right now. While you can’t see the details in this picture, the cats are napping in a little fleecy Volkswagon Beetle car, complete with plastic windshield:
It’s been a rather momentous day around here, as we sold one of our biggest/most popular websites. We came up with the idea for the site about three years ago, and the project grew so large that we decided to sell it, because it was just too big for us to devote time to. I’ll tell you what the website is after the sale is completed, as right now we’ve just started the sales process via Escrow.com and I don’t want to jinx anything. I’ve had mixed emotions about selling the site because I’ve put so many hours into it over the last few years, but it’s the right thing for us to do, and hopefully we’ll be able to use the funds from the sale to explore bigger and better options. We’ve got a couple of hundred different websites floating around the Internet, but this is the first one to leave the nest.
Monday, January 23, 2006 , late evening
Election day thoughts
I’ve felt impossibly stressed for the past week, watching Canadian election polls, worried about the possibility of a Conservative majority. I don’t think most of my family members understand how much I fear the Conservative party and their right-wing base. I’ve got no problem with “financial Conservatives”, but unfortunately, the Canadian Conservative party has more and more become the voice of the socially conservative, i.e., the anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion bunch. They’re far too similar to the Christian contingent running the US government, and their increased voice in Canadian politics makes me nervous. I don’t actually think that Canada has become more socially conservative, rather, I think the social conservatives have become more vocal and organized. Just as in the US, the social conservative movement dominates rural areas, while urban areas remain more mainstream and inclusive.
I’m somewhat pleased with the election results, given the possibilities. The Conservatives did “win” the most seats, but didn’t win a majority. The NDP almost holds the balance of power (I wish they did, but they’re a few seats short). I think all the voter comments I’ve read tonight reinforce the idea that this election was a “spanking” for the Liberal party and not necessarily an endorsement of the Conservatives, and I do think that once the Liberals have a new leader, they’ll be able to win the next election. A few of my “most hated” were defeated, including Darrel Reid and Bev Desjarlais (the latter voted against the gay marriage bill, supposedly to “reflect the views of her constituents”. Why didn’t any of those constituents vote for her this time, hmm?). I’m most bothered by the fact that Alberta is so powerful, given that they’re Canada’s version of Kansas. If a province has to separate, can we get rid of Alberta and keep Quebec? One more thing… I don’t know who Val Meredith is, but could she please stop talking?
I apologize for the lack of kitten photos. I did take some new ones today, but I left the camera in the bedroom where the kittens are sleeping, and I hate to go in and wake them up. I’m trying to raise kittens who sleep when it’s dark (rather than staying up all night partying), and I know they’re sleeping soundly right now. They’re all doing great, and are guaranteed to do at least 10 cute things every single day.
We’ve got a new “stray” cat visiting our front porch every night. It’s friendly, and seems to be a decent weight, but it has no collar or identification. It’s a female, and I sure hope it’s spayed. I want to put a collar on it with a note which says, “Please put some identification on your cat!”, but I have no idea if anyone would ever see it.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006 , late at night
Caught napping
I turned on the camera, quickly snuck into the kitten’s bedroom and snapped this photo. They were sleeping, so they didn’t have time to scurry out:
Day 35
Houston, we have weaning.
As if on some invisible, magical internal schedule, every single kitten today ate independently—no bottle feeding! Little Tie Domi just strolled up to a dish and started to chow down (he was our last bottle-addict), and Flippy was able to capture the moment with her camera:
I’ll admit that I loved the cuddles that came with bottle-feeding, but I was growing a bit concerned that my boys had a food learning disability. The little girl, Bing, has been eating on her own for two full weeks, but the two boys refused to even check out the goodies in their food dish. I kept bottle-feeding a few times a day, but it was hard because they were ready to start chewing, so there was more chewing on the nipple than sucking (if I was their mother, I would have had to smack them). Yesterday, Scampi walked over to a bowl of Science Diet chicken and liver kitten food and noisily gobbled it up, and today it was Tie’s turn to spontaneously surprise me. Honestly, I was holding my breath the entire time he ate, worried that he’d decide he didn’t like it. He still wants weaning food (a thick, milky formula) and not meaty food, but I’m sure that will change quickly.
Again, stolen from Flippy’s photo gallery, is a photo of the three of them, all lumped together and squirmy:
Yesterday, I finally moved the kittens into their “kitten playpen” cage, and an amazing transformation took place. They turned into cats. Suddenly they climb, leap, run, tumble, jump, and generally act like little terrorists. When I open the cage door they seem to come flying out, as if they have wings. I put a new dish of food in, and during the five seconds the cage door was open, little Tie managed to crawl up and sit on the back of my neck. Tonight we gave them a selection of toys, and whereas they’ve previously ignored them, tonight they went in for the kill:
They truly are adorable, and exhausting. Both Flippy and I were perspiring after half an hour of play time with them, but I hope we managed to tire them out a bit. They have such different personalities… Tie is an absolute wild man, fearless and powerful… Bing is cuddly and acrobatic… Scampi is a lovebug who wants to just sit in your lap and gaze at you in adoration. I feel so privileged to have the chance to experience this. I’m sure raising kittens is old hat to many people, but this has been a unique experience for me, and one I wouldn’t trade for anything.
I put up a number of photos in my photo gallery, and Flippy has a bunch in hers, as well. I’ve got one more to put up here, though. We bought a little “ferret sleeping bag”, and I hung it from one side of the cage. I thought the cats would just ignore it, but I’ve gone in their room twice today to find all three of them peeking out of it, like little peas in a pod. I’m never fast enough to get a photo of all three (they move like the wind), but here’s a quick shot of Bing, who didn’t want to get out from under the covers:
Monday, January 16, 2006 , evening
Preferred customers
Today’s receipt from the vet’s office featured a 10% discount with a notation, “preferred customer”. I think that’s just a tactful way of saying we have pets who are always getting into trouble. I was feeding the kittens this morning when I heard the sing-song of a cat fight starting up in the front room upstairs. Both Flippy and I ran in to break it up, and found, not surprisingly, Frank and Jackson having it out in a little corner by the litterbox. Jackson ran off behind the sofa and Frank stayed huddled in the corner, looking psychotic. We think the fight actually started *in* the litterbox (a large, clear, uncovered Rubbermaid container), judging from the mess that was left behind. I didn’t want to risk picking Frank up because of his previous post-fight aggression, so I left him while I started to wipe up the floor. Unfortunately, I found a fair amount of blood next to the box, so I carefully picked Frank up, checked him over, and even rubbed him all over with a damp paper towel. No blood, but I was able to remove three toenails from his forehead, and I locked him in the bathroom for safe-keeping. The lack of blood on Frank meant I had to hunt down Jackson, which required moving the sofa, crawling behind, and scruffing him to get him out. I didn’t have the bathroom to take him into (poor planning on my part), but I wiped him off and found blood all over one of his back legs. I wanted to shave the hair off the leg to look but I didn’t know where in the house to take him that didn’t have dogs, or Frank (again, poor planning), so with Flippy’s help we stuffed him in a nearby crate and off to the vet we went.
It’s a good thing we did take him to the vet. While there was a puncture wound on his leg, the blood was coming from a torn toenail which needed to be cauterized. I don’t know if Jackson tore the nail when it got stuck in Frank’s head, or if it got stuck in the mat under the litterbox where I found all the blood. Nevertheless, those two problems were fixed, and we discovered that he’d also broken a tooth. As I was going to have to treat with antibiotics anyway, we’re just taking the conservative route of Baytil for all his issues, and we’ll check the tooth out in a week and see if it looks like it’s healing. I wanted to avoid the liquid Clavamox because of diarrhea issues we’ve had with the cats, and really, if you can hold a cat down long enough to fill their mouth with strawberry-flavoured liquid, you can hold them down long enough to stuff a pill in their mouth. I’ve pilled him once so far and it went well, but it might get more difficult as he figures out what’s going on. He’s an aloof cat anyway, so I’ve already decided I’ll probably have to bring a ladder upstairs to retrieve him from the top of the cat tree each night, or I’ll need to just pill him “opportunistically”.
The vet suggested that the fight could have been about the kittens. Frank is very interested in them and “mothers” them—he licks them, nudges them, and likes to sit and watch over them. The other cats show no interest or are afraid of the kittens, so I don’t think they’ve encountered any before. Last night Jackson wandered into the kitten’s room while I was feeding them, and I wonder if their fight today was some sort of retaliation? The kittens live in the area of the house which is “Frank’s territory”, so I think they played a part in this.
Friday, January 13, 2006 , late evening
Mutts
Flippy recently ordered me a wonderful birthday gift from the Mutts Comics store, and much to our surprise, in with the item she bought was a special bonus gift, a copy of the hardcover book, Mutts: The Comic Art of Patrick McDonnell. Wow, what a great book! Whether you love dogs, cats, comics, or art, this book is an incredibly beautiful volume of Patrick McDonnell’s work. It’s an overview of his career, really, with sketches of the Mutts characters as he developed the idea for the strip, and his most well-known Sunday strips. The book has a narrative by McDonnell about how he got started as a cartoonist, and each page is accompanied by notes about the particular strip featured. My favourite aspect of this book is that it really examines the incredible title panels McDonnell draws for each Sunday strip, each a tribute to a famous piece of art, whether it be a painting, an album cover, or a movie poster. This book is a great value for the price, and it would make a beautiful and appreciated gift for any animal lover in your life. I read it cover to cover the day it arrived, and I know I’ll frequently browse through it again.
Animal Books I've Read • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Another Cat at the Door
Thank goodness the title of this entry is just a book review, and not something which has actually happened to us (at least, not recently). Author C. W. Gusewelle is familiar with the phenomenon of people who seem to attract stray and needy cats to their household, having married a woman and raised daughters who are like cat magnets. His collection of short, anecdotal stories, Another Cat at the Door, relates tales of many of the cats he’s shared his life with, some for many years, and others just for a short period of time. At first the rhythm of the book felt uncomfortable to me, as it had been so long since I’d read anything like a “short story”, or in this case, what I assume is a collection of newspaper columns. Once I adjusted to the fact that each tale was only two or three pages long, I began to really enjoy hearing about all of Gusewelle’s cat encounters, and his observations about cat behaviour. He does an excellent job of describing how cats work out social orders, even when the adjustments take years (it gives me hope that one day Frank and Jackson will tolerate each other). He also hits the nail on the head many times when he relates how each cat has a particular place in his heart, despite all their varying personalities. There are births, deaths, and illness of course, just as in life, but but every ending is a precursor to a new beginning. In short, a perfect book for the person who opens their home and heart and life’s little feline strays, like us. Who knew we’d end up like this?
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Thursday, January 12, 2006 , evening
Day 28
I snuck up on the sleeping monsters last night and took this photo before they rolled out of bed. They’re really very cooperative about photographs, and I caught Bing surfing the Internet to find an application for, “America’s Next Top Model”. They are now 28 days old:
They’ve suddenly turned into such kittens. They like to jump up and down, they pounce and sneak up on each other, and they love to climb. While they used to just eat and sleep, now they eat and play for a while before sleeping again. I’m so glad they all have each other for company. This morning the German Shepherd stuck her head into their container while I was feeding them, and they all circled around her nose while hissing, spitting, and waving claws. I think they hurt her feelings, as she whined a bit and left the room. Bing has been eating on her own for a full week now, and even though I offer her the bottle occasionally, she usually doesn’t want it and just eats out of her bowl. She also sits and delicately cleans herself up afterwards, although she needs help cleaning her face. The two boys will not eat on their own, and while I know all kittens develop at difference paces, I can’t help but wonder if they aren’t playing me a bit. I’ve seen them sit beside their sister and watch her eat, yet they won’t touch the bowl themselves.
I’m happy that we’ve had great litterbox success. I introduced a small, shallow cardboard box last week, and they were immediately interested but used it inconsistently. I then bought a litterpan for rabbits, ferrets, etc., which has a shallow front entry and a high back. I filled it with Dr. Elsey’s Cat Attract Cat Litter, which, the label said, was great for training kittens. The kittens immediately went into the new litterbox, dug around in the litter, and began producing like little champions. There hasn’t been one accident since the new pan and new litter, and they seem to really enjoy using the box (it’s fun to dig). All signs of diarrhea are gone, and that’s a real time saver. Now I can concentrate on feeding and playing, and not so much on butt-wiping.
About Me
My name is Leigh-Ann, I'm Canadian, and I live in the United States. This gives me great insight on cross-border issues, like American vs. Canadian candy bars, and curling vs. golf. I enjoy coffee but not caffeine, as I like to think I'm agitated enough already. I love animals and birds and fish and even most of the creepy crawlies on the sidewalk and in the garden, but I prefer it when they stay out of the house. I completed the veterinary technology program at Penn Foster, and in 2004 I started Wee Paws Animal Sanctuary with the goal of eventually turning it into a farm-like sanctuary facility for 50+ "unadoptable" cats (we're at 24). Long story short, this is a cat blog, with a dose of dog and parrot, heavy on pet health care talk. If you'd like to make a donation to Wee Paws, click the button below, or click here for more options and ways you can help.
I live with the fantabulous Flippy. I write a blog about fibromyalgia at Tired Girls. Feel free to check out the photo gallery if you want to see 500 pictures of my dogs, cats, birds, etc. Get in touch with me via the "contact" link above - I'm always available for freelance social media marketing work. My background includes 13 years in radio and television. One more thing: this blog was designed to be displayed at 1280 x 1024, because that's just the kind of girl I am.
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