We will be at Purina Days this Saturday.

The Owl House will be at the Purina Days Event at Tractor Supply in Ithaca on Saturday. Come by and say "hi!" I'll probably bring little Lucy, and perhaps Grayson depending on how he seems to feel about public appearances.

A very gentle child feeding his kitten milk

You know how cats are the most affectionate when you are helplessly wrapped in blankets on your bed, or stuck sitting in the bathroom on the toilet? All I could think was this cat had learned that kids are safe when stuck in their highchair. ;)

Continuing Education - Protozoal Parasites

Here is a great page on the Maddies Fund site where you can easily access presentations and articles on the most common (and insidious) protozoa creepy-crawlies that can make animal rescue so difficult: coccidia, giardia, and toxoplasmosis. Interesting stuff!

http://www.maddiesfund.org/Maddies_Institute/Learning_Tracks/Protozoal_Parasitology.html

Have a cat tattoo?

Believe it or not, there is a web site dedicated just to cat tattoos, or "cattoos" as they call them on this particular site. CattooDesign.com

Celebrate Memorial Day

And the service men and women, past and present, who allow us the freedom to do so. (Give it time to load)

Cat saves boy from dog attack

Warning: this child gets bitten only once by the dog, but it is a surprisingly aggressive bite on the leg, and will make it clear to you how children can be killed by a dog. It surprised me, so it will surprise you. But the cat is the immediate hero and the child suffers just the one bite.



Many cats are very protective. A long while ago (1986), my young female cat Bramble got a plastic shopping bag caught over her head and went zooming around my then-apartment, making a horrendous racket with her hissing and the bag rattling behind her. I finally cornered her and was getting the bag off her neck (she was squalling and hissing the entire time, but not biting me) and Rastus, my very first cat, who had never shown an aggressive cell in his body, leaped on my head with claws a-blazing, not realizing I was helping Bramble. From all the signs Bramble was giving, I was killing her.

I learned that day that Rastus was going to protect any creature he felt was in danger...even if the woman he appeared to love deeply was the one causing the damage.

I freed Bramble, but suffered a deep gash in my scalp and across my nose and eyebrow--the day before my job interview with Ithaca College Campus Safety. I actually scored points in the interview. The interviewers assumed these were scars from my current job with the SPCA. I got the job.

Interestingly enough, the majority of people who saw the damage on my face expected me to have Rastus put down...not realizing that if someone broke into my house and I was the one screaming, Rastus would likely come to my defense as well. People did not see the incident as a "cat protecting someone who was being hurt" but as "a cat who DARED to attack a human."

It's a good thing that the cat in this video didn't stick to her "stereotype" by avoiding attacking a dog. She reacted to defend a creature in danger. Perhaps if that young boy had been beating the dog, she would have reacted as well...against the boy. Who knows? The fact is, cats are furry little bundles of thought,emotion, and bravery.

Not the vermin some people would like to say they are.

I'm sure the dog has a story as well. He was apparently owned by the neighbor. Clearly the dog initially saw the movement of the child from the other side of the car (you can see him go on the alert--he could not have seen the whole child from his viewpoint under the car), and attacked basically on instinct. This story is not only about a brave cat defending a child, but a dog who was wandering where he should never have been. In a better life, this might have been a story about this very same dog protecting his owner against a robber or another dog.

The cat's story is about her. The dog's story is about us.

It's mail time!

Post by PreventDisease.com.

I hope people who don't have Facebook can view this. I haven't tried this before. I'm a YouTube kind of girl.

Kiddo needs a new home

I posted awhile back about an indoor/outdoor tom cat we assisted. Kiddo's post is here at this link.

Kiddo's mom is in the hospital and may have to stay where she cannot have cats, so Kiddo needs either a foster home (until we know for sure) or a new home where he can go in and out. I'll try to get a photo of him. He's a great big handsome sweet male orange cat, who would need to be kept indoors for awhile until his homing sense realigns with his new place.

Remember...don't always assume your kids will want your cats when you can no longer care for them. In this case the owner did not get a cat on her own. She reached out to help a stray. But now when she should just be taking care of herself, she is worried for her cat.

Photo to come!

The cats enjoyed the screened porch again. The best thing I ever did was screen that in.

The cold spring has been good to the daffodils. I have more than enough to enjoy outside, and pick for inside.

The side yard is mostly cleaned up. All the old wood is in one pile, the sticks are picked up, the firepit is cleaned, and I keep picking away at the spring weeds in the memory garden.

Patter ventures onto the enclosed porch and more spring things

I'm trying to get new photos and video of the cats and kittens. Pitter and Patter ventured out onto the porch today with the rest of the house clan.



Well, I guess the other spring things will go in another post, because Blogger won't let me add photos to this one. Sigh.

Our Amazon Wish List

Sometimes people ask us what we need. There is a PayPal donate button at the right, but we also have an Amazon Wish List, which I just realized is not on the blog. I've added it to the right rail above the photo of Cricket and the mandolin. These are the things we need all the time! Many of them are cheaper if you have Amazon Prime. Otherwise they may be cheaper at local stores.

If any crazy people are feeling especially generous, we are definitely in need of cat vaccines, which we purchase for Revival Animal Health, here at this link. Syringes and needles are not needed for this vaccine (so pay no attention to the "do you have needles?" question on that page. However it does have to be shipped to our home address (Not the PO Box 415, Spencer NY 14883 address), and arrives with ice and a cooler. The intranasal vaccine is "modified live", so it provides immunity faster than "killed" vaccine, and is also easier to administer to small kittens. We can also get intranasal at Tractor Supply but they are often out, and it is far more expensive by the individual dose.

I just stepped into the house from working in the cat facility and the yard, for a quick tick-checking break. And yes, I did find one. If you are trekking around outside, be sure to protect yourself from the little buggers, and throw your clothing in the dryer for ten minutes when you come back in!

It looks like this dog has had plenty of practice nabbing gloves!

The score at the end is cute. Kudos to the woman near the end who is obviously afraid of the dog but immediately overcomes it to get the glove back!

Another feral cat blog.

Here you go! http://www.feralcatbehavior.com/

Getting the grounds cleaned up

In anticipation of kitten-visitors and Coffee and Kitten Sundays this year, I've gotten as early a start as possible on cleaning up the grounds. First off is the cat memorial garden alongside the house. The garden itself has stayed pretty under-control after the work of dedicated volunteers a few years back (Wow, wait, was that really way back in 2007?). But grass and weeds grow, so thing periodically need a heavy-handed clean up, like the small sun-patio near the firepit:

I dug out all the bricks, the mill stone, and flagstones, turfed out the grass, shoveled up roadside gravel after the town's road brush went through tossing all the winter gravel to the shoulder, and got it all put back together.

Then the firepit had to have the ashes dug out of it. So it's ready for its first fire, once the open burning restriction is off in late May.

I moved what was left of the woodpile up on the porch. Let's hope we don't have too many cold nights, because I'm out of fuel...oil, almost all my wood, and NYSEG keeps sending those nasty envelopes reminding me about the electric bill that I'm catching up on. I can rest easy that I'm not the only person in that position--I've talked to lots of people who are mulling over filling up their almost empty oil tank for a heating season that could be a week longer...or a month longer.

That leaves this mess that I'm cleaning up so that I can lay down new pallets and start accumulating next years' wood:

I've got a wedge-shaped sledgehammer to beat the heck out of the old rotted pallets to get them in the dumpster. I want to put an arch through the middle of the woodpile that will lead into the memorial cat garden.

Speaking of which...

The ground was finally warm enough to lay Ivan and Cricket to rest. I don't think I blogged that Cricket, who was older than Ivan, passed away after she stopped eating. Unlike Ivan, she refused to be force-fed. So now they are together in the cat garden. It's hard to have them gone. My remaining personal pets are three sweet cats, Bear, Rose, and Nellie, who are total clowns (in a good way). I need a scholar's cat. So when I'm done with work travel, Fluffy and Storm will come in the house from the sanctuary. They are seniors as well, but they are grand cats, just like Ivan and Cricket, and are also bonded to one another.

But first...homes for these young cats!

Best way to listen to the "Happy" song!

Dogs annoying cats with friendship!