Espie checking in

Donna shared a video of Espie on Facebook, with her new toy sent to her as a gift from Save Grayson County Cats, who Donna also supports:

Perhaps this should have gone on the personal blog...

...but then again, maybe not.

Cat toys to benefit spay/neuter

I have finally bagged up and labeled the cat toys that my mother and sister made. I've been giving these toys to adopters and supporters for years. I like the simple design, the great colors, and the size. What's the point of ears and eyes that just get bitten off? This year they really went to town and made me a huge bag. The toys will be available as a gift to anyone who donates to the medical fund. Of course, special friends and adopted kitties will still find them coming their way as singles.

More to come. I just wanted to get these photos loaded!

Do you need some intelligent reading?

Discover magazine has some great blogs if you are getting weary of the tripe and clutter that pops up nowadays on Yahoo and AOL. Do I care that Tiger's wife bulldozed her house? I do. It's a waste. Yet there are bigger things I should be wasting brain cells on...things that will amaze and delight me, and expand my understanding of the world. I'll never understand what's going on in the minds of the pseudo-celebrities we create (whether they want to be celebrities or not.

I'd rather learn how a lizard jumps. Thanks.

Well, here we are, 2012. Feel any different?

The clock on my computer is wrong. I actually missed the countdown because there was a commercial on the streaming video of Times Square. Interestingly enough, the world did not end because I missed it. Instead, I found a recorded clip of the countdown in London, which was a lot prettier, and had no video of people kissing. Call me unromantic. I'd rather see fireworks over the Thames than people smooching at this point of my life.

Gretchen came over earlier bearing wine and cookies, and I had homemade soup on the stove and some decent bread. I built a fire in the great room, and we cuddled kittens (above) for a few hours. When she headed home around 8pm, I enjoyed a nap by the roaring fire. I went to sleep with Tommy on my chest and woke up with little Tortellini.

Today it was sunny and warm--nearly 50 on January 1st. I took Molly for a hike up on the hill. With all the weeds down and no snow, I was able to go places I've never gone before. I think I'll go up with a can of spray paint tomorrow to mark where I want to do trails next year. I'd like to open up the hill so friends with dogs can come walk them when they like, and not get lost or venture onto neighbors' property.

I'd like to have posted some photos but I accidentally gave my camera a fling across the kitchen floor and it didn't survive this particular impact. Luckily I have $115 credit at Overstock.com so a new camera is on the way. Until then I'll post photos others take. I have plenty of "got my present!" pictures to add.

I love my place. It would break my heart to lose it. Sometimes I forget how beautiful it is, huddled up here in the house behind a computer. I need to make some changes in my life this year. They are not so much resolutions--just a frame of mind.

I do have a few goals. I don't expect to accomplish them this year, but I do want to get a start on them.

Do you have any plans for 2012?

Two rabies infections at the end of 2011. Be careful with bats!

There is no need to freak out about bats. They are wonderful little creatures whose insect-eating habits also are a great help to homeowners who want to enjoy their land and yards. However if you should ever come in physical contact with a bat, or if you aren't certain if you've been in contact with one (for example, you wake up with one flying around your bedroom) you MUST capture the bat and have it tested for rabies.

Two people have recently contracted rabies. The disease is almost always fatal.

I keep an empty coffee can in my house. A plastic container also works, if the lid doesn't have a very deep lip. You wait until the bat is resting on a surface, put the can over the bat, and gently slide the lid underneath. The bat will make small chattering noises, and you may see the feet or a wing tip stick out as you ease the cover under the can. There's no need to worry. Just be gentle and calm and you'll shortly have the bat confined.

If the bat is acting normally and you are absolutely sure no people or pets have come in contact with it, you can release the bat outside. If the bat is acting lethargic (just hanging, not flying at all, or is having problems flying), has come in contact with a person or pet, or has been in the room with a sleeping person or a child, the bat should be tested. Call your health department immediately. Check their web site in advance. Chances are good they will have instructions there. Tioga County NY has a hotline number. Tompkins County has a good fact sheet.

Merry Christmas. Kindness to cats and their keeper

Is Christmas over already? Nonsense. Christmas extends from Christmas Eve to New Year's Eve. It takes that long for me to get my Christmas cards all in the mail.

In the week before Christmas, we had trekkers who came to the door bearing gifts for the cats. When Mary arrived, I had been pulling a marathon email stint and was still in what passes as jammies for me. The cats were thrilled at the bagsful of toys. A few days later, Lisa showed up with toys as well, and dropped off donated towels and some low-cal food as well. You'd think some of our cats were pudgy or something... (Yes, they are).

Cricket, getting up there in years, preferred the empty boxes (which is just as well, since she's not homeless and technically the toys weren't hers--but the pet cats have to give their seal of approval).

I tossed all the old toys in the cat facility, and we moved onto Bright, Shiny and New. Away boredom!

On Christmas morning it was Fancy Feast for everyone, from the boarding cats, to house cats, to rescue cats. I had gotten the facility cats some soft "fur" throws that look like they may survive the wash and not hold accumulated cat hair. We'll see. At least they will be cuddly and warm for awhile.

On Christmas Eve, Christy and Gordan invited me for dinner. Because there was chicken on the table, Jelli and Phillip (who forget they slept with me when they were kittens, and normally play shy when I visit) were absolutely charming.

Remember when Jelli was Cheeto? I find it funny that his name went from silly Cheeto, to distinguished Justin, but morphed to a silly sweet name once again.

Christy and Gorden sent home yet another bag of toys (the red sparkly ball with Arthur is one of theirs), so the cats are very distracted and very happy.

The cats received other gifts as well, but they deserve posts of their own, so I'll just pause to relay some profound feline gratitude, and wish you all a wonderful holiday!

Feral relocation/soft-release cage

Is this not the coolest thing? Finding a cage that is easy to transport and set up to relocate or return feral cats has been a huge issues for feral cat managers. The one thing I would like to see would be smaller wire, so common barn predators like mink and weasels could not get in:



From Ultra Lite Products, here:

http://www.mypetcages.com/product.asp?specific=156

I have two of their larger cages in by cat facility, which have stood up very well. Maybe around spring I'll invest in one of these. They are a huge improvement over a standard wire dog crate.

Emmi gets "Elfed"

Emmi can boogie with the best of them.

Here she is in a more traditional post.

Thomas, now Tommy, returns.

Tommy's caretaker, the father of a close friend of mine, has passed away unexpected. Tommy was adopted back in 2007 and was his caretaker's constant companion. Cary, his daughter, gladly would have taken him, but she has already adopted Simon and Hope from us, and has other cats and dogs of her own.

Tommy got the run of our great room while he got used to being in a new place. He is now running around the house, and has an appointment at the vet's next Thursday, along with Jewel and Arthur. He has always had weepy eyes and a snuffle in his sinuses. This has gotten a bit worse with age, so we'll have the vet check that out.

Tommy is looking for a new home with someone who wants a playful, affectionate older cat, and who doesn't mind wiping his eyes with special eye wipes to keep his white little face white.

In the meantime, we'll enjoy him here.

Here is Tommy and his Dad, who had only one request when he was in the hospital, and that was to see his Tommy

Faith heads off to foster-to-adopt

Tonight I delivered Faith to her new home for the next two weeks, and maybe for the rest of her life. I hope she's a match, because she would be a lucky cat to score a lovely quiet home with a caregiver who is home most of the time, and dedicated family who come visit.

Keep your paws crossed for her! She did great on arrival. She's clearly nervous, but she didn't disappear under the couch.

When you bring these cats to a real home, you realize how stunted their lives are in a shelter, where everything is chilly and impersonal.

You go, girl! It's "Foster a Lonely Pet for the Holidays" with Petfinder.com. I'm glad she's getting out of here and gets to experience warmth and love. She has been here since March 2009, and before that she was on the streets of Ithaca since at least August 2008.

Here are some links to earlier posts involving Faith.

We find Hope, Faith's kitten"

Finding homes on Craigslist

Some people are rabidly against posting on Craigslist. I figure if I get bad responses, I can just say "No." I've received some very nice adoptions by way of Craigslist and eBay (the classifieds, not the auction). People from more distant cities (Syracuse, etc.) often find my posts when they expand their search to check other nearby Craigslist postings. I find that I get a better quality of response if I post a photo that is cut and pasted from my Petfinder listing. People realize they we are not just someone with kittens from the backyard, and scammers also tend to stay away.

Tortellini, Beans, and Bounder just HAVE to get homes soon. They are far too active for my senior cats, but I don't want to put them in the cat facility. I'm just lucky that I have the boarding rooms to keep them in at night so my personal cats get a break from the playful activity that goes on, and on, and on. The kittens also want to cuddle up on my lap, bless them, which puts Ivan and Cricket's noses out of joint.

So keep your fingers crossed that these three beautiful young cats get their own homes for Christmas.

Christmas profile photos

It's time to get these three new homes!

Bounder

Bounder

Tortellini

Tortellini - "Get it off!"

Tortellini

Beans

TigerTom photo

...snitched from georg's Facebook page.

A new blog to add, and Feral wallpaper

I ran a search for "feral cat blogs" this morning and found The Feral Cat Rescue Project.

There is a calendar feral photo available to set as wallpaper on your computer. I like having a calendar in easy view, so I added it to my computer.

Right-click on the photo to save it.
The go to Control Panel on your computer
Click on Display
Click on Desktop
Click on Browse to find and choose the photo file.
Click Apply, then OK

There you go!

Jewel comes home

One day this summer, Christy sent me a photo of a cat who showed up in her garden. The cat looked like Jewel, who had spent two months here raising her kittens, and graces the banner of my previous blog. We compared markings and were fairly certain it was her. However Jewel disappeared, even though Christy left food out for her. Jewel was about a mile from the barn where she had originally been returned after being spayed.

Friday, the phone rang. It was Christy, and Jewel had made another appearance. I called Jewel's owners and, sure enough, they said they had not seen her in months. This time Christy scooped her up and put her in the workroom, and I drove over.

I'd felt badly about putting Jewel back out in the barn to begin with. She was far too friendly to be a barn cat, but I'd had no room at the time. Since Jewel hadn't "stuck" and was apparently going from house to house out there in the Styx, and since her owners said they would take her back but would like to see her find a home, Jewel came to stay with me again.

But first Christy offered tea, and I accepted. If I'm going to get stuck with another cat, I'm going to take all the human contact I can get. I told Christy I had to take a photo as evidence so my family knows I actually do periodically commune with humans.

Jewel was as good as gold in the crate in the car.

She has settled in quite easily here. I'll get her to the vet this week for a combo test and rabies booster.

Here's the link to Jewel with her kittens last summer.

And here she is today in the downstairs of the cat facility:

Big cat, little cat

Bear is not a cuddler, but Tortellini has decided he should be. Bear is twenty pounds. Leenie is 5.5, and she's six months old, so she's no wee kitten. She's going to be a little girl like her mom, and like most little girls, she believes the world can't possibly resist her charm. She sleeps on my wrists when I work on my laptop. It's a good thing she is tiny, with a habit like that!

HOLIDAY!!!!

Four days coming up, plus vacation days tucked in periodically until the end of the year. My poor rescue and my poor cats have been sadly neglected. So have I. The first thing I did when I got off at 2pm was take a 20 minute shower. Now I'm heading into town to check on the Fast Food Ferals and pick up wine for dinner. Then it's back here to take photos of the cats for Black Friday.

With five black cats looking for homes, it seemed like a good marketing crossover.

Laundry is already underway. Ivan and Nell have already hijacked that task, knocking over the pile ready to go to the cat facility and pre-warming one of the beds.

I have also decided I don't like the current blog layout. The banner is too large and the colors are too garish. So you'll be seeing some changes there.

I hope you all are gearing up for a few days of relaxation if you can.

Farewell to Henry...

at Texas Oasis.

I believe we need to stop claiming that territoriality will keep new cats away

Repeatedly, I see pro-TNR articles that state: "if you fix feral cats, they'll keep new cats away."

When fixing feral cats doesn't keep new cats away, this is cited by anti-TNR folk as proof that TNR does not work, and that cat advocates don't know what they are talking about. "See, look, new cats!"

Cats do in fact have territories, and in many cases they do protect them. However, unlike wild populations, cats do not necessarily move from Point A to Point B by themselves.

Most commonly, they are abandoned.

If you take a tame pregnant cats, or a batch of kittens, and dump them at a city park where there are altered ferals, those cats aren't going to move very far. They have been transported violently from the territory they knew to a territory they don't. They will latch onto the nearest source of food and shelter they can find, which is the food and shelter put out for them by caretakers. If kittens or a tame cat are dumped at a house or barn, they aren't going to set off across the fields looking for some mystical "better" place just because the resident cats beat up on them. They are going to try to stay out of the way, snatch some food when they can, suffer from wounds, catch illnesses, and become a problem.

Animal control professionals and cat rescuers are often called out for kittens dumped in some remote location. Those kittens will often sit just off the side of the road for days. Their little brains don't process that "wow, we are in trouble, we need to go look for help." Instead their genes are telling them "Sit here and wait for mom. Maybe yell really loud." Unless someone hears those yells, they die. They don't know there is a farmhouse a quarter mile down the road where someone might help them. They sit where they are put.

Male cats have it built in their behavior to move when things get overcrowded. But even friendly male cats are more likely to stay where there is a big house ("I know what a house is!") and humans coming and going, and food on a back porch.

Some cats will in fact keep other cats away. But what does that mean? Now there is a unaltered cats running around outside the colony, perhaps destined to start a new colony.

I strongly believe we need to promote the Caretaker as the reason TNR will work. When cats are fed daily, and traps are set to give cats rabies boosters, or catch injured cats, new cats will also be captured. Friendly cats and kittens can be removed, maintaining the status quo. New ferals can be altered before they spike numbers by adding new kittens to the mix.

Where there is no caretaker watching for new cats, any form of cat control will fail. Lack of a caretaker is why removal so often fails. No one wants to be the local cat killer who notes the arrival of two orange kittens under the cars in the state park parking lot, spends three hard days catching them, and then hauls them off to the local overcrowded shelter where they are killed. Average people might grit their teeth and do it the first time or two, but after awhile they get tired of putting out so much work (and paying a surrender fee), only to be known as that heartless person who kills all the cats everyone else cares about. The "cat killer" may in fact be the only one putting any effort at all into the cats...and yet they are being demonized.

This is why there are so few dedicated private "cat killers" in the world, and removal projects fail. A landlord gets tired of cats at his apartment complex, sets traps for a week or so, hauls them off to the shelter, but doesn't bother to enforce an "indoor altered cats only" requirement or monitor for new cats. So he waits until there are another 30 cats running around before trapping again. Sooner or later, the shelter says "Sorry, we are going no-kill" and he as no place to take those cats legally. So he either ignores them, employs "shoot, shovel, and shut up" (which is illegal and therefore can't be promoted as a public policy) or turns to TNR.

So let's move "territoriality" back to the minor role it deserves. I believe we set ourselves up for failure when we pull that out as a major benefit of TNR. It is a benefit only when you have territorial cats, in an area that experiences little or no abandonment. If you have that lucky mix, you are fortunate indeed.