Quick sprint to Jekyll Island

Last week I made a quick sprint to the Southeastern Animal Control Conference on Jekyll Island, which at the moment counts as my favorite place to decompress. I've visited there three times: once when I was wandering up the coast from Florida, wasting time (who gets to do that, anymore?) between my grandmother's funeral (and transport of her belongings back to my family in NY) and the No More Homeless Pets Conference in Virginia Beach. It didn't make sense to drive all the way up to NY and then back down to VA, so my truck full of antiques and my camping gear puttered from one place to another. My Uncle Ron suggested Jekyll Island, as we talked at the gathering of my grandmother's friends and family.

Horse back riding on the beach is now priced out of my range, but I managed to fit it in that first year (when it was $35). I camped and wandered. The last two trips have been for work--just happy chance that SACA likes to hold their conference on that island in high hot summer when no one else cares to go.

I don't mind baking in the sun one week a year. I always find two hours to rent a bike to ride on the hard beach. This year I ended up pushing the bike, because I misjudged the tide. It had just let out and the sand was too soft to ride on. But it was beautiful nonetheless.

I met this cat two years ago and lamented that I hadn't saved him a treat from the restaurant. This time I wrapped up a few shrimp and fed him bits. He's getting old. I hope he's here again next year.

When you see a cat, you feel compelled to rescue it.

I've been feeding my fuel tank with kerosene to keep the hot water heater running this summer, rather than paying continued high fuel oil bills. On a trip to Van Etten to buy kerosene, I found this skinny, nearly furless cat sitting by the dumpsters of the gas station. I bought her a can of food.

I noted there is a shed nearby, with a white cat sitting by the gaps that go beneath it.

I don't want to get involved in Van Etten when I can't even afford to get involved with my own village (Spencer), but it's hard to look at this poor furless thing when I might easily be able to get her fixed and treated for whatever ails her, if someone nearby is feeding them.

No one at the gas station knew of a local feeder. Checking with the liquor store was a mistake. They told me of two other cats who hang out at their own dumpsters across the road. The church nearby didn't have a name on the notice board. I guess I'll have to go back on one of my days off to see what's up.

On a more positive note, this gentleman was out walking his dog AND his cat. I did stop and ask him if that was his cat taking a stroll with them. The cat looked far too well fed to be another stray, but I felt compelled to ask. He confirmed his cat takes an evening stroll with them when he walks his dog, and called the cat their bodyguard.

Returning Gray Kitty

Grey Kitty showed up at the Hagadorn Hill colony awhile ago, and with the appearance of the abandoned Fern and her two kittens, I dropped off a trap so that they could catch Grey Kitty and we could get him neutered.

They felt that he had gotten skinny, but it appears in fact he's a medium furred cat who gets fluffy in winter, and strips down to guard hairs in the summer. I treated him with Revolution for his fleas, and during his stay, his tom cat scabs were all combed off. He likes to be scritched but doesn't think much of being picked up, and growls and hisses when I come in. However, the way to his heart is through his stomach. How many cats would bury their face in a plate of wet food when the door to freedom is about to be opened?

Grey Kitty is back home again, and now that he's a neutered boy, perhaps he'll show up with fewer scars and a nicer coat this fall.

Rose

So many cats, so little time. Rose is the cat who was abandoned here in the cold this early spring. For awhile she tolerated being kept in one of the boarding rooms I have upstairs in my house, but soon she discovered if she howled, yes HOWLED, out her front window, I would come up to see her.

I had to let her loose into my house with my pet cats because I figured my neighbors would think I'd crossed the line to hoarder and the animals were screaming for freedom. There was a lot of hissing to start, but she seemed to fit in. I shut her up at night, but let her loose during the day.

However, Ivan, my own special friend-cat, is jealous, and today there was a genuine knock-down drag out fight when he felt Rose was spending too much time close to me. Luckily I was right there and I was able to yell an end to the fight and express my displeasure with both parties, vocally. Ivan has also pulled the hairy eyeball on Bear in the past, but they got over it, so I hope Ivan and Rose will work things out as well.

Rose is currently hanging out on the catio, while Ivan snoozes near me on the porch. Sweet Rose needs a home. She's quite talkative and affectionate, and very gentle with people. She is playful, and if you prefer not to have her sitting on her, she will relocate nicely to the chair beside you. I cannot help but wonder who loved her once, and what louse dropped her out here in the country.

The kittens did not make it.

The two little kittens did not survive.

They had more "ups" than "downs" so I thought they were out of the woods. They both had good appetites. The littlest one suddenly seemed uncoordinated and stopped eating. Sometimes you can just push a kitten through one of these low points by syringe feeding until they get their appetite back, but the little kitten began crying in pain when any attempt to syringe feed her was made. I took her to the veterinarian, where they tentatively diagnosed distemper, and we chose to put her down. The second kitten happily ate a big breakfast from his bottle. He was a loud boy, and I saw no problems with him. When I came back from the vet, he was sound asleep, so I let him sleep a bit more. When I woke him up, he started bashing around the box, without making a sound. I thought at first I had startled him, but it continued, and it was clear he was suffering neurologically. So it was back to the vet, where heads were shaken sadly, and he was put down as well. The veterinary staff felt they should be tested for rabies, even though their mom was acting normally, since there isn't much research on how rabies is passed in utero. Perhaps mom had rabies but was not clinical yet, and the kittens contracted it before they were born, and is progressed more quickly in them than in the mom. It was unlikely, but couldn't be ruled out without pulling a lot of books off the shelves, so I went ahead and called the health department. They were extremely helpful (this was 4:30 pm on July 3rd, right before the holiday), and by Friday morning the results were back: Negative.

It's always sad to lose kittens, and even sadder to tell the people who rescued them, and even though I knew Valarie and Craig would be understanding, I put it off almost a week. And failed to blog as well. I finally called to let them know, and then I was off for travel for work, and the blog was neglected.

Mom cat is doing great and will go off to be spayed this week. She still looks like a kitten herself. She is no longer emaciated. She doesn't much like to be picked up, and I plan to work on that once she's upstairs with the other cats.

Raven goes home

Little Raven is spay/neutered, microchipped, and treated for her problem with lice. She probably could have gone back for her soft-release in her home barn before now, but I had to travel for work so the timeline didn't mesh very well.

She now has glossy black fur now that the lice are gone, and is a wee tiny spitfire without a friendly hair on her. See her originally shabby, skinny, lice ridden photo here. She'll stay in her cage in Donna and Tim's barn to get used to "home" before the door is quietly opened early one evening. Hopefully she will stay, since she was hanging around here for quite awhile before she was caught.

The cage is a ferret cage (around $225 at Petsmart) with the floor hole cut larger (hacksaw required) and I really like it. All four doors open individually, and the extra shelf is sturdy enough for a cat. I got this one at a church sale for $100, but would gladly pay full price down the road to replace some of my other cages. My only complaint would be that the wheels are cheap and will break.

Send good vibes for Raven that she "sticks" when she is released. She will have a good home here with Donna and Tim.

"Oh, the places you will go..."

I travel for work. This sometimes mean kittens, or Molly, sometimes go with me. This weekend I was off to an event in NJ at St. Huberts Animal Welfare Center to celebrate 20 Million Petfinder adoptions...with the Cake Boss. Yes, I know I don't have TV and that I've never seen Cake Boss, however my mother likes it, so I was optimistic about the experience.

Molly's kennel was overbooked, and I had the two bottle babies. While dogs were welcome at the event, I was supposed to be helping set it up, so towing Molly around wasn't really an option. At the eleventh hour, Nancy and Steve said they would pup-sit her. Whew!

The kittens came along, because they have been having issues, and I don't like leaving kittens with issues in a foster home. Not because the fosterer can't handle it, but because sometimes all the stay-in-touch phone calls take up more time than actually bringing the kittens along.

I have a regular travel set-up for kittens. It's a medium Rubbermaid tote with a largish hole cut in the top so air can get in, but the kittens can't crawl out (which will happen if you leave the top off). I have two Snuggle Safes, a small cooler for KMR, and a LL Bean bag for towels, etc.

The hotel I found was pet-friendly, with only a $25 pet fee, which is incredibly low. The room was only about $100, (which is pretty low in Jersey), and it was very nearly an apartment, with a full refrigerator, sink, microwave, and even dishes, complete with coffee mugs and wine glasses. If you ever need a hotel in Morristown, NJ, you need look no further than the Hyatt House.

The kittens found the mirror in the bathroom fascinating. I realize it is probably wrong to laugh when a tiny kitten bonks into a mirror to visit that other mirror-kitten, but I'm afraid I could not help it. They still look shabby, primary because they get the eye ointment on their fur. I could give them more full-body baths, but kittens do not find the Blow-Dryer Monster very reassuring.

I can not say enough nice things about the Cake Boss production staff. Seriously. That's one "reality" show you can watch and feel certain they really are trying to help out the organizations for whom they build and reveal a cake. You'll have to stayed tuned this fall for the actual episode (I'll be sure to give some warning here when it gets close), however I would assume they take all of their cake-adventures with the same seriousness, realizing that most celebrations have a message behind it, and trying hard to get that message across to their viewers...not just reveal the cake. I was impressed. And I am very hard to impress.

The St. Hubert's office staff babysat my kittens while I went out to lunch with my co-workers, whom I normally only see in Internet Land. This is where the tote comes in handy, because my kittens wouldn't be spreading their eye germies to another shelter, like they might in an open-door crate. Obviously, leaving them in the car on a 95 degree day was not an option. My co-workers were absolutely willing to fry on a patio so I could bring the kittens along, but thankfully St. Huberts watched over them so we could commune in the blessed comfort of an air-conditioned restaurant. Then I said goodbye, fetched my kittens, and headed on back to rural NY, where it was in the 80s, thank goodness.

I shall do a blog post on my travel set-up later. Maybe others will find it useful, or can share their own kitten-carrying devices.

I'm off to go fetch Molly from Nancy and Steve's place, where she is likely having much more fun that she will have back here!

Sorry I left you hanging....

There has been lots of kitten drama these past few days. Sick kitten #1 turned out to be constipated. I probably caused some of that with the pedialyte. Once that was cleared out (primarily via butt-soaks, gently keeping him moving, and some very gentle body massage), his appetite returned. Then the healthy kitten started in with these spasms in her midsection...something I had never seen before. They grew worse and I was beginning to wonder if I might lose her. I searched and searched on the internet, and finally found one statement that kittens who were too cold could suffer neurological issues that could cause muscle spasms. The kittens were on a fuzzy towel on a heating pad, but they were in the open air of the bathroom during the day, so I moved them into a small box with a cover (and a thermometer inside, to make sure I didn't bake them), and by morning, I had a happy, hungry, spasm-free kitten. Which just goes to show, you can have bottle-raised a hundred kittens, and still do something stupid. They are now in a clear plastic bin, with a towel over the top, on the heating pad.

Anyway, they are filling out. They still have that pinched look of a starved kitten about them, but they are strong and eating well.

Fern, their mom, has gone into heat in the cat facility. At least she's a "phiiiirrrrp!" cat, and not a howler!

1:30 am . Very sick kitten.

5:30 am update: The kitten is feeling well enough to climb out of his box and be trundling around the bathroom when I came in. He had some more water, then some KMR, although he still doesn't want to suck the bottle again. Water and amoxicillin can be a wonderful thing. I'll pick up some pedialyte to make their KMR up with for a few days and I will bring in the scale and weigh them, then do some real math on what their amoxi dosage should be until I can reach the veterinarian Monday. He's currently on the floor in the bathroom rolling around with his sister. I'll feed then again in an hour and box them back up. Let's hope he's on the mend.

1:30 am The fuzzy kitten is the same or worse. He blew some more green snot out his nose while I attempted to feed him, and I now worry that perhaps his lungs are infected and he has pneumonia. I switched to water from KMR and separated him from his buddy, because she kept wanting to suck on his fur. I'm not sure what I'll find in the morning. He seems to have some strength, so I'll get up in a few hours to get more fluids into him, and pick up some more pedialyte in the morning if he's still with us.

Then I had to wash well and change my clothing before crawling back in bed because my senior cats insist on sleeping right up against me.

Poor kitten...

Fern's kittens

I finally took a photo of the kittens:

Their eyes were closed when they arrived, however they were big enough that they should have been opened, so I gently soaked them open. Pus. Yick. Lots of it. I cannot begin to tell you how disgusting it is to finally crack open an eyelid and have pus start rolling out. They've been getting eye ointment. The first day was pretty nasty. They would keep sealing closed and every time I soaked them open, there was more pus. Within 24 hours they had pretty much cleared up. You can see there are still issues, but they look so much better.

They were both eating very well, but one kitten has a stuffed up nose that doesn't seem to be getting better. He started to get a tiny bit snotty and couldn't breathe while sucking on the bottle, so I've started them both on a teeny bit of antibiotic (because of course, it's Saturday, and the veterinarians are all closed) in their milk, and the stuffed up kitten just chews the KMR milk out of the nipple with his mouth open. I expect there will be quite a bit of improvement by the end of tomorrow and he'll be back to sucking normally

I did take them into Fern. However she only wanted to nurse them, not wash them, so I took them back again. She has no milk to feed them. She also kept rolling over on them in her enthusiasm to cuddle.

I was in the closet and found a clean Hammermill Paper box, which made me laugh. I have no idea where it came from. They are almost too big for it, but they'll stay it in tonight.

Typical: It's more fun to sleep where I can drive you batty with how uncomfortable I look...

Please note the nice chair all padded up as comfortable cat-sleeping space.

Orzo checks in...

...and look at his gorgeous lady friend!

Orzo is brother to Beans. We received a call from Orzo's dad because he has found a feral cat family in Cortland that needs help.

Wings is running...er...snoozing...with the big dogs

...at his new home

Elsa (blind), playing

She is such a pretty cat.

Cats who say "thanks"

This is a very dark video, but I'm adding in just for the glimpse at the end of a very relieved cat who is clearly glad to be warm and dry and fed for the first time in her very short life.

It's the season for kitten dumping

The night before last, my neighbors Craig and Valarie called, with the sound of kittens mewing in the background. Someone had dumped a cat--little more than a kitten herself--and two tiny kittens.

Craig came down and picked up a trap the next morning, and they had the mother cat captured the next day. The kittens are in pretty rough shape---skinny, with infected eyes and runny noses, but with plenty of energy left. Poor little Fern, the mom cat, was initially terrified but was quickly won over by food once she was here in a cage.

After she had her second meal of the day, she rolled around and around in her bed---probably happy to not be hungry for the first time since she stopped nursing on her own mother. She's absolutely emaciated. She has enlarged nipples, so she definitely is the mom, but there is no milk to speak of for the kittens, so I have been feeding them pedialyte and KMR.

Pictures of the kittens soon!

Today is Discover Your Impact Day at Discovery Communication (my Mothership), and bless my boss for assigning us the task of helping shelters and rescue groups promote their pets, which means one of the things I'll be doing today is getting all new photos of The Owl House adoptables.

It's a beautiful sunny day, so hopefully that will help me some good shots!

Too bad they all look so grumpy. They just want to nap!

Garbage: The Continuing Saga

The above photo will probably only mean something to Donna and Tim, and maybe Valarie and Craig, who drive by frequently.

I have a few very unpleasant tasks that I've been putting off for awhile. I've discovered the best way to make myself accomplish these is to put myself in a position where I have no choice.

After the flood of fall 2011, I got a dumpster to deal with my lack of a trash transfer station. Previously, I had used three large black professional garbage "cans" which were parked right by the road in front of my barn. They were OK looking as far as garbage goes. On the outside, that is.

Despite being by the road, raccoons would visit them, and the smartest and strongest learned to get the tops off. Or the wind would blow the tops off, and the raccoons would visit. They found nothing worth eating, but would rip open the bags. Litter would spill into the bottom of the can, and of course the bag could not be lifted, because it would tear.

You can guess what I did about it. Nothing.

So over the course of time, two of the cans had the bottom third filled with ripped trash bags of old cat litter. As far as nasty trash goes, you would be surprised to learn that old cat litter isn't so bad....as long as it stays dry, which this did.

However, tipping these huge cans, removing the lovely waste, and rebagging it, was not high on my list of fun things to do. So there they sat.

Well, a friend of mine is getting married, and is having an outdoor wedding, and they needed garbage cans. Here were these very professional looking cans. So what did I do? I offered them up for use at the wedding.

This meant last weekend I rolled up my sleeves, broke out the leather gloves, and went to work. A few old sheets to dump the cans out on, and a couple of primal yells in order to muster strength enough to tip the cans on end, and a lot of sweat (it was hot last weekend) was all it took.

And a weedeater to clean up the area afterward. And a lot of soap and water and disinfectant for the cans. As well as a few days of sun to bake the cans.

The front of the barn looks much better without the line of trash cans. And that's one more nasty task out of my life. From now on, the trash company deals with my cat trash.

No one talks about how to throw stuff out when you think about getting involved in animal rescue. But it's a big issue.

Kitties in-house

The Owego/Lisle farm is getting finished up, and we are working on the house cats, now. "Little Bit" is one of those cats who is a tiny ginger streak to strangers. She only loves the man of the house, and spends her time on his lap in his wheelchair. However in the cage at my place, she gets over her hissy fit pretty quick and turns into a tiny lovebug. She's squinting at the flash in this shot.

The veterinarian reported she had pyometra(infection of the uterus) when I picked her up after her spay, so Little Bit is on antibiotics for 10 days. She's a lucky kitty. If she had been left as she was, she could well have fallen very ill and died.

Then this scared little girl (?) showed up at Donna and Tim's barn (who adopted Wings). Of course...if you adopt a cat, it's certain a stray will show up on your porch. Donna trapped her and we caged her up, hoping she would show signs of being tamed, but it appears she is feral. She also has a skin condition. Ringworm? Lice? I can't get close enough to tell. I'm going to pick up some Frontline for her today in case it is lice (Revolution, which I normally use because it kills roundworms and earmites in addition to fleas, doesn't necessarily kill lice, I understand). It is ringworm, it will resolve on its own in a few months, and it's not like I can give her lime sulfer baths.

Little Bit goes home today, and I think I'll talk to Donna about moving this cage back to her barn. It might make sense to have her back at the barn she's going to live in, during the two weeks we are waiting for her spay appointment. Otherwise she'll be sitting her two weeks, then another week recovering from her spay, then two more weeks being reintroduced to her barn home.

Baby bears!

Molly was just barking on the porch. At a woodchuck, I assumed, at this hour. I took a deep breath so I would not yell at her (because I do want her to bark at bears) and went outside with a treat. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something big and black, and realized the bear was only thirty feet away in the side yard. I grabbed Molly and ran in the house for my camera, but ended up with the flipvideo camera.

I tried to get some video through the great room window when I saw the first cub come down the tree, so like a typical fool I sprinted for the door and managed to get a little video of mom bear in the grass by the middle three, just a paw on Cub Two, and Cub Three climbing down.

So here you go, so everyone knows I'm not making up my bear tales...

Yes, 2:30 in the afternoon. Bummer.