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« This Week on HGTVs “Dream House”:
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The Cat Report

It’s been a busy time in pet rescue, so I really want to thank Scott for making my girlish dreams come true by staking Bill O’Reilly’s column. His post regarding Bertie Wooster’s stupider brother’s latest offering was equally enchanting.

So, Scott, here’s what I did in your honor these past few days:

Saturday: Adopted out two cats at the weekly pet adoption event at Petsmart. Took in an 11-year-old cat whose owner had died after the owner’s daughter found out that the cat was sending her to the hospital with asthma attacks. The cat was pretty mellow, so I left her in one of the empty cages at Petsmart and put one of my foster cats in the other empty cage. So, I’m down one in net cat worth.

Sunday: Made up for all the cleaning I didn’t do Saturday while at Petsmart. Took in a 3-month-old kitten who had been given to some students as a wedding present after her owners were threatened with eviction for having a pet. So, cat net worth is now the same as before.

Monday: Was called by a woman who found a 6-week-old kitten in a field near her home. Told her we were full and to call the municipal shelter. She said that she already had, and they were full and so it would be euthanized. So, took the kitten and put it with the two I’ve been bottle feeding (a pure white boy and a white girl with tan and black on her head) Later was called by somebody on vacation who found 6 little kittens in their RV (apparently the mother cat had moved her kittens to the RV before they left home, and the people didn’t notice until they were here, 10 hours away). Said I would take the kittens. Turns out that the kittens are about 5 weeks old, but happy to eat canned cat food mixed with KMR. 3 are Siamese-esqe, 1 is white and tan, 1 is black and white, and 1 is black. My net cat worth is now up 7, and soon I will corner the market on kittens!!!

I’ll post photos as soon as I get to it. I did have to buy a new mouse after a cat chewed up my old one (yeah, cats are not into figurative naming), so I am wary about introducing them to any other electronic devices, but I need to take pictures now, while the kittens are cute and adorable and not yet evil.

Oh, and Lacey is still a big pain and the rest of the cats are still destroying all I hold dear. And that’s the report for this week.

Posted by s.z. on Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 at 11:16 am.

5 Responses to “The Cat Report”

*looking nervously at the exit*

So, um, you’re the neighborhood crazy cat lady?

*lacing shoes*

Left by actor212 on July 13th, 2010

s.z. is the haplessly big-souled neighborhood cat-fosterer, is what she is!

It’s like being one of the few people in an organization who’s actually willing to volunteer to do stuff. Pretty soon EVERYbody knows how to get in touch with you.

Hats off to you, s.z.

Left by Li'l Innocent on July 13th, 2010

Just out of curiosity, how do you keep all these cats from terrorizing each other? We just got a new one, our third, and now we have a cat in each bedroom and one in my office. Two of them hide almost all the time, and the new cat stalks around like she owns the place, despite our following all the rules on introductions that we could find on the internet.

Left by Anon on July 13th, 2010

Once again, please allow me to say if I had the decency you have in your little finger I would be a better person than I am.

Left by Weird Dave on July 14th, 2010

Dave, seconded.

Anon, we had a cat solo for about three years before a stray moved in with us. They really never liked each other despite many efforts to properly introduce them or to provide safe, delineated space, or anything else we could think of. They spent about fifteen years not liking each other, we kept waiting for them to get along.

After a while, it got so the older one would hiss if the younger one got too close, and occasionally would swat her if the younger one tried to pounce on her tail, but no blood was ever drawn. Every year we got a new bottle of cat wound spray at the pet store, just in case, and every year we discarded the expired one unopened. It seemed a small price to pay for a little peace of mind, though having a vet five minutes walk away also helped. But, seriously, it never really happened. And the older cat was neurotic, jealous, territorial, and grumpy, the younger one playful.

After the older one died, we got two new rescue kittens, a brother and sister this time. (This is my first male cat, and I tend to worry about stories I’ve heard about them spraying even if they’ve been neutered, etc, but so far he’s been no real trouble except for a tendency to try to tear up my carpet.)

The old cat *hates* the new kittens. Which, considering, is actually pretty funny. The new kittens spent three or four months sequestered in the back room when it turned out they had ringworm, so they never got introduced at all, really, and the older cat had more time than we’d hoped to become entrenched as the sole cat.

The two are hyperactive even two years later, with a tendency to pounce on the older cat, and they’ve been squeezing her out of her alpha cat status, so you’d think she’d have plenty of reason to kill them. She’s mostly settled for swatting if they get too close, but we’ve only had one small scratch, early on, on a nose. The rest of the time, it’s pretty much just grumpiness. She’s been the world’s sweetest tempered cat for fifteen years, so it’s a little sad to see her getting neurotic, but I suppose old age may be contributing to that. She keeps her tail down more now, and she is more likely to try to sleep with my partner and I on either side, presumably using us as barricades, but on the whole they’ve all settled in pretty well.

I’m told that multi-cat households can be a lot of fun, watching the interactions between them. I’m sort of getting some of that with the brother and sister, but we still buy the wound spray, and we still have the emergency vet’s number on the door. But I can even lock all three of them in the master bedroom together when, for example, I have repairmen tromping through the place. I wouldn’t go on a weeklong vacation leaving them alone, though, but that’s as much because the one girl is getting pretty old as anything else.

So, give them time. They’ll probably never be pals, but they can learn to work around each other if you have enough space and you solve big problems quickly. Consider a second litterbox if you have room, and try to make sure everyone gets food without having to be too close. If you can give them hiding places and time out spots where the others won’t bug them, that’s even better.

Left by D. Sidhe on July 15th, 2010

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