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      Friday, September 17, 2004



11:27 AM - 09/17/2004

The topic: The latest

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Friday, September 17, 2004  Well, Little Bit is feeling a lot better.  Yesterday, she saw her kittens for the first time since Tuesday and she trilled at them.  They went up to the crate and stretched to look in at her, but the minute I got close to the crate, with the intention of opening the door and letting a kitten or two in, she struck out at me.  This not only had the result of me backing off, it also scared the kittens.  They ran out into the hallway.  I think the thing to do now is to just leave the door open to that room for a couple of hours a day and go in there myself.  Maybe just sit and read out loud so she gets used to my voice. 

The kittens are becoming fearless, as kittens do.  Joey no longer spits or hisses at me.  He wants up.  Phoebe loves to have face to face rubs.  It’s the sweetest thing.  And Chandler is pretty quiet, but I think he’ll turn out very lovable. It’s so much fun to watch them play and explore.  I’ve opened up the gate to the entryway hall.  They go down there a little bit, but so far, they haven’t been that adventurous.  This morning, after playing and running around for a few hours, I found Phoebe and Chandler back in the catcam chair.  I went into the living room looking for Joey, and I couldn’t find him.  I came back into the office and found that he’d made his way onto the chair with his brother and sister.  Where they are right now.

Brian made some comment to one of the other cats this morning about the upheaval in their lives. He said this after he noticed that Benny was in the house.  An oddity, to be sure.  I considered this for a couple of minutes and pointed out that it was not only Benny, but Sammy has been spending more of his day in the house.  And that one of the changes with the cats came with Marco being in a crate and their see-through fence going the way of the dinosaur.  That I thought a huge part of the change in the cats was the fence.  New felines aren’t all that exciting, I guess it’s not that big a change in their lives.  But that fence has been open for all of their lives and now it’s not.  Now, there’s more a feeling of being closed in, that there’s really no “out” out there.  I could see Brian thinking about it and he agreed that’s when this attitude change in so many of the cats started.

Speaking of the resident cats’ reaction to the newcomers, most of the cats don’t seem to have an opinion one way or the other.  It’s more a thing of “just leave me alone”.  Ross and Rachel’s reaction has surprised me.  I kind of thought they’d be more amenable, being so young.  But that hasn’t been the case.  At least not to start.  I think Rachel is going to accept the kittens before Ross, I think I caught her playing with Joey in the living room this morning.  It was under the skirt of the sofa cover.  After Joey was in the catcam chair, she was still out sniffing and chirping at the sofa.  And both she and Ross were playing with the cat tracker earlier.  Right now, Ross is playing with a pipe cleaner in the bedroom.  Even though they aren’t all that old, they’ve never seemed to play much.  Now, they’re making up for it.  It’s kind of cute.

And I figured out a system for cleaning the litterbox.  There was no way I was going to put my arm in there, not with her wigging out like she was.  So, I brought up my ideas to Brian and he found a crowbar for me to use.  What I do is open the door,  take out the towel in the front and use the crowbar to pull the litterbox to the front of the crate.  I clean it, then slowly push it back, then I put the towel back in.  So far, it’s working nicely.  The first time, Little Bit was sitting in the litterbox and moved when she felt it being pulled.  When I pushed it back, obviously I couldn’t get it back all the way because she was sitting there.  But Wednesday night, she found the shelf and she spends quite a bit of time laying on that, which makes it a little easier for me to do the cleaning. 

She’s eating and drinking with no problem and from what I’ve been seeing in the litterbox, her elimination is fine.  I’m pretty sure this whole thing will work out, but right now, it looks like it might take forever.  Most likely, it will be a few months at the worst, but some projects always look tougher than they actually are.  I’m hoping that’s what will happen now. Since we haven’t seen the tortie (the one we got fixed last year around Easter, who is Little Bit’s mom) in a couple of weeks, there’s no way I’d ever willingly put Little Bit back on the street.

Well, my housework has fallen behind because of the time I’ve been spending with the cats and related work, and I’d really like to get the place straightened up.  And the heat hasn’t helped, I’m incredibly tired.  Today is a little cooler and I’d best take advantage of it. 

Have a great weekend.  If anything exciting happens, I’ll be posting.

Oh, about DeeJay and Ciara.  DeeJay is still plugging along.  He’s eating and taking his fluids well.  I started him on Orbax this past week for the UTI he has.  He sneaks into the exercise room to eat and I let him.  He likes the NutroMax Salmon that’s in there.

Earlier this week, I started giving Ciara 250mg of L-Lysine twice a day and it’s been a tremendous help.  She’s hardly coughing at all.  She is bringing up quite a few hairballs, which is good, I guess.

I don’t know what’s going on with Jackson.  He didn’t seem as if he was feeling well much of this summer, which I attributed to hairballs.  He did have diarrhea a couple of times and when I hit it with the hose, it was loaded with fur.  Anyway, he’s doing better, but since he’s been doing better, he’s let me touch him a whole lot more.  I can even stroke him with both hands and give him scritches around his face and head.  He’s really mellowing out.  Right now, he’s on the patio playing with the other cats, even tried sharing a stick bug with Sammy.  With any luck, we’ll be able to get him to a vet soon and get him neutered.



How are Ciara and DJ?

Posted by Ashley @ Friday, September 17, 2004 - 2:13:05 PM

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lisaviolet is seventy something, married with no kids, takes care of lots of cats, likes taking photographs, loves Southern California weather and spends altogether too much time avoiding her responsibilities.

In her spare time, she makes pretty things to sell in her store.

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