So, I found out yesterday who’s crapping on the futon. And elsewhere.
It’s Jackie. I know it’s him because I caught him crapping on the bed on my pillow yesterday evening. I stopped him before he had a chance to finish and whipped the covers off of the bed and put the spread in the washer last night. It’s in an additional rinse cycle right now. A couple of days ago I found he’d gone on the printer cover in the office (I’ve got plastic covers on the printers themselves, a folded over blanket on top of that, a folded towel on top of the Epson and a light fleece blanket over it all. I’ve got so much up there because the cats like to sleep on it and I’m always afraid of pee. The printers are safe.
I took that blanket outside and hosed the solids off of it, then washed it in the hot cycle. I did that with the bedspread last night (I was able to wipe up most with papertowels, then covered the area in Shout, then put it in the washer). This morning, I see more on the futon, so those need to be washed. At least they weren’t fresh spots, but had dried. We don’t know why he’s been so bad lately, but there’s really not a lot we can do. Sure I could trap him and take him to a vet and have meds prescribed. Then what? I can’t medicate him, I’m not going to put him in a big carrier. The meds he needs most likely taste horrible and he wouldn’t take them even if I was amenable to crating him. So, I’ll just cross my fingers and pray that he gets over this soon. He does go through phases, but this is the worst. I do think, though, that if I quit shutting the door during the daytime (hey, it’s cold!) he’d take it outside more often. I’m going to stay on top of the litterboxes, too.
And that all got me to thinking about when he’s gone. Sad to say, I most likely won’t miss him much. That might sound awful, but for people like us, with a lot of cats, most of them from the streets and many of them avoiding humans, there’s not a lot of interaction with him. My interaction with Jackie consists of cleaning up after him. Every once in a while, we can get in a little neck scratch on him, but it doesn’t last long. But we take comfort knowing that his life here was better than a life on the streets.
Then the sound of a cat puking got me out of bed, since I didn’t see Bart in bed with us. Yep, it was him. *sigh* I found dried puke, from an unknown cat, on the little throw rug in front of the fireplace. And after giving out kibble, I watched Mickey puke (small hairball in the solids, so that doesn’t worry me), then I watched Potter puke. You see so many cats puking and you wonder what’s going on. One of the possibilities is the fountain on the patio, it might have some rain water in it from last week’s rain. Brian’s going to clean that out today. And the “pond” part of the pool has a lot of nasty brackish water from last week’s rain, he’ll flush that out today, too. Get rid of anything the cats might be drinking from that’s making them sick. Although I don’t think Potter or Bart drink from that, the other cats might.
And I mentioned last week in passing that Notwally hasn’t been around. It’s been two weeks since we’ve gotten a glimpse of him. Trapped and euthanised? Hit by a car? Coyote catch? I don’t know, probably never will. I don’t have any idea where he spent his days and nights, he only came here to eat. But on the upside, I saw a red cat across the street yesterday afternoon. And I saw him again this morning, sitting outside the gate with KittyMeezer laying next to him.
Gilligan’s back! Kitty just loves him and he’s looking fine. I guess he stayed away because of Notwally (which is another reason I think we may have seen the last of him). I just hope that Kitty doesn’t follow Gilly and stays right here. Kitty has gone blind in one eye, I don’t think his hearing is all that great and he’s just better here where he’s familiar with everything. But it was very, very nice to see Gilly back.
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