Cat toys...

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It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything. Not much has changed, the cats are still in charge.

A few months ago we thought we’d cut back on their dry food. All Ernie eats is dry and it just can’t be good for his delicate digestive system. We devised a plan of feeding them unlimited dry for an hour twice a day. It didn’t really work out like we’d hoped. Around 2 AM I woke up to Herbie tapping me in the face, crying. Pippi was walking on me and Jack and Hurley were wrestling on the bed. I realized they were unhappy about the lack of food so I got up and put some out. They all acted as though they hadn’t eaten in weeks, so I ended up giving them six bowls of dry.

Bob bought them a bird cat toy. It’s a bird on the end of a spring, when you tap the bird it chirps. Ernie was petrified of it and every time it chirped he ran and hid. At first it seemed like a bomb, no one was terribly interested in it. One night after we’d gone to bed I heard it chirping over and over again. The next night we were watching tv and Hurley sat in front of it, batting at it repeatedly. I think he spent a good 10 minutes chewing on it and smacking it. He tends to wait until we’re watching a show or we’ve gone to bed and then he begins playing with it. I looked at it yesterday and he’s been chewing on it, eventually he’s going to take it apart.

There was no Christmas tree again this year. Jack just can’t be trusted, I put up a tiny little tree on the tv and he found it immediately and had to check it out and chew on the branches. He also figured out how to open the pantry door, so we come home and the pantry door is wide open. He’s mostly interested in digging out any toys that get shoved under the door, but I have caught him climbing the shelves. I figure it’s just a matter of time before he realizes that’s where the treats are kept.

They have a big basket of cat toys, which for the most part, go untouched. They like toy mice and things that don’t belong to them. When we buy mice for them we get the big bag of them and they always disappear. Turns out Jack and Pippi like to kick them under the oven. So about once a week we pull the drawer out and get the mice out. Lately there have been fewer mice under the oven. I convinced Bob to lift up the couch so I could check under there…I found over 20. It was like Christmas for them. I probably should have held some of them back because they’re all missing again. Hurley pulls the fur off the toy mouse and likes to kick the fur around; we call it the ‘sock’. Jack likes the inside of the mouse, we call it the ‘shoe’. I found several that were partially torn apart and that made them very happy.

Cats aren't totally aloof....

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My mom had to put her dog down yesterday. She was 13 which is pretty good for a big dog, but it was still very sad. She was a really good girl. We went with my mom to the vet to put April (the dog) down. I couldn’t be in the room when they did it; it was just too much for me. Bob stayed with my mom and April, he said it was very sad and April was such a good girl. She went quickly and quietly, she was very tired.

We were both pretty subdued last night and the cats knew something wasn’t right. Lucky is particularly intuitive. He knows when the other cats aren’t feeling well, he knows when we’re sad or not feeling well. When Jack was a tiny little baby he had an upset stomach one night. Lucky was so sweet, he curled up with Jack and comforted him. Jack had Lucky’s tail in between his front paws like a little blanket. I wish I had taken a picture of them. When Ernie first got sick Lucky did the same thing, I have pictures of Lucky with his arm around Ernie.

After I fed everyone this morning I went back to bed in the spare room because Bob was snoring so loudly. When I woke up Lucky, Ernie, Jack, Hurley and Pippi were on the bed with me and Herbie was laying in the door way on the floor. I can count the number of times they’ve all been on the bed like that on one hand.

Packing for vacation

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We just got back from a few days in Vegas. I brought my suitcase up and everyone swarmed it. I can’t decide if Hurley thought he was preventing me from packing by getting in it or if he thought it was a new bed. As soon as I opened it he climbed in and made himself at home. He looked very comfortable and wasn’t happy when I pulled him out so I could put my clothes in, he tried to get in after I’d filled it.

I started putting food out for the neighbor cat and now we’re feeding some strays. One of them is fairly tame and appears to have been fixed. I’m assuming that’s why his ear is tipped. He’s awfully friendly for a feral cat though so I almost wonder if he didn’t belong to someone that left him behind when they moved. In any case I know I can’t leave him out there when it gets cold so I’m trying to figure out what to do with him. I could take him to the shelter or possibly my vet could take him. He’s a big orange cat with a sweet face. I would love to keep him but we’re at the limit now and I don’t know how an adult cat would do here, Pippi already growls at Ernie from time to time.

6 Sick cats....

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One of the hazards of having six cats is the possibility of having six sick cats at once. Right now five of the six are sick. Actually Ernie just finished his antibiotics. Herbie has remained healthy; I think he was exposed to everything when he was living with my mom’s cat.

A week ago if you had asked me who would be the toughest to get a pill in I would have said Pippi or Lucky…turns out Hurley is The Worst. He bit me, he bit Bob twice and he sunk a claw into me that went so deep he couldn’t retract it himself, I had to manually do it. To say he doesn’t want to take a pill is an understatement. The next most difficult is Jack, he starts drooling and frothing so he can spit the pill out. It’s a huge production that always results in scratches and bites. Bob wraps them up in throw blanket creating a straight jacket. I have some water ready and we tilt their heads back and jam the pill in and follow it up with water. This technique works great on Ernie, not so good on the rest of them. Sometimes they swallow, more often than not they spit the pill out and we start over again. Lucky was crying and screaming before I even handed him off to Bob. If it wasn’t so stressful it’d be funny. He sounds like someone is torturing him and I haven’t even picked him up yet.

Hurley figured out what was going on and he hid in this soft cube we have. It’s soft sided, it’s got two holes in it. He wouldn’t come out, I tried shaking him out and he wasn’t budging. I tried to pull him out and he tried to bite me. So we turned it into his straight jacket. I really wish I could have gotten a picture of the face, he was SO mad. His pupils were fully dilated and he was squinting at us. He pouts all day afterwards, he won’t let us near him. Jack seems to forget and move on pretty fast. Pippi is actually pretty good about it, go figure.

This is the first time we both said six cats was insane. When they’re healthy and low maintenance it’s not that big of a deal, they’re manageable. But right now it’s just really, really stressful. They look pathetic because they don’t feel well and then we have to force a pill in them. It’s just horrible.

I want to know why someone hasn’t invented a nasal spray for cats. With all the new technology you’d think someone would have manufactured SOMETHING to make giving cats medication easier. I tried sneaking a pill in wet food, they sniffed it and turned their noses up. I stuck it in cream cheese, they licked all the cream cheese off and spit the pill out. I tried Cool Whip, same deal. It makes sense though, what cat is going to eat something that’s bitter? You can’t even bribe them like you could a kid.

They're kind of like kids...

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Ernie picked up an upper respiratory infection at the vet's. Jack has it and now Lucky is sneezing, it's like when kids pick something up at day care. Ernie has been on antibiotics since last week and we're almost done. Now Jack needs them, which means Lucky probably will also. And of course it can't just be liquid antibiotics, it has to be a pill. I'm learning though, when this is done I'll be able to medicate them all.

I knew Jack wasn't feeling well when I heard him in the back of my closet sneezing. He has shown no interest in picking at the tape on the screen door. I cleaned out the refrigerator the other day and normally Jack would have been all over that. Today I did the pantry, Jack was nowhere to be seen. I feel so bad for him, he looks SO pathetic. Usually when I make Bob's lunch Jack cries for lunch meat and tries to get up on the counter, he slept through everything yesterday. I can't believe I'm saying this but I miss his antics.

More about Jack

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I found some old pictures of stuff Jack has done in the past. He and Hurley turned two yesterday, I really thought he would have mellowed out by now. Hurley definitely has, but he was never that energetic to begin with. Jack hasn’t slowed down at all. I think he’s worse now that he has Pippi to plot with. I’ll say it again, Jack is an exceptional cat and the day he slows down we’ll probably be sad because it will mean he’s old.

When we brought Jack home he was the smallest out of his litter. I had to go back and look at his paperwork to make sure I got his weight right, he was 8 ounces. That’s like a block of cheese. Hurley was just a dot over a pound at 1 pound 2 ounces. I worried about Jack since he was so small and he wasn’t a big eater. When you sign up to foster they warn you about Failure to Thrive syndrome. Sometimes kittens just don’t mature or gain weight and there’s nothing that can be done for them; they eventually die. Because that was always in the back of my mind I really watched Jack to make sure he got his share of food. Even then Hurley wasn’t shy about snarfing all the food he could get. It’s funny how some things never change.

Pippi was a punk as a kitten and she’s still a punk. We love her, but she’s kind of mean. Try to imagine a tiny 2 pound kitten growling at you…that’s what Pippi was like.

We were talking about how different Ernie and Pippi are. It’s like different ends of the spectrum. Ernie is so mellow and good natured and Pippi is just difficult. Ernie picked up an upper respiratory infection at the vet, so he’s on antibiotics in addition to his pooping medicine. He’s SO good about taking a pill, I can’t imagine what it would be like trying to get a pill in Jack or Pippi. She would probably bite me. He doesn’t like it but he doesn’t claw me or bite me. I learned a new little trick. I jam the pill down his throat and then very quickly shoot his tuna flavored medicine in, he swallows and it doesn’t taste too bad. The key is shooting some liquid in there right after you get the pill in. They have to swallow it and the pill goes with it.

Days like this...

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It's days like this that make me question our sanity for adopting six cats.

I have a lot of stories like this morning’s, probably because we have six cats and that increases the likelihood of stuff like this happening. Honestly, this isn’t that unusual..it’s frustrating but not really out of the ordinary.

Breakfast time is 5:00 AM, I try not to give in earlier because I know they will just start pestering me earlier and earlier. This morning Bob had a bad nightmare around 3:00 AM, I’m pretty sure anyone with their window’s open heard him yelling. Unfortunately that woke all the cats up. So from roughly 3 until 5 they kept waking me up. In retrospect I should have just gotten up around 3:30 and fed them, but I was trying to hold them off until 5.

After I fed them I told Bob he needed to get up for work, I wasn’t going to be his human snooze alarm today. He got up and went in the spare room and I fell back asleep. He woke me up about 20 minutes later saying we had a ‘problem’. He could hear Pippi under the bed growling, but couldn’t see her. Finally he realized she was IN the box spring, growling at Ernie who was under the bed. It kind of reminded me of that Twilight Zone episode where the kid goes into another dimension. Anyway, at 5:45 we turned the bed upside down to try to find the hole she made. Bob was yelling at me because he had to go to work, I was yelling at him because I was half asleep. We found the hole but Pippi wasn’t budging. Bob left me to deal with her while he got in the shower. She just kept growling at me and backing away. I went downstairs to get some treats thinking that would entice her out on her own. When I came back upstairs she was out, prancing around. I put tape on the hole, like it’s really going to make a difference, and tried to put the bed back together.

We put the bed back together as best we could, Bob left for work and I went back to bed. I kept waking up though because I thought I heard Jack pulling the tape off. I don’t even know why I bothered with tape.

It gets better….I tried to put the bed back together and I noticed the bed frame is missing some bolts. I found one of the bolts in the water dish, god only knows where the other ones are.

Feeding time...

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I’ve always heard that you can’t over feed a cat; supposedly they will stop eating when they’re full. Whoever said that never met Herbie. Herbie will eat until he barfs and he’s been doing that since he was a baby. I thought he would outgrow it but it’s only gotten worse. It happens several times a week. The good thing is he usually gets it all back in his food dish so clean up isn’t too bad.

Lucky and Hurley race to finish their food and then clean up whatever Pippi, Ernie, and Jack have left. Jack isn’t a big eater; I usually have to carry him to his food dish at dinner time. Then he just picks at his food and goes back to whatever he was doing. When WE eat it’s a different story. Jack likes people food and so does Hurley, Lucky and Pippi. Jack is very persistent when he’s begging, who would have guessed right?

Hurley is the least discerning, he will eat almost anything. Honestly I’ve never seen a cat eat like Hurley does. His absolute favorite people food is asparagus. He turned his nose up at fish and went for the asparagus.

Lucky is very polite when he begs. He puts his front paws on the table and looks at what we’re eating and cries. He never jumps on the table or claws us; he just waits patiently for Bob to give him some of our dinner. He’s slow so often Hurley or Jack steals his share and then eats their own. I have to admit I’ve given Lucky Cheez It’s and chips.

Pippi is a picky eater, she’ll beg but if Bob gives her some meat she just plays with it. When it’s time for wet food she acts like she’s starving and she has to be fed first. But she doesn’t really eat much of her wet, if it’s a flavor she doesn’t approve of she’ll just stare at me. She does however like ice cream and milk and she’s not shy about helping herself to Bob’s ice cream and cereal.

Herbie is only interested in food he can’t have. He thinks I should give him raw chicken or ground turkey. I did that one time and learned the hard way that raw meat is bad for cats. Apparently cats can’t really digest raw meat since they’re so domesticated. Poor Herbie had stomach issues for about a week after that.

Ernie has zero interest in people food and most wet. If all he ever got was dry food he’d be happy. He doesn’t even care about that fancy stuff like Sheba, he licks the gravy off and moves on to the dry food.