He is a boy and he is barely two years old. The reason he looks so hammered is that he has two abcesses one on the top of his face and one on his shoulder which usually means he has been battling with other Toms for dominance of females or for territory. This could also explain his missing eye.

The eye is gone- it is shattered and at the time of this injury he had to be (according to the vet) in tremendous pain, but now the globe has shriveled up and died and the pain isn’t there. The only reason to do the surgery would be for cosmetic reasons so we are not pursuing this at this time.

He has been neutered, his abcesses drained and cleaned. Unsure of how feral he is, the vet is reluctant to put drains in, so we opted for a heavy antibiotic shot and anti-inflammatory. They will de-flea and deworm him for us and I will keep him in the deck enclosure to see how he does with socialization as time goes on.

His canines are busted (probably in the fight) must have been some fight! We are going to call him Bronson because he sounds like he is a really tough guy. Orange Mist just doesn’t fit him at all. I will pick him up before five o’clock and his wandering days are over . Bless his fighting spirit and his heart

After so many trial and error attempts of trying to trap Orange Mist, I ended up tricking this cat into going into one of the enclosures. Once the cat was inside, I boarded up the access to the catio on the side and now this orange kitty that needs vet care so desperately is now inside the deck enclosure. I don’t know the gender- I am just hoping that with some more trickery, I can coax him/her into a carrier today and get this cat seen! The eye looks blown to me- but the cat needs a vet even when our budget is so low.

Here it is inside of a huge dog carrier top flipped upside down- (thank you Pat if you are reading this for donating this to me). This is the third time I have used it to trap cats that won’t go into humane traps or drop traps!  She is way in the back, but we have the heated pad under her and the heater going. I believe she is girl because if she is a boy she has been neutered. There are no jowls protruding. Her ear flaps are intact and I don’t think she is very old? I’ll know more after the vet visit which I hope and pray will be today.

This morning went to check on her and she was out of the hidey hole and on a shelf so with some gentle persuasion- I got her into a carrier! We are on our way to the vet.

I hope the eye can be helped.

Chandler, this morning, must be feeling better. She growled and hissed at me, charged me when I set food down near her and wouldn’t let me near her. She is acting just like the woman told me is her normal behavior- wild. She is eating a bit of AD so that is a good thing. I’ll just let her get used to her new world and decompress. But she is today, a far cry from the cat I had yesterday that let me bathe her three times without a battle! If I go near her, her growls warn me she means business. Just leaving her alone will show her she is in a good place, no one will hurt her and she will come around in time. I’m glad she is feeling more like herself. LOL

Yesterday a cat arrived here. I was told she was a Bengal (she’s not) I was told she was “wild” (she’s not). I was told she needed to be spayed (she didn’t) She is a very sweet mackeral tabby about five years old whose owner decided to help her out with fleas and dumped a BIG can of Hartz Flea Powder on her (very bad product). Her back looks like someone laid some hot wax on her and took a strip of fur off her in a big stripe! She is covered with scabs from head to toe. I took her the vet immediately and they tested her, gave her a cortisone shot, an antibiotic shot and went to spay her but found a spay scar. She is home, she has had a soothing bath because she is covered in fleas. I gave her three baths with DAWN and flea combed all the stunned fleas off of her to give her some peace. I saw enough fleas to cover Rhode Island! We have given her a Drontal and can’t flea treat her skin yet safely because even with the baths, she still has all that toxic chit on her. Too many chemicals for one small kitty. I am calling her Chandler. I almost cried during the bath. She was so painful from all the sores, it must have felt so good to be gently scrubbed and massaged as we worked to get all the toxins and fleas off of her. She was leaning into my hands and licking my fingers as I was bathing her! So much for being “wild.” Most cats fight the bath, she didn’t want hers to stop!

Here she is, she found a good spot in the bedroom to hide:

When I walked into the office this morning to pick her up, a couple sitting on the couch surrounded by cat carriers nudged one another. I heard the guy say “Isn’t that Mary Anne? I think that’s Mary Anne!” I looked over and saw a couple who adopted three kittens from us over three years ago: London, Paris and Glacie. They had brought in the two calicos to get their shots and I was able to slip into the room and say hello to the two beauties rescued so long ago. Of course their names had been changed, but they looked so beautiful and petting them, I knew that what we do here matters-

So this morning, seeing these beauties and remembering how bad they were when they were first rescued- it made me smile and know our work is good, it is out there walking around and making people happy. Here is London, Paris and Glacie after they were healthy and adopted out. The cat on top of the condo is a stuffed animal!

Time to do an overhaul on all the litter pans and I sit here in my recliner not very willing to move. (Well my spirit is willing, but my knee is still weak). We do a complete clean twice a month and it goes pretty fast (usually). I have asked the volunteers to help out. We will see who shows up for this task. Because we spray the bottom of the litterpans with PAM cooking spray which allows the litter to just slide out of the pans easily with no sticking. The job doesn’t take up to much time. I know recently they have developed a new litter called Slide, but you can accomplish the same job with just using non-stick cooking spray on your pans. One note of caution though- don’t overspray it and don’t spray the sides of the pan. The cats love the taste and tend to lick it up if it lands on the sides of the pans. Also, if you have a litterpan that has a stain on it that you can’t seem to get to come clean. Try using toothpaste and a small scrub brush but be sure to rinse thoroughly. They like the smell of the toothpaste, but it is not something that should be swallowed. Even though you put it in your mouth, the caution on the label says do not swallow. But it certainly removes stubborn stains without the smell of bleach assaulting your nose.

There are 32 litter pans in our sanctuaries- anybody want to grab a litter scoop and join us? Come on over! 🙂

She came out of the shadows about a month ago. I am guessing it is girl and like the other orange kitty that recently came here, her eye is also compromised. We are wondering if this was a litter dropped off or just a litter from another place that have found their way here. I tried putting out the traps- but besides catching a HUGE possum, a skunk and my own cats- this one stays clear. I have just been going out there and talking to her and before, she would normally just run back through the hole in the fence and come in after I leave to eat- now she will at least stay at the corner of the shop and watch me carefully when I am dishing out food.

I am not sure what is going on with her eye- whether this litter had a bad case of conjunctivitis. or she got into a fight. I don’t know if she is blind in that eye. I am hoping because this morning I saw her for the first time on the other side of our house looking at the other cats inside the enclosure, that her trust meter is not on high alert and before the end of the month, I can gain her trust and get in to be seen. I just call her Orange Mist because until today, she simply just evaporates from sight. I am also giving her probiotic powder in her food- hoping to help her because she is so emaciated it breaks my heart.

Here he/she is right before dusk. Each day slowly getting braver

I am praying that this week’s donation will bring us more than just cat litter. We are on our last bag of dry food right now- which will last throughout the month so there is still time. It’s scary to us being so close to running out of food. I can’t go out and get a job because I have to take care of Mike, and if I did have a job right now, I would have an unhappy boss because walking, driving, lifting, sitting is so torturous for me. It is going to drop into the 20’s tonight so have fed wet food early enough that the cats will eat it before it freezes. Who will be out of luck there are the late nighters who don’t come in until about 2-4 a.m. By then, the food will be frozen to the plate.

Thursday night we received a phone call from a frantic child telling me her kitty was high up in a tree. Her name was Amanda (the kitty) and she had been up in this pine tree for four days. She was only four months old. Chrissy, her owner was in tears and told me her and her parents had called everybody and no one would help them.

I jumped in the truck along with a huge bag of bird seed and a bag of cracked corn. When I got there- I spread the contents of both bags right under the tree and left a large extension ladder propped against the tree. Then I made a huge circle of wet food on a board just outside of the bird seed. I said a prayer and told the family that I hoped what I did would matter.

I got an elated call this morning that the kitty had come down from her perch. I was so happy to hear that- the mom asked me why I thought this method would work in the first place. She was highly skeptical (not to mention a bit drunk) when I showed up in the first place and outlined my plan. I told her that this had worked in the past, and I believed that it worked because a cat’s prey drive is pretty strong and even overpowers fear. Seeing all the birds gathered down below, Amanda forgot where she was for a minute or two and made her way down to hunt. The extension ladder made it a bit easier for her once she came down to its level.

One of the problems with adopting out kittens before they are fully ready- most people are so tire of them by 5 or 6 weeks they just want them gone, is that the mom doesn’t get a chance to train her kittens to hunt. Part of that training consists of going up and down a tree. Going up is easy- just scamper headfirst to the branches. But going down, they should be going down butt first- but most will go down head-first that just adds to the fear of being up so high. It’s becoming a lost art in the cat world- going head-first they freeze like a deer in the headlights. Going butt first, they don’t see where they are going- it is all instinctive.

If anyone finds themselves in a similar situation with a cat in a tree, just remember you have to buy the biggest bag of bird seed you can find. A small bag is not going to work- you have to empty the entire contents of the bag on the ground under the tree(s) and the cracked corn also attracted the blue jays and larger birds to add to the hunting grounds. Another thing you want to be sure to do- is to take the cat immediately to the vet if it has been up there more than 3 days. You are looking at dehydration issues or even feline hepatic lipidosis in extreme cases.

They gave me $20.00 for my trouble and I was glad to see it because donations have been almost nonexistent recently. I did want to give my vey $100.00 but now, at least there is $20.00 to give him.

Watching Hollister interact with the two of us, I am saddened to think that because of her early introduction to a human who did not understand the ways of a cat, she may not be able to move on and become someone’s beloved kitty for the rest of her life. When she sleeps with me, she will start by first sniffing my hair (as if she likes the smell of the shampoo). Her purr will then intensify and her sniffing becomes almost frantic- then she attacks my scalp. She digs in with teeth and claw and when she is removed, she comes right back. I hide my head under a pillow and she burrows her head deep underneath still seeking my hair and my head.

Last night I slept with a knitted cap on my head, hoping that might help and it didn’t. The only thing that prevents her from attacking at night is preventing her from sleeping in our room. Then she sits at the door and wails all night keeping me up. Mike’s oblivious to the noise as he takes his hearing aids out before he sleeps- but she is loud. I finally resorted to an old trick I discovered that stops cats from wanting to get into the bedroom at night. I parked the vacuum just inside the bedroom door. It was plugged in but not on. When she started screaming that she wanted inside, I turned the machine on just for a second and she scrambled away. Eventually, I was able to just park the vacuum outside the door not running and all was peaceful and quiet for the night. As time goes on and she feels she can trust humans again, the vacuum can be put back in the closet. But for right now- it stands vigil in the evening hours. It’s a good trick to stick in your back pocket if you have a cat that keeps you awake at night. Much better than spraying a cat with water- or screaming at the cat, stomping your feet or other methods some use to stop unwanted behavior in the nighttime.

Hollister was adopted out last week and she was returned yesterday. Apparently, she bit one of the older kids in the chin and drew blood. I told the new adopters that her trust meter was fairly low and they said they understood having “rescued” another cat years ago with trust issues. But they aren’t willing to just let her figure out things for herself and although I saw the wound- it was nothing really. Not even that deep- but they tossed her back.

I suspect she will just stay here for awhile until the memory of all she endured before coming here has faded away. I never noticed before, but she has a mark on her back and the pattern looks somewhat like a heart. She has our hearts and that’s all that matters.

We are still turning down cats right-and-left and it makes us sad, because there is no place really for these cats to go. But with a nine-hundred dollar vet debt and the food supply tenuous at best-there are no other options available to us at this time. When you throw the word feral into the midst talking about placing cats somewhere safe- it narrows the field.

The weather here has been frigid especially at night.  Yesterday, it warmed up enough to snow and more snow is in the forecast for tomorrow through Thursday. Kota doesn’t quite know what to make of all this white stuff falling from the sky. He started barking at the snowflakes yesterday which we thought was pretty funny. I would love it to just dump on us heavy and stick- I think he would be one of those dogs who would just dive into a snowbank and love it.

This morning, I left my flashlight outside when I was feeding. I went out to get it (this is about 4:00 in the morning) I heard this skunk making noises of distress under the shop- of course the flashlight was sitting on the feeding table out there. I went to reach for it- and turned it on and that’s when I saw the skunk. She was under the feeding table surrounded by the baby nutrias. They were growling and gnashing their teeth at her. I am not sure what set all that up- but I didn’t stick around to find out. By the time Kota and I made it to the house, the skunk smell had followed us inside. Yuck- thank God for Vicks Vapo Rub under the nose- overpowers everything.

When it got lighter, I went back outside to see how things were going and noticed the fresh hole dug down under the shop. I don’t think the new tenants are going to get along very well. I don’t really know how fierce Nutrias are in the wild, but they come from South America and they are rodents so I imagine even the babies can hold their own in a battle.

Tripp is doing so much better on the CBD oil. He is no longer fixated on his tail- eating the carpet or trying to suck down socks in his spare time. What I like about this treatment is it doesn’t turn him into a drooling zombie cat. I am noticing he is gaining weight now- I think the oil gives him the munchies.