For the first time since opening up our rescue, our catfood cupboard contains only 12 cans of cat food. I have reduced the amount of wet food for the inside cats to feeding once a day, and for the outside cats, we feed them in the morning and in the night and only do the canned food if the temperatures are going to dip down into the thirties. There is dry food for now. We are going to meet on Monday and figure out if some of the volunteers might be willing to go beyond the outlying towns to secure donations. Wish us luck!

Today, I opened up the bedroom door and let her just find the cracked screen and make her way to the other cats. She was out four hours and there were no confrontations of any kind. I did keep Kota away from her space- because dogs terrify her at the moment. That will change in time.

Please enjoy the latest pics of her. You can see she is now fully relaxed and feeling right at home. Such a cute kitty!

Her uneasiness has worn off, she is eating and using the litter pans now. She is racing around the room like her paws are on fire, so I let a few of the kittens into the room to see what happens. She’s a spitfire- took on even the biggest of them (Pidgeon). He’s three times her size- but he backed down and just looked at her as if to say “If mom weren’t here right now little one, I would eat you for lunch!”

I finally got her to eat some KFC chicken sans skin- added some warm water and pureed it down. She scarfed it up. She’s figured out that the master bedroom is now her domain and she will protect it at all costs. LOL  Such a tiny kitty with such a big personality. It’s a joy to see her feeling better.

Here she is the day after her spay-

Thank you Ethel for emailing me and suggesting we use a tee-shirt. Kota is now “stylin” and his bandage is safely tucked away from his nibbling teeth!

I have broken through to her and she is coming out now. She flees at the slightest sound and she still doesn’t seem to be able to eat much. I have gone to get her some AD and even that didn’t tempt her. I was watching her last night and thinking about all she endured for the last two months. I just sat on the floor and started talking nonsense to her and finally she must have decided I am way to crazy for her taste, and she came out to say a proper hello. She is a beautiful girl.

Here she is this morning- For some reason the photo although it looks correct when I sent it email, it flipped it around. So just cock your head when you look at it! If I can’t get her to eat by Monday- I will take her in to be seen. I believe she is just bruised in her throat from the collars.

Received a phone call this morning from an elderly woman who had gotten a kitten so her dog could play with it. As we talked, the hairs on my neck just kept raising up as she described how she was keeping this kitten (since it ended up scratching her dog up ) She was keeping it on a leash in her living room- other than that she was keeping it a cage that sounded less than adequate.  She sounded almost like she was punishing this baby for not being “nice” to her dog (who turned out to be a hyperactive older Chihuahua and not at all nice). Something told me to get over there quickly and when I did, it was a horrid place.It smelled so bad inside her house, it was hard to breathe.

I got the kitten home, she is terrified. She had a collar on. I took the collar off. She had another collar on! Took that one off.What? Another collar? Started to take that one off and it was becoming embedded. We had to  soak her neck underneath where it had started cutting into her. She’s 3 months old for pity’s sake!

She is here, she is safe but she is having a hard time eating, so I am giving her baby food right now. I suspect swallowing is hard for her after having to endure three friggin collars around her neck. I am calling her Hissy, because that’s what she is currently doing a lot of. She was crawling with fleas- so we flea-treated her, de-wormed her and put her in the bedroom. She’s in the warming cage with the door open. She was ice cold and her temp was subnormal.

I know someone who is looking for a kitten right now, so once she goes to the vet, gets tested and spayed, she will go to a great home. During that phone call even when I told the woman that I couldn’t take her, something else was telling me to get over there fast. I am glad I listened. Her eyes, they are stunning- they are an emerald green color.

I decided to give her a more user friendly name and am calling her Hollister. She is so funny- all the time she is hissing at me now, she is also smelling and licking my hands. I guess she’s wondering why I smell like so many other cats! I just gave her regular wet kitty food and she ate a bit of it. She is still hunkered down in her corner but she’s not on a leash and having to deal with a yappy, snappy dog.

His growth on his leg is not going away. He has been to two vets thus far- one is leaning toward mass cell 🙁 He just turned a year old! I took him for a second opinion and was told that it is not cancer, it is an infection. Something stuck into him and now it is heavily infected. We got him an inflatable surgical cone collar. But on the second day, he ripped it off his neck and tore a huge hole in it. So I went out and got him the hard “cone of shame.” I put it on him last night and he just froze. He was terrified. He stayed in one place for over an hour. I tried bribing him to like it, lectured him into liking it- comforted him into liking it, but when I discovered that he was shaking uncontrollably and had peed all over himself- I quickly discarded the idea of putting anything around his neck to stop him from removing bandages and licking off the medicine. To see this huge beast who intimidates most people because he is a German Shepherd, he is BIG and he is Black reduced to a piddling puppy broke my heart. Not worth it to have him so terrified. I have never seen such a reaction to these cones in a dog before.

So I just change his bandage three times a day (every time he has to have the medicine put on his leg) and he is on pain meds and they gave him an anti-inflammatory shot. If it doesn’t go away in a weeks time, they will surgically remove the growth (but not the leg).

It has not changed his behavior. he and Cooper still run together daily- he still goes for walk when the weather permits. He is eating and playing and I just hope it vanishes within a week’s time. He has eaten so many bandages off his leg. I have used all sorts of deterrents to stop him from licking the bandages and he embraces them all. Tobasco Sauce? Loves it! Bitter Apple? Yum! No Chew Em- loves the taste. What a weird dog. I even coated his bandage with Vaseline and sprinkled ground pepper over the ointment- he licked it all up! Yes, I am feeding him (he is 95 pounds now) he is not starving- he is just weird. LOL

I really don’t want him to have surgery. We would have to keep him heavily sedated to keep a cone on him. He just won’t stand for it. It scares him too badly.

This morning, with a lot of tears and prayers, we let Fletcher go to the Bridge. He suffered from unpredictable and unprovoked acts of aggression and this cat was not kidding around. He put Molly in the hospital for two days, he attacked Magoo and Gadget. He would rush the fence and try to get to Kota, he has attacked me over a half-a-dozen times. I could pet him, sure could do that, but paid for it in the end. As I would walk away, he would charge me and bite my ankles. I had to start wearing boots and tucking my jeans down into my socks for extra protection.

I kept working with him, hoping I could step into his aggression, but there was no tell on when he would attack. No tucking of the tail, narrowing of the eyes, pinning of the ears, no posturing, nothing to alarm anyone. He was on you in seconds- and out for blood. No sound, just a silent attack that left several victims (including me) shaken in the aftermath.

A few days ago, he got out of the enclosure he has been in for months and returned two days later covered in blood and carrying a dead chicken! I know he killed this chicken, there is no doubt. I have done all in my power to get him to merge with the group without bloodshed- never worked. I covered the end of the tunnels with wire so he could meet the indoor kitties safely and he would charge the wire until he was bloody. It broke my heart, but I called my vet this morning and explained the situation and that I couldn’t in good conscience adopt him out without believing that he would harm another person or an animal. He is a drop-dead gorgeous kitty and would normally have flown out the door as orange kitties are all the rage here. But I couldn’t save him from whatever broke him in the first place, so we put him to sleep. That’s the only way I could save him from himself.

Instead of waiting for Amazon to get ahold of me, I asked Google instead. I believe it is now fixed and the food has been added to the wish list. If this is not the case, please post here and let me know and I will again try to fix it.

Thank you-

Mike’s youngest son left this morning and I have to say that the visit went much smoother than I thought it would. He does not like cats. He wouldn’t hurt them, but he just doesn’t care for them. But, just like cats will, they knew he didn’t like them so they were all over him! LOL He tolerated the invasion quite well and in the end of the visit, admitted to really liking Pita and Pigeon. He fixed some things around here that seriously needed attention and he saw a different side to his Dad than he remembers. He and I had a long (almost two hour) cleansing talk on this fourth day here. He asked me to tell him all- and so I did. I wasn’t going to- but I have been carrying all this for so long and to finally let it out to someone who knows Mike was quite the relief.

I told him that initially, I thought he might be coming to check up on  how I take care of Mike and then would report to his brothers and sister about how the care fell short. He just looked at me when I said that, and hugged me and said nothing could be further from the truth. He came because he wanted to see for himself, all that was involved in taking care of his Dad.

He is on his way driving back to Denver (a 20 hour drive) so if anyone is just checking into this blog and could say a prayer for Dennis to get home safe- he is headed into some pretty nasty weather after he leaves Ogden Utah that would be appreciated.

Kota has a growth on his leg and I took him to the vet. They suspect it is mass cell but he is only a year old! I will take him for a second opinion on Weds. They did a scraping and said that the growth wasn’t like anything they normally see on a dog- and there were so many inflammatory cells that it causes them to suspect cancer. We just want a second opinion before any other action is taken.

This morning, when I went to pick up cat food, we got two small bags of fancy feast and one pack of canned ff. Won’t last too long I am afraid. We have the low protein stuff in storage Meow Mix, Kit-n-Kaboodle but the cat chow and kitten chow is long gone. Just one foot in front of the other is how we are playing this now. I have called the recipients who are getting our old donations and they always tell me they have no cat food available. It’s frustrating and bit scary at times.

Still haven’t caught one-eyed kitty or the new gray long-hair but will keep trying. We are not quitters-

Everybody be safe on New Year’s love and hug those around you and practice acts of kindness when you are out and about. So many are hurting right now- so many broken souls wandering around.