21.11.11

cat wonder, concern, gratitude & some pics

Some of the commenters found this sad but I think it is incredibly uplifting. The cat's amazing either way, not surprising since almost all of them rock.

Give him a minute; I think he must be sleepy at the beginning.


BTW, thanks Blogger: 
video posting is more nonintuitive and glitchy 
than ever AND produces the worst results. Huff.

29nov11 - That is probably not working so try opening the vid separately instead here. See above, Blogger's far more difficult and less effective vid-embedding protocols since all the new changes happened! gah!


I can talk about something less uplifting and cat related tho. Just got home from the feral cat mgmt meeting. There is a lady in one tiny town a few miles east who is keeping 42 cats, mostly ferals. Apparently 13 of them are fixed. She also has 5 dogs. She only eats once a day in order to feed all the animals. We are going to go do kind of a check and talk to her a bit; best case scenario we can get her to give up the numerous kittens for adoption (kittens are super adoptable) and get her to take neuter certificates for the adults that still need to be fixed. She seems pretty amenable, according to someone who already talked to her a little bit, to taking them for neutering herself to the vets who accept our certificates. If all this works out we could be saving hundreds of unwanted feral kittens from lots of suffering.

Worst case scenario is she's a cat hoarder. People like that aren't usually that interested in controlling their population, regardless of how friendly they might seem when first approached. Also they will keep taking in more and more cats until the cats' and their own safety and health is in jeopardy. Supposedly people in the area know of her and call her all the time when they find out about kittens, etc., and she has continued taking more in. So part of what we'll try to gauge is whether it seems like she recognizes limits of her money, space and energy... This part doesn't bode well re the hoarding possibility. If she's not a hoarder she might be kind of doing her own version of a shelter. In this case we'll look at the conditions (she has a lot of them penned in big kennels according to the info we got) and try to suggest/urge her to make any changes that might be necessary. Hopefully she'll be as amenable to that as she supposedly is to the neutering... So we'll see.

On the homefront, here's a recent shot of TC and Gris-Gris (thru the sliding glass door) in the sun on the deck a couple of weekends ago. I am very happy to say (knocking wood) that Griz's head sore is slowly getting better after all - he still rips it open regularly but the actual sore part is getting progressively smaller, and he doesn't seem to be digging at it to the same extent as before.


I have renewed my resolve to get TC TNR'd. I really need to get Beau taken care of too but he is going to be really hard to catch; I never really know when he's going to come around and I have no idea how to get him without getting either of the others, if I put something really tempting in the cage... Another member of our group is a champion cat trapper tho and said she might be able to help. I hope as soon as finals are over. I'll try TC between now and then. I still think she is fixed or just not viable but she could use a checkup and a rabies shot of course. She could use a diet, too, but oh well. 

Beau is definitely not fixed, ahem. You can't see evidence of that in these shots but you can see the hard-livin' aspect I've alluded to before. For whatever reason he is not looking quite so bedraggled as he does here. I honestly think it's partly because of Griz's being fixed now - I think they were each other's prime daily opponents. I'm pretty sure Beau is top cat in the neighborhood now (but I never say that aloud when Griz is around of course).




As always thoughts of all the strays and ferals everywhere lead to ponderings of the two pretty cool cats in here with me who had their own hard times on the streets when they were little. Wondrous universe to have brought them to me.



4 commentaires:

Bill a dit…

Hey Susan - happy pre-pre-Thankgsgiving. I'm at work now and cannot view the video - most likely because the browsers they allow here are ancient (friends don't let friends use IE 6 !!!!!!). I'll have to check it out when I get home tonight.

The photo of Gris and TC is real nice and Gris does look a little mellow there (nice having a regular meal I guess).

Now Beau, that's a different story. Beau looks like the Charles Bukowski of cats. Been in a few too many fights in his lifetime, poor guy. I hope things turn out okay for all these cats you are tending to especially with Winter around the corner.

Great pics of your 2 favs there - Sam seems to have such a serious look on his face - what's up with that??

Anyway - happy holiday. Have a great time at the UU.

By the way, the Nobel Peace Prize fell through but I think I can get you the Cat Lady of Clemson award ....

Susan a dit…

that is too cool, the Bukowski reference, by which I take it you see what I mean about the Richard Harris link, too :) If I'd thought of Bukowski first perhaps his official (haha) name would be CB instead of RH

lol Sam has his serene moments - it's true tho, I have lots of pics of him being calm but his face is downright zen in that one. And for once Miss Lucy is keeping her head still. They must have just woken up when I took that. No anti-photography protocols engaged yet.

Bill a dit…

Glad you liked the Bukowski reference and I do/did get the RH thing. Actually I can picture Beau laying against an old telephone pole at the top of some hill, late at night, suffering a bad hangover from drinking too much sour buttermilk singing MacArthur Park.

Susan a dit…

that is so so funny - or else I'm just really pooped :) I think I was more envisioning him singing something Tom-Waits-y but MP is way funnier.