BlueBear, April 2009 - October 20, 2017

Two of my friends lost their pet cats this week. In both cases the cats were quite sickly, facing many chronic health issues. One died on Wednesday, another on Thursday.

I didn't expect that BlueBear would be dead by Friday night.

BlueBear was one of a litter of feral kittens born in April of 2009. We took in his sister, Bowie, first, and then his brother, Thor. BlueBear we caught with a Havahart trap baited with garden netting. BlueBear loved to play in the garden netting, so I figured it would be an ideal thing to trap him with. It was.

BlueBear was the biggest of our cats, bigger than any cat since Ashes, and maybe bigger than him. He was one of two black cats in our house. I always felt very lucky to have two black cats in the house. "Miniature panthers," I called them.

BlueBear as a newly-caught kitten. The blue had mostly left his eyes.

BlueBear used to love to sit on the back of a chair and gently chew on my scalp. He would often hold my head in his paws to position it just right, and then extend his claws to make sure I stayed still. He didn't like when I let my hair grow long, but returned to this practice once it was short again.

I began a new shift a few weeks ago: Monday through Friday, 6:00 AM to 2:30 PM. This means that I need to be out of bed by 4:00 AM to do all that needs to be done, and also need to be in bed shortly after 9:00 PM. Fridays I can indulge myself a bit, staying up later than usual because I can sleep later than usual on Saturday. But this past Friday found me dozing in a chair while watching the news. Various cats were scattered around me. BlueBear was in the bow window in the front of the house, one of his favorite spots for sunning himself and watching the outside world. He, like the other cats, also has a habit of nibbling on the (non-toxic) houseplants in the window - and often throws up what he had eaten. So I didn't find it at all unusual when BlueBear began to make retching sounds like he was trying to cough up a hairball. He did this a few times, and then wandered off into the next room, creeping along with a wobbly gait. Bad hairball, I figured, and this thought was confirmed when I heard him give a brief yowl and another retch from the next room. I roused myself and went into that room to find him, but he scampered out into the room I had just come from. Fine, I thought. I had to write out a bill anyway. I would check on him after I was done.

BlueBear (top), Bowie (left), and Thor (right) as kittens

I wrote out that bill - the only one I still pay by mail - put a stamp on the envelope and sealed it up. I went to put it in the spot where I would remember to mail it the next day, and noticed a suspicious looking lump under a carpet. I nudged it with my foot, and BlueBear dashed out, to hide in one of his favorite hiding spots - inside the pedal chamber of a disused and depowered organ.

I returned to my bills and went through all the other bills I had, noting either each one had already been paid or the dates on which they were due. I marked the due dates in my ledger, sorted out the to-be-paid from the already-paid from the junk mail. I heard BlueBear yowl faintly from the other room, possibly from inside the organ. I sorted everything back together and put it on the organ bench, which serves as my mail sorting station.

Thor and Bluebear, October 27, 2009

Enough of this, I thought. I went down on my belly to pull BlueBear out from under the organ. I reached in and pulled out...another cat. Where is BlueBear?, I wondered. I looked around. I spotted him sprawled out under a coffee table, glaring at me.

I picked him up. He yowled again and struggled - with his forelimbs. His hindquarters were limp.

I took him off to a bathroom we use for cat isolation. I put him down and he proceeded to crawl away with his hindquarters dragging. I got my mom, let her know that there was a problem with BlueBear. Let her know that we would probably have to take him to the emergency vet.

I think we both knew that this would be a one-way trip.

We didn't know for sure what had happened. She speculated he had had a stroke, which didn't seem right. I have never heard of a stroke affecting only the lower half of the body, both legs and the tail. I speculated he had somehow broken his back, but there seemed to be no other sign of the sort of trauma that would accompany this.

We made it up to the emergency vet fairly quickly. BlueBear cried a bit going down to the car, but my mom was able to keep him calm during the ride. It was 8:00 when she was leaving messages for my sister and brother, letting her know where we were. Where we were going. What had happened.

Once there I quickly and succinctly explained his condition. They rushed him back immediately for an examination. We were directed to a nearby waiting area.

As we seated ourselves a young, athletic-looking woman approached us. She apologized for the intrusion, but said that she couldn't help but overhear our situation. And, she explained, she was here for exactly the same reason.

Now, her situation was not the same as ours. Her cat was 14 or 15, while ours was not yet nine. But her cat had experienced the same sudden onset of lower-body paralysis.

As we conversed, a young veterinarian came out and asked us to join him in a private room.

He took a quick history of BlueBear. Medicines, vaccinations, is he an outdoor cat? None of that, in retrospect, seems relevant to what he told us next. BlueBear had apparently experience a "saddle thrombus"

PetMD: Saddle Thrombus: Every Cat Owner's Worst Nightmare

Saddle thrombus is, basically, a blood clot that has traveled from the heart though the aorta and down into the area where the artery splits to feed blood to the lower parts of the cat's body. It has now created a blockage, and is denying - has been denying - blood flow to the lower half of the body. Treatment is possible, involving radical surgery, but the likelihood of recovery is close to zero - and the likelihood of death during or shortly after surgery is high.

We knew what the other option was. We knew what had to be done.

The doctor brought us back into the holding area where BlueBear was being kept in an oxygen-rich chamber.  He seemed distraught, but we were both able to put an arm through an access port and pet him, That calmed him a bit. I touched his back legs, and as the doctor had told us, they were cold. No blood flow.

We stayed with him for a while, but we knew that he was upset and confused and frightened and, I believe, in pain. We wanted to make that stop. Bowie had died in my arms. Nikki had died in my mother's. Both suffered a lot in the end, I think. We didn't want to put BlueBear - or ourselves - through that.

When we were ready, we were directed to another room. BlueBear was given sedation before he was brought to us. He lay on the blanket they had provided - the one we had brought him in on had become terribly soiled on the ride up - eyes open, but motionless. We were allowed a final few moments with him. Not long enough. Never long enough.

Then the doctor gave the two injections that rendered him insensate and did something else - stopped the brain directly, he told us. And then it was over. The time was about 9:15 PM - I didn't check it. BlueBear was dead. Another box to be added to the collection.


CODA 1: 

I had wanted to get to sleep early Friday night because I had two things planned for the next morning. I planned to take my mom up for blood work as early as possible, to allow me adequate time to get ready for my dental appointment at 11:00 AM. We still went up for blood work anyway, both shocked and shaken by the events of the previous night, and I had time to take a shower, change into fresh clothes, and brush my teeth thoroughly.

I was getting some work done around existing fillings, and it required a lot of novocaine. I wouldn't be able to eat or drink for a while afterwards, and my speech would be slurred until the numbing went away. That was OK: I planned to run up to The Lands at Hillside Farms, a nonprofit farm dedicated to preserving a place that might otherwise be destroyed by development, the dream of the late local veterinarian and founder of Blue Chip Animal Rescue Dr. Doug Ayers. I had a glass bottle from milk to return, something I had picked up last November, and I had just been planning to spend some time with the animals. Now I felt like I needed it more than ever.

I made the twenty-minute trip from Nanticoke to The Lands at Hillside Farms. I returned the bottle and was surprised to find that I had a two dollar deposit being refunded to me. I pocketed the two singles and headed out the back. As I had entered through the front door I had seen a sign about a current fundraiser to build a new dairy barn, but I didn't see anywhere to make a donation. I figured I would look for one as I wandered about.

My first visit was to the peacocks. Beautiful birds, two of them, a male and a female. I wondered how they would do over the coming winter. I had no such worry about the alpacas, who seemed quite ready for any weather that came their way. I wandered along the path and saw some goats begging for food - but on my way there I first stopped and said hi to a chicken who seemed to want something from me. Unfortunately, the nearby dispensers only provided goat feed, not chicken feed. I popped in some quarters and got three handfuls of the goat treats. I held out a hand to each of two nearby goats who were eagerly looking for handouts and let them each eat about half. Then I moved over to a more forlorn-looking fellow with his head stuck through a fence and let him have the rest.

I stopped in a barn to commune with some cows, first calling out to a surly-looking orange barn cat who had business to attend to, but I quickly moved into the calf stables. I don't remember the separate area for calves when I came on my first visit almost exactly three years ago. The girl I was with then was surprisingly willing to get her new pink sneakers dirty as we visited the cows, but she surely would not have passed up an opportunity to be with calves. I spotted two rocking chairs and a bookshelf in the back, and remembered reading about a call for volunteers to come read to the calves during cold winter nights. I thought about picking up a book, taking a seat, and reading to the eager and curious calves right then and there. As I was contemplating this, a family came in. The mother expressed wonderment at seeing cows, and the little daughter quickly responded that these weren't cows, though she couldn't explain what exactly they were. I mentioned to them about the rocking chairs and the books in the back, but with my half-numb mouth it sounded like I had had a stroke. I decided it would be best to talk as little as possible for the rest of the visit.

Reluctantly leaving the calves, I walked through an empty barn that, according to the signs on the stalls, housed some donkeys. The donkeys were wandering around a nearby enclosure that they shared with some pigs. One pig was wallowing in some mud in a connected enclosure, but the other pig, Otis, who had recently returned to the farm following a bout of rheumatoid arthritis, lay in the dirt near his little pig house.

"Hello, Otis," I said.

"Grunt," he responded. I interpreted this as "I wish I had some mud to roll in. That mud is too far away."

Our conversation went on like this for a while. Finally I had to go.

"Goodbye, Otis," I said. "Take care. I'll see you later."

"Grunt." ("Don't forget to stop back in the dairy shop and donate those two dollars. You saw the bit about the two-for-one match, didn't you?")

Indeed I had. I stopped in the shop and found my way to a checkout counter where I mumbled about making a donation. The girl eagerly took it, and offered to have me fill out a form so I could get on a thank-you list. I realized that the postage and overhead involved in such a thing would vastly reduce the impact of my meager donation, even with the two-for-one match by an anonymous benefactor increasing the value to six dollars. I demurred. Maybe some other time with some other donation.

My spirits were somewhat lifted as I left The Lands and meandered home.


CODA 2:

After we came home from the emergency vet's - without BlueBear - I sat down to finish working on my bills. I paid one after another, rapidly erasing the temporary windfall in my account produced by my biweekly paycheck. I checked my email and saw that I had received a coupon good for $5 off a $30 purchase at Pet Supplies Plus, good Friday through Sunday. I filed the coupon away for later.

Today was later.

I took my mom out for a ride. Today would have been my parents' sixty-second anniversary - my father died just a few months short of their fiftieth - so we stopped at his grave, where she left a single pink rosebud we had picked from one of my rosebushes. After a trip to refill the nearly-empty gas tank of the car, we headed out to Pet Supplies Plus. She didn't want to come in, so I left her in the car.

As usual I stopped first at the rescue pet they have available for adoption on a regular basis. Usually it's a cat, but not too long ago it was a rabbit. This time it was a cat, the same cat who had been there the last time I had stopped in. A big black cat of unknown age named Pa-Pa. Last time I had remarked that he was the spitting image of BlueBear, and now that reality hit me hard. Here, for a $70 adoption fee, was a cat nearly identical to the cat I had just lost. His face was not the same - Pa-Pa's eyes looked far more world-weary than BlueBear's - and his throat featured a patch of white far larger than BlueBear's. I opened the cage and pet the sleeping cat, who quickly roused and moved to exit the cage. I had to gently hold him back, but pet and cuddled him for a while until I had to move on with my shopping.

I quickly found some items that added up to more than $30 and which, with the coupon, would be much less expensive overall than I could get them elsewhere. I headed for the register and stopped to see Pa-Pa again. Opened the cage, pet him, cuddled him. Kissed him on the forehead and told him that someone would be there to adopt him soon.

I moved to the checkout and found myself telling the clerk about BlueBear, about saddle thrombus, about how much Pa-Pa looked like him, about how if I had an extra $70 I might just be taking him home today. Tomorrow the funds that I had transferred to my cards would be available. Maybe tomorrow.

I left the store, thinking about coming back tomorrow for Pa-Pa. As I loaded the cases of cat food into the car I mused that I would need to bring up a cat carrier to take him home - just like that couple walking into the store now.

They're returning the cat carrier, that's all, I thought. They bought it and it doesn't fit their needs, or it's defective in some way. Quality ain't what it used to be, amiright?, I mused as I pushed my cart through the parking lot, back into the store. No way could they have just shown up to adopt the cat that you had just started to try to convince yourself to adopt.

I entered the store, returned the cart. Got the customary "Thank you!" Saw the couple and their cat carrier next to Pa-Pa's now-open cage, playing with the cat they were about to take home. Another clerk was there, taking pictures with her cell phone.

I sidled up to them and intruded on their moment. Told them that the cat was the spitting image of a cat I had just lost Friday night. Told them how lucky they were to be taking home such a cat. Told them how I had thought about adopting him myself.

"See, Pa-Pa," I said. "I told you someone would adopt you soon."

I left the store, walked back to the car, and cried for my lost friend.

Homer

Today after I got home from work I watered my tomatoes, moved some heavy terra cotta pots, and slept. Then I woke up, ran the weed whacker, and hauled out the garbage.

More than half of our garbage, by volume, is cat litter. We recently acquired our twelfth cat. I had decided that we were done with cats, but this one had extenuating circumstances.

For the past few months I believe the resident feral population has hovered at five: two from the same litter as Bowie, Thor, and BlueBear, and three from the same litter as Amber and Spooky. We have managed to catch two of those ferals for neutering and re-release, one of the older males and one of the younger females. The other younger female became pregnant at some point and had kittens a few weeks ago at the height of the heat wave. (It appears her kittens have all died - I found and buried two of them last week, and I have seen none anywhere near her today.)

The other older cat has not been around lately. Maybe he's dead, maybe he's just moved on to establish his own territory.

And then there's Homer.

These cats are really just semi-feral. They know that humans on the porch mean that there may be food available, so any time they hear the back door open they will come up the steps and through the propped-open door to see if we have anything for them. Mostly they will keep their distance, dashing back off the porch at the slightest provocation. Except for one of the younger cats.

For weeks, months maybe, one of the three younger cats kept trying to come into the house. Not sneakily, not by stealth: it's just that whenever we opened the back door to go back into the house, he assumed we were inviting him to stroll in, too. Several times he nearly made it, and was caught in mid-stride. He didn't put up a fight when we turned him back, but he would always try again.

Our personal trap-neuter-release program, as you may recall, started with a disaster. While I was able to trap one cat, a young female, almost immediately, she got loose while I was trying to transfer her to another carrier. She bit the hell out of my hands each of the several times I was able to grab her as she raced around the house looking for an exit, and then she spent most of the next three days (Thursday morning through Saturday night) hiding in our house until we successfully re-trapped her. (That first Friday my sister was able to trap an older male that we then had neutered.) We had to hold onto her until the following Friday, when the mobile low-cost spay/neuter clinic came back to town. She spent that week in two oversized pet carriers, being transferred from each when it became too soiled to let her remain.

After that adventure was over and she had healed from her surgery and been released, I took the carriers outside, disassembled them, hosed them down , cleaned them off, and then filled them with a bleach-water mixture to soak for a while. Then I went to work for the night.

That night I was haunted by visions of feral cats drinking the bleach-water mixture from the carriers. My God, what have I done? Have I killed the cats we were trying to save?

The next morning when I got home from work I went straight out and dumped out the remaining bleach-water and hosed out the carriers.

One of the cats was on our porch, sniffing at the food. He yowled a bit, stepped off the porch, jumped off the steps behind a rhododendron, and yowled some more.

Over the next few days I kept an eye out for him. He was suddenly very skinny, as though he weren't eating at all. Had I burned his esophagus and stomach and the rest of his digestive system with bleach-water?

The other cats stopped coming around, though we saw them once in a while. We suspected that they resented what had been done to them, and did not appreciate being made our unwilling guests. And I figured the pregnant one had gone off to find a place to have her babies. The temperature began to soar.

But the skinny cat kept coming around. He would plant himself directly in front of the back storm door, which opens out. Several times I had to pick him up and relocate him so I could open the door all the way. He didn't put up a fight.

Finally it was time for me to go back to work. On that day, my mom decided she had had enough of watching this cat getting skinnier and skinnier, dying by inches. She was going to take him to the vet to see if there was anything that could be done with him.

I told her that she was probably just investing a lot of money in having a cat put to sleep. If he hadn't been accidentally poisoned by me, or intentionally poisoned by someone else, he was probably being eaten alive by parasites and full of diseases. But she decided to take him and that was that.

As I got ready to leave for work, they were finally taking her into a room. As I left for work, she called me with the verdict.

He wasn't dying, not irreversibly. He hadn't been poisoned, intentionally or accidentally. He didn't have rabies, or Feline AIDS, or Feline Leukemia. What he had was a severe respiratory infection that was compromising his ability to eat or drink. The vet gave him I.V. hydration, a massive dose of antibiotics, and prescribed some appetite stimulants. We decided that we would hold onto him for at least two weeks, if possible, and try to get him back to fighting weight.

It became clear very quickly that this was the cat who had always been trying to get into the house. He didn't fight us, not like his feral sister had when we captured her for spaying a few weeks ago, in fact not at all. And I don't think this was just because of his weakened state. He actually seemed to be - well, not just friendly, but actually grateful. Happy to be starting a life as a domestic cat. (This sort of odd behavior in a nearly year-old feral had me wondering about rabies, but the vet says he's clean.)

That was nearly two weeks ago. He is doing well. He has put on weight, thanks to a liquid diet of kitten milk which is now transitioning into a diet of solid food in liquids. Where once his spine was the widest part of his body other than his head, he now has a little belly and a somewhat less-bony spine. He is still showing signs of intense gratitude, nuzzling us when we pick him up and wrapping around our legs when we enter the bathroom-turned-isolation chamber where he is being kept. He still tries to stroll out a door - but now it is the bathroom door, so he can meet with his fellow cats. Several times a day I will carry him around the house so he can see (but not closely interact with) the other cats of the house, especially Nicky the Senior Cat and his sister Amber and brother Spooky.

We were stumped as to what to name him. Finally I decided on a name that reflected his life story: All that he wanted to be was a house cat. All that he wanted was a home.

So now we have our twelfth cat: Homer.


The order of cats:
Nicky, born August 1998 1999 (Based on the date of REM playing at Merriweather Post on September 10, 1999, which is the concert I went to see with my sister the weekend I came down to pick up Nicky.) Abandoned by his mother when she relocated the rest of her litter. Rescued by my sister, then transferred as an infant to us. Senior Cat.
Joey, found in mid-2000 wandering around by my brother's house, looking to get in. Probably several months old at the time..
Babusz, born September 2006.
Scooter, born July 2007.

Bowie, born Spring 2009. Fell into basement twice. The second time, we kept her, May 18, 2009.
Thor, littermate of Bowie, caught barehanded by my mom June 4, 2009.
BlueBear, littermate of Bowie and Thor, trapped (using bird netting as a lure) June 2009.

Ray Chelle, formerly Rachel, littermate of Gretchen (deceased), child of Socks (deceased). Captured (along with his sibling) June 30, 2009.
Peaches, daughter of Tortoise (deceased), caught barehanded by my mom, July 2009.

Amber, born Autumn 2009. Captured October 2009.
Spooky, littermate of Amber. Snatched in his sleep January 1, 2010. (Spooky was fairly old when we caught him, and had a very hard time adapting to life in a house. I decided that he was at the maximum age for taking in a feral.)
Homer, littermate of Amber and Spooky. Came to us, sick and apparently dying, July 2010 - nearly a year old.

Baby Boy, inherited from a neighbor

Romeo, inherited from a neighbor

Bojangles

(Squeaky)

Mama Cat

Spumoni

Spent

I spent enormous amounts of money today. But what do you expect when you get three cats neutered* in one day? On top of that I ordered two wire compost bins from Ace Hardware, and took my mom to an eye appointment and then to Walmart, where we spent some money on cat items and gifts for my nephews - and then went back and spent way more money on a very cool Lego set for my nephew's birthday.

Credit card debt, I have said, is an expression of faith in the future.

I'm tired. I think I'm stuck in night-shift mode, so when I'm up during the day I have a few slumps in the afternoon. I had to get up early this morning. My alarms went off at 6:00** and 6:01, but I stayed in bed until 6:30. I had to get the kitties up to the vet's by 8:30

Thor and BlueBear are fine. Bowie, as had been planned all along, is being kept overnight because of the more traumatic nature of her surgical procedure. But I may be scheduled to work tomorrow - I'm on the list for overtime. I won't know for sure until 8:00 tomorrow morning. Whether I'm working or not, I must pick up Bowie tomorrow. If I am working, it will make for an interesting sleep schedule.


*As my friend Melinda pointed out, "spaying" is also neutering. The male form of neutering is more correctly referred to as "castration."

**To the song "45" by Lauren Malone, who (currently) blogs here. Here is the video, because I just spent a hell of a lot of time searching through the archives of Lauren's many, many blogs to find it. (It's #85 on this list.) NOTE: YouTube videos posted to my blog won't show up on Facebook, so go here to view it. But, seriously, you know you want to be reading my blog, Another Monkey, and not just the reposted posts on Facebook! Besides, Facebook appears to be broken once again today...

Neutered in the morning

Tomorrow morning I am taking Bowie, Thor, and BlueBear to the vet's to be spayed (Bowie) and neutered (Thor and BlueBear.)

While I'm there I will make an appointment for "Rachel", who is about a month younger than these three. We've taken to calling "her" Rachel/Ray, after this pretty little girl developed some clearly male characteristics (such as testicles that I would swear were not there before.) And while my skill at determining a cat's sex is admittedly limited, I'm still pretty sure "she" has some of the characteristics of a girl cat. Either we were very wrong about her sex for the first few months of her life, or she has changed sex completely since she was a kitten, or she is a genuine hermaphroditic cat. So, there may be a double charge for her, as she may need to get spayed and neutered.

And then there were six

Bowie, Thor, and BlueBear had a sleepover at my house last night. They all did very well. They used the litterbox I provided for them, which I stocked with the same type of pine pellets used at my mom's house. They played extensively throughout the bedroom where we all spent the night, but did not manage to break anything. They seemed to genuinely enjoy themselves. Which is good - because at some point in the future, that's where they'll be living, along with Gretchen and Rachel.

One cat who will not be moving there is our latest addition, Peaches. Peaches is the sole survivor of a litter born at the end of May to Tortoise the Tortoiseshell, who was herself born just last September or so, and is the last free-roaming kitten out there. (I no longer count Bowie, Thor, and BlueBear's two siblings as kittens - they are both larger than their domesticated brothers and sister, and have become juveniles / young adults at less than four months.) Not that she will necessarily be the last cat we capture - we would like to trap the remaining adults and have them spayed or neutered. No more kittens.

Peaches is sickly. Her tests for FIV (the feline version of HIV) and Feline Leukemia came back negative, and she has had her first round of shots. But she has an eye infection in both eyes, as well as an upper respiratory infection. We have drops and pills and a liquid medicine we have to give her twice a day.

But this sixth feral kitten is not for me. My mom will keep her, the fifth cat in her group, so we will have five and five. All spayed, all neutered. And as for the outdoor cats...I don't mind a few to keep down the mouse and vole and rabbit populations, but having them breed without constraint is unacceptable, even if the kittens have an incredibly high mortality rate. We will take steps to avoid any future litters.

Kittens, Dinosaurs, and Uggs

(OK, that title is technically incorrect: the footwear linked below are NOT Uggs. My mistake. But since the word "uggs" is part of the link name, I will leave it as-is, in accordance of my "don't screw with the URL" policy. )

Please remember to click on the links in the Silence Is The Enemy post every day in June. It costs you nothing, and it generates revenue for an important cause.


My posting may become irregular over the next few days, as work and a visit from my sister overlap. If I'm not around for a while, I'll leave you with this:

Big and little: Scooter hovering over Bowie.


Three siblings: BlueBear at top, Bowie at bottom left, Thor at bottom right. Note the different patterns on Bowie and Thor. In this picture, Bowie appears to have an "angry face", while Thor appears to have a "happy face".

"We found your camera cable!" The gap between keyboard and monitor is guarded by two dinosaurs. Actually, the Elasmosaurus on the right is technically not a dinosaur. And the Styracosaurus on the left bears a stamp indicating that he is actually a "Styrarus."


I received this e-mail the other day and was immediately inclined to ignore it. But the links checked out, and it looked legitimate. I figured I would ask around to see if anyone else received it:

Hi

I just stumbled upon your site anothermonkey.blogspot.com and I’m not sure if you’re interested but we created a gift card for your readers which gives them $30 to spend at our store.

Sorry if I’ve wasted any of your time!

Feel free to shoot me any questions or ideas if your keen...

All your readers need to do is visit our website http://www.whooga.com/ and enter the code ANOTHERMON into the cart. We ship to all countries and there are no conditions.

Kind Regards,
Alicia

www.whooga.com

(NOTE: These shoes are NOT Uggs, despite what I wrote in the title.)

Turns our Dr. Isis received a similar (though not identical) letter. She also believes it is legitimate. Now, these aren't exactly the sort of shoes I would wear, and I'm not getting anything out of this offer, but I figured there is no loss (and some benefit) to the Cosmic All by passing this offer along. I mean, if you're inclined to want this sort of thing, you'll probably know whether the prices being offered at the store (less a $30 coupon) are decent. If anyone knows of any scammy aspect of this offer, please let me know.

Well, so much for me! Better start getting ready for work.

Kittens and yard work

Kittens and yard work are rapidly consuming all of my time. Everything else is suffering as a result.

I'm not putting as much into blogging, not writing the posts I want to because I just don't have the energy. (I have, however, made major revisions and additions to NEPA Blogs, and I may incorporate some of those changes into Another Monkey.)

I'm gardening in reverse: I started out with three tomato plants set out and now have one. Stupid birds. Next year I'll use Wall-O-Waters, which also protect the young plants from birds. Actually, it's not too late to use them this year...I'll see if I can find any in my shed. I still have a dozen tomato plants in reserve, but I'm reluctant to have them all get eaten. Maybe by next week they'll be taller.

I have about half a dozen people I need to get in touch with. Some of them contacted me several weeks ago and I'm just being unspeakably rude by not getting back to them.

I've found out via Facebook that two unconnected friends have ended their respective relationships. That makes me sad.

I'm also sad that the cute girl who lived across the street from my house across town has moved. I last saw her the night my mom and I were retrieving Bowie from my house - wow, three and a half weeks ago! - and something seemed amiss. She was dressed differently than usual, though usually when I see her she is dressed up for wherever she works. But she was loading stuff into her car. I glanced at her as I got into my car and asked myself Is she moving out? I wanted to ask her, but something stopped me. Maybe I was just tired. Next time I was over thataway, there was a different car in front of her house. It looked like her car, but was a different color. Did she just get a new car? No. Now there's a FOR RENT sign in the window of her apartment. Oh, well. I guess I should have said goodbye when I had the chance.

My twenty-year class reunion from the University of Scranton is this weekend. I'm not going. A lot of people I know aren't going. But some are. Maybe if my job situation were different - like, say, if I weren't working twelve hours each night of the reunion in a factory production job that has nothing to do with my double-major in Physics and Philosophy, a job where every day I get further and further from any possibility of ever again holding a job that does have anything to do with my degree, or indeed any job that requires skills more advanced than the ones involved in doing factory production work - I would consider going. But for now, no. Maybe next time.

Bowie had her initial vet's visit on May 26, so her follow-up will need to be sometime between June 24 and 26, or July 2 or 3, or July 10 or 13 - by which point Thor and BlueBear will be ready for their follow-ups. And I'm sure the grass will need to be mowed, again, during each of those groups of days off.

Kittens and yard work. That's what my life has come to.

Daily cat post

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Haha, I meant to do this as a supplementary post for Tuesday, but I got wrapped up in another post on NEPA Blogs and by the time I looked up, it was already Wednesday! So does this count as my Wednesday post? You'll just have to stay tuned to see!

The two latest additions to our feral kitten collection went to the vet today and got a clean bill of health. Everyone at the vet's office is telling me how I need to capture the rest of the litter, and the mother, and the other two litters and mothers in our neighborhood, and all the other stray cats in Nanticoke, and bring them in to get checked, and spayed, and neutered. As I handed out $114 per kitten for the initial checkup, which included Feline AIDS and Feline Leukemia tests, de-wormer, and an initial distemper shot, as well as a physical exam - a bargain, since I was expecting something more like $150 per cat - I could only smile, nod, and try to figure out how many days of overtime I will have to work to support these cats, when and if overtime becomes available again.

Bowie was glad to finally get to play with Thor and BlueBear. BlueBear seems to be more traumatized than the other kittens - while Thor and Bowie rolled around and ambushed each other, BlueBear preferred to sleep against my heart while curled up under my shirt for well over an hour, something Bowie outgrew several weeks ago.

Tomorrow I think I will be going over to my house across town to mow the lawn, possibly after mowing the lawn here. I may be taking all three kittens with me, to start getting them used to their future home!

BlueBear

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BlueBear is a very shy (or frightened) kitten. While Thor has fully adapted to being around humans, and will play with any toys we give him and will even cry when we leave his presence, BlueBear will always hide when we come onto the porch.

BlueBear's name commemorates another black cat who was born to the same mother several years ago. He had no fear of humans whatsoever. Whenever the other kittens from that litter would see us they would scatter, but one would hold his ground and stare at you as you approached. When you were almost close enough to touch him, he would calmly walk away. We called him "Spooky", but one day a nephew caught a glimpse of him and thought he was a bear - and from then on he was named "SpookyBear." It has been several months since I saw SpookyBear, and the last time I saw him he looked bedraggled and weak, and was behaving deferentially towards the younger cats, the ones who were born last October. I presume he has since died, before reaching his third birthday. I think only one cat from his litter is still alive. Feral cats do not have long life expectancies in the wild.

(The name also commemorates the fact that he had beautiful blue eyes about four or five weeks ago, when I was able to pick him up and get a good look at him. The blue is now gone. Bowie also had bluish eyes when we first got her, two weeks ago, but her eyes are now a yellowish-hazel-gray.)

Thor and BlueBear are both about 50% larger than Bowie. I don't know if this is because they are both males, or because they have been eating a different diet than their sister for the last few weeks, or because being outside forces a kitten to grow up faster. Whatever the case, I expect that tomorrow's visit to the vet will not be as much fun as Bowie's visit was two weeks ago.

Three

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And now we have three feral kittens. Well, two ferals plus Bowie.

I had a plan half-made up on the way home today: The kittens love the nets, right? They play in them all the time, in a way that the older cats cannot. So if I were to stuff the opening of the Havahart trap with nets, maybe the kittens would manage to get through. Maybe...

As I pulled up at the house I saw three cats playing in the nets at the bottom of the back porch. Two young adults from the litter from last October, and the black kitten.

I especially wanted to grab the black kitten. Not just for the sake of having her. Not even for the sake of getting her out of the breeding population. No, see, whether you want to believe it or not, there are people out there who get their kicks torturing and killing cats.

There's a group of kids in the local inbred haven of Shickshinny (about ten miles from here) who have been recording themselves doing just that and then posting the videos to YouTube. Prosecutors say there's nothing they can do about it, since the videos could have been altered once they were posted. So these kids are free to do as they please.

Black cats are a particular target for this sort of thing.

The cats scattered as I got out of the car. I checked under the overturned cart, but there were no cats hiding there.

I walked onto the porch, and there was the trap, already loaded with cat food. The adult cat we caught yesterday, who tried to exit our porch via a high-speed leap through the screen, apparently didn't manage to eat very much.

I thought what the hell and placed the trap at the bottom of the steps. I stuffed the entrance with nets - not enough to block the door from closing, just enough to intrigue a kitten. I then went into the house to get Bowie and Thor, who were sleeping in two separate - and separated - pet carriers. We would sit on the porch together and wait to see if anyone took the bait.

As soon as I stepped onto the porch, I heard the SLAM of the trap door closing.

Several cats were gathered around the trap, looking at the black kitten inside.

So now we have Bowie, Thor, and the black kitten I had planned to call BlueBear. Back when his or her eyes were blue. They may still be blue, I don't know. I didn't get a good look at him (or her) as he (or she) ran out of the trap and into hiding somewhere on the porch.

I'm glad we have this kitten. It will mean company for Thor, since he isn't allowed to play with the other cats (including his sister Bowie) until he gets checked out by a vet. But he and the black kitten can play as much as they want to.

For the first day we had him Thor cried for his mommy, for his brothers and sisters, for his lost freedom of the wilds of the back yard. Now he cries for one of us to come out onto the porch to keep him company. I want him to draw out the black kitten, to show it the food bowls, and the kitten milk bowl, and the comfy bed where they can snuggle together. But I also tossed a toy out to him, a clever and simple spinner ball. He is having a great time with it on the porch. Hopefully, before too long the black kitten will come out of hiding and decide to play, too.