Just in time for Halloween, he has found a place of safety and sanity away from hands that may do him harm being that he is a black cat. Twist was in an awful state this morning. At first I attributed it to the fact that I had overslept for the first time in many weeks. I was behind a couple of hours. (Kota and I had a pretty rough night together.) When I got closer to the feeding platform and saw the feline welcoming committee,I did a double-take. Instead of three black cats to greet me there were four!

For the first time since his arrival, I was able to see Goblin clearly. Similar to Crazy Eyes, Goblin is cross-eyed. Unlike  Crazy Eyes, whose pupils do this frenetic constant dance ( hence his name). Goblin’s gaze is steady, one can clearly see that he is cross-eyed.

He met my gaze, so I slowly blinked my eyes, lowered my head to reduce the threat and continued my walking. Before today I have only seen glimpses of him seconds in the night. I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was still stationary and hadn’t fled yet. As  I walked, my mind was processing all I had seen. Goblin is short-haired  he is pitch black, he is extremely skinny, his ribs are pronounced. I knew he would flee the moment I returned to look at him  But I took the chance that he wouldn’t. It failed. As he turned to run away from me, I could clearly see the unmistakable signs that he had tapeworms. It was time to return to the house and form a plan of action.

The next time I returned, I was bearing individual plates of food instead of trays. Each dish contained wet food, diatomaceous earth, L-Lysine and ground up pumpkin seeds. The diatomaceous earth was for the fleas, the L-Lysine for general health and the ground pumpkin seeds for the tapes  At the last moment before I left the kitchen, I had broke open a few pouches of donated fancy feast tuna and broth and dribbled all of the juices over all of the offerings as a final temptation.

Using ground pumpkin seeds to kill both the adult and the eggs of the tapeworm has its drawbacks. First it doesn’t magically kill them overnight as Drontal or Pro-fender would  Secondly, when you deal with outside cats who want nothing more than staying as far away from you as possible. You have no way of monitoring who is eating how much food. I have learned over time using this process and working with it, that if you start with a very small amount of canned food and add the seeds mixing well. You have a better chance of success that all the cats will eat only out of their individual saucers instead of getting more than the others.

I have also learned, the finer you can grind the seeds the better you are with the cats accepting them  The seeds don’t appear to have an odor, but the texture can be off-putting to some of these carnivores  Once the plates have been licked clean, more canned food comes out along with dry.

The pros are: It works! I will admit I was skeptical when I first learned of this process, but working through it and tweaking it has shown me that it can indeed work. It is so inexpensive compared to the chemical route, not to mention so much better for the cats overall. If one cat gets more than he’s given, it won’t hurt him  It’s a micro bacterial fiber but it doesn’t even produce diarrhea. The powder passes through his system easily. Yes, the preparation is a bit arduous for the human. But the human doesn’t have to donn on their Hazmet suit, set-up traps or try to barehand-catch and medicate their clowder  This method is a win-win for both sides. So much less invasive.

Goblin will be pampered with good food, clean water and a safe harbor to ride out his days  Looking at him I estimate he’s probably just over a year old? Hard to tell unless you can see the teeth, I’m not anxious for that experience, thank you very much. He’s right on time too- not only to escape what sometimes happens to black cats on Halloween, but he’s also landing on his choice of a variety of heated cat beds when the temperature outside is reading 34°F. Welcome to my world, Goblin  I am so pleased to meet you.