The New Year will soon ring in with substantially less kittens in the Miller home! I have made a couple of surprise visits to some of the kittens new places to find they are thriving and being loved and cared for- I couldn’t ask for a better outcome than that!

I still have black kitties and this morning, when I opened the door to let the barn cats come in, this beautiful black and white longhair kitten (about 7 months old) waltzed in like she owned the place! At first I thought it was Muddy as she is quite similar to her, but then Muddy came into the kitchen and I thought- “What in the world? Who are you?”

I did a quick roll call check on the black plague, Moses, Melin, Waverly, Muddy, Frasier, Sharky all accounted for and present.

The new one has made herself quite comfortable on the couch, there have been no confrontations and she ate like there is no tomorrow. I suspect the wild weather has driven her to me and I will make inquiries around the road to see if she might be someone’s Christmas kitty! Mike says she is now our Christmas Kitty! Just what we need! LOL

To my readers of this blog, I want to wish you a Happy New Year’s and may 2010 be full of infinite possibilities and delights! If you see a stray wandering your neigborhood and you have the means to take care of the creature, I hope my writings have encouraged you to do so. There are to many people in this world who turn their backs on suffering, who are so self-involved they do not notice the cat scrounging at the dumpster of the local McDonald’s or notice the litter of kittens huddling under a bush.

I thank you all for bearing with me through everything God has thrown at me this year. It is your prayers and support that have helped me through the tough times and shown me that although I may at times want to stop rescuing, God has other plans.

Take care of yourself, and each other and I will meet you again in the New Year!

With Love and Respect-

Mary Anne Miller

Hope has left here today to go and live with a friend of mine who is a vet tech. I also adopted out Barnum and Merlin to a wonderful home in North Albany. I think this necklace is really lucky!

Looks like Hope has decided to stick around on the planet for awhile and she started eating this morning. She only seems to like junk Friskies wet cat food- not my favorite choice. The problem with wet cat food, is they make it to wet and it tends to rot the teeth out if that is ALL the cat is eating. This causes extra serious health diseases including the shut down of major organs so I hope that she decides to eat dry food after awhile.

She is a real pill when she wants attention and you are busy. You need to pet her and you need to pet her NOW or she gets very aggressive in her search for your attention. I am going to start working with her to chill a bit because I can’t have a pet aggressive cat here- not with Mike being so ill. I am sure she is starved for affection as her previous owners haven’t done right by any cat they have owned.

She keeps dashing outside, but thankfully she dashes out the back door which has an enclosed porch. There is a cat entrance out there, but it is high up and unless the cat knows it is there, it isn’t easy to find. I have to go to work today, but at least I can go to work this morning with an easier mind, knowing that Hope is eating food and not just nibbling,

Whatever was in her stomach has been softened by the barium and has moved along. She was eating for the vet’s and she still has a fever 103.6 but they have some pretty sick kittens there right now, so it was thought best that she come home.

I put her upstairs and put out food and water and gave her her pills. She is on amoxy and baytril.

She isn’t eating right now, but I hope that changes soon. If she suddenly relapses, I will take her back and have bloodwork run on her. The visit this time added over three hundred dollars to my vet bill, but hopefully, they will be patient with me as I pay it off slowly.

I am just glad to have her back, she is alert and wandering the room looking for a place where she can feel safe.

Christmas is low-key this year. I am working Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so today I gave Mike one of his presents. I bought him the complete television series of MacGuyver on DVD. I have been saving for quite awhile and was going to order it online, but when I mentioned to my boss what I was doing, she ordered it through the store and I saved a lot of money that way.

He was thrilled, and I knew he would be because he loves MacGuyver. I told him he can’t start to watch it until Christmas though! The other part of his present I am still working on.

Because his life is so sedentary now, he has a hard time getting into the attic where we have our library. I have been slowly moving the books out of the attic into one of the upstairs room- actually, the kitty quarantine room. I have most of the paperbacks out and now just need to bring out the hardbacks and turn this room into a real library. He will still have to walk up the stairs, but he won’t have to duck into the attic now to grab an Anne McCaffrey or a Mack Bolan or John D. McDonald. I still have to alphabetize the collection we have, but I think he will be pleased at the effort. Like I said, it is a really low-key Christmas, because as usual, the cats do come first.

He got me a new digital camera so after the holidays, I will be able to put newer photos of the kittens on petfinders and hopefully get more homes for them.

They are keeping her one more day. Her temp keeps spiking and the last film still shows the suspicious mass in her belly. She was tested for all the nasties and came up negative for those (thank you God) so I have no idea what is wrong with her and apparently neither do the vets.

They ran the film and found a suspicious mass in her stomach, her stomach totally empty and her colon full of gassy fluid. They are now running a barium study and so she is staying overnight. She also spiked a fever of 103.4 so something is definitely wrong with her.

All this couldn’t hit at the worse times, but I guess that is just the way of it around here.

I am waiting for the vet to call regarding the study and I will update as soon as I know more. I suspect they are going to have to do surgery to find out what the mass is that is causing her so much pain. I warned them about her pain level being to the point of her attacking me when I touch her now. I don’t want these good vets to get bit like I was earlier today. I know her aggression is pain-driven. I may just have to surrender her to the clinic as her surgery is going to be costly. But, I will cross that bridge when I come to it and not until then-

7:10 p.m.- the vet just called and there is indeed a suspicious shadow on the films. He wants to keep her overnight and repeat the films in the morning. I asked if she was eating anything and he said no- 🙁

She is not eating. I can’t get her to take anything. Not human food, not raw food, nothing. Dry has been tried, all the canned food I can get that is available and still she isn’t eating a thing.

I watch her in the room and she walks funny. I suspect, she is injured in her back legs. Because as she walks, she periodically stretches her back legs together to often to not indicate a problem. I couldn’t take her in today because I had to work. I will call on Monday and see if the vet will recheck her. I think I will ask for films of her back and her legs to see if this is why she isn’t eating and why she is so grumpy.

She climbed on my lap earlier today and I was using MaryJean Ballner’s massage tips on her, but when I got to her rear legs, she became quite agitated and growly. Even using the lightest touch of the palm of my hand, she turned around and swatted me good with her claws extended and her ears flat. So I think I am on the money that she has either been kicked, hit, or she has fallen from a great height and is in pain.

Guess I will know on Monday.

Work was difficult tonight. I had one of those nights when everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. I am opeing tomorrow so I will be in extra early to do the books and try to figure out the errors. the new girl was short by quite a bit so we need to figure out what happened and fix it before Monday.

Maybe on Monday, everything will be fixed- including Hope’s hunger strike. I am force-feeding her and she hates it with a passion. 🙁

The vet has no clue why Hope is not eating. She checked out negative for any of the nasty diseases and she was very loving and personable with the vet. He gave me some valium for her as valium in cats is an appetite stimulant and said if she isn’t eating by Saturday to bring her back.

Hoping to stimulate her prey instinct, I gave her about twenty minutes with the crew before shooing all the residents out of her room so she could have it to herself. She has several choices of food upstairs and I will leave her be for now and check in with her in the morning.

A & E runs a program called Hoarders late at night here. When I can’t sleep, I watch this program partly from fascination but also from dread. When they spotlight a home of a cat hoarder, I sometimes wonder if I fall into that category? My house is by no means clean- it is messy but liveable. I don’t have litter all over my rug, but I have a lot of cats and litter pans to qualify. I sometimes think my home might be showcased in the future, especially during feeding time when so many cats are around that it is hard for me to find a piece of tile to walk on without trodding on a paw or a tail.

This morning, I watched Animal Cops Philadelphia, and I wept along with other rescuers as they swept through a “No Kill” Shelter, only to discover over 150 sick and dying (or dead) cats in the basement. One poor boy had so much drainage coming from his eyes that he now is blind for life. I watched them carry off the cats in garbage bags, and try to save the hundreds that were so ill and I knew that although my heart is soft when it comes to these wonderful animals- I am not a hoarder, I am not evil and my cats don’t suffer nor will they ever if I have something to say about it.

Hope still isn’t eating. She is loving and headbumping me, allowing me to pet her, but she won’t eat. One session of force-feeding babyfood and water produced a cat ready for battle and a lot of frothing and foaming at the mouth. I have never seen anything like it and she will be going to the vet at 4:00 today. I have tried all my tricks to get her to eat and she wants no part of any of it. Not the KFC not the wet food that is mixed with a bit of catnip to stimulate an appetite. She is dehydrated but she is using the litter pan so she is at least drinking water. I am stymied why she isn’t eating so hopefully, the vet can shine a light on to the reasons why.