Today the sun actually showed its face and it was wonderful to feel the warmth after so long. I cranked down the windows of my car on the way to town and uh oh- ALL the fur from stressed kitties going to the vet plus all the hair that Brook shed recently just flew out my windows! I had this vision of me flying down the highway with all this fur piling out the windows like the hay trucks losing their chaff when they haul hay from the Straw Palace. I had hair in my nose, my mouth, my ears! I guess I need to shake out that pet blanket more often!

Sam is holding his own. I am a bit alarmed at the amount of drainage coming up out of the drain but I called the vet and they said it was normal. I’ve been removing the e-collar when I go in to clean and feed but he starts rubbing his eye so I have to put it back on. Thank God for Trimline- if this were one of the stiff e-collars he would be miserable.

Pilling Samson is not a fun time. Poor boy he tenses up and starts to shake no matter how gentle I am to him. I gave him a nice meaty treat when we were done. I wish I could tell him that these pills are to help him. With the e-collar it makes it easier on me because he can’t claw me. He can and he does bite though. This morning he bit the syringe tip in half! I make sure to give him water after each pill so they don’t seize in his throat.

I pulled down the screen doors from upstairs yesterday and used these to block the underside of the bed so he can’t escape there. That’s all I need to have him hide underneath the bed with the e-collar on!

His poor eye looks so bad- all goopy and weepy despite being stitched closed. The vet said it would do this- drain and weep which is why they put the drain in.

I just pray the vet is wrong and it isn’t cancer. I saw the spot in question yesterday during the exam and it is a large mass. The vet said when he scraped it, part of it was thick while the rest was thinner. Said he never has seen anything quite like this before (figures).

I had to laugh though after the initial exam. Steve looked at me with some exasperation in his face and said: “Mary Anne can’t you ever just bring me a normal case?” HA! I can handle the normal cases, it’s the complex ones that baffle me.

This is the first time that Steve has examined Samson. He wasn’t available before now.

A friend asked me last night why not just put Sam to sleep? Right now I can’t. I have lost Shell, Manchester, Brooklyn and Frasier in a very short amount of time. To lose yet another one I can’t go there. Sam isn’t suffering. He was actually playing this morning with the tip of my blouse as I got dressed. If he were suffering it would be a no-brainer. If the eye and the ear tips can be removed along with the cancer- he has a chance to finally have a life denied to him before. True, he has to spend his time in the bedroom away from the direct sun- but it beats the alternative.

My friend Delores is coming by later to take Barnaby off my hands. She runs a private rescue over the mountain and is in town for some meetings. I told her about Barn and she said she has room to take him.

Samson has had a third eyelid flip performed by the vet. This procedure takes the third eyelid, stretches it up and over the eye to form a natural eye patch. Although they strongly suspect he has cancer in this eye (for they can find nothing else to explain the mass they found there) they want the eye to rest for two weeks. Then he goes back and they will remove the eye (and also both his ear flaps. Poor kitty!

He is Shell’s colonymate and these cats just weren’t even given a chance to be healthy and happy. I am going to start a chipIn and hope that I can raise the monies needed to give this kitty that chance he never had. He is such a sweet baby, but I knew he was in trouble a few days ago when he started banging his head against the wall, the pillows, the laundry basket, the bookcase- anything he could find. He was at the vets for two and a half-hours and is now home with a drain in his forehead and his eye stitched close. I put a veterinary soft e-collar on him so he won’t pull the drain out of dig out the stitches. I have him in a cage right now as he is still sedated- then he will just continue to stay in the bedroom with the last of the remaining colony- Delilah. Poor kitty- my heart hurts for him.

not that I blame him, but he just bit me after I had to dose him with an antibiotic, a steriod and some eye drops. Now he is hissing and growling at the very sight of me. I just want to hug him but I don’t think he is in the mood.

Tomorrow, Samson goes to the vet to once again see if they can figure out what is going on with his eye. This poor kitty has been stained, dropped, doped, numbed, and given ointments, antibiotics, shots and pills and still his left eye is one messed up puppy. I tried making an eye patch for him, but it bent his whiskers and his tail was a twitchin so I decided this was a really bad idea. This is the fourth vet visit for the same problem. I am hoping tomorrow they will have a cure that actually works. It’s not pink-eye, conjuctivitus. They have not found any injury to the cornea or the inner eye. It is just a mystery. It isn’t an ingrown hair or a scratch to the lower part of the eye- it just is so painful for him and it breaks my heart daily to see that what they give me isn’t fixing it.

He would be invisible, this solitary figure pedaling ahead of me on the highway were it not for the several sets of glowing eyes caught in the reflection of my headlights. As he stops to rest under a street light, I pull over and quietly observe the contents of his baggage. Inside two beat-up carriers ride several adult cats. Perched precariously on top of the two carriers is another smaller carrier with only one occupant. He moves off into the darkness and I follow.

He stops under the overhanging of the local bank and props his bike along the wall. I take a quick glance at my emergency box I carry. I have several tins of cat food, some dry kibble and some water. I pull over park, pick up the box and walk over hesitantly. I want to see his cats, but I don’t wish him to feel threatened. As I move closer, I reel back from the stench. Those poor kitties are living in filth.

He looks at me suspiciously as I approach and I hold the box before me as a peace offering or a shield, I am unsure which. He is new in town as I don’t recognize him. Two cardboard signs are bungee corded to the sides of the bike. One says “Jesus Saves” the other “Need Food.” Strapped between these two messages are the cat carriers and several boxes of crushed Meow Mix.

I ask him his name and he tells me “Todd.” When I ask his last name, he holds his fingers up to his lips in a shushing motion and whispers, “Can’t tell you- CIA.”

I smile and cautiously peer into the bottom carrier. Five kitty faces are faced against the wire. I see a long-haired tortie, a mackeral tabby, a golden boy and the others are obliterated in the darkness of the carrier.
My heart sinks. In the top carrier rides a lone black cat, for some reason she gets to stay by herself escaping the crowded conditions of the carriers below.

I leave my offerings on the nearby stoop and back off. The man approaches angrily and takes the bags tossing them into the street. He sneers at me and I am frightened. Here I am in the middle of the night on the edge of town with someone who doesn’t have full mental capacity. I keep backing away slowly It is time for me to leave.

As I drive away, I wonder about Todd and where he came from. What circumstances put him into a situation where he is homeless and sharing his life with seven felines? In the rearview mirror, I see him again settle down to the ground. The cats I am sure are smelling the food they will never be entitled to eat.

I see him later around town with the black cat allowed a bit of freedom on a leash strapped to the bike. The police, now well aware of his presence and the fact that he is gaining so much attention with his feline passengers quickly set out to drive him away from the area. I spoke with one of the officers describing the deplorable conditions these cats have to live in, but he was more concerned with the man stopping traffice and creating a nuisance then he was for the feline prisoners. His response- “They have food and water, therefore they are not being abused. After all, they are just cats!”

I saw Todd one last final time during a bad rainstorm. He had pulled off under a bridge and had taken his black cat out attaching her leash to his bike. I watched as she strained vainly against the leash in an attemp to escape. She seemed to prefer a mad dash into traffic instead of this nomadic life. In my heart, I wished for the leash to break so she could escape. As I drove away, my face was as wet as the pavement ahead of me.

That’s what they call the little suck holes that have magically appeared on the backs of Mike’s legs virtually overnight. Apparently, this fluid is blood although it isn’t red- but according to the doctor, the blood is coming. They have him wrapped up in thick, ointment covered bandages and we are supposed to keep his legs dry? How in the world do you keep legs dry when they are weeping fluid? i guess that is the million dollar question. I really didn’t expect to spend the day at the hospital- especially this day, but when I was trying to help him put his shoes on earlier, his one sock was soaking wet. Upon further investigation, I found these little suck-holes on the back of his leg and off we went. Happy Birthday to me, pass the sports wrap!

I just hope he can keep his leg clean. They say if the holes become infected really bad things happen. He goes back Monday to see his regular doctor and then back to wound care clinic on Tuesday. I’m just grateful that I found his wet sock and went looking to find out why it was wet instead of just assuming he walked near the dog’s water as she is quite sloppy when she drinks. Thank you God for giving me vigilant eyes-

Swat…swat…swat…”meow” swat…swat…swat..swat..”Meow!” SWAT….SWAT…SWAT…”MEOW!”

Opening my eyes, I see Fiona’s caliconess staring at me. For the last few minutes she has been swatting my cheek lightly and meowing. “Mom…mom…wake up!” I groan and roll over looking at the clock. 6:00 a.m. Two hours later than she normally wakes me up. Closing my eyes trying to sink back into the oblivion of sleep, Fiona is relentless. Finally after the umpty-dozenth swat, I get up.

I know what Fiona wants. She doesn’t want her ears rubbed, she doesn’t want to be petted or spoken to. She doesn’t want food. How do I know? I can hear the grinding of the water fountain in the kitchen. In the middle of the night, this kitchen oasis has run dry. Fiona wants water.

She doesn’t want a bowl of water set on the floor, a trickle of water from the kitchen sink or a drink from the hose. She wants her fountain fixed and she wants it NOW…MEOW!

She paces relentlessly below me as I struggle through sleep to dismantle this older Drinkwell Fountain. Like a caged lion she weaves in between my feet and when she thinks this is taking entirely to long- she swats my leg with her claws unsheathed- OUCH!

“Will you knock it off?” I say to her below. “This thing ain’t easy to mess with.”

Finally, fountain disembled, cat hair cleaned from the pump and put back together, I pour the water into the reservior filling it and plug the unit in. The minute it starts to whirr, she ceases her pacing and goes over to catch the water spilling over into the bowl.

I look down at this calico girl amused. Maybe she knows something I don’t? Perhaps this is her fountain of youth- her entertainment for the day. A satisfying drink of water when so long ago water and food was denied her as she struggled to live within the confines of a small bird cage. Whatever she thinks, she is happy now and her purr takes over the room. Maybe, instead of the coffee brewing on the stove, I should just kneel down and join her at the bowl- especially if it is a fountain of youth!

In the coming weeks, my kitty testers are having a go at all the eco-friendly cat litter out on the market today. One brand carries an early FLUTD which would be good to have as some of my senior kitties do get frequent UTI’s. The challenge I believe is going to get these kitties to accept a new texture of litter. But, if the product is kinder to the planet and still handles the odors that occur, I am all for it.

Woke up this morning to fog- dense fog in May! For a minute I thought I was back living on PCH and fog was rolling in from Huntington Beach. I wanted to continue to burn our leaves, but there is burn ban for the day. Instead, I will start my set of summer articles for felinexpress that deals with outside cat behavior and spring clean my house. To bad, there isn’t profit in cat fur as I have a ton of it!

They don’t do it intentionally- try to puzzle, baffle, frustrate or thwart you, but sometimes you have to wonder!

Early this morning, our phone rings. It’s our neighbor. He has a cat in his barn and the cat is crying to get out. However, he CAN’T find this cat. He can hear it- oh can he hear it- but where in the world is this cat in distress?

I turn on the light and glance at the clock. It’s 3:00 a.m. I didn’t ask Frank why he called me now. Why is he out in the barn at such an hour, I know why, his cow is sick. I struggle into my clothes, gather my trap, carrier and other gear and head on over. Mike is still asleep. I swear, the man can sleep through anything.

When I arrive, I find Frank wringing his hat in his hands looking worried. The vet was out caring for Buss their cow. Frank said not even the vet could find the cat. I’m not surprised, vets can care for cats, not find them in a massive barn if they are stuck somewhere. I told Frank to go get some sleep and I would poke around and see what I can find. He heads off to the house and I get to work.

The barn is still at the moment. The horses and cows are munching hay, the chickens are clucking but I don’t hear any cat. Popping open a can of cat food, I wave it in the air so the smell will travel- then I do a quiet kitty call and I hear the response. A very muffled meow.

This barn is massive. It is full of farm equipment long past its prime, hay bales, old tires, I know one place I can rule out, the stalls. I doubt any cat not familar with the livestock would be stuck inside a stall with a cow or a horse. I start searching in grids calling, waving the food and trying to find the kitty in question. I can tell by the cry that it is a young kitten which makes the search worse. Kittens can get into any tiny space and so I go low and squat and try to figure out where the crying is coming from. It’s not easy but at 4:05 a.m. I emerge triumphant behind the stacked tires with this little kitty in my arms. He had been found inside the tire up against the wall of the tire and he was tired and hungry but he seems just fine.

I popped him into my carrier. I have no idea where he came from- where mom is and how he ended up in the barn. But for now, he has been bathed and dried and is upstairs getting warmed up and he has food and water and Shell’s blanket for company. I’ll call Frank in the morning, but I think I will wait until the sun is up! By the way- I am calling this kitten Barney! Actually, Mike said he acts more like a Barnaby- so Barnaby he is. When I first found him I thought he was pitch black, but he was just a dirty bird-

One of my readers contacted me yesterday and asked for Rums. I have adopted to her before twice and both kitties live a life kitties could only dream about, so I let Rums go to her. Thanks Doris for giving this little girl such a wonderful home. I know you will guard her closely until she is spayed and she will live with Bravo and Spencer to a great age!

Bless you for coming down through the storm and picking her up too. To bad Washington is a bit far from our front door but I know you will be so happy with her. She has quite the purr-sonality- LOL