I am unplugging for a few days. Having issues with my computer and Mike is going to try and “fix” it. No offense but every time he tries, he crashes the darn thing. He might have been able to back in the day be the great calibration technician he once was- but these new computers are a far cry from the behemouths he worked on back in the 60’s. Oh well, his youngest son is a whiz at I.T. so worse comes to worse, Dennis will come to the rescue. I am sure part of the problem is cat hair in my computer- Did I say that? How in the world could cat hair be inside my computer! LOL

See ya later guys and Happy Mew Years!

We were traveling the old hwy 99e because last week our 3 hour trip took 12 hours on the I-5! So I went the old highway when I took Mike to wound care. On the way home, the truck in front of us hit a red-tailed hawk! The truck didn’t stop, but I sure did. Mike was yelling at me but I did an illegal U-turn and whipped around and parked near the field the hawk had stumbled into. I grabbed my heavy coat. I was not going to let that majestic bird die in the middle of a field.

It took several tries to make it up the slippery hill, but finally I saw the hawk and it saw me and tried to fly away. I could see the wing was broken and there was a hole in it’s head. 🙁 It kept trying to get away until finally, I just used my feral cat skills. I sat down on the wet ground and started talking to it. I could see its beady eyes staring me down, so I closed mine (just like I do with the ferals) I carefully stood up, took a deep breath and with my eyes still closed, tossed my carhardt jacket over the bird.

Ok, now I am thinking- Great Mary Anne now you have an injured raptor underneath your coat. What are you going to do next? So I said a prayer and knelt down, gathered the coat around the bird and carried it back to the truck. Mike held it the rest of the trip and instead of going straight home, we went to Corvallis to Chintimeree Wildlife Refuge where I dropped off this beautiful bird and I can call in the morning after 8:00 to find out if it survived. They said when they took it out of my coat that it was in shock, but it was alive. It’s tongue was glued to its beak from the shock and dehydration. I just pray it lived. I saw it fly across the road with a fish in its talons and then the truck sped up- I didn’t see the hawk for several minutes, there was another car behind the truck that hit it- then I saw it appear on the road and it was rolling- so it either got stuck under the truck or it held on to something when it hit? Hard to tell. But in 30 degree weather, I was not about to let it die in a field. If it does die, it will at least be warm and comforted and fed.

Mike is going to gone for a month soon. He is being enrolled in the hyperbaric program at OHSU. It is an outpatient program and as we don’t have friends in the area that he could stay with, we are going to have find appropriate lodging nearby for 30 days where they can shuttle him to the hospital for his 4 hour treatment daily. I can’t go with him, I can’t leave the cats (and honestly kids I need a break from taking care of him). So we will figure all this out when the time comes- he still has two more treatments at the clinic before he “qualifies”  There is no way I can drive him up and back every day for a month- so like I said, we will figure it out soon. He has gone from 5 ulcers on his leg to 10- dangit all but we are trying so very hard to save his leg. If it weren’t for the veinous statis he might have a fighting chance but now every time his leg swells, whatever is covering his leg cuts into it- much like an embedded collar would a dog. His leg for lack of a better word is gushy and pretty nasty. I am to change his dressings now three times a week as they are using a special netting to stop the bacteria from spreading. Like I said, I really need a break from all of this-

Mr. Riggs is at the vet’s this morning getting neutered. I am praying that after this surgery his aggressive growling and snarling at other cats will vanish and he will not want to talk as much as before. He meowed the entire night last night. I finally popped a pair of ear plugs in so I could sleep. Mike is lucky in that respect. He just takes out his hearing aids before he goes to sleep and then he’s deaf as a post. I don’t like to sleep with ear plugs in- because I need to hear if Mike stops breathing (sleep apnea) or if a cat or two starts quarreling. But, I do need to sleep.

Pebbles is going downhill quickly after her vet visit. She has stopped eating- she is drinking a lot of water but there is no urine in the pans. I think the vets might have been right saying that she is probably fighting cancer. They put her age at about 14 and this poor girl has had such a rough life.She has pretty much just stayed in one spot inside her heated cat house since we brought her home the other day after her visit. Not sure what is going to happen from here on in with her.

The little black and white tuxedo boy- Mike said we should call him Bones- he eats like a steam shovel! I am feeding him small bits at a time, and when I go to remove his plate to put a bit more food on it- he will attack my hand! Poor baby- he is but 3 months old or he could be older and in such deplorable shape. I pick him up and weep, you can feel his ribs protruding and his backbone and leg bones protrude as well. He really is a walking skeleton, it is a wonder he is even alive. He is out in the living room in a large cage getting used to being warm and having food. I am hoping in the next few days his food aggression will stop as he realizes food does come at certain times and kibble is down all the time. He allows me to pet him but not too much as his skin is very thin. he will bite if I inadvertently hurt him. But he is a sweet boy and I just hope he survives. If he does- then he will find his own name in time.

I think I will call him Quinn. Here he is:

This is Riggs- he is what I would call a Christmas gift gone wrong because the person he ended up with wasn’t keen on keeping him. She had called “everyone” and no one would take him. I was their last hope. So there you go- one more through the door. I took him in, got him tested and he will be neutered on Monday then up for adoption after the first. I kind of suspect he wore out his welcome quickly because he is extremely talkative. Extremely-

He is really a cutie about 3 months old-

This morning, I received a phone call from a farmer’s wife. She was near hysterics. There was a wild cat in the barn and she thinks the cat killed her baby lambs! Her husband was going to put a bullet in the cat because not only was the cat a killer- it was wounded. I raced over and they let me in the dark barn. I could hear the cat moaning underneath a bench and I let my flashlight look for eye-shine. When I saw the shine-back I was surprised. it wasn’t green, it was blue!

Talking softly to the cat, I approached on my knees and using a towel, I carefully got it out from under the workbench and into the carrier. It wasn’t easy the kitty was flipping upside down and sideways. I saw the leg dangling but there wasn’t a way to lower the cat down into the carrier without bumping the leg. Snarling and spitting at me- the cat was finally captured. Turns out it is a Persian! A sooty white Persian with a broken leg and a microchip. Kitty has had surgery and the owners have been called but apparently they have been out of the country for some time and not due back until after the 1st. Kitty is being boarded and watched over carefully.

When I got back home, I was late in the  morning feed. When Pebbles came out to eat, I saw her eyes they were such a mess. I was able to trick her into going inside the carrier and I took her to the vet. She has been drinking a lot of water since she arrived here a few weeks ago but I see very little return in the litter boxes which worries me. We did a pre-op blood work- her liver and kidney values are normal range but she is showing highly anemic and dehydrated which doesn’t fit for a cat who is drinking four cups of water a day. The vet searched for a mass (fearing cancer) They gave her a long-acting antibiotic shot for her URI but said that in three weeks if her appetite doesn’t improve and she continues to empty the water bowl daily they would suspect she has cancer. They also said she is a old, old girl with only four teeth left in her mouth- three of which are rotten. We are going to give her three weeks, change her diet to AD and hope she improves, if not, we will let her go so she can travel out of pain. Although I had not that much trouble getting her into the carrier- they couldn’t get close to her without giving her sedation. She is still loopy so I am going to let her spend the night inside the carrier and let her back out in her cage in the morning.

When I was getting ready to just relax, the phone rings and a gal down the street who maintains a maintenance yard said there was a new kitten running around the yard and she couldn’t get close to it- but she was worried because the kitten was young and bone-skinny. Off I go again to find a really sweet looking tuxedo boy about 3 months old. He looked like he had never been introduced to food! Chris said he just showed up two weeks ago, but she couldn’t get close to him and had tried. Half an hour later, I scruffed the little boy and we put him into a live trap. Chris looked at me in amazement and said “How did you do that?”  I just smiled.  I took him to the vet, where they tested him and neutered him, de-wormed and de-flead him and battled his earmites. He is home now inside the cage on the back porch. He is a walking skeleton so I am feeding him bits at a time of AD. He is not feral- just unsocialized and he needs a name which will come to me soon. Right now he got neutered under the name of “Barn Cat.” I have been able to pet him without it going to war which is a relief. I told Chris I was keeping him because he would never survive being outside in these frigid temperatures. he is sleeping in a heated cat house right now and I blocked off the access to the outside catio for now. He needs to stay warm until he gains some weight-

It’s 7:00 p.m. right now and I am going to sit in my recliner, see how many kitties want to keep me company and fall asleep. Here’s hoping it doesn’t rain kitties today- although it did also rain gifts for kitties and for me from some of you so THANK YOU SO MUCH for the cat food, the catnip cat toys (my cats went nuts for these homemade bags) and the Universal Scanner so now when I find a stray- I can scan for the chip without going to the vet.

May you all have a safe, warm and lovely Merry Christmas- those of you brave enough to have Christmas trees in your homes please know that tinsel is toxic to kitties. They love to play with it- but eating it can be deadly.

God Bless You One and ALL

After being involved with that cat hoarder late in 2015 and then learning later that most of the kittens we did rescue from her hoard passed away from FIP- I cannot find it in my heart to watch this. I learned about this project through my feline specialist and she asked me to pass on the link- which is what I am doing. My FB page got hacked so if someone can put this link on their FB page, the kitties would sure appreciate it.  I flunked linking webpages on blogs the last time I tried so if the link isn’t active, my apologies- just copy and paste  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulcastrojr/aeris?ref=thanks_link

Didn’t work you will have to copy and paste

FIP

Mr. Raleigh (the kitty locked in a local business for five days) is turning into quite a challenge. I swear he is polydactyl (but he isn’t I looked). He has been inside the kitchen trash twice now. I found him under the bathroom sink with all my brand new toilet tissue shredded beyond belief! He opens up my kitchen cabinets and climbs inside. If the dishwasher is open- he feels quite comfortable going into it and taking a nap! He is a counter jumper and with this cold weather, I keep the faucet in the bathroom dripping so the well won’t freeze up and he will lie in the drip until the sink fills with water! He does not make a good drain! LOL I had to blow dry him fast because he can still get out into the tunnels and into the enclosures and if he did that while he was so wet- he would freeze on the spot. Silly kitty!

Thank you to whoever sent cat food- trash bags, litter scoops and cleaners for litter pans. There was no note who it came from inside the boxes. BUT the gifts are so appreciated!

We are finally at the tail end of renovations on the cat enclosure. I will be posting photos soon. It is so nice to know that they will be able to weather these ice storms in comfort instead of just huddling down under the house. Most of the outdoor kitties are now inside the patio enclosure at night- huddled around the heater. it’s a sight for sore eyes.

Bitter cold, freezing rain, some snow which means if it continues, the  mating season for the strays and ferals will finally stop! It’s been three years since we have had a bitter cold winter and the kitten population has just exploded. So I just bundle up and smile and head out the door!