UPDATE ON NUGGET!

P.S. .....  

  Mom got an e-mail late this afternoon from the potential adopter, and Nugget is still here.  It seems that the little kitten he already has, has tested positive for FIV!
  Mom is kind of sad that the adoption fell through, after she had herself all geared up for it...but also very glad that the people were honest and told her, instead of just taking the little guy and exposing him to getting sick as well!

  Soooo.....maybe we're keeping him here, after all...purrrhaps it was meant to be....

Hello--We've Missed Everyone!

This is Nugget, our latest Foster...

To all my dear, wonderful acquaintances from the CB...I have (obviously) been among the missing for quite some time, and the kitties have been deprived of their blogging privileges.

That is my fault, and I must apologize.  There are a number of reasons this has happened, but it has all been around personal issues.  Among other things, I have  had quite a time trying to get back into my Blogger account--none of my passwords wanted to work, and neither did the password reset link function.  I was going nuts!  (Short trip!) 
I was  delighted and dismayed all at once to discover, when I finally did get back in, that there were NINE wonderful comments on my last post, which was nearly a year ago!  Several months, at any rate!  I loved the comments, appreciated them (the delight), but I was dismayed to think that I had not seen them in a timely fashion, and offered a proper thank you and reply.

My husband's health has been a huge factor.  He's got multiple problems, and we've spent a year back and forth to doctor appointments, tests of one sort and another, all trying to find out when and if they can start fixing things for him.  The biggest problem was that in August of 2011, he had a heart attack, and had to have a stent placed.  That, in and of itself, was a simple procedure, and he came through just fine.  He's getting good at it--that was "only" his 13th heart attack, and his 4th or 5th stent placement.  He already had a coronary bypass back in 2001.
However, that bypass surgery caused a small hernia to form.  It was not a big problem either, at the time.  Fast forward to January of this year (2012), and he caught a bad cold.  He coughed so hard and so much that the hernia tore, and now reaches all the way down his belly, making it hard for him to get a deep breath.
Naturally, he wants it fixed.  Complication:  after the stent placement, the doctors want you on Plavix for a full year.  That is a blood thinner, so, no surgeries until that year is over.  
However, the tear of the hernia followed a fall in November of 2011, at which time he tore the rotator cuff in his shoulder.  It has been causing him excruciating pain ever since, so now, he is virtually housebound, there not being much he can do without pain or breathing difficulties.
Come June, he started a round of appointments to evaluate the outlook for surgery, and darned if they didn't find a blood clot in his heart!  So, they put him on a course of Coumadin.  (For those who don't know what it is, it is a very severe blood thinner, generically known as Warfarin--a.k.a.  rat poison!!)  Between that, the Plavix, and the baby aspirin they had him on, ALL surgery was a no-go!  

Meanwhile, we were spending the last year jumping through hoops and filling out all manner of duplicated paperwork and stressing out to the max to get a mortgage modification so as not to lose our house!  To become homeless would be a death sentence for him, with all his problems (and rents in the area are higher than what we were paying for our mortgage--which was about to triple, due to the deferred interest capping out...)
Finally, the modification came through, and we were able to let go of that particular stressor.  

During this time, I was just too stressed out to juggle very many things online, and ALL of my blogs, not just this one, fell by the wayside, as I was concentrating on building up my work on Hub Pages, where I am finally actually earning some green stuff....not a lot, but it is slowly building up month by month.

Now, hubby's latest problem was some severe pain that made him think he was having yet another heart attack, so off to the ER...but no...just very severe gas bubbles from the hernia issue.  WHEW!!  That was a relief, because this was at the end of August--the 'magic' date for getting off the Plavix, and the 6 months on the Coumadin...so they can okay him for his surgeries.  (If it had been the heart, we'd have been back to square one at 'no-go.' )  So, he now has an appointment with the surgeon to assess how they are going to repair the hernia.  At last.  Progress.  Once that is fixed, they can do the shoulder, then hopefully, he can have his life back!
Once he's fixed, I'm hoping I can get my bum knee seen to, and repaired..and then I can have MY life back, too, and we can both get back to riding our bikes, and me to my rollerblading!

So, at this point, it is my hope that the kitties can return to blogging.  The "little monskers" from the last post the cats made, are now a year old and still just as cute as little buttons...neither of the girls are a very big kitty.
Meantime, we fostered a new batch of kittens starting at the end of April...3 more siblings (a little Tortie and two orange tabbies, one of whom had long fluffy fur).  The tortie and the fluffball   were adopted quickly in June at the "Maddie's Fund" event.  However, the last little boy, "Nugget," is now 6 months old, and is being passed over at every single weekend adoption that we hold.  (The group I'm with is called "H.A.L.O.," for "Homeless Animals' Lifeline Organization.) 

 I think it's looking like we may have another Foster Failure with him.  He is so used to playing with all the other cats, and is sooooooooooo attached to us (ok, we like him, too!), that he would surely feel betrayed at this point to be suddenly taken from all he's known for all of his life he can remember, and given to someone else....he now runs and hides when the carrier comes out to go to the adoption events every weekend....and when he gets home, he hides and sleeps...and acts depressed.   
But, that will be the end.  No more kittens will be allowed to steal our hearts to that extent.  That will put us at 7, and 2 over the 'legal limit,' for our city.  (Although, I don't think they can afford to have staff knocking on everyone's door to count cats....)  But, it's also a budget issue.
With surgeries for both of us on the horizon, though, we'll be taking a hiatus from fostering probably until "kitten season" 2013.
 So, I think that about brings us current, and I hope I won't have to deprive the kitties of their blog for such a long time ever again!   

Stand Up, Speak Up for the Animals!

Today’s post is for a very special cause, as part of the “Blog the Change for Animals” challenge.  Our topic is the sorry state of the nation’s so-called animal shelters.  Too many animals entrusted to these facilities suffer everything from inadequate care to being killed outright--(so I have published in blood red type).

“Euthanasia,” they call it.  Euthanasia, as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary is as follows:

 

 “The act or practice of ending the life of an individual suffering from a terminal illness or an incurable condition, as by lethal injection or the suspension of extraordinary medical treatment.”  (Emphases mine.)

There is nothing ethical about the reasons for killing animals at the very facilities responsible for their temporary care until a permanent home can be found.  Instead, they are concerned only with their bottom line, and available space.  They do not discriminate overmuch about which animals are chosen to be killed.  In some cases, it could be older or ill animals, but it is far more likely to be perfectly healthy adult animals or baby animals just beginning their journey of life.  They are not 'suffering from terminal illnesses or incurable conditions.'

Instead of focusing their efforts on education, adoption, spaying and neutering of family pets and TNR (trap/neuter/release) programs for feral populations (especially cats), these places would rather collect and kill. 

It is a shameful practice, and reduces to nearly insignificant numbers the equally horrific tales of individuals committing animal abuse and causing extreme harm and death.  However, there is a conspiracy of silence in the media:  only individuals perpetrating cruelty upon animals are exposed and held accountable under the laws of the land.

The ultimate irony lies in the very names these agencies give themselves:  “American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals” (ASPCA);  “Humane Society of the United States” (HSUS); and local branches of the ASPCA, going by the shortened “SPCA” label.  Happily,  a few shelters are beginning to get the word, and are adopting out more pets than they kill, but the numbers are still skewed too far toward the high-kill shelters.

Even more shocking are the recent reports coming out about the so-called animal rights group, “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).  PETA also operates a supposed shelter, but has managed to adopt out  only 8 animals of the many thousands it took in during 2009, the last year for which figures are available as of this writing.  The rest, they killed!  Check out that story here: http://petakillsanimals.com/ 

This is not a pretty subject, and there is no way to dress it up to appease those easily shocked or sickened.  In fact, it is that very shock and horror that is needed to create a massive cry of outrage from the public at large.  It is unconscionable that the great majority of these organizations run on volunteer labor and monetary donations from the public.  They get the donations by running bleeding-heart campaigns in the media, convincing animal lovers to open their wallets, and then betray the trust by acting contrarily to the advertising on which they waste the donations.  Before you donate, please do research on the organization asking for your hard-earned dollars.

The statistics speak for themselves:  the facilities that like to call themselves shelters are in fact, themselves directly responsible for the wanton slaughter of over four million dogs and cats annually.  Four million!  Yes, a four followed by six zeroes! 4,000,000! Annually! It’s a huge number, and it must come to a stop.  They are murderers, plain and simple.

Even in instances where rescue groups have offered to pull the animal and find it a home, and physical rehabilitation if needed, the animals were quickly put down instead of being turned over to the rescues.  This happens more often than you would think, and speaks of horrible, sadistic, evil people who kill for the sheer sick pleasure it must give them.

There are laws proposed such as this one dubbed "Oreo's Law," to force the shelters to live up to their names, yet the bills are getting tabled by political pressure from these very same organizations.  What can you or I do to help stem this bloody tide and turn  the screws on these powerful lobbies?  Nathan Winograd’s No Kill Nation is a good place to start (http://www.nokilladvocacycenter.org/). The link to "Oreo's Law," mentioned above, is found from a link on this site.

    

At his website you will find links to the various laws being proposed, and a comprehensive detailing of the problems being faced with convincing the directors of these agencies who are interested in protecting only their salaries, and not the animals with whose lives they’ve been entrusted.

You can start the ball rolling by calling attention to this blog post.  Share it on Face Book, Tweet, Digg, StumbleUpon, e-mail or whatever other means you may use to spread the word.  Working together, we can do this.

Thank you, from the bottom of all the "anipal's" hearts, thank you!

Read Mom's related post here: http://hubpages.com/hub/Human-Rights-vs-Animal-Rights-Is-There-a-Difference

Signed,  Jigsaw Puzzle, Esq.,
Spokescat for the Talk With The Paws crew
(Tigger, Munchkin, Jigsaw Puzzle and Patches)

 

Sunday Stories

JIGSAW'S STORY

   Last, but certainly not least, is Jigsaw, whose full name is actually Jigsaw Puzzle, he being named after the many intricate patterns in his fur:  there is a heart, and a cursive letter 'h' among his other stripes and swirls.

   Unlike the others, who we deliberately chose to rescue from various circumstances, Jigsaw chose us. 

   It was February, 2008, and hubby and a friend were outside working on a project.  Up through the carport came Jigsaw, with a bird in his mouth. Hubby noticed at once that the kitty was hurt.  He had a nasty looking wound in his side, and it made my husband angry, because at first sight, he though it looked as if the poor little guy had been shot with a BB gun.  Jigsaw set the bird down, looked right up at my husband, and exclaimed, "Mrow!"  as if to say, "See?  I'm hurt and I still caught a bird and brought it to you."

   We had never seen this cat before anywhere in the area.   He just appeared that day.  We asked around, but no one else knew anything about him, either.  We fear he may have been dumped by some irresponsible jerk.

   Hubby has a very soft spot for all animals, and they know they have nothing to fear from him, and always gravitate to him.  He picked up this little kitty, who was fairly thin, and started to examine the wound.  Jigsaw kept looking at hubby, then down at the bird, and back again, doing a little bit of struggling.  Meanwhile, the bird recovered, shook, and flew away.  Oh, my goodness, the scolding that went on! "MOW!  Meerow! Mrrrow!  Mew, mew, mew!"  As if to say, "Hey, you let my dinner get away; now you have to feed me!"

   Since he'd been outdoors, and we had no idea of his history, we sadly left him outside and gave him some food and water.  Next, we arranged a litter box and a crate with an old blanket, and closed him up out in the shop overnight. 

    Next day, we took him to the vet to be checked out.  Turns out the wound was a ruptured abcess, the vet said likely the result of coming out on the losing end of a cat fight.   He passed his tests well..he didn't have kitty aids or FeLv.  The vet said he was "about 8 months old" at that point.  So, we decided he could be slowly introduced to the rest of the clan.  They'd been 'visiting' and hissing at each other, through the patio door ever since Jiggy had shown up on the scene.

   At first, Jigsaw was quite skittish and nervous around the other cats, but he eventually fit in.  At this point, we now had 5 cats, as we still had our Sootsie then.  Soot would not take any nonsense from him, and swatted him and hissed at him a few times.  Patches either ignored him, or growled and hissed and swatted, depending on where she was in her medication cycle.  If she was fully dosed up, she ignored him; if she was coming down, she wasn't having any sass from a kitten.

  Tigger was another story.  Jigsaw quickly discovered that he could cow Tigger, and take the upper hand.  Tigger, who is the largest of the cats, the eldest (next to Patches), and so second in seniority, should be the king of the castle.  But, as big as he is, he is also cat-dom's biggest wuss.  I cannot make him grasp the concept that "If you don't run, Jiggy can't chase you!"

  So, the chase was on, and continues to be on!   Several times a day, Tigger gets chased up or down the hall.....sometimes short-cutting to his bed across our bed...often after we are in bed...and we get trampled in the kitty stampede.   The two of them sound like a herd of elephants thundering down the hall.  I think they missed the chapter explaining that cats are light on their feet!

  Early on, they were so bad that I would sometimes put them both in Tigger's large carrier.  "There!  sit there for a while, and learn to get along!"  They were just fine then.  They made no attempt to battle inside the carrier.  However, when they were released, they would head in opposite directions as far from each other as they could get.  Jigsaw would toss a look over his shoulder as if to say, "See? You got us in trouble!"   As if it was Tigger's fault!  OY!  

   At this point, I'm unsure if they've arrived at some kind of truce, and are 'just playing' when they carry on, or if they are just showing off.  There does not seem to be any evidence of chasing when we come home from being out for a while....'evidence' meaning tufts of Tigger fur on the carpet...which I will find often enough if I am home and seeing or hearing chase scenes.     

   Munchkin will not tolerate any crap from Jigsaw, either.  In fact, she will chase him.  Tigger and Munchkin play together very well, and will playfully chase each other.  It is funny; in a way, we have a 'pecking order' going on:  Jigsaw chases Tigger; Munchkin chases Jigsaw; Tigger chases Munchkin.   We call it "The Kitty 500."  It can be quite a hazard to objects on the lower shelf of the coffee table, which they view as a shortcut.

   Jigsaw Puzzle is a very sweet and loving kitty.  He loves lap time, eats up pets and scritches, and sleeps right between our heads most nights.  Sometimes, he will sleep on the extra pillows above my head.  Tigger may feel displaced, as he used to sleep with us, but he got kicked off the bed too many times (long before Jiggy's arrival) for disturbing our sleep by sucking his tail (loudly!) while mushing.  Soot used to sleep right between us like that quite a bit.  In a way, Jigsaw has taken over for her, beiing the same kind of 'little lover,' but we do not miss Soot any the less.

  We have no way to know how long Jigsaw was outside on his own, but I think for some time, given how thin he was, and the fact that to this day, he remains fairly skittish and easily startled.  He is very wary, and is on alert at the least little noise that Munchie and Tigger will sleep right through.  But, he has found his forever home here, and like the rest of the lot, we love him dearly, quirks and all. 

   And that finishes the series on the acquisitions of each of our 'fur kids.'  You've now met the whole family.  I now return the Sunday blog to the cats.  ;-)

SUNDAY STORIES

SOOT AND MUNCHKIN

Soot was born just about a week before Munchkin; (as near as we can figure the 'genealogy,' Soot was not only Munchie's half-sister, but also her aunt!) These two litters our neighbor kept indoors until they were old enough to be adopted. Munchkin, then, never knew life without Soot.


We adopted them both together. Soot was coal black, with nary a single white or other color hair anywhere on her. She had beautiful gold eyes, and a short stubby tail.  (We are not sure if she was part Manx or part American Bobtail.)  Her coat was so, so, soft, like velvet, and very dense, so although she was a short-haired cat, she gave the impression of having longer hair…she certainly shed like a long-hair!

Soot and her half-sister, Munchkin, were the offspring of two of the feral cats in the area. Soot’s mother was known as “Mama Cat,” and Munchkin was "Mama's" grand-daughter. We ‘met’ them when they were just a couple of weeks old, and at that point, spoke up to adopt Munchkin. However, when the time came, little Soot was right with her, and instantly stole our hearts, so that is how we came to take them both.

These kittens were born across the street, as that neighbor 'sort of' looked out for the feral cats, putting out food, and so they felt safe there. “Mama Cat” was probably the most prolific, and sadly, no one had ever been able to catch her to have her spayed. She was a tiny cat...barely 4 pounds, even at several years old and who knows how many total litters.....

At the appropriate ages, we took them both in to be spayed. This was in 2004. We enjoyed having them add their kittenish antics to our household of 2 cats (Patches and Tigger), and they helped fill the hole left by the loss of our dog, Delila, who had passed just a few days before we took the kittens home.


These were the two little kitty girls described in Tigger’s story, as having him cowering him under a chair. Even though he would hiss at them, they did not seem overly intimidated, and pretty much ignored him, preferring to play their kitten games with each other. As they grew, Tigger eventually came around, and they all became buddies.


The kittens grew up, as kittens will, and blossomed into beauties. Munchkin is a gray-white-black tabby, and Soot just got more beautiful every day. Her coat was such a deep, rich black that begged to be petted. She was irresistible, and just as well, for she certainly loved sitting in laps and soaking up ‘pets.’  I even wrote a limerick about her:

"Soot is a very nice cat

Who wears a soft coat; velvet black.

Pet her, she'll purr, as you stroke her fur,

And add a cute tail to all that."

© 2008 Liz Elias

Sootsie seemed very empathetic, as well. I have a bum knee, and in the winter, if my arthritis had set in and had the knee aching, Soot seemed to sense it, and would lay in my lap, more on my leg, acting as a live heating pad for my aching knee.  That also helped with my physical therapy, as I was supposed to do stretching exercises to get the knee to straighten again.  Her warmth and weight on the leg helped, making a gentle, but firm stretch-and-hold.


Both of these girls were extremely interested in the food bowls, Soot especially, earning her the somewhat derogatory nickname of ‘food slut.’ We jokingly said we’ d set her out on a street corner in San Francisco bearing a sign reading, ‘Will do anything for food.” Of course, we would do no such thing….but she did love to eat. And she had the oddest tastes of any cat I’ve ever come across. She loved bread. I did not dare leave a loaf of bread, or cookies even, out on the counter, for as soon as we’d be asleep, Soot would be up on the counter, and tearing the wrapper. In the morning, I’d find a chunk bitten from the middle of the loaf! I did catch her in the act a couple of times, so I know it was she. She would even eat garlic bread!!


Her midnight food prowls got her into trouble more than once. Mostly, it was of the petty annoyance category, but one night, she hurt herself—prowling the counters, she bumped and knocked down a glass candy dish. The crash scared her, and she jumped down and took off…unfortunately landing right on the broken glass. She cut the inside of her hind leg rather badly, luckily missing any arteries, but she still left a scary-looking blood trail. As soon as I heard the ruckus, I bolted out of bed, then yelled for hubby to help. We managed to get a bandage on the leg, and called the vet’s cell number, as it was still before midnight….she asked a few questions, inquired if it was still bleeding actively (it was not), told us how to wrap it for the night, and said to just bring her in next morning…no appointment needed…and no need to spend the extra bucks on the all-night emergency vet.


Aside from her penchant for over-eating—despite our attempts to ration her food—(after all, how do you put just 2 of 4 cats on a diet, in an open-plan house??!!)—she was a happy, healthy cat. That is, until the last year and a half of her life. She began to ‘go down’ with extreme lethargy and fevers. We’d take her to the vet, she’d be put on a course of antibiotics, get better for a couple of weeks or a month or two, and ‘round we’d go again. The vet ran every test she could think of, and everything came back negative—there seemed to be no reason for her to be getting these mystery fevers. It got so that I would just keep a supply of the antibiotics on hand at home.


(Munchkin also ate more than she needed, but has never--knock wood--developed any health problems. Aside from being somewhat overweight, both girls would otherwise be quite small cats.)


One day, Soot began to feel poorly again, but with a new symptom…she was ‘oozing’ a clear gooey fluid from her rear.. I cleaned her up, and we put her with her bed in the bathroom overnight, so she wouldn’t mess the carpets. She was to see the vet in the morning.

She never made it to the appointment, having crossed the rainbow bridge sometime overnight. We were devastated. I think she was hubby’s favorite: she was the most cuddly, loving, sweet kitty of the lot. And she was only 4½ years old! Not fair. No reason she should have died, and so young.


The vet was equally perplexed, and did a necropsy at no charge out of 'professional curiosity.'  She expected, she said, to find ‘massive peritonitis’ or some other grossly evident problem…but there was nothing. Soot’s heart, she said, was “slightly enlarged,” but certainly not enough to have caused her death.

I cried my eyes out for days and weeks… and even now, almost a full year later, I am tearing up at writing about it. I have kicked myself over and over and over, feeling so very, very sad and so very guilty at leaving her locked up in the bathroom for what turned out to be her last hours with us…and we were not even with her! If I had only known she was that sick, I would have sat up with her and held her all night!  It still kills me to think about it. She deserved better…she gave us so much joy.


Munchkin came up to us in the morning, where I was sitting on the floor holding our beloved Soot and sobbing like a baby. She sniffed at her, and walked away. But, as I said at the outset, Munchie had never been without Soot all her life, and was depressed and looking for her every now and then for at least a couple of weeks…and she stayed rather depressed for a good couple of months. (I didn’t blame her a bit.)


Even Tigger missed her, as they had all gotten, finally, to be friends. We had by then acquired Jigsaw Puzzle, and had had him just about 8 months when we lost Sootsie. His presence was somewhat of a comfort, but there will never be a cat to replace our beautiful little Soot. Jigsaw had been tested and vaccinated before he was introduced, so his introduction in no way contributed to Soot’s untimely passing….she had, after all, been suffering these on-again, off-again mystery fevers for over a year prior.


Munchkin finally recovered from the loss of her sister, and is still with us. She has even seemed to take over some of Soot’s “duties,” such as being the ‘timekeeper’ and reminding mom if their dinner or breakfast is tardy. She is very playful, loves toys, and is very vocal—a trait that was also Soot’s. .. Munchkin has become more vocal of late. We call her the ‘confused cat,’ for she will miaooww… ..meew, meeeeoowwww… purring all the while… or interrupt purrs with complaints. She is a bit of a clown, as was Soot. She has been more of a clown lately…sometimes, it seems as if she is ‘channeling’ her sister.


We treasure our little Munchkin, as we do all our fur babies. May she live a very long life!