When we moved out of our apartment in October, we did in fact bring two outside/stray cats (Daisy and The King) with us to our new house, to give them more stable, healthy lives. The King has happily stuck around, but Daisy (kind of expectedly) ran off, even after we tried to acclimate her in our garage for a couple of weeks. She was fairly nuts though. So we had two inside cats and one outside cat.

Then, on the last Sunday in October, as we were doing the final cleaning before dropping off the keys to our old apartment, our neighbor Matt showed us the two stray male kittens he had just trapped. Apparently there are still a few fertile adult cats hidden under various buildings in the apartment complex, despite our best efforts. The kittens were only about two months old then. We took photos of them for Matt, hoping to share them with some nice people who might want to adopt the kittens. Below are five photos from October 26.

Kittens are so cute. Their mother is a tuxedo-colored cat (black with a white chest) and we think their father must’ve been part Siamese, based on their markings. Like our cat Eli, the two kittens could be closely related to either Daisy or The King, since they’re from the same cat colony.

Matt continued to take care of the kittens in his apartment for a few weeks. But in mid-November, he gave us a call and asked if we would babysit the kittens for a week or so, to give him a break, since he has several other cats and was going to visit family for Thanksgiving. We agreed, knowing full well that it was a trick, and that in a week’s time we would find the kittens too adorable to give up. Because we’re total suckers. And, you know, it’s the holiday season, the spirit of giving, and blah blah blah. The justification continued with thoughts like this: Well, we do have more than twice as much room in the house as we had in the apartment, so doubling the housecat population is totally reasonable. Yeah.

So, yeah, we’re keeping them. Now we have four indoor cats and one outdoor cat. But this is it. We’ve reached pet capacity. Unless I get a special message from the Old Testament God telling me to collect additional animals and convert my house into an ark (or, I suppose, if I truly go nuts and become an animal hoarder), this is the limit for pets. The 10-gallon fishtank plus four indoor cats. No more. Three indoor cats would be more sane, but we didn’t want to split up the brothers like we did to Eli and Repete last year.

Here are two pictures of Shadow the kitten on Thanksgiving, at around three months old. We thought about calling him Ewok, for obvious reasons, or Frost, because his dark gray fur looks frosted at the tips. But his propensity for lurking beneath and behind things made naming him easy. Shadow’s starting to grow out of his excessive hissing now and becoming quite sociable.

Below are two pictures of blue-eyed Tanuki. He’s sleeping with his new friend Eli in the second photo.

As you can see, Tanuki is quite Siamese-looking with some raccoon-like markings. I originally wanted to call him Rorschach, but this suggestion was rejected and countered with the name Taffypants. And I could not have this little guy named Taffypants. I mean, really. So I came up with Tanuki as a compromise. Tanuki is the Japanese word for a species of raccoon dog found in Japan. You may also remember the Tanooki Suit from Super Mario Bros. 3. Same thing. Tanukis are magical, shapeshifting animals in Japanese folklore. See Studio Ghibli’s Pom Poko for evidence.

Here’s the whole famdamnly playing together on Thanksgiving, including Eli and Lily:

And here’s an indoor fambly portrait to wrap things up:

I will leave you with these: How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You and Techno Kittens.

This autumn, in addition to transporting furniture and boxes of crap we’ve accumulated into our new house, we’re contemplating moving two or three stray cats with us. These planned acts of kindness clearly put us on the road to becoming crazy cat people. Read part one for more details on that.

We already have two indoor cats, Lily and Eli. Lily the kitten was added to the family this spring after Smokey succumbed to illness. This post is about the amusing aftermath of Lily’s recent surgery and some more information about the late great Smokey.

Conehead Lily

Six-month-old Lily was spayed a couple of weeks ago. She also had her extra 23rd(!) claw removed at the same time. Now she’s down to an even 22 claws. She’s still a polydactyl freak, but at least her paws are symmetric. In addition to having her belly closed up with skin glue, the claw surgery required three stitches, which meant she had to wear a protective Elizabethan collar around her neck for almost two weeks. Hilarity ensued. Below are some photos of conehead (or, alternatively, buckethead) Lily. We had to find a tiny 8cm collar just to get the E-collar (cone) to stay on.

Because Lily initially struggled so much with the oversized cone, we attempted to make a more comfortable protective costume for her, using two tiny shirts meant for toy-sized dogs (AKA “punting dogs”) and a hand-sewn felt arm sleeve, all safety-pinned together. It was fun to attempt, but no matter how tightly we adjusted the outfit, Lily somehow managed to wriggle/pull her way out of it within a few hours. But how? It was like a kitten onesie!

I know what you may be thinking, but no, under normal circumstances, we would never dress a cat in tiny clothes and make her participate in itty bitty kitty tea parties complete with little party hats and “special” catnip cakes. That would never happen. We were just trying to keep her from tearing up her healing paw and belly. Srsly.

Being too clever an escape artist for her own good, Lily was stuck with the clinic collar around her neck for most of the two weeks so she wouldn’t rip the stitches out. She was not a happy conehead.

Over the past two weeks, there were so many fantastic opportunities to create lolcat FAIL photos, particularly when Lily tried to eat while wearing the E-collar . . . or when she tried to slink between two narrowly placed objects, an ajar door, or anything, really. It was pathetically funny.

Revisiting Smokey the housecat

Thank you to everyone who has written in over the past year about our cat Smokey. My November 2007 post, “Smokey the $1000 housecat: A Hemobart story,” is definitely the most-responded to post I’ve written for this blog. To fill everyone in: Unfortunately, a few months later, I had to follow up with more somber news. My May 2008 post, “Cats and ducklings: Part one,” reads: “our seven-year-old cat Smokey died on April 6 after a relapse of whatever had been ailing him last October (an autoimmune disorder and/or cancer). This time the steroids, antibiotics, and vitamin supplements didn’t work.”

I will share some additional information for individuals with cats who might be suffering with similar symptoms. If you’re interested, you should read “Smokey the $1000 housecat: A Hemobart story” first.

More about Hemobart: It is hard to tell whether a cat really has feline infectious anemia (AKA Hemobart) since the organism cannot be cultured in the lab. It’s essentially a hit-or-miss diagnosis. In Smokey’s case, his body was systematically killing off his red blood cells, which left him extremely lethargic and severely anemic. I am under the impression that this is what happens in actual FIA cases. The Hemobart organism attaches itself to the host’s red blood cells, thereby telling the body they are irregular and need to be eliminated. As far as other symptoms, Smokey vomited a few times, but not a lot because he slowly stopped eating. He was also dehydrated from not wanting to drink water.

More about Smokey’s prognosis: We ultimately determined that Smokey probably did not have FIA since he relapsed five months later, even after all the antibiotics and vitamins administered prior to, during, and following the blood transfusion. However, the blood transfusion did work very well (and we continued treating him with vitamins and a low dosage of prednisone). It appeared to cure him and he acted healthy again. His quality of life seemed to go back to normal, until the next relapse of whatever it was he had. I now believe it was most likely a cancer that affects the blood or bone marrow.

More about blood transfusions: If you believe your cat has FIA, or any other similar red blood cell problem, it cannot hurt to try to do a blood transfusion. It can be an expensive procedure, but it will help your cat regain his/her energy and appetite. The only drawback to doing the transfusion (beside the potential costs) is that if you have to do it a second time, the donor cat has to be screened for a matching blood type. This is because the receiving cat can build up antibodies to donated blood of a different type after the first transfusion. As you can imagine, this makes it difficult to have a transfusion done a second time. But hopefully you won’t need to do it more than once; if you do, that could be a sign your cat is too seriously sick for long-term recovery anyway.

Best wishes to all.

Below are photos of the four usual suspects. We have the orange & white male (The King), the white calico mother (Daisy), the young gray & white male (Hiro) and the young black calico (Delilah). If you look closely, you can see that all of their right ears have been tipped (cut slightly), which is the standard way of marking a fixed stray cat.

The King and Daisy, while not the most attractive cats and always looking kind of beaten up, are very friendly to us. They’re usually eager to spend time in our apartment and receive attention, even when we don’t have food for them. The King has a very funny-sounding broken meow.

Young Hiro and Delilah are both from Daisy’s last litter (before she was fixed). We presume The King was the father, but you never know.

Being less than a year old, Hiro is more skittish than his parents, but he’s getting friendlier. Sadly, Delilah the black calico, my favorite, was hit by a car last week (only a few days after the above photo).

So, now we’re down to three outside cats/moochers. While all three cats may be of some relation to our housecat Eli, we’re sure that at least Daisy and Hiro are relatives. We’re not positive when The King joined (read: claimed leadership of) our building’s cat colony, but it may have been after Eli’s birth in March of 2007. We will most likely take The King and Daisy with us to the new house, and I suppose Hiro too, if he decides to be tame enough to facilitate such a transfer.

We still, of course, have our two indoor cats, Lily and Eli. Read part two for some funny pictures of conehead Lily after being spayed recently – and some additional notes about Hemobart, feline blood transfusions and our late housecat Smokey.

Continue to Autumn cats: Part two »

This article was amusing, if you care about the grand, elaborate façade China has put up for the Olympics: “Life of Reilly: The Chinese government did everything but put up a fake blue sky.”

Besides total domination by the likes of Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, and a handful of others, the shadiness of the Olympic proceedings in China seems most predictable of all.

I know I say this every Olympics, but in contrast to popular sentiment, I dislike watching most of the judged events, such as gymnastics and synchronized whatever. They often seem rigged, or at least easily manipulated. I enjoy the track & field and swimming events the most . . . the races against time or feats of distance. Seems much more objective. The rivalries between the U.S. vs. Australia in the swimming events and the U.S. vs. Jamaica in the sprint events are fun. Except when those teams drop their batons and get disqualified off the podium.

Lastly, did you see this story on Thursday about people in Washington supposedly going insane after taking tainted drugs? Well, here you go: “Tainted drugs causing odd behavior in Spokane.” The information is slight, but it’s a bizarre story for sure.

Below are six pairs of tennis shoes I donated this week. I tend to destroy about one pair of shoes per year, especially from playing tennis every summer. I guess I was waiting for a chance to make these old, holey shoes useful somehow. Lily the 12-week-old kitten was interested. She had to investigate each shoe:

My first tennis tournament of the year is this weekend, in Monmouth/Independence. Wimbledon is also finishing this weekend. I am anxious to see Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal in the men’s singles final and Venus and Serena Williams in the women’s singles final. But what about the faceless aliens roaming about at Wimbledon?

Someone besides Serena and Maria Sharapova is becoming famous for her bizarre/skimpy tennis outfits: American Bethanie Mattek. Though the fashion sense of this one may be lacking. The Daily Mail says her outfits “have a bit too much bounce even for a tennis player.” Read/see more: “Tennis star serves up a treat that mesmerises ballboy.” The new, trashier Anna Kournikova?

Below is the second half of the 20 lb. watermelon from last weekend. He’s a bit angrier, but equally delicious. This guy has apricot halves and dried cranberries for eyes and sugar snap peas for eyebrows. I wasn’t planning on making another goofy watermelon face, but it just happened. I was eating it with a spoon and suddenly realized that I had made an evil mouth. So I foraged in the refrigerator for suitable face bits and quickly came up with this:

This parody video series is funny: David Blaine Street Magic Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.

Have a Happy Fourth of July tomorrow!

Most cats, including our other cat Eli, have 18 claws: 10 in the front and eight in the back. We’ll probably have Lily’s weird extra claw removed when she gets spayed in a few months, bringing her total claws down to an even 22. Read more about polydactyl cats (also known as “mitten cats” or “Hemingway cats”). Lily’s mother, while small, was supposedly part Maine Coon (which are known for polydactylism).

We might give this product a try at some point: Soft Paws, which are nail caps for cats. These provide an alternative to clipping the claws of indoor cats (which we do) or declawing them (which we don’t). Oftentimes polydactyl cats aren’t able to retract (and/or actively use) one or more of their extra claws, so they can get snagged on things (or become ingrown) and cause injury. The nail caps will prevent claws from snagging on fabric and accidentally scratching humans as well.

Below are some photos of Lily (born April 10, 2008) and Eli (born in early March 2007) from the past three weeks, starting with a size comparison and a goofy shot of Lily:

Here’s Eli showing his maternal instincts (including allowing Lily to repeatedly attempt to nurse; he’s been quite motherly for an adult male cat):

Eli and Lily became fast friends (Lily is much like “Mini-Me” to Eli):

A few playful pictures (including glowing multicolored demon eyes and a gratuitous six-toed paw shot):

And two final shots of Lily:

We’re not certain whether Lily will have green, yellow or gold eyes yet. Since she’s only two months old, her eyes still have a bit of the kitten blueness to them. Her mother had yellow eyes. Lily just had her first shots and tests today.

By the way, this kitten post was by request of my mom. You’re welcome, Mom. And Happy Father’s Day tomorrow!