Blood Bath

Don't worry Peeps.  Nothing bad today.  Just thinking about when my cat scratches me, usually not intentional.  I trimmed five of my kitties nails yesterday.  Those are the ones that let me.  The other few scream or are too strong for me to hold them while skwirming to get away.  I am still teaching people about what declawing will do to a cat.  There are people still out there that don't know how bad it is.  I just told one person - the alternatives:  Trim their nails, get double sided tape for the furniture, a spray bottle, and a firm NO!  If you regard your furniture to be more precious than your cat, don't get a cat. 

If you will recall, my niece's cat had babies - from her perspective, she delivered 14 babies.  I think they were baby body parts (sorry to be so gross), and continued to be in labor for the next 24 hours or so, delivering two dead babies, one alive baby, and then an emergency spay which resulted in two dead babies inside of her.  Here is the little prince, named Peppercorn, as he is today.  What, two weeks old?  Still being bottle fed by a caring individual who is part of the Keller's Kats rescue group.  What a CUTIE!

Don't forget to click on pictures to see up close!~

PEPPERCORN!

I took some pictures Sunday morning to share who is out there and who needs to be rescued.

Parsley's Twin on Parsells

Sick kitty on Parsells (next rescue)

Gemma's Twin on Garson

Gemma's Twin rolls over every morning on sidewalk

Kitty inside shelter on Grand and Baldwin

Fluffypants #2 on Baldwin and Grand

Big Red #2 on 4th and Pennsylvania

NIAGARA Cats

MARBLES on Third & Central

All these angels need homes.  Please consider foster and adoption.

"TODAY

will never come again.

Be a blessing.

Be a friend.

Encourage someone.

Take Time To Care.

Let your words heal

and not wound."

TGIF!

Woo hoo!  Its Friday.  So much planned for the weekend.  So much to do around the house.  I will have a houseguest coming from very far away at the end of March, so tidying up and trying to make the house look like a five star hotel.  :)  I say 'the queen is coming'.  :)  She will be riding with me to see what I do in the mornings.  It will be quite an enlightening experience for her, to say the least.  I probably will feel like a nut at first.  I LOOK like a nut to most people.  People that can't figure out how I do it, or why.  Or why I go in the dark, in the early morning hours.  Why not go during the day?  Nevertheless, it will be nice to have a fresh set of eyes seeing what I do out there every day of my life.

Sick Tabby on Parsells - next rescue!  WHAT TO NAME HIM???

This morning, I forgot my camera again. I was pretty upset because I saw so many beautiful kitties.  At my first stop, there is a big red fluffy cat that has been hiding from me for nearly two years now.  Well guess what, that little fluffball finally let me pet him this morning, and feel around his belly.  And behind. He doesn't feel like a boy, and doesn't feel like he has babies in his belly, but no ear tip, so its hard to tell.   I think he must be on my rescue list for sure.  Along with sweet little tabby boy at the second spot on Parsells.  He is still sick, and I gave him his third daily dose of Clavamox, but running out so if anyone has any, I would surely appreciate it.

CAMMY in the old days

BUTTONS in the old days

Parsley is doing so well.  I can hear him now running around like a crazy boy upstairs.  He is so playful, and so lovable.  I must find him a permanent home.  In the meantime, tomorrow, he will go to a foster's house to get him acclimated to other cats, and a dog.  I know its stressful for these cats, but hopefully it won't be a long foster, hopefully, fingers crossed, Cammy's new parents will want to adopt Parsley.  They expressed interest, now we just need to introduce them!

Buttons comes more and more out of her shell everyday.  She loves to lay with me in the mornings on the couch while I watch the news (at 3 am!) and sip my coffee.  A real cuddler.

The CUTEST picture of GEORGE & SQUIRT

Esmeralda, also being fostered, is ready for her forever home.  She has now met her foster family's brood, the two young girls, the pug, and two other cats.  And she gets along with everyone.  Such a good kitty.

ESMERALDA

ESME says:  ADOPT ME!!!  I want to cuddle with you!

Hermie continues to make progress.  He is a good boy and needs a home with someone who will give him love and patience.  He really is sweet, and loves human interaction, even though he was out on the streets with no love and attention for a long time.  He had a hernia the size of a golf ball and thanks to Laura from Habitat for Cats, he was trapped and had a minor surgery to remove it.  He is good to go! 

HERMIE at top

That's it for today.  Its been a long week, and I plan to savor every moment of the weekend.

Have a great day!

"The happiest people don't have

the best of everything

they just make the best of everything."

FIV - The Truth and Nothing But the Truth

Drizzling morning out there today.  But I fed all the kitties in record time.  I gave the pretty boy on Parsells, who is very sick with URI, another dose of meds. I pray its working.  Tomorrow he will get his third dose.  I could use any Clavamox anyone would like to donate to me.

Someone shared a great article with me.  It was just after I had taken a pic of my latest rescue, FIV+ Parsley.  This cat is the sweetest boy.  He now comes to me while I am on the couch in the morning watching the news and sipping my coffee, waiting to go out into the hood, and wants to cuddle.  From street to comfy cozy house.  He loves all the other felines in the house.  They love him.  To think there are people that are afraid to mix their FIV negative cats with positive ones, they just don't know the facts.

Parsley (FIV+) - taken this morning

Finally — Vet Study OKs FIV+ and FIV- Cats Living Together

The study in the Veterinary Journal shows FIV is difficult to transmit. How many cats' lives have been lost because people believed the opposite?

JaneA Kelley  |  Mar 8th 2016

Today in News of the Obvious: FIV-positive cats can live with uninfected fellow felines and not transmit the virus. A veterinary study concludes this. Finally..

Purdue University’s College of Veterinary Medicine conducted a long-term study in cat shelters and drew two conclusions: FIV-positive cats can live with FIV-negative cats and not infect the FIV-negative cats during normal day-to-day interaction; and mother cats infected with FIV don’t pass the virus on to their kittens. The study was conducted by Dr. Annette L. Litster of the college’s Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences.

Cat lovers and rescuers have known this for many years, and they’ve repeatedly crusaded to stop thesuperstitions about FIV that have led to who knows how many cats being needlessly killed in shelters.

Misguided beliefs about FIV-positive cats have also led to long stays — sometimes as long as the cat’s whole life — for the FIVers lucky enough to be placed in no-kill shelters. There is no need for FIV cats to be adopted only into homes with other FIV-positive cats; the disease is transmitted only by deep bite wounds, which happen only if the cats get into intense fights. Proper introductions and consideration of the individual cats’ personalities should go a long way to prevent such fights.

I know this from experience: When I was much younger, my family had a tomcat who developed FIV as a result of fighting for mates with other intact males. But he was never aggressive with his feline housemates. They shared food and water bowls, beds, and sometimes even groomed one another. None of the other cats developed FIV; in fact, his best lady friend, Iris, lived to be 18 and she was very healthy right up until the end of her life.

The false belief that mother cats can pass FIV on to their kittens has probably resulted in thousands upon thousands of unnecessary euthanasias. Although the world certainly has many more cats than it needs, it’s a damn shame that so many otherwise adoptable kittens may have died as a result of these incorrect ideas.

Another problem: People often confuse FIV (the feline immunodeficiency virus) for FeLV (the feline leukemia virus), which is transmissible through cohabitation and casual contact. These two diseases are retroviruses and both affect the immune system. The difference? The feline immunodeficiency virus does not easily cross the mucous membranes (the lining of the mouth, nose, eyes, genitals, and intestines), which is why it’s so difficult for FIV to be transmitted to other cats.

There’s no need to fear FIV, and I’m delighted that we finally have an official veterinary study that confirms what a lot of us have known for decades. I hope to all things cute and furry that this knowledge spreads rapidly among shelters so they don’t unwittingly torpedo their FIVers’ chances of being adopted or, worse yet, kill them because of the fear that the disease will spread rapidly.

Thank you, Dr. Litster, for conducting this research and reporting on it: you’ve already started saving cats’ lives.

Grooming doesn’t spread FIV. Research has shown that FIV is not transmitted from mother cats to kittens.

"Ignorance

Is The Root Cause of All Evils

Knowledge eradicates ignorance.  People

hate out of ignorance and out of fear.  So it is 

our duty to educate ourselves as well as

masses around us."

Happy Wednesday! (my titles are getting lame)

Me and Niece Amy, way back when....

First off, the two cats I brought in for spay yesterday.  Esmeralda, the kitty that I rescued from Parsells, was not pregnant.  Not only was she not pregnant, but she was already spayed.  This sweet little loving girl had to have been someone's pet at one time.  But on this street, in this neighborhood, she did not belong.  She does have fur missing on various parts of her body, so hoping that grows back in.  She is disease free, so hoping she gets scooped up soon by a loving family.  Right now she is being fostered.  She is just a sweetheart.  The boy - Midnight, my niece's country cat, is a pain in the you know what.  A crier.  He hates being cooped up in the bathroom where he was a guest overnight, and is going home today, thank God, and he also has that very pungent urine smell that male cats have before they are neutered.  Hoping that goes away, QUICK.  My poor cats have been listening to the crying, and smelling the smell from the other side of the door for nearly 24 hours now.  They are good kitties to be so patient, but I had better not find them spraying anywhere because of it!  Cats are so territorial.

Another thing I thought about this morning as I did my rounds.  There is such a lack of compassion in these neighborhoods I go to.  There is some, but not a lot.  I waved to a woman who was standing at a bus stop, I even yelled good morning to her.  Nothing.  I will bet you a gazillion dollars that this woman does not like cats.  It was obvious what I was doing, sliding food under a fence for five very hungry cats that had gathered there waiting for me.  And even as I drove up to the light, next to the stop, she refused to look at me.  There are a lot of people like that.  Even if you are having a bad day, at least acknowledge someone who is reaching out to say good morning.  For all they know, I could be a very wealthy person that could change their life.  You just never know.

2nd & Pennsylvania - Skunk Central

There is another location on Pennsylvania and Second where a skunk has obviously sprayed INSIDE this shelter which is made of three huts, a pallet under, and a board with tarp covering it.  I have a rug thrown over the pallet for their little feet so they don't step into a groove while they are eating.  Well, I took out the rug to replace it thinking it might help with the overwhelming stench, and placed it in my car thinking I would wash it when I got home.  Well let me tell you, don't ever do it.  I regretted that I did not throw the thing away right there and then.  The smell was very hard to get rid of.  I replaced what I replaced the rug with then this morning with another rug, and threw out any remaining towels and rug right there at someone's trash.  Its garbage day.  I am sure these shelters will need to be replaced someday soon.  I don't think that smell will ever go away.  Wondering now if the skunk died in there?  Can't wait to open everything up and find out!  ha.

Another exciting morning.

Have a nice day.

“Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day:

- I shall not fear anyone on Earth. 

- I shall fear only God. 

- I shall not bear ill will toward anyone. 

- I shall not submit to injustice from anyone. 

- I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.” 

― Mahatma Gandhi

Tuesday

Sort of exciting morning in the hood today.  The usual feedings - on Parsells - where I recently heard from the woman named Audrey about not feeding the cats next door to her - there is a beautiful tabby cat, young, that needs a home, but has bad upper respiratory.  The only thing I can do, until I can find someone to foster or adopt, is to pill him.  So I brought a Clavamox pill and he gobbled up the ball of wet food I hid it in.  I will continue to do this daily, until he sounds better.  Poor thing.  I must get pictures.

At each stop, the food was gone, and there were hungry cats waiting for their breakfast.  I got to Central and Third, did my usual feeding at that boarded up house (that I will soon need to relocate as someone has purchased this house and will want my stuff gone), a cop drove up and asked me if I heard any gunshots.  I said I hadn't SINCE  A MONTH AGO WHEN I REPORTED IT!  No, I didn't yell this.  Just found it ironic.  A month ago, I did hear gunshots, reported it, and not one cop stopped to ask the person, me, about it even after they shined their spotlight on me in a dark field.  So there must have been 10 cars out prowling this morning, just two when I reported it back then and they were gone in a flash.  I know I am nuts.  There is some crazy stuff going on in these neighborhoods, not usually this early, but I just go about my business, no fear.  I don't know why that is.  That I have no fear.  But yet, if you sneak up behind me I will scream.  If I see a spider crawling on my ceiling, I will not rest until I can remove it from the room.

This morning, Esmeralda will be going to the clinic.  She has been being fostered by a sweet family, who last fostered Murphy, who was happily adopted a month or so ago.  I had suspected Esme to be pregnant when she ran up to me as I was pouring food into the bowls at the first Parsells spot a few weeks ago, a lot of fur missing, and her sides bulging, but now I don't think she is.  She looks slimmer there.  My niece's other male cat will be going in for snip snip today also.  By the way, regarding the comment from yesterday, Momma's milk ducts never formed, so baby could not nurse.  Which is why baby is now being bottle fed.

One last thing, I received a call from a man the other day, he was given my name and number by someone...  He recently bought his mother a house in a suburb, away from her home in the city, a very bad part of the city.  His mother loves cats, and was feeding ferals at her city home, which by the way were reproducing left and right, but at least she was feeding them?  His mother is 78 and has bad legs, or something like that.  He was worried about her going over to her old house to feed these cats.  He reached out to me, along with several other people, for help.  My heart went out to this man.  He is an animal lover, and knows how important this is to his mother.  Ideally he would like to see these ferals go to a barn.  I told him I would put it out there, although no one has responded to me on Facebook, which I am also quite disappointed about.  Of all the animal groups and friend I have on Facebook, there was not a lot of response to my plea.  I gave him Lollipop's number as they have a barn program, and told him perhaps they could also give him advice.  I asked him to keep in touch.  I just wish I could help this man, and his mother, but I have so much on my plate.  If I had a million dollars, I would hire someone to go to this property (which is being sold soon) and feed and take care of these cats (TNR also).  There are just so many sad stories.

Baby VIOLET

But on a brighter note.  If you remember Nora and her baby Violet, who couldn't eat, here they are in their new home which they've been in since before Christmas.  Violet is thriving, and they are finally in a permanent loving home, together.  Such cute pictures....

Violet with her Mommy NORA

VIOLET's Favorite Toy - The Scratching Post!

Have a nice day!

The following is dedicated to my friend Jessica, who lost her 17 year old cat, Sierra, two days ago.

Spring Breeds Ignorance

PARSLEY!

It was a good weekend.  I did a bit of tidying up in my home, threw some stuff out, donated some stuff, still plenty more to go.  I am not a hoarder, although I will admit I have a hard time tossing those sexy jeans I wore when I was in my 20s, thinking 'I will fit in those again someday!'.

BUTTONS!

The shelter on Parsells, on the porch of the vacant house that I've been feeding on for two winters now.  Where whoever actually owned the house came by one day and removed all my beautiful totes and such that Parsley, and at least five other cats took shelter in.  I wound up placing two new shelters on the adjoining porch and fed the cats there since this happened a month or so ago.  I received a call from the woman that lives next door - the nice man Carl's wife, Audrey, asking me to move the cats somewhere else.  She cited the reasons to be her 'grandbabies were terrified' and so were her 'customers' (I have no idea what business she is in).  She said the cats pee in her garden and spray her house.  I tried to tell her that I am trying to clean up HER neighborhood, and once the males and females are all fixed, their population will dwindle, and they won't spray once they are neutered either.   She didn't really listen to any of that, and I did tell her that I wasn't moving until I could rescue the few cats left there.  Someone mentioned an orange spray, a citrus smell that cats don't like, and I can even bring her some, to keep the cats from under their porch, where Parsley mostly lived all winter.  She said she called Humane Society and they wouldn't come do anything about it.  I told her I would do my best, move the shelters back to the original porch for now, and wished her a good day.  She said we would be having a conversation about this again.

As I reflected on this conversation, I thought about the trash that was left from the people moving all the stuff inside this elderly woman's house, where the shelters were.  Whoever removed the contents of the house left half of this poor woman's precious memorabilia - photos, returned checks from the bank, all sorts of personal stuff, on the lawn.  I thought, this woman is complaining about the cats, but look at the yard next door.  I personally would even clean it up if it made any difference to these ignorant people.  But I don't really think it would.

PARSLEY was rescued from this dumpy area on Parsells

There are at least four cats there this morning, two friendly.  One of the smaller tabbies, sweet boy, is very sick.  I must bring him Clavamox tomorrow, and I must get him out of there.  He will make a sweet soulmate for someone.  The other is the fluffy boy that I've been feeding for many years on Parsells.  He would also be a good boy for someone.  The others are semi-feral, and won't get too close to me.

Another revelation this weekend.  Remember how I said someone insane was doing crazy stuff at the shelters on Baldwin and Grand?  There is a nice man that lives next door to this lot named Mark, a black man, who lives there with his family.  Across the street is a nice black man named Larry.  I had left them both notes to call me if they saw anyone messing with the shelters there, and I never did get a call.  Well, Mark was leaving for work or whatever when I was there Sunday morning, and he said that there was a woman coming around, and that at first, he thought it might be someone I knew, and then he asked her and she said she had 'talked to' me and she had permission.  Well, he put two and two together, he said she sounded crazy, and she had a back pack.  Yup.  Crazy Maryleigh.  I KNEW it.  He told her not to be messing with anything there, and hopefully he nipped it in the bud.  I can't wait to see her again.  Just last week she left a plate of some kind of food inside the shelter.  Crazy B.  I hope I don't have to deal with her again.

There are a ton of cats out there that need to be spayed and neutered.  I need help.  Tomorrow, Esmeralda goes in for spay (I don't think she is pregnant like I thought last week), and so does the boy cat my niece has.  Momma cat, her other cat that was in labor for 24 hours at least and delivered many dead babies, is doing well.  So is her son, yet unnamed, although I hear he is a 'screamer'.  :)

Have a great day.

"What is a cat?

Felis catus is a four-legged creature

with a furry coat, considerable

intelligence, consummate grace and

eternal dignity.

He is usually disliked by dog-lovers,

who say they do not understand the cat.  This

is unremarkable because the cat requires

a great deal of understanding ---

including the fact he doesn't give a damn

whether you understand him or not."

Things that Go Bump in the Night!

As I wandered out into the hood at 4 am. this morning, I thought to myself how eerily quiet it was.  Usually, there are cars whizzing past, going a hundred miles an hour down the city streets, cops here and there, sirens howling, but this morning, it was just plain quiet.  Which is nice!  I like it like that.  It allows me to listen for whatever I am supposed to hear.  I have been drawn to cries in the dark, on rare occasions, that have brought me to situations where an animal has needed help in some form or another.  I have many a times called 911 to report a dog in a bad situation, or a cat crying up a tree, or on a roof.  Well, I haven't called 911 to report a cat on a roof, but I have had to call in the help of friends one time or another to help assess whether or not the cat could get off the roof, or out of the tree.  Regardless, its nice when its quiet.

That silence was broken along the route though, I heard a very strange noise when I was walking to the back of the field on Garson.  At first I thought it sounded like a squealing car, but then the sound would stop, then start, then stop, then start, and I thought to myself that there are other animals besides cats, and dogs, out here.  I might not know what a fox, or a raccoon, or an opossum, or a skunk sounds like when its in distress, or whatever.  So I couldn't identify the sound, and it was far enough away that I didn't want to walk to investigate.  I just prayed that whatever it was, it wasn't hurt, or hungry.  Further on, down on Central Park, I heard a cat fight.  I shook my plastic coffee jug full of dry food and make the kissy noises, trying to break up what sounded like a very bad scuffle many houses away on the other street.  After I did this, silence again.  I hope they were curious enough to stop the fighting and follow the sound and find the stockpile of food I left. 

Everything I do in the early morning is done in the dark.  I wouldn't know if a cat is pregnant unless it walked up to me.  That's the downside of doing what I do in the early morning hours.  I will begin my TNR'ing first week of April this year.  Still snow on the ground.

Speaking of pregnant, Momma kitty was brought in for an x-ray yesterday, and it was discovered that she still had two babies inside her. This poor thing had been in labor for well over 24 hours.  An emergency spay was done and the babies were already dead, the sac inside had broken.  Such a sad story.  But the little champ, a boy, the lone survivor, I was told was drinking from the bottle like a pro.  What a strong little boy.  I will pick up the Momma kitty this morning at the vet and return her to my niece, a very thankful niece for her Auntie, and Karla from Keller's Kats.  Keller's Kats foster will nurse little baby boy until he is strong enough to eat on his own, and then we will get him adopted! 

What a week its been.  TGIF!

Recent pictures taken of Smudgie, the cat that I rescued early last year from Melville Street, in her happy home:  "Hi from miss smudge (or as Lucy still calls her FUDGE) and all of us. Smudge loves it when the kids have friends over!"

I still would love people to share their stories.  C'mon, there has to be something you can say?  Please write me at janinethebean10@yahoo.com and share something.  It could be as cute as writing on behalf of the cat (or dog) you adopted from me, or from someone else, to how you became an animal lover, or WHATEVER.  Just share!  Thanks, and ...

Have a great day!

Facts:

• The cat makes over one hundred sounds, each of which has a meaning, at least to other cats.  His vocal range includes snarling, spitting, purring, hissing, screaming, growling, trilling, and the famous meow.
• Even the purr has its own vocabulary.  Anxiety is shown by a sharp purr, pain by a deep purr, contentment by a soft purr.  And here I thought all purring was a sign of contentment!
• The cat is the only mammal that can outstare man... and seems to enjoy doing it.
• The cat has five toes on each forefoot and four on the hindfeet.  Did not know that!
• When in an affectionate mood, cats have been known to pat a master's cheek, put their paws around his neck, or stand on hindfeet, clawing the air for attention.  Cats can open windows, turn handles, open refrigerator doors - and one on record taught himself to somersault by watching a dog perform.