Category Archives: Cats

New of the Holiday, and part was bad but better now

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Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

I have bad thing new too, though. Last night somehow Strider, my favorite cat, got missing. [Update: 4:30pm He's found!]

Around 4am I heard someone downstairs and the garage door in the kitchen then shut loud. Frank went down and was Russell that did it. Well, I couldn’t get back to sleep so I went down, and didn’t see Strider, so big deal as he offen is sleeping in the family room. I was in the kitchen. So then Dixie went over to the door and was scratching the bottom of the corner of the door, after that a bit I started to think about it, and then went looking for Strider, and didn’t find him. Not in our out of the house. He could be in the garage, we have so much stuff piled up on one side there is no way to know if he is there.

He got out one other time during the night … it’s on this blog somewhere I would guess. Anyway, he was gone for days, and I was about to give up on him, we did go to the shelters and vets around here and put up notices and report him missing. So then the day we got him back, Frank was leaving early in the morning when it was dark still, and came back inside after starting to pull out of the driveway. He got me out of bed and told me that he saw an animal on the driveway as he was leaving and it ran into the garage …. so he then put the door down and came and got me.

It was Strider, way down under stuff where I could not see him without lights shining there to reflect his eyes. He ignored me, and I could not reach him. I finally lured him out far enough, with food, so that I could grab him.

Sigh. It’s just so horrid to have him missing again. Why him again? He doesn’t “Try” to get out ever any other time. So then, fresh memories of the other time leaves me feeling really bad since I had no idea where he was for days, and he never showed his face or meowed when “lost”. We looked like crazy for him, called him, called him very, very often. In the end it was just good timing that we found him. He wasn’t coming out.

So it’s fustrating. He is my cat. My dear one. My sweetheart. He is so nice, so loving, so much of a great cat, and more. He loves me so much, loves belly rubs, loves, to sit on my shoulder, just be with me so much. Why did he disappear that time and not come looking to get in the house? Will he do the same thing this time? Is he around, just hiding?

He could have done it this time since we have new kittens. He “seemed” to be doing well with them, not hissing anymore and eating with them, and sniffing them without hissing. The other cats are still wary and hissing at them mostly. So why the morely well ajusted cat gone? He might have been planning it, and took the first opportunity. Maybe he’s not gone, just in the house where we can’t find him, sick. Maybe, but probably not. It is sure that the door had been opened. Russell did that, but now says he doesn’t remember doing it. So what happened is not clear. But the cat could have gotten out if the door was opened and Russell was sleep walking, or not, just there going out to find something when he shouldn’t have, and a cat would just be able to walk out the door into the garage and hide instantly. :(

So I’m missing my dear friend. I am praying he’ll come back on his own, safe, and sooner than later, but sometime at the least if it must be later. Please pray that he’s safe and finds his way back inside or that we find him and he is alright. He was fine last night. I paid lots of attention to him last evening.

So that’s that.

The turkey is in the oven. I didn’t get to do it yesterday, as we had to go out. I have a few more hours of it before it’s done. I need the oven to bake other things too, and I have no room with the turkey in there. Blah. It’s not fun with a small oven. It’s not “small” just not “large”.

I have to bake the rolls, and also the green bean casserole, and the sweet potato casserole.

Pumpkin pies are done, cooling. I make mine from Norishing Traditions, that’s with spices as fairly normal, but with lemon peel, and sour cream, instead of the other “normal” dairy put in most folks pumpkin pies. I also put in JD Whiskey. Recipie calls for optional Brandy. So I sub my favorite!

At some point we have to make this Victoria’s birthday, and I’m not sure when that’ll be. I’m pooped out already, being up since about 4am. :laugh:

[Update] I went out the front door just a bit ago for “yet another” perusal of the yard, to call for Strider, etc. Immediately upon going out and calling “Here Kitty, kitty, kitty” I saw Foster bounding across the street straight at me through the yard … and as he got mid-yard something to my left caught my eye … it was Strider by the back wheel of the Montana. He was wary of me and I knew I couldn’t get him, so I fastly opened the house door and yelled for Frank to come help me with Strider.

Frank came out and then opened the garage door, which was shut, for the “in case Strider is hiding out in there” in actuallity. He wasn’t though. I went out “just at the right time” seems. So then Frank came out in the front yard and Strider meanwhile went under the other car (Honda that just sits there) and up into the engine. So Frank had to go inside and get the keys to the Honda to open the hood … and did that and there was Strider right there on top. So I plucked him up and into the house we went. He is doing fine now, but at first was semi-wanting to hide here and there and a bit skittish, but I loved him up instead of telling him how bad he had been … and that seems to have worked.

Same thing of nurturing children … love them instead of yelling … the hard thing to do at times :( So object lesson with the cat today hits hard … nurturing with love in response to bad stuff really does work. It works when the big person keeps with it, regardless of how the other acts. The other comes ’round eventually. That’s the tough spot for parents and children, when parent loses the cool they had tried to keep with the frustration of the non-compliant one. It’s that one needs to push through and keep at it, and love them, love them, love them. :)

Something I know, something I’m hard pressed to be good at mostly. So I guess I know the upper reason for Strider leaving today: teaching me to do what I know, do it, it works, but do it inspite of that, do it all along, even if it doesn’t seem it IS working. :)

Cats, cats, and more cats

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On Saturday we went out on errands, shopping, of course, and Frank surprised me at Petsmart [where we go for the kitty litter we get] and told me I could pick out a kitten if I saw one I liked. :smile:

There were some young kittens, and several older kittens, as well as a few adult cats. It was adoption time, of course, as Petsmart doesn’t “Sell cats or dogs”. Pet Adoption agencies come in on various days with animals from shelters and rescue services, etc.

In the past, we got Strider, Dixie, and Scarlet in this manner. When we got Strider and Dixie we were there to look for a kitten. We ended up with the dynamic-duo instead. I saw them, and didn’t look further at them since they were older kittens. I was looking for a little black kitten then, I think. Frank pointed the 7-month old kittens out to me and asked if I wanted them. Both? Well, let me see then … and the rest is history. They were the best pair of cats, sigh. Still are.

We got Scarlet next, looking for a kitten again, and the people there didn’t let us take a young onethough they had several then. [actually, we had gone to Petsmart and didn't see much of anything, so then we tried PetCo which was just a few blocks away --holding adoptions, it was at PetCo we found Scarlet.] We ‘weren’t trusted’ for some reason. Usual pet adoption people fall in love with us for adopting any of their cats. We got Cinnamon in 1998, when I was pregnant with our second baby [Victoria]. It was a great experience. We got Strider and Dixie a few years after that. Super Great Experience. So Scarlet then, was a not-so-great-experience in that we lucked out in getting her at all. We stood around waiting for more cats to arrive then, and she showed up finally, and was just old enough for them to reluctantly so OK to us about. She’s a nice little cat, very petite. She was 3 months old when we got her. Strider and Dixie really took to her and loved her in her growing up phase. They still all like each other a lot, just that the “young” phase was greater.

We got a kitten from a family we know next, Foster. He’s over a year old now, and outside, as he just wouldn’t fit in with our family. Really a royal pain, much nicer as an outside cat, though that’s not my usual medium of caring for cats. He’s needing neutering still as well, but that means $ in the case of what needs done to allow them to do him [shots ...] and then the scolding that would follow about him being an outside cat, blah, blah, blah. Frank says we’ll give him a trial inside deal. I’m not sure we will though, as he’s just a big, strong, opinionated cat.

So with all that has happened in the past year-plus, we have four inside cats and one outside cat, until this weekend.

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Cutie Cat

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Here’s the latest cutie cat in our midst:

He’s much cleaned up-like now, but the camera is in “tempermental mode” again. He’s what I have hopes of getting “fixed” soon. He is very sweet, very, very, sweet. He started hanging around nearly two weeks ago, or more, and was injured looking. His nose, you can see the darkness in the photo, was all crusty scabby in bigger and smaller areas, as well well as an older injury on his side that looks like it is healing, but was nasty and untreated. Beyond that I was feeding him after a day or so of him hanging around, and Foster, our cat I HAD to boot outside, was becoming a bothersome creature, as the visitor kitty was seemingly more “at home” and Foster acting as “visitor”.

I sat down with the new kitty one day last week and saw some pinkish color on a front paw, and upon further investigation found that his right-paw-left-claw [thumb] was declawed … freshly in a wounded way … ugh. Poor thing. So that sealed my thought process, and in he came.

He a gentle boy, perfect candidate for grown-up male cat to be neutered and house-catted. If we can get him checked out at the vet soon-ish, he’ll be fixed up and introduced, eventually, to our current-foursome of Princess, Strider, Dixie, and Scarlet.

His name is Vivaldi.

He’s gentle, but oh so catty, needing attention, and singing and performing to get it. But his name isn’t for those reasons. It’s because of something else. My love of Vivaldi music and … any guesses?

Vivaldi is a pale tabby-pattern on top, actually a bit paler than the wonderful picture of him portrays. His front feet are white socks, his back feet are white short boots, and his tummy is all white. He has a beautiful white bib too. His nose is pink and his chin and such are white. White whiskers as well.

I gave Vivaldi a bath after I got him inside. He didn’t like it much, but neither did he fight me. He sure looked a ton better since that bath! He’s a beauty, I estimate him to be not very old, but grown-up.