krazycatlady’s blog

Favorite Photos

nobody@vox.com(krazycatlady) — Sat, 31 May 2008 19:09:52 -0700

Here are a couple of shots from PetSmart today that I liked enough to share with you!

A boy & his dog, what could be cuter? How about that dog deciding that he needed to sit on Mom's lap instead of the slippery floor? These former volunteers stopped in to visit us after attending the big dog event in St. Charles.

Mason!

This picture is in the grooming salon - don't worry, the dog isn't being abused and isn't that unhappy, he just looks pathetic in the photo and you know how I'm a sucker for pathetic!

Danielle!

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Kitten Updates

nobody@vox.com(krazycatlady) — Sat, 31 May 2008 18:50:31 -0700

Sashababies

They barely fit in the basket now! They are officially 9-weeks-old today and will be getting spayed/neutered on Monday. Hopefully if all checks out well, they'll be up for adoption next weekend! They weren't too keen on the idea of sitting in the basket, luckily they were intrigued by the toy I was holding up and played along for awhile. It was still a challenge to get all of them looking at the same time. Sasha started having ooey pooey lately, so I'm hoping that they won't have anything that requires a long treatment so that they can all go home and get adopted!

Venicekittens

From left to right we have Palermo, Rome and Sicily. They got spayed/neutered yesterday but won't be ready for 10 days at least because Palermo tested positive for giardia. The other two were negative, so hopefully that means that it'll be easy to wipe out. None of these guys were having ooey pooey, so there's a really good chance of getting rid of it quickly.

Naples

This is Naples, Venice's other kitten. I didn't think that she was ready for a spay yet, so I held off on having her done. She still looks a little rough around the edges. She was so weak for a long time when she was younger, I'm still amazed that she survived. She had repeated eye infections and didn't especially like me because I had to put the medicine in. Today she purred for me for the first time. Too bad I had to give her the yucky-tasting giardia medication! Hopefully she'll still like me when it's all over.

I gave Koko a new toy today - a catnip stuffed body pillow and he just went to town on that thing! He had so much fun. I can't wait until he is all clear and can play with the other cats. He has went from being such a scared, shy boy into such a sweet shining star.

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Adoptions 5-31-08

nobody@vox.com(krazycatlady) — Sat, 31 May 2008 18:12:47 -0700

Another slow day. Adoptions are down and so are donations. Everyone in rescue is seeing the same trend. We guess the economy is to blame, but it's the animals who are suffering as more and more become homeless when their people get laid off or have their homes foreclosed on.

Dogs: June, Daisy, Cookie, Dixie & Jack

Cats: Binks, Ankiel & Adonis

June: adorable aussie-mix puppy, the shy one in the litter and the first to be adopted!

Daisy: 7-month-old shepard/husky mix, she was adopted out as a puppy (named Elke) and returned because her owner had some serious medical problems and could no longer care for her even though she was truly loved. When she was a baby, someone dumped her in her foster mom's yard - imagine coming out in the morning to find a puppy in your fence. This is part of why we don't want people to know where we live, we don't need dumped animals!

Cookie: sweet schnauzer/poodle mix that was lingering in a pound and getting sick - she had an infected uterus (often fatal if not treated) which is not uncommon and is totally preventable by spaying! She'll never suffer that agony again and has a forever home.

Dixie: sweet probably isn't the first word to use to describe this spirited mini-cocker with issues, but she really is a sweet girl under her anxiety about other animals. She has new owners who understand her background and are willing to work through her issues

Jack: beagle, I didn't know Jack, so I can't comment on him, but I guess you can say that "the Krazy Cat Lady doesn't know Jack!"

Binks: a kitten that was fostered by one of our foster moms at a school for vet techs where she works, someone there fell in love and adopted him

Ankiel: a kitten that is white with buff, so sweet and cute - his new mommy held him for the longest time at PetSmart. He'll be the little brother to Gizmo, formerly known as Colt - one of my foster kittens from last year.

Adonis: another kitten, this time an angora mix. This white beauty came from another group called Snuggle, where they take in neonatal kittens and bottle feed them then get them to other rescue groups to find forever homes for them.

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Mission Unaccomplished

nobody@vox.com(krazycatlady) — Fri, 30 May 2008 11:51:18 -0700

It's been awhile since I've had a Krazy Cat Lady adventure, so I was looking forward to a home visit to help out with a couple of special needs cats that I had placed earlier this year. I got to visit three of my former fosters: Chicken Nugget (now Ginger), French Fry (now Abby) and Kelly (now Kelly Louise). Poor Ginger had thrown up something that wriggled, so I went to try to help deworm them. What makes these 3 girls special needs is that they're all very shy and the first two were adopted as semi-feral.

I spent quite a bit of time getting the girls used to me being there and actually got to pet Ginger a bit. Kelly has been adopted for about 2 weeks. She spent the first week hiding in the closet and then got brave and snuck into the basement. She comes out more and more, but her new mommy hasn't been able to pet her yet. Luckily Kelly recognized me right away and came out to see me. I got to pet her, then pick her up and hold her. She was so happy to see me! She just broke my heart with her little Kelly-meow and then the way she nestled onto my shoulder and purred in my ear. She has a very nice new mommy and Kelly is on the verge of figuring that out. She already loves sitting in front of the patio door, aka her "big screen TV" and feeling the breeze. She loves running up and down the stairs and down the hall. She doesn't know it yet, but it's much better than living in my basement.

Having Kelly like me so much helped the other girls calm down a bit by me. The canned food didn't hurt either, especially since we took their food away the night before (I'm sneaky and mean!) I was hoping to do a brief petting, get them calm, and then scruff and pop the pill, but I forgot one key factor. Ginger has no neck. I remember her being a bit hard to scruff, but I had forgotten that she is truly impossible to scruff. There are WWF wrestlers with more loose skin on their necks than this cat has! So I ended up juggling the cat, trying to get her to stay in the corner of the kitchen while I repeatedly tried to find a scruff in vain. She ran off and we tried to get her into the bathroom to try again in a smaller room, but no luck. We decided that it was in the cat's best interest to try again another day.

I left the medicine with her. She's going to try to starve them out and see if she can get them to eat it in canned food. Most cats won't go for it since it takes a bit bitter, but here's hoping! I'm willing to go back, but it would be much easier on the cats to just give up and eat the stuff!

My life is pretty boring if this was the highlight of my day! But I did get bribed with cat litter for my troubles, so it wasn't a total waste! And I got to see sweet Kelly was truly was the highlight of my week!

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Updates

nobody@vox.com(krazycatlady) — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:34:32 -0700

It has been a fairly boring week, but I'll take boring! Kittens are notorious for having ooey pooey, so it's no surprise that I keep showing up at the vet's office and demanding fecal exams. I'm so tempted to get my own microscope just so I can stop bugging them. I also think my kids would benefit and think it's coolio. (doing normal science slides, I don't mean to infer that I'd have me kids looking at poop all day!) Cross your fingers, Venice's kittens go in tomorrow to see if they're big enough to get spayed/neutered and then they can think about going home! Hard to believe everything that they've been through. I'm not taking Naples in, she's not big enough yet, but I have a good feeling about the others. Sasha's babies are supposed to get done on Monday! Sasha has been having ooey pooey, so hopefully it's nothing too serious. Her babies are doing so good and will hopefully be cleared for adoption quickly!

Kiki and her boy Koko are still having poopy problems. I thought that Kiki was better, but her fecal proved otherwise and so she's back on nasty tasting medication. I give her a treat after each dose, and while she eats it, she gives me a look like she'd prefer to not get the treat if it meant not getting the medicine. It was nice getting to be her friend for the period between the meds. Koko is still positive for giardia, so back on metronidazole which he also thinks tastes awful, but he's such a sweetie that he can't stay mad at me for long and just loves getting a belly rub. The good news is that the medication is working and he's not so gross anymore! So I get to spend longer petting him. He's also not going through toys as fast either which is also a good thing.

I'll try to post tomorrow and tell you how things went with the surgeries.

I just want to take a moment to honor the life of Macy, one of our volunteers had to put her beloved dog down yesterday and I'm taking it harder than I thought I would. She started getting sick on Saturday and went downhill fast. She tried everything but it was clear that the dog wasn't going to get better and that it was time. I felt honored to have gotten to spend some time with her yesterday. I got to spend an hour with her at the vet's office and just sat petting her and I like to think that it helped ease her mind to hear a friendly voice and feel a gentle touch. I've been giving my own dogs extra hugs this week and really appreciated having my cat snuggle on my shoulder as I fell asleep last night. Macy was only 8-years-old, make me really glad that I've had my dog Jake for 12 years and my Max-cat for 14.5 years. I've also been getting weepy fairly easily this week as thoughts of Harry keep rushing in. I do think it's better to have had them in our lives and go through the pain than to not have known the love and comfort that a cherished pet brings.

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Adoptions: Memorial Day Weekend

nobody@vox.com(krazycatlady) — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:18:36 -0700

Sorry to have missed posting for a week - just been busy and nothing exciting going on! Last year we did over 20 adoptions over the holiday weekend. This year was much slower. Not sure if we're feeling the crunch of the economy, but adoptions are way down, even for the cute kittens.

Cats: Mopsy, Flopsy, Cottontail, Bunny, Alvin, Duchess & Belle

The first six adoptions are for kittens that I didn't get to meet since I wasn't at the adoption event. I do know that one of them got returned already because the family dog thought it was something fun to chase and the new owner feared for the kitten's safety.

Belle: my six-year-old Persian/Himalayan mix was very happy to get out of PetSmart! She was a sweetie at home, but a little stressed stinker at PetSmart.

This weekend we are adopting cats at PetSmart and our dogs will be at a special event in Chesterfield at Petropolis. If you know of anyone looking to adopt, please send them our way! We are at the point of the year where we are turning animals away and it is breaking our hearts.

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Poop Patrol

nobody@vox.com(krazycatlady) — Thu, 22 May 2008 22:27:16 -0700

I just got finished scooping the boxes. I feel like that guy from the old Dunkin Donuts commercial, who slept walked out of bed every morning saying "time to make the donuts". I finish almost every day with "time to scoop the boxes". (sometimes I do it earlier in the day so I can get to bed at a decent hour) I try to keep things pretty well scooped and replace the litter as needed. Some boxes get clay litter and are dumped and bleached daily, others have scoopable. Things seemed to be getting rather stinky lately, so I took extra time tonight and dumped out most of the scoopable litter boxes too and soaked them all in bleach. Luckily I have a double set of litter boxes (aren't you jealous?) so I can let them dry once they're clean and the cats don't have to wait to get them back.

I took Rome and Palermo to the vet today for fecals and they don't have giardia anymore! They have "tootsie roll" poop which is what we like to see. They were a bit scared leaving the house, but lucky for them they'll get to stay here a bit longer. I had them look at Palermo to see if he was ready to be neutered, but he's not. He needs to get a bit bigger for everything to drop into place. Rome is really gaining weight and growing quickly now that the nutrition is staying in his body!

Poor Koko tested positive for giardia today. He just can't seem to shake it. He was doing a bit better for awhile, but he's still overflowing his box daily. Poor guy is so lonely and he's a bit on the gross side, so I give him lots of petting, but not so much holding. He was so happy at the vet that I was holding him that he didn't care what they did to him (for giardia they have to take a direct sample, straight from the source if you catch my drift). He is getting better and isn't as gross as he used to be. He's grooming on a regular basis, but he just loves playing with toys and doesn't care if they hit the litter box. In fact, he's been helping me to declutter the old cat toys. I just give him a couple of toys that need to be retired and he plays for hours and then the next day, they're sitting in his litterbox and I toss them out with the litter and give him new toys! Today's new old toy is a white furry mouse that had ended up in a water dish, then washed and the snobby cats don't want to play with it. Not Koko - he's willing to play with anything! He's also helping me to finally get rid of some of the old towels that are in rough shape. I give them to Koko and in a couple of days he's make enough poopy paw prints plus some other spots on them that I don't really want to wash them! I know he sounds horrible, but he's much better than he used to be and with starting new medication today he'll go from being gross to just being hyper! I'm looking forward to having him get to PetSmart and finding a home. Poor guy deserves better after fighting this for so long.

Time to go to bed, I've been up for almost 20 hours. Gotta get some rest so that I can have more Krazy Cat Lady adventures tomorrow! Cross your fingers for the next batch of cats going to the vet for fecals, if all goes well, Kiki could get moved to PetSmart!

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Kitten Update

nobody@vox.com(krazycatlady) — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:16:09 -0700

I'm behind in my weekly kitten photo shoot, but don't worry, no drama here. I've just been busy. We're getting ready for company this weekend and I'm doing all the end of the year stuff for Girl Scouts. On top of that, I vowed that this week I was going to be able to park my car in the garage! So I've been doing non-cat-lady stuff and moving around all the clutter that has found it's way into my parking spot. I haven't let it touch the husband's side, he'd have a fit if he couldn't park in there.

I can't say that cleaning the garage didn't have to do with cats. There was an awful lot of cat stuff out there. I tend to be the collector of the supply drive stuff and I had a bit of that stored in there, including the two supply drives that happened this week! I also have stuff for Trivia Night out there and so that got organized today too. I have a pile that goes to the dog fosters (including a big crate!) and a pile that goes to another shelter and a pile that goes to PetSmart. It's taken 2 days to organize it all - although it's amazing that I found myself going out to lunch with a friend each of those days.... Once I get all these piles out of the way, I'll be able to tackle the last little area where the front of my car belongs and I'll be inside before summer. It's good to have goals. Like the way I hope to conquer clutter inside all summer long!

Back to the kitten updates. Hopefully I'll have pictures in the next day or two. Everyone is doing well. Sasha's babies are getting so big and big-kittenish. They romp and play and climb and are just everywhere! It's a darn good thing that they have such a big "apartment" to run around in. I gave them one of the scratching posts that I got for Mother's Day and they are having a blast. They climb to the top and just ponder the world from such a high vantage point, then they try to figure out how to get back down! Too cute. Mom is just about ready to be done with them. She's been such a good mama, but she's tired and wants her life back.

Venice's babies are doing really well. They have to go back to the vet this week for a fecal and then hopefully they can start getting spayed and neutered. Rome has had a major growth spurt and he's as big as Sicily now. Naples is doing shockingly well. She's starting to eat in front of me now, so I don't know if eating the solid food is truly a new thing or if it's just something she's doing more of now. She's also grown a lot since they started the medicine for giardia. They're still loving their canned food and demand it every night.

Jackson, Miley and Lilly are settling in. One of the girls is still a bit shy and they've gotten loose stool from getting dewormed, so it'll be to the vet for them for a fecal.

Kiki, the mama cat of Koko is finally having solid poopies, so you guessed it, another fecal and if she's negative, she'll be next in line for PetSmart! Koko on the other hand was starting to do better but is having more loose stool again, so he needs to be tested too. Just put a sign on my van that says "The Poop Patrol" and send me on my way. I'm sure that they'll love seeing me at the vet this week!

So sorry that I haven't posted much lately, but without cute pictures and just having stories about poopy litterboxes, you can assume that no news is good news!

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Compelling Video

nobody@vox.com(krazycatlady) — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:06:16 -0700

This was done by someone in St. Louis and is about plight of puppy mill and shelter animals. It's a good wake up call for people who are thinking about getting a purebred dog from a pet store and don't know where they come from.

http://www.onetruemedia.com/otm_site/view_shared?p=5ddff46aa6f57603f016b2&skin_id=601&utm_source=otm&utm_medium=text_url

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Adoptions 5-17-08

nobody@vox.com(krazycatlady) — Sun, 18 May 2008 22:58:16 -0700

It was a fairly slow day for adoptions due to the gorgeous weather! I had the chance to get outside today and loved feeling the sun in these few precious days before it's too hot to want to stay out for long. We have gotten some other calls and interest in animals, so hopefully we'll have some luck during the week.

Dogs: Jewel and Melvin

Cats: Molly, Sammy & Gabriella

Jewel: our theme was black dog adoptions - usually they get adopted last, but someone saw this young black lab on our website, filled out the application and fell in love!

Melvin: another black dog got to go home, this very lucky dog gets to live forever with our webmaster! He knows the plight of black dogs in shelters and does his part to give them homes. His other dog was looking for a friend. His other dog is also a black Heartland dog that only has 3 legs. You can see more about Mikey on the success stories part of our website.

Molly & Sammy: two older kitties that were surrendered when their owner had to go to a nursing home. They got a great home with another Heartland alum, Ashley. The woman had just adopted an outgoing cat from another shelter and got Ashley to be his friend. All he did was beat up poor Ashley and so the woman made the hard choice to return the first cat. She knew that with his friendly nature, he'd find a home and adjust much better than Ashley would. So this time she chose a pair of older kitties to be her friends and it's working out very well. Early reports say that Ashley has warmed up to the idea very quickly and wants to play all the time just like a kitten!

Gabriella: my buff girl got to go home. She was around 10-months-old and I was happy to get another "adult" gone before my kittens are ready. But that joy is short lived. I found out that I'm getting a return this week, so I'm not ahead yet. Gabriella is going to be the pampered companion of a young pre-teen girl and this should be a match made in heaven. Our Gabby loves people and loves to be carried around. I wouldn't be surprised if the girl can dress the cat up!

Gabriella!

Babydoll: she hasn't been adopted yet, but our FIV+ girl did get to go to a long-term foster home with a senior citizen at Gambrill Gardens. She had been living in a bedroom at her old foster home and got to sleep with a boy at night, but now she'll have attention all day long. She'd still like a permanent home, but this will be better for her for until that happens. And if we can find her a home, there's always another cat that we can let the sweet older woman foster for us!

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