Happy New Year!

Crystal is ready to party! Or maybe she's already been in the 'nip...

Happy New Year to everyone, and let's hope 2009 is so good it makes us forget 2008!

Pyewacket, My Halloween Cat

This is my beautiful boy, Pyewacket. He is truly a Halloween cat, and here's why.

Last year (2007) on Halloween night, while I was giving out candy, my neighbor Cathy came over and asked me if I had seen a big black cat that had been running around the neighborhood for a couple weeks. She thought he had been dropped off by someone, and being a cat lover like I am, she was worried about him. We live on a busy street that runs alongside a major road. I hadn't seen him, but told her I would keep an eye out for him.

A little while later I heard something in the hydrangea bush next to my front porch. I turned, and there he was - the biggest black cat I had ever seen, with these amazing orange eyes - but he took off when I saw him. He was probably right there in the hydrangea when Cathy was asking me about him. After that, I was very worried about him, it being Halloween and all, so I put some food out on the kitchen porch before getting ready to go to my friend's Halloween party - dressed as a black cat, no less.

I got home from the party literally at the stroke of midnight. I went to open my basement door, and the cat came around the side of the house, scaring the bejabbers out of me. I said "Hi there!" and he just stood there. It was like he was saying, "Well, what are you waiting for? Here I am!" I scooped him up and brought him into the house. Then I fixed up the old coal cellar for him, giving him food and water bowls, blankets, and a litterbox. He stayed there for a couple days until I got him to the vet for a checkup.

I had to find a "Halloween-y" name for him, but I didn't like all the typical ones. I loved the movie Bell, Book, and Candle, so I named him Pyewacket after Gillian's cat.

Pyewacket is as nice as he is gorgeous, and he makes sure I remember to fill "his" special dish, the one he had in the coal cellar, every day by running in front of me down the stairs and leading me to it, then glaring at me. He is a wonderful addition to my menagerie.

Update on Timmy

Timmy is still doing well on his thyroid medicine, although he hasn't gained any weight back. He is still very thin, but he takes his pills and is eating and drinking normally. He hates the pills, but it seems like he knows he needs them so he doesn't give me much trouble about them. At his last vet check, his thyroid levels were much better than before he started on the meds. He likes to sleep on the little table in the corner of the kitchen on top of a pile of old catalogs.

One Happy Cat

Drugstore.com rocks! The box of Skin Milk arrived in two days, right in the middle of Christmas shipping season! Autumn is a happy girl!

No, my cats aren't spoiled...much!

So, Autumn likes to hang out in the bathroom with me while I take my shower in the morning. She plays monorail cat on the side of the tub and licks my face as I'm testing the water temperature.

After my shower, I put body cream on my legs. Lately I've been using one called Skin Milk, which has actual milk in it and smells like milk. Autumn has gotten into the very weird habit of licking the Skin Milk off my legs and is now so demanding (actually, she's always been very bossy) that as soon as I step out of the shower she is standing there going "Meow! Meow! Meow!" and she glares at me until I put the cream on my legs so she can lick it off. I know - who's weirder, me or her? It's a tossup.

I'm almost out of Skin Milk, and grocery day is not until this weekend, so I ran up to the local drugstore to see if they had it. They didn't. So I went to the drugstore by my office at lunchtime yesterday. They didn't have it either. Then, like an idiot, I drove 15 miles to Wal-Mart just to get Skin Milk for a CAT! They don't carry it anymore!! Just my luck. But I ran into a girlfriend in the parking lot and we went and had a couple beers, so it wasn't a totally wasted trip. :-)

I did find Skin Milk on Drugstore.com and bought four jars of it (free shipping for orders over $25), plus I got Upromise credit towards my student loans for my purchase. Yay! So that should last a while and keep Autumn happy. In the meantime, since I only have a teensy bit left, I am only putting Skin Milk on one leg and Eucerin on the other so she can still have some to lick off every day until the new shipment arrives.

You've Come a Long Way, Baby

Meet little Peek-A-Boo, a dilute calico Manx, mama of the beauty queen Pearl. Peek-A-Boo began life as a feral kitten who lived on a farm where they raised bobwhite quail. The farmer, a friend of my ex-husband's, was going to shoot the kitten because she was eating his birds. My ex, also a cat lover, and I already had quite a few cats, but he told his friend to bring the kitten to work. I worked across the street from him at a company that cleaned the sewers. The shop manager was also an animal lover, and he agreed that we needed a "shop cat." When Rick carried the cage with the kitten into the shop, she was literally hanging upside-down from the top of the cage, screaming at the top of her lungs. We put her in the parts room and made up a nice bed, litter box, food and water bowls, etc.

No one saw her for the first three months, but we knew she was there. She lived in the ceiling of the room but came down at night to eat and use the litter box. Soon she ventured out and walked around on the steel beam that went around the top of the metal building, watching the mechanics work on the trucks.

Still nameless, the little kitten was so filthy from being in the shop that she looked like a smoke-grey kitty! But she wouldn't let anyone get near her. Eventually, she started hanging over the loft above the office area and watching the men eat their lunches, and they started throwing little scraps up to her. This is where she got her name, Peek-A-Boo. She seemed to like one of the guys, Brian. After a few weeks he was able to get up on a ladder and actually pet her through the loft railings. I brought in a peacock feather and got up on the ladder and played with her, but still no one could get near her except on the ladder.

Then Peek-A-Boo went outside on the first warm February day, and guess what? She turned up preggers. This seemed to calm her wild spirit down a bit. She was so dirty and matted by this time, I brought in a slicker brush and climbed up on the ladder. She LOVED the slicker brush! After a couple weeks, I had all the mats out of her and you could actually tell she was a calico cat.

One Monday in April we came in to work to find Peekie skinny. Uh-oh, there are kittens somewhere! All work stopped for the next three days (when the boss wasn't looking) while everyone searched for the babies. We looked everywhere! Finally Jim, the shop manager, opened a room that was kept locked and we heard their little mews, very faintly. Jim reached into a large box of truck parts with me, Lisa and Karen right behind him, and out jumped Peek-A-Boo! Jim jumped back into me, and we almost fell like dominoes. In the box were five very tiny kittens. Jim took them out on by one and laid them on my hand. All five of them fit across my hand. Sadly, a little orange striped Manx was dead, but there was a calico Manx, a tortie Manx, a black & white tuxedo Manx, and a tortie with a full tail.

We made up a nice cozy box for Peekie to raise her kitties in, but she would have none of it. Every night she would move them to a different place in the shop. Fearing for their safety, I finally packed all of them up and took them home. Peekie was spayed, and the kittens were all adopted except for Peekie and Pearl, who still live with me. My daughter adopted little Norton, the tuxedo, and two of my co-workers took Casey and Lucy.

Peek-A-Boo weighs only five pounds, still loves her red slicker brush, and has never once shown a desire to go outside since she moved in with us. She knows she has the good life now!

Domino, the Cat Saved by Apple Cider Vinegar

One night 8 years ago as my daughter and I were driving home from my fiance's house, I suddenly saw two tiny faces next to a mailbox post - one all white and one black and white. I said to Mandy, "Did you see that?" and stopped the car. The two kittens ran off into the bramble, and Mandy and I in our shorts and sandals were no match for the thorn bushes and could not find them in the dark. In tears, we got back into the car. "Don't worry, honey, I'll stop on my way to work tomorrow and try to find them," I said. The next morning, I stopped, and found that there were actually three white kittens and on black & white tuxedo kitten. They ran fast and kept going into a culvert underneath the road where I couldn't catch them. At lunchtime, I got one of the guys at work to go back with me. The white kittens were still too fast, but the little tuxedo was lagging behind and I caught him. For my trouble, he bit my finger and I had to go get a tetanus shot. I took him back to the office where the other girls fed him tuna from a can. I kept trying to catch the white kittens and finally told another lady at PetsMart about them and she and her husband went to get them. I never saw them again after that so I hope they caught them all.

Domino was only four weeks old - too young to be taken from his mama - so I bottle-fed him for a couple weeks. I was getting married in a month, so he actually attended the wedding and the honeymoon, which was at my ex-husband's cottage in Deep Creek, MD. The above photo was taken on our honeymoon. I think if it weren't for him and his antics, we would have been bored to death because it was freezing that week in July 2000.

As a result of the bottle feeding, Domino became a suckler. He would get under the covers with me and snuggle into my arms, and suckle on the inside of my elbow. He is now 8 years old and still does this from time to time. He is still my "little kittles."

When Dommie was about 5 years old, he developed a bald spot on his shoulder. I thought it was from the Fontline I used on him. But then he started to develop bald spots all over and eventually lot almost all of his hair. In the meantime, he was also losing weight. The vet ran tests and told me he had Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP), which is a deadly and unfortunately, highly contagious, disease. He said Domino would live maybe a couple months at best.

I was devastated, not only for Domino, who is my baby, but for my other 13 cats who had now been exposed to this horrible disease. I cried for two weeks. Of course, I quarantined Dommie in my "sick room" which is my spare bedroom. Every day I would go in and sit with him for a couple hours and hold him while reading a book, or just rock him in the rocking chair. I cried and cried. The vet told me to give him subcutaneous fluids and keep his water freshened a couple times a day. The fluids were a joke. I had four people trying to hold down this 6-pound cat so I could get a needle in him, and he would have none of it. It was impossible. I just figured I would make him as comfortable as possible.

One day I was in his room eating a banana popsicle, and Domino started licking the other side. He loved it and ate almost the whole thing! After that I took him banana popsicles every day.


One day I was researching his disease on the Internet, and I ran across an article about someone who had given their cat apple cider vinegar to help with kidney failure, which was one of the symptoms of FIP. What can it hurt, I thought. I started putting a dropperful of apple cider vinegar into Dommie's water bowl every time I changed it. Within a couple weeks, I noticed his hair growing back in. Then I noticed he was putting on weight. I kept up with the vinegar therapy, and after a month or two, Domino was back to his normal weight and looked fantastic. Jubilant, I let him out of the sick room. Boy, was his girlfriend Peek-A-Boo glad to see him.

That was three years ago, and Domino is still doing fine. The only symptom he has is that his third eyelids are always a little bit up, which is a sign of illness in cats, and one eye has a chronic redness problem which I give him eye salve for. But absolutely no sign of kidney failure or FIP, and none of the other cats have gotten sick.

Do I believe in apple cider vinegar? You bet I do! It saved Domino's life.

Timmy Mau

This is Timmy, the oldest of my 15 cats. Timmy is 13 and was recently diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, which, I've learned, is not uncommon in senior cats. The good news is, it's easy to treat with medication. Timmy's been on his meds for about a month now and has already started putting weight back on. He used to weigh about 13 pounds and was down to 8 pounds, but I can't see his ribs anymore so that's a good thing.

At first I thought the weight loss was just a natural result of aging, but it didn't make sense. Timmy was eating as much as ever and spitting up a lot, and he was more vocal than usual. Mau! Mau! Mau! all the time. Dr. Duel recognized the symptoms right away and tested him for thyroid. Thank goodness it was not something worse.

Timmy has been with me since he was about 10 months old. My daughter found him roaming the neighborhood and knew her friend had lost his brown tabby kitten, so she brought him and and called her friend Chris, who came over and said "that's not my cat." So we put a found ad in the paper and asked all the neighbors, to no avail.

When Timmy was younger and spryer (is that a word?), he used to leap from the kitchen counter onto your shoulders and ride around like that. He never used his claws but managed to have a perfect landing and hold on every time. Now he just hangs out in the kitchen, sleeping on the butcher block table or the metal cabinet where I keep the cat food. He sleeps a lot. But he has no problem jumping up, even at his advanced age.

Another quirk of Timmy's is that he has NEVER drunk water from a bowl--it has to come fresh from a faucet. He just sits in the sink and stares at me until I get up and turn the water on to the proper trickle for him. Talk about spoiled! I don't even want to think about how much money has literally gone down the drain because I turned the water on for Timmy's "dinky" and forgot about it until hours later when I came back into the room.

Timmy is still as beautiful as ever, though his eyes are a little glazed and I'm not sure he can see too well anymore. He goes back for a thyroid checkup in a couple weeks, and the vet will decide if we need to adjust his meds. But I'm happy he is doing so well.

It's a 7 Cat Night

It suddenly turned cold in Western Pennsylvania. So cold that all of the cats have decided they need to suck body heat from their mama. I'm not sure why they want to do this, because my bedroom happens to be the coldest room in this 82-year-old house. They could easily sleep in a warmer room. But they don't. Or maybe they're very generously sharing their body heat with poor me.

Good thing I'm not a large person, because as you can see, it's not a large bed; and on a cold night, there will be up to nine little furry bodies smooshed up against every part of me. One on my pillow wrapped around my head, two on either side of me, one curled up behind my knees, one on my feet, and always, little Domino under the covers with my arm around him and his head on my shoulder. No kidding. While I'm reading my book, he climbs up to the spot and stares at me until I lift the covers up for him, then he scooches his little butt down underneath and stretches his two front legs across my shoulder.

I found Domino by the side of the road where someone had abandoned him at 4 weeks of age. Too young to be taken from his mama. I bottle-fed him for a couple weeks, holding him in my arm like a baby. He is now 8 years old and still suckles on the inside of my elbow from time to time. He's such a baby. He will stay there under the covers all night, or at least until I have to get up to pee.

That in itself is a major undertaking. It's 3 a.m. and I'm going, "excuse me, I need to get up, can you move please?" Of course it annoys them immensely and I apologize for disturbing their sleep. But they sure do keep me warm.

Opal, the Tomboy Cat

Hello! This is my first post, so please bear with me. As I write, my little Opal is outside the door of my office begging. She has the sweetest little trill that ends with "me" when she wants something.

I have 15 cats, and they aren't allowed in my office. It's the only "no kitty zone" in my house. I'm a writer and copyeditor, so there is a lot of stuff in here. Too many things to get into, pee on, puke on, well, you get the idea.

But Opie is such a good girl, and she simply adores the basket in the corner next to the peacock feathers. All she wants to do is come in here so she can get in that basket and go to sleep. She doesn't even bother the peacock feathers. My other cats would rip them to shreds. And the basket is the perfect size and shape for little Opie.

Opal is a real tomboy--hence the nickname Opie. She earned the nicknames "Opal Knievel" and "The Flying Wallenda" after jumping from the top of the entertainment center onto the ceiling fan, riding it once around the living room and then sailing over the top of the kitchen cabinets into the kitchen. The fan blade was permanently bent and it never ran right after that, but it was worth it.

Opal and her mama Crystal will chase each other all over the house like kittens. Opal is 7 and I have no idea how old Crystal is. I went to the Humane Society one day looking to foster a mama and litter of kittens, and Cryssie had just been left on the doorstep the night before with four newborn babies. I took them home, and they never went back. My daughter took one male, a short-haired ginger tabby (China), and I adopted the other three kittens--Opal, Reese and Hayley--and Crystal.

Of all my cats, Opal has the sweetest personality. Her brother Reese is a thug, and sister Hayley is the quietest of all of them. Opal hates Reese, though. He is a bully, and every time he walks past her, she hisses, even if he's not even looking at her. They're just like human brothers and sisters.