Justine doesn't think that I post enough about my cats.
I think that I have too many of them right now. I made a blog
where I can post news about cats, either my own news or news
from around the world.
Current Cat Inventory:
We are moving at work to a new building. Today was cleanup day and I discovered a CD of pictures from Nov, 2004. There were four pics of Gracie and Ollie when they were just kittens. I put the pics in a gallery album.
Christine at Petropics has been following Max's illness and sent a care package for him. Inside were a few cans of Max's favorite cat food - Tiki Cat, and a jar of a Renew Probiotics Therapy that Petropics makes. I am guessing that it is acidophilus, but she explains that it is a special strain of bacteria that can stand heat better and is good for the lower intestine's pH.
As you can see, the box is not packed with styrofoam peanuts, but plastic cat toys. Gracie and Ollie have gone nuts over them and I am in danger of tripping over them and breaking my neck. They are scattered everywhere. Even Archie, the stray, was playing with one.
Thanks Christine - Max is very happy with his present!
Max woke us up a 5AM crying. He seemed to be in pain. Max is a vocal animal and when he yells, he is usually just saying "hey hey". This sounded different. He was struggling to go to the bathroom. We got up and took him to the animal hospital. He had a blocked bowel. This is not the first time. The doctor gave him something to relax him and managed to take out a few large clumps of very hard stool that was blocking him. Max is now a little doped up, but he is relaxing. His thyroid reading is back up and his liver stats are bad. The infection in his bowel must have backed up into the liver again. We have to watch him and double his antibiotics. He is out of any immediate danger, but this is chronic and we will have to treat him for the rest of his life. Max went up to hide in the attic. I have to go up and check how he's doing. I'd rather he stay down with us and sit on the couch where we can watch him. Max cost us $400 for off hours emergency room treatment. The vet just called about the blood work. He his very high liver stats and a low? white cell count. We have to get him some super antibiotics and I'll have to take off from work monday to take him in to see his regular doctor. More money. The doctor would not rule out cancer, but he had a very intense checkup the last time this happened and there was no indication then.
ABC News: Judge Spares Life of Lewis the Cat: "BRIDGEPORT, Conn. Jun 20, 2006 (AP)— A state judge on Tuesday spared the life of Lewis the cat, whose vicious attacks on neighbors landed his owner in court, but the terrorizing tomcat was ordered confined to the house at all times."
The civet cat or paradoxurus is a tree-dwelling animal that is part of the sibet family. Long regarded by the natives as pests, they climb among the coffee trees eating only the ripest, reddest coffee cherries.
They collect the poop for making coffee!
(Note: this is called a cat, but it is not feline - more like a skunk.)
Kopi Luwak: "But perhaps no coffee in the world is in such short supply, has such unique flavors and an, um, interesting background as Kopi Luwak. And no coffee even comes close in price: Kopi Luwak sells for $75 per quarter pound. "
I added about 50 images to the Gallery. For every image I post to the blog, there are 5 or 6 that I discard. I uploaded the unsized images so you can zoom in on the big files. I have a bunch more, but it is slow work. I will go back and tag them by cat when I get a chance.
I added a Coppermine Gallery Cat Picture Archive to the website. You have to register to see the images. I only added a few, but I will start uploading large numbers of images when I get home. I hope readers will add their own images to the library.
I'm moving the blog to a new host. There may be an interuption and the blog will not be available for an hour or two. I have to move the blog to balance traffic. I am getting too many hits. The African Lion picture has been linked by hundreds of bloggers. The Petropics posts are getting hundreds of hits through the search engines. I am getting many hits from people looking for info on sick cats, so I will try to add some links to pet rescue and vet sites. I will fiddle with the layout and add a search feature. Hopefully it will be up and running before anyone notices it's down. If you have suggestions as to what sites I should link to, please let me know. When Justine suggested that I should post more about cats, I didn't know it would be such a big deal.
A few years ago, a great white pine went down after being hit by lightning. I call it the Chipmunk habitat because it is a tangle of branches and hidy holes and the chipmunks love it. Gracie brought me back there and showed me her technique. The chipmunks scolded us, but Gracie decided not to catch any today. Click on images for very large version.
The very nice people at Petropics (Tiki Cat Food) saw my previous post about their cat food and how my cats scarf it up. Christine Hackett, the Tiki Cat President sent me a great email with advice about Max's health. I had expressed concern about allowing Willy to eat a fish based cat food. Willy has had urinary blockages from eating ordinary commercial fish cat food and once almost died.
Christine knows her stuff and here is what she wrote:
Seafood has the reputation for being high ash 1) because there is a lot of fish "meal" and other fish sources that contain a lot of bone which can cause a high ash rating which shows itself with a Magnesium content and 2) they add inferior food items that cats can't process which cause toxicity and excessive elimination load on the linings of the urinary system resulting in crystals and enlargement of the urethra.
Our recipe's are a low-acid recipe's, do not affect the PH system in the body, we only use whole seafood with no fish meal or other inferior by-products and is simply real, good food. The main culprit of urinary tract problems in pets is the dry food that was fed leading up to the problem. You will notice that even the "premium" foods are loaded with various grains, flours and meals which are not digestible for cats (therefore overloading their system) who are true carnivore's and also we leave the food out all day causing the cats body to alkalize the urine (cats should be fed high quality dry food 2 times a day only to allow their body to prevent alkalizing) creating crystals.
Our food is whole, pure seafood with no meal, no ground fish and bone to compromise the health of any of your cats so you don't need to protect Willy from eating Tiki. :)
I actually had a lot of customers concerned with feeding seafood to their elderly cats at a recent public show and they are all calling me for re-stocking after testing it with their cats and checking with their vets on the ingredients.
Erica has a friend who flies in Africa who sent her this picture. (click image to see full size.)
"Pilot's Dilemma"
"You are a South African bush pilot. You fly in some critical medical supplies, enjoy a quick lunch at the hospital.
It's a stifling 100 degrees in the shade and you're eager to get back up to the cool, high blue yonder.
On the way back to your plane, you discover that the only bit of shade, within 10 miles, has become very popular . . . You start calculating the distance to the plane door . and wonder . . ."
"Do I feel lucky today?"
Update: I found another picture from a different angle.
We have all the best cats here in the northeast. We have the cat in the Greenwich Village wall and Lewis the Attack Cat. Now we have a cat in New Jersey right across the border from here, that chases bears.
Erica and Justine had a little cat named Nipper who once rode a German Shepherd across the yard, holding on with her claws on its back. That cat had Moxie and reminds me of this cat named Jack.
Yes, this black bear ended up high in the tree in West Milford, New Jersey. What's he running from? A tabby cat named Jack, who can be seen sitting comfortably at the base of the tree."
I call the black stray Archie, but Erica doesn't like that name. She calls him screamer because he comes to the door and yells at us until we feed him. It is definite that he's a male. I saw the evidence. He needs to be fixed, but he spits at us if we come close.
Archie is quite photogenic today.
Furry posed, but the flash washed it out.
Blue doesn't hold still long enough to take a picture. He sleeps on the bed now, next to Erica. I reached over last night and gave him a good belly rub, and he was very insulted.
I walked around the lake today and saw a Cormerant. They are such weird birds. They hand out with their wings spread out.
I fixed up the style of CThreePO.com, my non-fiction site. I moved all the essays that I wrote at Astounding Tales to the web site. It looks much cooler than it used to.
Also, check out Free Name A Star. I finished it and it is already doing well. I will have the Martian Land Grab up and running next week.
There have been complaints that I went a weekend without pictures of cats. There have been demands that I update the blog or suffer death.
Here, at least, is some news.
Blue, the stray that we brought inside to keep from starving, is doing very well and adjusting to the house. We pushed him out the door on Memorial Day, because he has shown interest in going out. He was terrified and ran back in the house after a few minutes. He has not gone close to the door since. He is very much an indoor cat.
The black stray has been sleeping in the cellar. We have a cat door down there. When we do laundry, he runs back out and looks in at us. The laundry room light is on a motion detector so we can tell he's been inside because the light goes on when we are still coming down the stairs.
He spent the entire winter outside and has lost part of an ear to frostbite. I originally thought that he was partially a tortoise shell cat, but the orange discoloration on his side has gone away and it may have been a symptom of frostbite and malnutrition. He is now nice and fat and is getting picky about the food. He looks inside when we open the door and is considering coming in.
The black stray is the spitting image of Max, who was also a stray. He may have come from the Fikes Farm, about a half a mile down the road, where there are dozens of barn cats. I figure that the black cat (recently determined to be male) is probably Max's grandson or great grandson.
Max is gaining a little weight and seems to eat more without being force fed. I dissolve his Pepsid in a little hot water and then mix it with his favorite canned food. He eats this right up without comment. Cats are usually so fussy that they reject anything strange about their food, so the pepsid must not have any taste. Erica still has to feed him his thyroid medicine and antibiotics with a medicine dropper, but seems resigned to this.
Furry was limping around with an infected bite on his leg again. He and Blue occasionally get serious and Blue has bit him hard before. This time, the bite healed up without a trip to the vet. These two big cats are in a war over who is the dominant cat.
Gracie is bringing home ticks. The deer live back in the woods and Gracie is a traveller. Erica has taken many off of her and I took off a couple last week. Gracie sleeps on the bed next to Erica some nights and Erica has had several tick bites, thanks to Gracie.
Willie is as fat and lazy as ever. I take him into the back every day or so and let him run back. It is the only exercise that he ever gets.
Ollie is depressed that the other cats get to go out and he has to stay inside. He is exibiting some bad behavior, like not using the cat box. I hope he gets over it. He runs without thinking and his outdoor behavior is suicidal. If he gets out he refuses to come back in.
Last night there was a bad storm and the thunder-bumpers scared the cats. They all ran into the attic and hid for several hours. It was strange not having them around.
We have all the best cats here in the northeast. We have the cat in the Greenwich Village wall and Lewis the Attack Cat. Now we have a cat in New Jersey right across the border from here, that chases bears.
