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God made the cat in order than man might have the pleasure of caressing the lion. Fernand Mery
I had planned to write this last night but after spending 3 1/2 hours under a covered booth at the St Petersburg Folk Fest with the asphalt reflecting the heat from the sun directly into every booth all I wanted to do was sit back with a large iced tea and listen to the Gators and then the Rays. Seein’s how I’m a sucker for punishment I’m gonna do it again today. The stage is directly behind WMNF’s booth so we’ve got the best seat in the place if we don’t pay any attention to what’s going on in front of the booth. Can’t go wrong with an hour each of The Green Grass Boys with T C Carr, then Sarasota Slim and Nitro followed by Rebekah Pulley and The Reluctant Prophets. Great folk and blues afternoon.
I think Gabby has an ear infection. This is gonna be fun. He doesn’t like to be picked up or held. Holding him long enough to stand on a scale is an adventure. Getting him into a carrier even more so. As soon as any of the used-to-be ferals sees a carrier they disappear. I’ll have to bring the carrier in the evening, make it ready and scoop Gabby up first thing in the morning. I’m only get one chance.
Last weekend we set out 6 traps for strays. We got 4 and one juvenile possum, who was so cute as s/he waddled off after the trap was opened. No kittehs from these 4. They’re back, acting like nothing happened. Cool. Eileen didn’t get Sweetie in so she ended up in one of the traps. Silly tiger. Got to spend a lot of time with my buddy Max, though. He had to see what was going on first thing in the morning.
Short post today but it’s been slow in the tiger world. Too damn hot.
I’m off to bake myself once more. Takin’ 2 liters of water instead of 1 and wearing lighter clothes. I thought of goin’ nekkid but that’d be really ugly and jailhouse orange is even uglier.
Share your tiger stories with us.
If you want to know the character of a man, find out what his cat thinks of him. Anonymous.
23 Comments
A folk festival sounds like a good place to be if you gotta be somewhere. I celebrate my 28th annual 29th birthday tomorrow and just want to be still and quiet today and not leave the house if I can help it.
Me, I’m hangin’ with Madison the feral right now on the front porch. He just finished breakfast and he’s lounging about 3 feet from me now, in the cool shade. Soon I’m gonna trap him, too, and take him for his own no more tigers fix. SD, do you get traps at the pound?
Grace’s absorbtion into our borg is almost complete. She and Uncle Nikki, as I’ve taken to calling him this week, are getting to be buddies. She follows him around, taking the occasional swipe at his tail and leaping sideways in front of him, and he lets her. A couple of times he’s even rolled over on his back in front of her, a clear invitation to play. She’s still wary but I love it when they touch noses every morning. Grace is adorable, playful, loving and strangely quiet. I only hear the occasional peep from her – literally a peep, not a meow. She’s growing fast but I still think she’ll be a petite kitteh.
Miss Belle, my two year old and previously the only other female besides me in the family, has taken an instant dislike to Gracie. I thought our dishwasher was broken last night but it was Belle, under the table, growling intermittently at Grace. The first two nights the kitten was in the whole house Belle stayed out all night with her nose out of joint. I hope she gets over it. What’s y’alls experience with this? Should we just let them work it out? All our previous animal intros have gone swimmingly. Even the rat was an instant hit. Our Rotty/Lab used to play ‘flip the rat’with Scabbers – Scabbers’d come dancing up to the dog and stand right in front of him, perfectly still. Brownie would gently lift him up with his nose and flip him about three feet away, whereupon Scabbers would do his little ratty dance again and come back for more. The cats just ran from him, never growled or showed animosity.
Well, I guess I won’t be a crazy cat lady anytime soon, darn it. We were at the vet last week and there were two cats, one under a year (the mom) and one of her three kittens, in the waiting room cage. Sprout called dad to see if we could take the kitten home and was told NO. We currently live with community association rules that already make us illegal for pets.
Now Sprout is worried we’ll go to jail. Sigh.
I had a co-worker who said she just started counting over again at 30. So it was 30-1 to 30-9 at which point it became 30-10, 30-11, 30-12, etc.
And part of the deal with having only a single feline companion is that if he doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary, there’s not really much to speak of going on.
Happy 29th year! I’m 23. Hehe.
Have you tried rescue remedy in the water bowl? It’s kind of like prozac for furbutts. I’ve found it helpful in stressful situations. It’s a flower essence that you can get at natural food store.
Yes! I forgot, Rescue Remedy! Can be sprayed on the cat and rubbed into the fur in a traumatic situation. My cat loves it, I think he imagines he is the king being anointed with oil by his faithful servant!
Feli-way is another great product. When we introduced our Gracie to longtime resident Abner, we used both rescue remedy in the water dish and Feli-way in the plug in air dispenser. (Didn’t work for marking behaviors, I’ll add.)
Our animal control rents traps. The lady who’s doing most of the trapping here has her own. I have one of my own.
They’ll work it out. Some sooner, some later, some never. At worst it’ll be a growl and move away. Fights are rare in my experience.
I came back to say that ‘flip the rat’ story had me chuckling this morning! That is hilarious! AND cute as all get out.
I’ll chip in to bail you out if you land in jail for the kittehs, mommybrain.
Stay cool at the folk fest! Have you tried Feli-way to calm the kittehs? My poor orange tiger has cardiomyopathy, his heart is failing and our frequent visits to the cardiologist were turning into life-threatening trips. I tried Feliway – spray 4 squirts in the carrier and 8-10 in the car about 15 minutes before we have to go, along with cooling the car down as cold as it will go, and we do much better.
http://www.catfaeries.com/feliway.html
It is marketed mostly to stop urinating anywhere but the litterbox, but it calms the kitty like magic. I also use their Calm and Serene flower essence, a few drops in his water.
Thanks Mocha and YellowSnap, I have some rescue remedy in my cabinet, I never though of giving it to the fuzzybutts. I should have remembered about the Bach flowers -
A long time ago I worked for a commercial production company. One of our commmercials was a for-cable, 3 min spot on the TImeLife Book series Witches and Warlocks. They build a medieval stage as backdrop and somewhere in the commercial they have a series of morphs (and this was when morphing was brand new) where a frog jumps and turns into a raven who flies and turnes into a cat who jumps and turns into a witch. When we did the animal casting (oh the stories!) they picked my black cat, Miss Tabitha Mink, because she had the same eye color and shape as the woman they picked as the witch.
The consultant they hired was an actual witch, also a vet and the first female jockey in NY state. She anointed all the animals with some kind of oil before their shots and it took only one take each.
*The consultant they hired was an actual witch, also a vet and the first female jockey in NY state*
wow! Multi-talented! Just about covers all of it: the spiritual, the intellectual and the physical. She must have been a cool lady.
Did Miss Tabitha Mink say ” Oh, I’m ready for my close-up”?
Oh, sweet caturday!
What great stories! I never thought to rub Rescue Remedy into the fur.
I’ve only had cats play together with great enthusiasm that worried me until they convinced me it was all good fun. Never any *real* fights.
When I brought my little Colette home she was silent ~ that scared ~ she didn’t purr, she just vibrated after she started to settle in. Eventually, one night downstairs I heard her finding her voice, calling quietly. Now she can call me from downstairs if she wants. And she purrs three times as loud as her size should allow. And now that she’s blind, she’s using calling and my responses as a substitute for sight. All that practice talking cat pays off.
I saw one of the cats who used to wander in the neighbourhood as I was taking out the trash the other night. He seemed to recognize me. I couldn’t adopt him so I was feeding him but I was really worried about him. One day he showed up with a collar and tag that said: “Does anyone own this cat?” and a telephone number. I raced upstairs and called the the number blurting out: “oh I am so glad he’s finding a home!” He showed up a few times after that and I found a dropped collar on one of our kitty walks. We figured out that he had a circuit that was about 1/2 hour each way and my place was at about the limit of his territory. Very cute. I haven’t seen him in a couple of years or more. It was a treat. Apparently he settled in to a life of leisure. I wonder what brought him out?
BIG tragedy last night. I failed to understand that I was supposed to stop the rain. At least couldn’t I stop the rain in either the front or the back? How about if Merlin whines ~ would that make me stop the rain? How about if he scratches at these papers here? Would that do it? How about he rips the rug under my desk chair to shreds? Would that do it? Why won’t I stop the rain???? Please oh please oh please make it stop raining so he can go out or he just might die!!!!!
Well, he’s still with us this morning. So I guess he can wait until tonight. He’s a good boy: except for the infernal cat whining.
Love the quotes SD, they get better every week. Hope you enjoyed your day in the sun.
Good luck with all the lost kittehs. It breaks my heart when they come around ~ good thing it’s rare here now. You all have such huge hearts.
And the witch-vet-jockey? Now, that’s someone I’d like to meet!
Wonderful stories. Wonderful caturday.
This is so long you’ll all think I’m some kind of caturday troll. lol.
Cat Kisses.
I visited mine – I’m in a no-pets place – and got cat-haired from ankles to shoulders. (It’s a lot easier to have this done when sitting on steps. The cat enjoys it more, also.)
This is outrageous! Poor kitteh
Poor Kitteh, indeed!
Vets say kitteh will make a full recovery after anaesthesia for the removal. I saw a picture and the cat looked quite calm ~ in vet care by then, though.
Animal cruelty needs to be taken very seriously. AND it’s an early sign of psychopathology in humans. They keep abusing. And worse.
My Cat channeling here begs to differ God made man to serve the cat! Cats don’t care what humans believe they just care about the actual facts of our relationship:)
I do believe it was a human who crafted that quote. Whadja expect from a human? Some humans made their god in their image.
hey TigerMan !
I found the perfect Caturday gift for my I.W.W. friend
LOL!
And Mommybrain – luuuuurve the “flip the rat” story.
My only real story is yesterday, coming into PetSmart to buy kitteh food for my brood:
First sight, cages 4-cage high, filled with adorable kittehs, mostly young, all adorable. I could see a tiny calico curled up in a top rear cage.
Couldn’t help myself – I stopped and gazed (longlingly, no doubt)–and, of course an adoption volunteer (Feral Cat Coalition) came up to invite me into the web-of-felines:
“You can come closer!” She grins widely at me. “It’s okay, really!”
Me, “No, I can’t! I have six now!”
She laughed and admitted I probably didn’t need to bring any new babies home. (I think my crew might have done foul things to me in my sleep, had I been so foolish.)
heh heh heh
Awwww, that’s really cute. A baby Sabocat.
Hi Dragon and dear folks.
There’s a commercially-made t-shirt out there (http://geargems.com):
We luvs Caturday, Dragon. Thanks!
P.S., Our little tigers coped extremely well with our recent move and are very happy in our new digs. I’m sure it helped that we kept their favorite furniture. And it doesn’t hurt that we have more time to play with them now. Whoopeeee! Huge, terrifying tiger eyes around every corner. Toys presented to us when we’re asleep… or trying to read at the Lake, heh
It’s a good thing. ;->
p. e. a. c. e. (dammit!)
Our kitties talk to us using human language inflections in their trills and “brrrrumps”. It started when they were kits, and they kept expanding their repertoire.
The brother of the pair is now up to multisyllabic prose beyond the skills of most hoomin’ be’ens. The little grrl can read minds through the ethers of a casual glance, and has a hot serve to rival Serena’s.
I’d be tempted to try making a yootoob, but they’d immediately want to investigate how the camera’s constructed. So, these remain just private pleasures indulged in by us, special family, and a few close friends who have been accepted into our rather exclusive Pride.
That’s the way they want it, and so it remains. The lil’ tigress told me so.
“Are you sure, Hon?” says I.
“Uh Huh”, says she.
Honest.
I think I’d like a government managed with such simple grace and respect.
no snark was injured in the making of this comment.
LOL