Got the Jimmy Legs

It's going to be so quiet in here tonight

This morning we put Lefty to sleep. After showing promising improvement since his seizures over the weekend, he took a turn for the worse and we had to say goodbye to him forever. Read More »

The lights look bright when you reach outside

Our foster kitten Lefty may have FIP. He had been recovering from an especially bad upper respiratory illness which required the use of a nebulizer and a battery of meds. He pulled through and seemed almost back to normal by Friday night. After he had some food, he napped on the couch with us. About an hour later he woke up and started acting strange.

His claw was caught in the slipcover, so I thought his movements were related to him trying to wiggle free. But after I released him, he kept wobbling. His pupils were dilated and he couldn't seem to see us. He started wriggling and trying to run across the couch, oblivious to any obstacles or the edge (he almost ran right off). We immediately took a car to VERG, the 24-hour emergency vet in Boerum Hill.
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Come on in and cover me


I am obsessed with shelter. Mine and the feral cats we watch over. Luckily, my house, however unkempt and run-down, is pretty sturdy. I get antsy when I worry that the skylight may not be watertight, or the cellar may be taking on water. But so far we've been lucky (well, we did have a bunch of plumbing work done to ensure the cellar won't flood).

So my attention ends up mostly being about the cats' shelter.We already have a number of shelters out back, but some are starting to fall apart and will need to be replaced. I built most of them, so I'm always trying to figure out how to build a shelter that will last forever and need zero maintenance.  In the past couple of months, I built a few types of cat houses, as well as purchased a ready-made shelter.

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Count the things you haven't got

Lots has been happening in the real world! Currently, we're working on our 3rd bottle-baby kitten of the year! Lefty, above, was brought into our vet's while we were there for another cat. The guy who found him was clueless about kittens, let alone a days-old kitten with a cold. The vet examined him for free and gave us some KMR, and we took it from there. I had to bring him to work for a couple of weeks, secreted in my desk drawer, so he could be fed regularly. He's now eating solid food (though just last night he had a bottle for old time's sake) and looking more and more like a cat and not a fuzzy insect. He'll be up for adoption soon, although I suspect he will be claimed before that.

So much else has happened, including one of our foster cats (Lenny) getting lost and returning nearly a month later with a jaw injury. We also got our senior cat Mabel a much-needed Total Ear Canal Ablation surgery. I should probably make a separate post about that, there's not a lot of info on the web about it, so somebody may benefit from our (her) experience.

Meanwhile, winter is coming and the ferals need shelters! I'm planning to build some more this year, and step up from my usual storage-bin shelters to something sturdier. I'm planning a trip to the Home Depot soon!

Home where you belong

Adoption Event

We've been participating in North Brooklyn Cats' weekly adoption events when we have cats or kittens to adopt out. It's been an invaluable resource to get our cats seen by an enthusiastic crowd and I don't know where we'd be (or how many more cats we'd still have) without them. Read More »