Diaper Kitty Box?

Fearless letting BlueBear do her job.

We kitty owners all face - THE LITTER BOX. You know how we automatically used sand because that's what cats use outside? By accident, we found out something else that's far easier, neater and cleaner. 

You know how your towels slowly turn ratty? Use them in the litter boxes. Before you gasp WTF? all you have to do every day is shake the solids into the toilet, throw the dirty towel into the wash, wipe out the box a bit, put in a fresh folded towel. Think of it as using a diaper. Keep the ratty towels in a clean, separate pile. No more tracked litter, no more constantly buying and disposing of litter. It really is cleaner and neater. 

And if you have a kitty with one of those sudden housebreaking problems, you can lay a towel where they go, then put it in the box, then start seeing if you can move the box back to a more secluded place. Cats are conservative. They'll put up with anything if you do it slowly enough (and you can see if the urine changes color or has anything to worry about in it).

Poor Red

Leo and Fearless helping Red.  Actually, drinking her water.

From now on, I take a flashlight into the coop. 

Last night, I thought Red was just sulking in a corner.  Turned out, she'd had her leg stuck in a side of the nesting box and was stuck there all night!

She's in the house, now, warming up, letting some circulation get back into her leg, and drinking from a syringe once in a while.  Priority today is fixing the nesting box.

More: I should have posted this a long time ago, but no sooner had Red healed, but she was attacked by the neighbor's uncontrolled Husky. I thought she would die, but with the help of some antibiotics and cat pain-killers I keep in the house she healed, and went to Dryad's Rest for retirement.

Here's the horrible dog-bite wound, already closed:

Here's Red, back on her feet in the cage. She went back to laying eggs and is enjoying herself with Black and Inky on a lovely farm.

April Is The Cruelest Month

Rats.  Our white chicken died.  No weird foaming, green droppings, nothing.  Just laid down and died.  The poultry site says, "Sometimes chickens just drop dead."

Her eggs had been getting smaller -- I thought she was just ramping down for summer.  She SEEMED completely energetic.  Her eyes are clear and bright.  Who knows? The site recommended some Baytril, which we keep on hand.  But they also said cut grass is bad for chickens -- and I'd been giving them grass (I thought chickens ate grass!).  Maybe they meant oily lawnmower grass, not hand-pulled or hand-cut grass?

We've been keeping cats for 30 years and nearly lost one to a whole WTF? episode with asthma.

And my bees aren't looking so good today.  I SHOULD have kept them warm in the house and put them in today.  I hate saying "live and learn" when other things die.

We were also calling the hen "Steve" (McQueen, in The Great Escape) because she'd got out once by burrowing under the fence.  NEVER NAME A GOLDFISH OR A CHICKEN.

ALMOST LOST KIKI -- file under stupid accidents

Our cats had been coughing lately, especially Kiki.  She's the cute calico we rescued up here a few years ago. After a treatment of hairball medicine, the only one still coughing was Kiki. We thought it might be worms; one of our other cats once had worms and the cough sounded like that.

In palpating her belly, our vet commented that she was tensing her lower body muscles.  He thought it might be connected to her breathing. I began to remember that she seemed to cough more when she was excited, or purring.  Could it be asthma?

We thought about what do do next.  He said we should try some cortisone for possible asthma, and it wouldn't hurt to worm a cat in a multiple-cat household.  We could x-ray.  I said we should start slow and go from there.  Our vet is funny.  He said, "Well, I can run the bill up as high as you want today."  We both laughed.

The cortisone shot caused no trouble.  She began to gag on the worm pill and then to slobber and finally to retch.  We petted her, waiting for her to keep the pill or cat it up.  Then the coughing started.  "That's it, that's the cough," I said.  Suddenly, she keeled over.  The vet's face went flat; nobody had expected that.

He picked her up and rushed her into the operation room.  I got out of the way.  I felt my heart turn over when I saw her carry her across a hall wrapped in a towel, but he was only taking her for x-rays. He put her back on oxygen, and then leaving her with a technician, called me in to see her x-rays.  They showed an airway no larger than a straw, and a small pool of vomit in the lungs. She'd inhaled vomit, then the muscles around her lungs had cramped hard, locking her lungs closed.

Each time she was taken off oxygen, the vet said, "She keeps trying to die."  As she lay there, her chest and belly muscles roiling, I put my face down close to hers and spoke to her.  Her wide black pupils shrunk, and her eyes focused on me. Each time the tech touched her, the pupils flared again.  Apologizing to the tech, I asked her if she couldn't take her hands away, in case a stranger was stressing her.  She did so, and Kiki focused on me again.  A cat down the hall began to complain, and her attention flicked toward the sound; there was a cat she was going to have to beat up.  Perhaps the distraction began to allow her muscles to relax. After about a half hour, the vet tried to take her off oxygen. She continued to struggle to breath, but the vet said it was much better.

When he thought she was "critical but stable," we placed her in a kennel, dark and quiet, and I called Dan.  Ever tear somebody's heart out over the phone?  To give her a chance to calm, I went and got the rest of my errands done, with my cell phone on (we live far away from town, and the chickens needed food and the house needed things).  When I came back, she was much better. The vet gave her a shot of antibiotics, to give her lungs a chance against the vomit, and sent her home.

She's much better today, but we're watching her.   She'll probably need cortisone once a month, but from now on everything she gets will be topical; we can't risk another vomiting episode. I told the vet's receptionist they were lucky I'd had a lot of cats and knew this was caused by accident and DNA, or I'd be going ballistic.  "Broken heart, small soul," as my character Lt. Winzig once told me.

Damn dropping oxygen levels on the planet.  Well, you know what they say:  "Cure asthma -- shoot a logger."

Final Goodbye
     Went back and dug down a bit into Hector's grave, and placed a large butter-clam shell containing a slice each of butter and margarine into the little hole, then poured milk into it until it overflowed.  Covered it back up, replaced the big square beach-tile back on top after scratching "Hector '92-'10" on the surface.
     My brother's cat Holly died the same day. He and I had better have our ducks in a row when we go, or the Old Basement Cats will GET us.  Purr with Bast, guys.
     Dan and I keep looking at the sofa where Hector lay, to check if he's hungry, or comfortable, or needs washing.  Exhausted, emotionally and physically. Now I have a bad case of the 'flu that is turning into bronchitis; will have to have some Skookum tobacco (age-controlled site) on the beach today and actually -- YUCK -- lung-suck it, to kill the germs and clean out the phlegm.

You Can't Keep A Good Cat Down

     First, a poem from Kate Murray:

God bless all pussycats
And keep them safe and warm
Especially those who are in heaven.
Give them a safe path to the Rainbow Bridge
And if they have no human friend help them to find one.
And today especially bless Hector
who showed us that even Basement Cats are full of love
(especially for those who give him smoked rabbit).
Give him lots of prey to chase and subjects to rule with a firm yet gentle paw
and salmon to fress, Amen.

     Thanks to the gods for a hideous head cold/'flu that showed up yesterday morning.  We are much less torn by grief when we're dripping snot out of our skulls.  Digging a deep hole through rocky soil is no fun with aching muscles and a fever, but it's a lot better than trying to do it bawling the eyeballs out of the head.

      Hector was washed down one last time, then formed into a comfortable position on a towel in the cold back-bedroom shelf.  When he'd cooled down (putting any warm cells into a cold hole gives me the willies), his fur looked like it had as a young cat, thick, dark and rich, with only a few grey hairs.  He was wrapped in an old quilt I'd made years ago, and then into an old tatami.  He was given his bowl and plate and bits of nice food, including smoked rabbit, cheddar and milk. Unfortunately, I think I gave him the soymilk.  I will have to go pour real milk on the grave (the cat equivalent of the human bottle of whisky).  I also forgot the margarine and butter.  I'll have to do something about that.  We've dedicated the spirits of all protein we'll eat to him and the other cats.  Or he will be back stomping on my pillow with dirty feet: "WTF??? Fake milk?  Are you high?"

      His grave was planted with white Dutch clover and dark red and pink Columbines.

      Yeah, yeah, he can't feel a thing.  Funerals are for the survivors; ritual is like medicine.  Such as Gratefulness Candles.  Try 'em; they work.
     Then the whole of Sunday was thrown away watching Dead Like Me DVDs. That's another thing that works.

Hector's still here!


He can barely walk, now, but his spirit is still there.  Cats hang onto their spirit until the bitter end.  He still purrs and staggers off to drink water and rest where he wants during the day.  He just went into the back bathrooms to drink his helping of hot water, and then sat down to suck up a load of cold.  He is doing better today.




A less beloved animal would have been gone by now. You know how it is.

Hector's still here, and has stabilized. He's slipped into a weak, thin, but interested old age. So far, his water bag IV is set at two units (about an inch) of water per day, he gets Diazepam (Valium) twice a day, and while he usually eats a dry kidney-support diet, we let him have anything he wants. What can it hurt, now? Knowing he has purr-ogatives lets him know he's still top cat. Or, officially, Top Cat Emeritus. Leo is Top Cat, now, sort of. Living with Leo is like living with Denny Crane, but without the penis comments.

Chicken emergency resolved. As the hard rains of the El Nino came in, the chicken cage became unbearable. It was originally built for security, but this made it almost impossible to clean. So for about a week, I threw myself into building an actual mobile cage -- a bit too heavy to be an actual chicken tractor -- to get them out of the filthy, muddy, ammonia-reeking trap their home had become. Red, the hen as tall half-way up my thigh, and the boss chicken, was yelling for help.

Yesterday I ignored the lashing rain, each hammer-blow splashing water as though it were coming down in a puddle, and slammed through the project until the cage was at least sturdy and completely enclosed. The neighbor was so upset at seeing me soaking wet in the rain she brought me a nice red rain jacket. I tried to tell her I had spent much of my childhood in the cold rain. My father was injured and in pain much of my early life, and mom just threw us out in the rain to fend for ourselves. We didn't know we were abandoned; we had woods and beach and fields to play with, ponies and peacocks, seagulls and wandering hounds. But we did spend most of our time soaking wet, sometimes just stringing our tennis shoes (we got one pair a year) around our necks on our shoelaces and running barefoot.

But, back to the present. I ran in the house and changed my sloppy sweatshirt so I wouldn't get the nice red jacket wet on the inside and dashed back outside before I warmed up; it's running in and out of heat and cold that makes a weatherproof person sick. By the time I got the cage finished, it was the hen's bedtime, and no time to move them. Red did lay her first egg, however. A PINK one. White's are yellowish, Black's are light green. Easter eggs!

This morning Dan helped me move the hens. Red was squawling to us to come rescue them, and came to my hands to be handed out of the hutch. While Dan ran with her to the new cage, Black came in to be caught, too. My God, is that a fat hen! She's rather gorgeous -- in the sun, shimmering black/green with black edges on each feather. White was an idiot -- white chickens usually are -- and had to be cornered and caught in the muck.

The moment they were all together in their new hutch and cage, they happily started scratching the grass. This is growing over a concrete-tile path that is nearly covered over. Let THEM clean the damn' weeds off the path. Then we'll roll the cage to the next patch on the path and sow the edges with white Dutch clover. Ha! They can replace the nasty thin grass with nice rich clover while they're at it -- and they lay just enough eggs for us to have scrambled eggs twice a week.