Bob and Kathy's Millennial Adventures with Feral Cats Pt
IV
April 29, 2000
Hello again everyone,
When we last visited the Rude Ranch, Bob and I had just adopted out four of our foster kittens. We also thought we had solved our mouse problem.
It has now been one year and two days since Bob and I bought this house and embarked on our moving disaster. This past year has gone by incredibly fast, and although there are a lot of things that Bob and I didn't get finished, (like unpacking the moving boxes) we did manage to find homes for a lot of cats and several dogs. Hopefully in the next year we will at least be able to finish unpacking our boxes. Or at least be able to find the rest of our stuff.
Now on with the story:
Angel and Xander, two of our foster cats were 6 months old and needed to be fixed... at this point they were the equivalent of human 15 year old boys rushing hormones, obnoxious, messy and a general pain in the neck (and else where) to be around. (Ok, I know this description also applies to men of other age brackets, but you get the idea). We made an appointment with our vet to take care of these problems. The night before their surguries, we dutifully took their food and water up, and made sure we would be able to catch them in the morning. Unfortunately both cats were on to us. When we went to "stuff" the boys into carriers in the morning, Angel cooperated until I had him just inches away from the carrier. Then he twisted around, bit me, dug in with all four paws and took off to hide behind Mr Macho. Xander also put on a good show. He started running around his cage at full speed. Then he started hissing and growling. At that point we decided not to take them to the vet. However, we would prevail.
We made an appointment for the following week. We picked up knock out pills from the vet. We planned to mix these pills in their food. The pills would take affect in an hour and the cats would be out for 6 -7 hours.... long enough to get them into special cages and get them to the vet before they were conscious enough to know what was happening. We actually got lucky with Angel ---- he woofed his food down like there was no tomorrow. Unfortunately, Xander suspected something and refused to eat. Taz however did eat his food and took a nice long nap afterwards.
Now we were down to a battle of wills, Bob and I against Xander. It was time to pull out the heavy artillery. We mixed up another concoction with baby food. 99.99% of cats can't resist baby food --- this one could. This called for another plan of action, and it wouldn't be pretty. We armed ourselves in the standard full bodied armour. We removed all breakables from the vicinity. We got our heavy towels ready. Oops, he shredded the towel. Ok heavy sweat shirts. After a fair amount of bickering and cussing on Xander's part (at least I think it was cussing) Xander ended up rolled up in a sweatshirt inside a wire cage. By now it was an easy deal to stuff a sleeping Angel into another cage.
Fortunately, Angel, Xander and the vet all survived their respective ordeals. By the time we got them home, the kitten were sleepy and only a little ticked off at us. They did get even with us the next day however, when they ripped open an extra bag of kitty litter, spread it all over the floor and encouraged the rest of the cats to use the pile 'o litter on the floor rather the the litter box.
By now we thought things would calm down a little. Until we got another call, from a lady that had been referred to us by our vet. (He was probably getting even with us for bringing him Xander and Angel) A stray cat had moved in under her deck, she felt sorry for it and had been feeding it. Now it was getting big --- as in had a hot date and is now in a family way, big. Could we take her?
We took one look at Miss Sophie when she arrived and we agreed. She was in a family way --- big time. So we set up a cage and towels and a "birthing box" in our quarantine room for her. She promptly buried all of the towels in her litter box. We're not sure if this was a social comment on not. We are now waiting for the "blessed event".
Coming in the next exciting edition: Sophie's kittens.
