Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Babbit









Babbit was abandoned in a cage left in a sunny parking lot by an anonymous jerkwad. The other rabbit in the cage died of heat exhaustion before we found them. Audrey is his caretaker, she's been doing a good job with her responsibility for three years now. He's a happy rabbit, I think his breed is called "Lionhead Rabbit" for the mane-like topnotch he has.

Ramona

New to the pond this month is Ramona the Red-eared Slider. One of these days Dave will put his foot down and say 'no' to the billions of animals I drag home.


I got Ramona from the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge staff after someone dropped her off. Sliders are not native to Utah and the employees there didn't think it would be a good idea to introduce her to that habitat. Someone brought her in after finding her in the middle of the highway in the Brigham City area and I have a great little pond for her to live in - it has all the amenities: invertabrates, fish, algae, paddling duck feet ;)


She seems happy----but shy.

Ruby and Toad























I have a couple of ducks that hang out in my backyard.

Ruby is a mallard that I bought six years ago as a companion to a duck I was caring for. The furthest she flies anymore is from the back porch down to the pond. She likes to act as air traffic control for incoming duck visitors.

Toad came to live with me about a year ago - She came in to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center after she was hit by a car up near Chris' Cafe in Huntsville. She can't extend her right wing but she's happy as a clam in my yard. She hops up the stairs to the deck and eats the cat food--she also likes to sneak up and bite the cats' tails. She occasionally takes a nap in the cat house before she fumbles back down to the yard. Weirdest thing ever to watch a handicapped duck descend a staircase.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Matt----the stray



Matt is disgusting and ill-tempered. He's filthy and his back never has less than 20 greasy gnarled matts of fur on it. He just showed up for the food and never really left. One of these days I'm going to grab him (probably with welder's gloves and a face shield) and get him neutered. He hangs around in my driveway or on the deck and waits for me to refill the food dish. Fatty has to come harass him and show him who's boss every couple of hours. He could be a nice cat, I guess, if he wasn't such a weird thing. He can't decide whether he likes or wants to be pet---and I can't decide whether I want to be the one petting him. Beside that, after any encounter with Matt I always feel like I need to wash my hands and anything else he touched.

Katie

Katie is a very shy cat and ranks the lowest of the low in cat pecking order. She is shaped oddly, sort of hunchbacked and duck-footed, she has greasy looking corse hair, and crusty eyes. She hates to have her tail messed with. Dave calls her 'the disease' because of the way she creeps around and will suddenly appear on your lap. She is sweet, though, and she likes me so I reciprocate in kind. When she's all cleaned up and pretty she bears a striking resemblance to Puss in Boots from the Shrek series. Poor little critter - she's usually hiding under the cedar chest in the living room.

Mert



















Mert is my first cat - I adopted him from the Ogden Animal Shelter the same year I got married. He's sixteen and it shows- He's going into renal failure so he drinks all the time, his teeth are falling out, his breath is horrbibly foul, he's a walking skeleton and he's a bit touched in the head. I love the old goat--it's terrible watching him get old.

Fatty Lumpkin

This is Teensy's baby - he's named after Tom Bombadil's pony from the Lord of the Rings. Fatty isn't meant to be a house cat and never was. When the kittens started learning to use the litter box Fatty used a corner of the room, and when I put a litter box in the corner he chose a different corner without a litter box. I got him neutered while he was really young, so it isn't hormonal - he's just a naughty little shit.

He's rough and tumble, he likes to fight and mark his territory (he came in the house and sprayed my artificial Christmas tree). He is my only 'outside' cat.

Teensy


Teensy used to be a neighbor's cat. They called her Angel, fed her spaghetti and bacon grease and never got her spayed. I thought she was a kitten until I noticed the evidence that she had been nursing a litter of kittens. She would come over to my house to eat - probably because she didn't like spaghetti sauce.
The neighbors went on a vacation and asked me to feed her and their other cat 'Socks'---but they have enough food to last a couple of days. Yeah... That's how I found out about the spaghetti and bacon grease. Worst pet owners EVER! They ended up extending their vacation for three or four months - I noticed Teensy was pregnant again and two weeks later found her on the floor of their crappy abandoned car just after she had delivered three kittens. It was late September and too cold outside for the babies so I took her in and made her a bedroom downstairs.

Long story short--- Neighbors moved, left her and two kittens. I got them all fixed.

Mickey

I don't know how old Mickey is now, maybe eight or nine. He showed up on my front porch and never left. He's named after Mickey Mouse. I let Audrey name him--she wanted to call him Cinderella but decided that it wasn't a very boyish name.
When Kohl was two or three he tried to trap Mickey in his bedroom but Mickey was a little too quick (but not quite quick enough). Kohl slammed the end of Mickey's tail in his bedroom door and completely de-gloved the last inch and a half of his tail. I was in the bath when Kohl knocked to tell me that "Mickey's bweeding!" I asked why and got this response: "I don' t know, but his tail is in my woom!"
That'll teach me to take too long in the bath.
I hurried and dressed then ran Mickey to the vet with the chunk of tail in a ziploc bag. It couldn't be re-attached, so the vet took off the exposed tail bones on a day that Kohl described as "the wowst day evoo". In the days and years following, Mickey has healed and Kohl has learned to pronounce his R's and L's.

Otis



Here's Otis. As you can see he's absolutely gorgeous. He has turquoise-green eyes and really long perfect fur. He's also dumber than a box of rocks. He's three or four years old and started as a neighborhood stray (he followed us home from a walk). Now, he tries to leak out the door and heads straight for the neighbor's back yard or the blue spruce in the front yard. If I leave him outside he will undoubtedly get himself stuck someplace (under the shed is a favorite). He thinks he's the boss and lets my girls carry him around on a pillow.


He is a total jerk to all the other cats, but he looks classy.

Gigi

This is Gigi. I think she's about two years old. I found her after a movie wandering around in the parking lot trying to shake hands with the cars. She was most likely dumped there. Shortly after I brought her home she went into heat and tried to talk my cats into messing around, needless to say my cats are all neutered so they couldn't figure out what the hell was wrong with her. I think that's what started the rivalry between her and Otis - she was trying to be attractive and he just wanted to kick her ass.
We got her spayed and she decided that Doug was her best friend. She has a unique tail, it's short and zig-zagged. Her fur is like satin, honestly one of the softest cats I've ever met. I don't let her outside because I don't want her to get hit by a car or get abused by someone that doesn't like black cats. Kohl loves her and hauls her all over the place (she tolerates him).

Douglas

This is Douglas.....He's a regular three-legged wonder. I don't let him go outside but the light was better for pictures so I made an exception for a few minutes. I think he's about two years old now and was born without his right back leg (we think it was strangulated by the umbilical cord). A few months ago his stump started to bother him. He would extend and retract it and the pain would make him scream and flip himself over. I felt really bad for him and decided the best thing for him would be to amputate the rest of his stump.
The surgery went well, he gets around every bit as well as the other cats. Right after his surgery I stupidly brought him home and let him out of the cat carrier into the bathroom. He lurched out of the carrier like something possessed and tried to kill me. Anesthesia recovery is scary! I'm glad he got over that. Doug is more of a cat's cat than a people cat - his best friends are Gigi and Teensy, probably because they baby him, wash him, and keep him entertained.