Life on the Road

We were very sad yesterday to say goodbye to one of our “fearsome foursome” of kittens, when Jesus took Miss Nicki home.  (Please, no theological debate…)

If you missed the story of how they were orphaned, saved from fumigation, and came to invade our home, there’s words and pictures posted from last summer.

They’re only about 8 months old, so losing her to a wasting illness was not what we’d imagined for the immediate future.  She passed peacefully in her sleep.

 Jewel is really having a hard time coping.  However much she does or doesn’t understand, she’s hysterically certain that she is not okay with Nicki being any kind of “gone.”

Here are the most recent photos of the gang, watching “Cat TV” out the screen door - Nicki is second from right.  She was the most beautiful of the three calico girls, and the most classically “cat” personality of all six of our feline houseguests.

And seven months ago, the furball that came into our lives:

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Goodbye, Nicki.  We will miss you…

CAUTION: This is a sad story, and in some ways has no direct bearing on our life.  I don’t follow the news because I don’t want to hear all the sad, depressing stuff they feel like they want to share with me.  So I won’t be offended if you don’t want to read this, and I hope to get what I need out of the very act of writing it down…

As you may recall from a week and a half ago, our four kitty-babies were rescued from under the other house on this property during the pre-inspection process for tenting and fumigation (read it here).  This week, our landlords are fumigating the buildings on their other property down the street.

Wolf was next door grilling burgers for dinner Thursday night (we don’t have a grill set up yet), and came home with the neighbor in his van hot on his heels.  He handed me the plate of burgers and said they were going over to the other property, because there were cats trapped in the - tented - barn.

I looked at the clock in horror.  It was almost 8pm, and the fumigation had been done around 4.

Pregnancy, I’m sure, does not help these kinds of situations.  I don’t need worry and drama, I need peace and tranquility, you know?

Shortly he came back, looking very sad.  I assumed the cat(s) had died…  The reality turned out to be even worse.

Wolf and H had arrived at the property prepared to enact whatever sort of rescue was needed.  Then H’s wife came roaring up the road, honking her horn, and shouting that they must NOT go in there, the fumigation chemicals were too dangerous, etc.

This got the attention of her parents, who live in another building there, and in fact own the whole kit and caboodle.  They insisted that it was an old cat, and it had already been in there for four hours.  Whatever would happen would happen, and it was not sensible to put anyone at risk over it.

H drove Wolf back here, and he told us the story.

We were really surprised that the exterminators hadn’t managed to find the cat, since they discovered out four babies when they inspected here.  Wolf explained their process - including releasing a tear-gas into the tented house first, to scare out any possible remaining animals - and said that everyone had assumed the cat had gotten out (or was elsewhere to begin with, being an outdoor/barn cat, after all).

It was Nick who said, after contemplating this for a minute, “Then how did they find out the cat was in there now?”

Wolf was quiet for a minute.  This was clearly something he had hoped not to discuss.  “You can hear it crying in there.”

Oh, my…

The first part of the story had already upset me, and Jewel had started asking, “Are you sad, Mama?”  When Wolf said that, I had to excuse myself to the restroom to keep her from being more upset by my reaction.

I know that part of my reaction is just my hormores making everything seem more drastic than it actually is, and I know that not everyone feels the same way about animals as we do (I can hear the choruses of, “it’s just a cat” already)…  But, yuck!  It would be sad to learn after the fact that the cat had died because he had hidden in the house and refused to come out - but to know he was in there, suffering, crying…

Okay, here they are, in living color:

This is Superhero Thor, whose alter-ego is mild-mannered Charles (named for a dear former pastor).  Jewel is in a Superhero thing, so we all have two names.  Anyhow, the only boy in the bunch.

This is Nicki.  She was the last one named, after being called “Meanie” for a while (for her personality during the rescue), and “Meow” or “Mew” for a while.  Finally the inspiration struck that if she was a he, he would be a perfect “Nicholas” … So she’s Nicki.

Here is Nicki (foreground) with, well…  Pig-Pig.  It all started because she’s the only long-hair, and I said she looked like a guinea pig.  It just…  stuck.  We’ve off and on called her “Babe” or “Miss Piggy,” but I think she’s just stuck with Pig.

This is SkippyJon Jones (named after the adorable children’s book).  She’s the runt of the litter, and has the original Skippy’s big-head, big-ears look.  Usually she’s just “Skippy.”

They were a little sniffly and sneezy, so heeding a warning about young orphans in the week after losing mama cat, we took them to the vet on Saturday.

He prescribed antibiotics and eye ointment, and said that it was probably nothing to be concerned about.  He did say, though, that fereal cats are often subject to chlamydia, which has a mortality rate over 50% and nothing to do for it.  (Since their mama didn’t seem ill when she was last seen and they weren’t declining, he felt like we were probably not in that situation).

The vet’s estimate is that the babies are now 4 to 5 weeks old - and we’ve had them a week.  That’s about a week younger than I’d thought, even.  Poor kids.

All are thriving with the medication taking hold, and all are eating dry food during the day (between continued feedings of formula with dry food or meat, or just in a bowl).

The dilema was that we’d grown terribly attached to all four of them.  Pig-pig was one of the ones we were fairly sure would end up going to our neighbors, but now she and Jewel have formed an adorable bond… 

Well, when Ms. R came home from her vacation, she came by to say hello and look at the kittens.  We discussed the situation, and mentioned that we really had grown quite fond of all of them.   

It turns out, she’s not really a cat person.  She has two dogs, plus her son’s, in the house, and she was just going to put them in the barn to catch mice.  She laughed at their full bellies (they’d just eaten), and said that they clearly had a better life here…

So now we have - are you kidding?! - SIX CATS

A small miracle happened this week…

We arrived in Florida Sunday evening, and got our first look at our winter home.  We’d been warned over and over not to get too excited, since it was “just a little, old house,” etc.

It is fairly small, true, and an older house - but’s it’s an adorable Art Deco bungalow, and has a huge sunroom that adds tons of space.  We’re thrilled.

The owners decided to tent all the houses in this area (three of them) for termites, so Monday the pest control guys showed up.  During their inspection of the third house, which has been empty over the summer, they reported hearing kittens under the house.

As we pieced the story together later, the family knew that there were kittens… somewhere.  And, in fact, they had been trying to find them in earnest since Friday, when Mama cat was killed. 

Only one of the family was around at the time, so he and our family became the Cat Rescue team.

The first pair came out without too much difficulty.  One pale orange and sweet, the other a feisty tiny calico.  The other pair hid deep in a hole in the cinderblocks, and gave us all a bit of a fright.  Eventually they were located, but getting them out was still a problem.  Two feet straight down in a small hole, and the one on top was mean!  She hissed, spit, yelled, clawed, and bit right through the gloves of anyone trying to reach in and grab her.

A hose was the next gambit… surely spraying some water on them would flush them out.  But it only made them madder.

Finally we arrived at the desperate solution: he took a hammer and began banging.  Although we hoped the noise would scare them out, he was willing to - and eventually had to - break a hole in the bricks to get to them.

He dragged out the one on the bottom, the only long-hair of the litter, and a sweet calico girl.  It still took a bit of doing to drive “meanie” up and out (another calico).

Three colorful girl, and a cute orange boy.  Saved from starvation because the termite exterminators happened to come, and now living happily in a big kennel on our dining room table.

I have been saying for a while that I’d like to get a couple of kittens, since I’m already concerned about the age of our two Old Ladies.  What a blessing to have this litter delivered up into our laps!  Looks like we’ll be keeping two, and one of the sisters will take the other two.  Of course, we’re not sure yet which two… 

It’s been a bit of a challenge, of course, since we can’t go in the house yet.  I assure you, the RV was quite small enough with 4 of us, my growing belly, and 2 cats - who, by the way, are furious about the interlopers.

Luckily one of the sisters is a cat person.  She loaned us a great big kennel (now occupying our entire dining table!), and ran to the feed store to get some kitten formula and food.  Fortunately they have taken to drinking the formula from a saucer, so we didn’t have to go as far as bottle-feeding.  They aren’t mch interested in the solid food yet (soaked nicely in their formula), though.  They really are tiny things.

In a way, of course, the timing is ideal.  I feel for them losing their mother at such a young age.  But by all accounts she was truly feral, and would have raised them to be little wildcats as well.  As it is, within an hour of their rescue they were snuggling up and sleeping in the crook of our arms, and after a day of TLC they are happily playing and roughhousing with us and each other equally comfortably.

Of course we have pictures…  Just… Ummm… I don’t know where the camera interface cord is…  LOL  So much stuff got shoved around to make a place for this gigantic cat castle, the RV is in even more chaos than usual!  Ack!

Anyhow, the termite treatment is done today, so we’re going to start fixing and prepping the house for paint!  And I’ll find those pictures…