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Photo Friday: Enjoying the Sun
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Puck’s Gotcha Day
Three years ago today, we adopted Puck. He was rescued and bottle-fed by my sister-in-law, Felice, and was in need of a home when Abbey passed away. Here are some pictures and videos of Puck from oldest to newest.
Puck with Felice’s cat, Toad.
Chris greets kitten as he comes out for food.
Tigger, Chris and Puck
Puck takes over Chris’s spot
Chris and Puck on top of the Cabinets.
Weekend Update
I just wanted to catch you up on some of the stories I wrote about recently.
The feral cat I have been feeding at work is doing okay (see Feral Cats at Work and Feral Cat Update). I worried because he didn’t show up on Tuesday and the food went uneaten all day. I had Wednesday off and Thursday the cat was back like nothing happened. This time he left a fair amount of food behind. That tells me there is a good chance that he is either a good hunter or someone is feeding him elsewhere too. Of course, he may have also been scared off before he finished but I doubt it. In that situation, he would have backed off and waited for the person to leave but there were no people in sight when I came outside, nor was the cat anywhere in sight.
Chris has pooped on our new sofa twice more since I first mentioned it (See A New Level of Badness). I stopped using the Dr. Elsey’s Litter Attractant a couple of years ago when Chris’s pooping problem stopped but I bought some again in hopes that he would leave the sofa alone. I bought it at Petco for $20 and then noticed it was on Amazon for $7.63. It has worked for me in the past but this time It made no difference.
Chris is very finicky about his litter boxes and when we brought the sofa in we changed things around a little. Perhaps the space between the sofa and litter boxes was too small. It was plenty big enough for a cat to get through but who knows what goes through his mind.
I decided to pull out the boxes a bit so that they were more easily accessible. It is better now but one box is still too close to the couch. So far, so good but we will see what happens.
The kitten we helped rescue ( see Newborn Kitten Rescue and Kitten Update) had been doing well until recently. Rose wanted to name the cat Luis, after her maintenance supervisor who started the rescue process, but the cat turned out to be female so now she is named Lulu. Felice has worked hard to keep Lulu healthy but she has recently developed diarrhea, which can be very bad in young kittens. Bottle feeding a kitten is not a good replacement for mother’s milk and we can only hope she will get better. I have every confidence in Felice’s ability so I am not too concerned. Unfortunately, I have no new pictures of the kitten to share but here is one from July 4th in case you missed it.
Kitten Update
My wife’s mother and sister came to our house today to help celebrate The Fourth of July. If you read my post from last week, Newborn Kitten Rescue, You would know that Rose’s sister, Felice, played a major role in saving a kitten’s life. Because newborn kittens require so much attention, Felice decided to bring it with her.
Felice informed us that the kitten is a girl so we will not be calling her Luis like Rose wanted to if it was a boy. The name is not important anyway. What is important is that the kitten is in pretty good health and will probably be okay.
Felice and Kitten
Newborn Kitten Rescue
My wife, Rose, runs one of the largest apartment complexes in the area. Recently there has been an increase in the feral cat population on her property. I told her that she could get traps from the Humane Society and once caught, we could have them fixed (out of our pocket, of course) and returned to the property. Unfortunately, Rose has so much work and is chained to her desk eleven hours a day that she has no time for anything else.
Yesterday evening, while eating dinner, Rose got a call from Luis, her maintenance supervisor. He said a resident had informed him of an abandoned kitten. When he got there, he found blood on the sidewalk and a solitary kitten with no mother in sight. He decided to take the kitten home and call Rose to ask for advice.
I know it is very difficult to raise a newborn kitten without its mother. Many don’t make it. I also know that some people will take the kittens thinking that they are helping, not knowing that the mother is close by, perhaps hunting or just hiding, waiting for the humans to leave. She could also be in the process of moving the kittens. In this case, it seemed the mother was not returning.
Rose hung up with Luis and called her sister, Felice, who is an expert in rescuing newborn kittens. She works for a vet and has brought many kittens back from the brink of death, while also losing a few along the way. She told Rose to bring the kitten to her and then started the process of turning her bathroom into a makeshift nursery. Our Puck was saved in Felice’s bathroom.
We immediately put our food away and headed to the property to pick up the kitten. Luis had it on a towel in a small box. He handed it to me and Rose sped away, driving her Mustang like it was an ambulance. She was very careful not to break any speeding laws (fingers crossed) while we raced the 24 miles to Felice’s house.
When we arrived, Felice picked up the kitten and said it was too cold. She brought it into the “nursery” where she had a cat carrier set up with an electric heating pad on the bottom topped with a towel and another towel or two covering the top of the carrier, making it an incubator.
She put the kitten inside for a few minutes and then took it out and gave it some formula. She squeezed a small amount of the mixture in the side of the kitten’s mouth. Putting it directly in the mouth was not good. I believe she said it could introduce air bubbles into its stomach. That is not what she said but that is how I interpreted it. After only a couple of drops of food, she put the kitten back in the incubator for about fifteen minutes. She then took it out and gave it more food.
Taking care of a newborn kitten is a lot of work. Felice says it will need to eat every two hours for the first couple of weeks of its life. Once it is old enough, we might have to adopt it if we can’t find someone to give it a home. We do not want to leave that burden with Felice but I hope we find it a home because we already have more cats than allowed. I would hate to be forced to get rid of cats after they have become family members.
By the way, if the cat is a boy, Rose want’s to name him Luis.
Photo Friday: Cute Kitten
I was going through my pictures and noticed a couple from two months ago. My son and his wife adopted a cute little kitten. It seems the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Photo Friday: Young Puck
This is a picture of Puck as a kitten in his foster home looking out the door with his big foster brother. We felt bad taking him away from his foster family but he couldn’t stay there forever and I think he is pretty lucky to have us now.
Puck as a kitten.
Chris’s Stolen Routine
I mentioned this briefly in my post, Jealousy but I wanted to expand on this issue. Chris used to have a routine in the morning of hanging out with Rose in the bathroom while she got ready to start her day. He would lie on the counter in front of her, occasionally grabbing her makeup or whatever else she happened to be using and pulling it up against his chest. Sometimes he would collect three or four things before Rose would be forced to retrieve them. This would go on until she turned on the hair dryer, which was Chris’s cue to make a quick exit.
When we got our kitten Puck, everything changed. Suddenly Puck would be the first one up on the counter and when Chris came up for his routine, he would take one look at Puck and go back downstairs. I felt bad for Chris but Rose found Puck to be a little easier to deal with.
At first Puck would steal a cotton swab, play with it for a while, then come back for another cotton swab. Much of this playing took place on the bathroom floor, so it was not really a problem. Along with the cotton swabs, he also had a particular mouse he liked to play with. Now, while he still plays with cotton swabs from time to time, his mouse has become the center of much annoyance for Rose.
I very much want to get a video of him and his mouse but Rose does not want to be recorded while getting ready for work. Too bad, because nobody would believe it otherwise. Puck jumps on the counter with his mouse and drops it in the basket that Rose has some of her stuff in. He then waits for Rose to throw the mouse in the bedroom. When she does that, Puck races to retrieve the mouse and then brings it back and drops it in the basket again.
This goes on until Rose gets tired of it and stops playing, but when she does that, Puck pushes on her hand and tries to get her to throw the mouse again. You can imagine how difficult it would be to get ready for work that way. The obvious solution would be to turn on the hair dryer and scare him off, but he is not bothered by it in the slightest. Now Rose is longing to have Chris back on the counter with her.
I would like to see that happen too, but dispute the loss of one routine, or perhaps because of it, he has developed another. He now lies on the back of my chair while I write blog posts.
Update: I did get a video of Puck playing fetch. Here it is.
Jealousy
Rose and I discussed getting a playmate for Chris since shortly after we got him. He has so much energy and always wants to play, but until recently our other cats didn’t want to play with him. That changed when we got our new kitten, Puck. He has turned out to be a great playmate for Chris. They spend a good part of the day pouncing on each other or chasing each other. Sometimes I even see them washing each other.
There is, however, a darker side of this relationship: jealousy. Whenever puck comes to Rose or me for attention, Chris is sure to show up seconds later. occasionally the opposite happens. Puck will come to us second and then Chris will leave, presumably in disgust.
Keep in mind that I have a hard enough time trying to figure people out so interpreting the behavior of another species could be beyond my ability. Nevertheless, I feel Chris is the Alpha male in the house and he feels threatened by the kitten.
I have seen behavior from Chris that is different now than it was before Puck showed up. For example, he sometimes will grab Puck or Tigger by the scruff of the neck and hold them down for an extended period, as if he is reminding them who is the boss.
There is also something that he does not do that somewhat bothers me. Rose gets ready for work every morning by sitting at the counter in the bathroom. Chris used to lay on the counter while she got ready. He was somewhat of a nuisance for her but also a source of entertainment. He would lie there and grab her makeup or whatever he could get his paws on and pull it toward him.
Now Puck has taken over his spot so Chris usually just avoids the bathroom in the morning. That makes me feel bad because that was part of his routine that was taken away from him. Of course, Chris could easily take that spot back if he wanted to, so I am not sure why I feel bad about it. Perhaps it is because he does not want to take it back.
Puck takes over Chris’s spot
All things considered, Chris is generally a happy cat and I believe puck has added to his life more than he has taken. Eventually, Chris will reestablish his dominance and all will be right with the world. Well…maybe not the world.
What Goes Around, Comes Around
Chris’s three-year reign of terror has ended. Okay, maybe that statement is a bit exaggerated but there has been a turning point in the Bad Cat Chris household.
Previously, Chris was able to dominate the other cats without fear of reprisal. He would often, out of the blue, pounce on Tigger or Abbey, pin them down and bite them on the neck. After a few minutes, he would then cozy up along side one of them like nothing had happened. Now that Abbey is gone and our new Kitten Puck is here, it is not so easy for him anymore. Puck fights back!
The two of them spend much of the evening going at it. Chris will attack Puck and Puck will counter with his own attack. I often see Chris as the submissive one during some of their many battles. It makes me think of Karma and the saying, “What goes around, comes around.”
Although it is no longer surprising, it is still amazing that at over three and a half years old, Chris still has the energy and personality of a kitten. The two of them seem like a perfect match for each other.
Now they are a great match, but I know that a year from now, puck will have matured and Chris will still be Chris.
Tigger, Chris and Puck
On another note, I just learned that Alex died. If you read the post, The Great Upheaval, you would know that Alex had to be left behind when we moved back to Florida from Myrtle Beach. He stayed with a friend that we knew would take good care of him, and he did.
Alex was the brother of Abbey, who died two months ago (story here). Both were great cats and only eight years old. They will be missed.
Alex (on top) with Abbey, Tigger and Chris
Bad Cat Chris 