Cats of DOOM

[Greg]

If you need a place to assuage your pain, I might know a place rife with cats. I'm sorry for your loss.

[Drunk Monk]

Billie is gone

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Goodnight, Billie.

[Greg]

Fáiní story. (Almost a pun)

I looked back through this thread to find mention of Fáiní but I guess I didn't post it here. Basically F followed me home from the next street down the hill, which is about a half mile away. I have a ton of cats and yet another one decides to come how with me. I brought F back to where she first started following me thinking that was her house. When I brought her back to the neighbor's, the woman there said they didn't have any cats.

Crap. We put up notices on Facebook and Nextdoor but no luck. We kept her. We named her Fáiní which is Irish for Wanderer. What's one more cat at this point.

Plus, she is the friendliest cat. Runs up to us when we exit the house. Wants to be petted. Wants to be held.

Now, Fáiní is going for walks with me in the morning. When I take the dogs out, she joins us. Since Maeve is on the leash, Maeve doesn't chase Fáiní. Dani, who is off leash, only gets upset when the cats get chicken and she doesn't, so she is cool with bringing the cat along. Not short walks either. We go for at least two miles and the cat is always with us, either a little in front or a little behind. Maeve even tolerates Fáiní rubbing up against her. She has now gone with us four times in the last week. My only worrying is on the big road where the cars go by at breakneck speeds. But we had two cars pass us without incident, so I am hopeful. 

Personally, I would prefer if F would stay at home because she causes me to worry. But so far so good.

I also was reminded of Skittles while scrolling through this thread. Any sign of her?

[Drunk Monk]

I also was reminded of Skittles while scrolling through this thread. Any sign of her?

Funny you should mention Skit because we were just wondering.  We passed the leftover cat food that we got for Billie to our backlot neighbor, Mary, who feeds every feckin beast around - cats, birds, possums, raccoons, skunks... She's been feeding Skit from the beginning but we haven't seen Mary in a bit, so we were wondering ourselves what might have become of that cat.  I was kinda thinking we should just feed the rest of Billie's food to Skit because Skit was coming to our house because it was better eats (Mary buys industrial sacks of cat kibble - we got Billie Fancy Feast & Sheba because Billie only ate soft food, being old).  But Stacy was glad to be done with cats for a while.  Billie trashed our back room and we've just got it clean again.  Plus now I can open the door to my man cave, which must always be cat free, because I'm still allergic to them.  Skittle was pretty tough tho - a big healthy looking cat last time I saw it. And it kept it's chest clean, which is brilliant white.  

I do miss Billie.  But it was meant to be...  

F sounds like a cool cat.  I've heard of other cats that walk for miles like this.  Our old neighbor's cat was like that.

[Greg]

The Catvalanche! Or The Catastrophe!

Here's the cat update at Lynch Lair. It's not pretty. You might have noticed some vague hints over on FB, but here's the scoop, as dumb as it makes me look. In my defense, I have no defense.

To recap, when we moved in to Lynch Lair we found a note saying there were four feral cats on the property. I don't know how feral since there was a shed attached to the back of the house for them to live in. Fine. Four cats. Not a problem. We have two of our own. However, one of the cats at Lynch Lair, soon to be named Nefertiri, had four kittens in between the time we bought the house and the time we moved in. We spotted Nefertiri in a drainage culvert at the front of the property. Eight feral cats and the two we brought from Los Angeles, means 10 cats.

The first generation of cats is Anubis, Ramses, Ishtar and Nefertiri. They all got Egyptian names because they were referred to as Faro cats in the transfer documents. The second generation  of cats (Nefertiri's kittens) were Mike, Will, Mia and Collin. That note referred to them as Farrell cats. The first generation wants little or nothing to do with us. The second generation love us. Meanwhile, the LA feral cats are living their best lives in the garage separate from the Lynch Lair pack.

At some point, we lose Will. But we gain Faini.

All this time I should have been getting the cats spayed and neutered. I made arrangements with the Madera SPCA who had a no-cost program with the local vets. I just had to make time with the vets to bring them in. The vets seemed to never have a time when they were available to perform the free spaying service. I kept calling. The program was cancelled. I believe a grant from one of the large pet store chains funded the service but then they stopped funding it. Admittedly, I wasn't as proactive as I should be. A lot of fiddling while Rome burned

I got back on with Madera SPCA. They had a new program with Hope Charity in Fresno where a woman would come to the house and catch all the cats, take them to be spayed, then return them. All I had to do was wait for the call.

Summer becomes fall becomes winter. No call. I call Madera SPCA and say where is my call. Meanwhile, I call the vet to see how much it would be just to bring in the cats and pay the full freight to have them spayed. $160 bucks each. No discount on bulk orders.

As cats will do, they make more cats. Neferitiri becomes pregnant. At first it was a funny case of boy, doesn't Nefertiri look fat. Then it was the sobering, she's not fat, she's pregnant.

Nefertiri had her cats just before we went to Ireland. The third generation was Finchin, Finbar, and Finnoula. It seems like there might have been a fourth, but anyway.

After the kittens were weaned and running around the yard, Nefertiri vanished.

We had the three first generation Toms along with the second and third generation kittens. Our total cat population for several months was 12 cats. 

I continued to call Madera SPCA to get someone out. They continued to tell me to wait for the call from the Hope representative, Kimi.

Naturally, we waited too long. The first generation Toms had a festival of raping with the second generation cats and Faini. Turns out Collin and Mike were more female than male. One after the other, their bellies started to swell out. For a while, we had four pregnant cats running around, eating their weight in kibble every day. We hoped their litters would be small. After  all, Nefertiri had litters of three and four.

On April 12, Mike popped out five cats in the cat shed at the back of the house. Three days later Mia gave birth to five kittens under the rose bush next to the deck. We had gone from 12 cats to 22 cats.

However between the birth of Mike and Mia's kittens, Collin vanished. It takes a while to declare the cats missing, because sometimes they miss a feeding, but that's about when Collin went off to Kitty Lake. On the one hand, we are sad to lose any animal. On the other hand, call me heartless, we weren't going to have any more cats.

On Friday, I noticed Faini was missing. That made me sad since Faini is my buddy. She's the dog walk cat. She greets me whenever I leave the house. She is really affectionate. I didn't like the thought of Faini being coyote food. But on April 20, Faini was back for food with no sign of a pregnant belly. Also, no sign of where she left the new kittens.

All Saturday, I followed Faini to see her hiding place. But when I would walk after her, she would stop and come back to me. I sat in a chair. She came and sat at my feet.. I followed her down the road. She would stop and stare at me. Two other kittens thought it was some sort of hunt and came to join us.

Finally, after hours at this game, Faini went for her kittens. About a hundred yards from the house, she popped into the tall weeds by the side of the road. I raced down to follow her. Initially, I thought I lost her because I couldn't see her anywhere in the weeds. Then I spotted movement about three feet up a partially dead tree. I watched as then Faini disappeared into a crack in the tree.

It turns out my precious Faini had found a den at the bottom of a rotted out white oak tree. I stuck my iPhone into the opening and snapped some shots to confirm. There was a big ball of cats underneath a clearly upset at being found Faini. I took more pictures later to reveal there are probably eight cats in that litter. What the serious hell? Eight? They were all supposed to have three or four. Now, I'm dealing with 18 new cats on top of the ten I already have. I told my sister it's only crazy if you have more than thirty, right? Right?

I made the call on Tuesday to have the two remaining third generation cats spayed at my own cost. Especially since the young girl Finnoula was already drawing the attention of Anubis and Ramses. No more cats is our policy.

Wouldn't you know it I get a call from Kim at Hope Rescue to say she is going to be coming out to give me traps to catch the cats. Great. Kimi's call came about because I was pestering the Madera SPCA volunteer all the previous week. I even got her to send me some discount coupons for the spaying.

I was to catch the three toms and the two kittens and Kimi would bring them into get spayed. That was a miserable failure. I wasn't worried about the kittens. I could just pick them up and put them in a box. The Toms were the problems. Anubis walked into one trap and ate all the food without triggering the trap. I had Ishtar in the trap when I thought I should just close the trap so he doesn't get startled by it springing shut. I should have just let him spring it. He saw me closing it and forced his way out. I didn't see him again for days. I did catch the mama cats in the traps on many occasions. 

Finally, just the kittens went in to get fixed. We are going to try again for the Toms when it is time to send the mamas and their kittens in towards the end of May.

But it will be with one less litter than originally planned. Our cat catcher Kimi, suggested I put out a nice cardboard box for Mia to sleep in with her kittens to get her out from under the bush. I took the box and placed it on the deck right next to Mia's nest.

Late the next day as I went to check on her, I noticed there was only one kitten in the nest and no sign of Mia. I had earlier spied Mia heading out to the field beyond our garden shed. Cat watch 2020 was on. The Queen and I sat on the deck watching the nest and waiting for Mia's return. This was also the time for the dogs to be walked. They started to grow frantic at the delay. I took the dogs while The Queen stayed behind to watch.

When I got back, tQ said that Mia had shown up just after I left. But when tQ went to follow her, she lost her in the grass. We spent the rest of the evening looking for her. We didn't find her. 

She did return on Saturday. I figured I could follow her back to her new nest. She showed no signs of going there. She found a new spot to sleep in the grass. She played with the other older kittens. She drew the attention of Anubis. By this time, I could tell she was no longer feeding her kittens, because her teats were full and hard. She spent the day sleeping in a box on the porch or even sleeping back under the rose bush. Anubis decided now would be a good time for sexual relations and wouldn't leave Mia alone.

Sunday I went back out with her again. I found one likely spot deep inside a crack between two boulders, but it was empty. tQ searched in every empty log and inside a lot of bushes. We both crawled through some really thick grass in hopes of finding the nest. But no kittens. Lots of mosquito bites.

At this point, I think somebody raided Mia's nest while she was away. It's very sad. She had a lot of good looking tortoise shell cats.

We are down to two litters for a grand total of Lucky 13 kittens, if there is indeed 8 in the tree stump litter. Mike's cats are already opening their eyes. Mike loves for us to pet her kittens. The tree stump kittens are going to be a problem since I can't get to them to socialize them until they emerge from their tree.

Kimi returns at the end of May for cat round-up number two. The spaying faces problems because of the quarantine. Kimi can't bring in all the cats she wants to because of the restrictions.

Stay tuned for more updates from the Cat quandary.

[Drunk Monk]

Catovirus


too soon?

So how many cats is that? It's too much math for me on a Monday morn.

[Greg]

Too many. 22, I think. I could be missing one.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Does this make you officially a “rancher”? Prolly some Gummint funds available to you.

[Greg]

Ooh, good thinking. I'll have to look into that. Maybe If I tell them I'm Ruth Chris.

[Drunk Monk]

Just remember there's an old Asian saying 'young dog, old cat'.  That refers to the prefered age when slaughtering them for meat. Or maybe it's 'young cat, old dog'.  I don't remember.  I'm actually not sure if that's even a real saying. One of my Kung Fu brothers told me that, and he didn't speak Chinese and was very, very white. The whitest.

For the record, I have never eaten cat. I've never even seen it offered on any menu. And I've eaten plenty of exotic meats... too many, which is why I gave it up.

[Greg]

Why would you even go there? I love the cats. They are not for eating. Unless, you're a coyote.

[Drunk Monk]

Why would you even go there?

Ruth Chris. Sorry, my bad. I thought that's where we were going with this.

<discreetly puts coyote costume back in closet>

[Greg]

Could be we have lost another one of the mama cats. Haven't seen her since yesterday. Good thing we have kitten formula in the pantry. Although I did try to give the kittens to the mother who lost her litter. She was having none of it.

[Greg]

To follow up. We did lose a mama and spent the next three weeks bottle feeding the kittens three times a day. Fainí's kittens we eventually took out of the tree by the expedient of cutting down part of the tree. We put them all in my studio. For a while we left the door to the studio open so Faini could get in and out while the kittens were in a little pen. We stopped this when we found Fainí was hiding the kittens under the deck.

The kittens are now out and about on the property during the day time. We lock them up at night to keep them from being eaten. During a run of really hot days, I made a pen for them to be inside our front room. Two days later they were jumping out of the pen. I added some additional boards. It took them a day to circumvent that. I finally put a big sheet of plywood up to seal off the room. They could get out of the pen. They couldn't get past the board. Until yesterday.

We had a couple coming over to adopt one of the cats. We put the cats that were to be adopted back in the house in their special room. About a minute later, they were out of the pen and over the sheet of plywood. All that tree climbing has really started to pay of for them.

At this point, we have adopted out three of the cats. Patrick, Moira, and now Maureen. We still have a lot of cats left. None will be used at the Fourth of July BBQ.