Critter Review - Summer 08

Ok, well for starters, if you haven't figured it out, I've been blogging over here a lot more lately as things have kinda changed around the Gardner household recently. I will probably continue to do so, but I couldn't really justify griping about feral animals on the family blog, other than the fact that Yordanos wanted to know the Amharic word for "Raccoon." I'm like, "No Amharic. Raccoon English Only," and pulled up this picture in an attempt to describe why I don't want them running around the backyard, dining on free cat food.So yeah, about 3 days ago I could no longer deny the fact that there were too many flippin raccoons hanging around. I put food out for the cats and a half hour later, no cats, but *4* raccoons (looked like a mother and 3 'cubs' or whatever you call them) were enjoying dinner. So I put the trap out, and needless to say, I caught the one male cat that I couldn't get when I was on the 'neuter the neighborhood' spree. It was kind of a toss up, but I decided to let him go and hope for one of them masked bandits. About an hour later, I looked out and saw a small raccoon in the cage. But here's the thing, whenever I've captured a cat, the other cats all do the, "No sir, I didn't see anything, officer" pose. But this is the first time I've gone out to the cage to find 3 other animals trying to help the trapped one out, and let me tell you, mama was pissed. So I took the little guy 'to a better place' and set the trap again, hoping to catch the mother, figuring that it would be my best bet at keeping them all together. Less than 15 minutes later, another sibling wandered into the trap. Again, he is now in a better place and hopefully caught up with his brother. I guess losing 2 in an hour was enough to convince mama raccoon that there was no such thing as a free meal at the Gardners because there has been no evidence of raccoon activity and the outdoor cats have been lounging around the yard all afternoon (lately they've been dine-and-dash'ing.)

But speaking of the outsiders, it's been over a week since we've had a 'Fat Murray' sighting and I think it's safe to say she's slinked off to the eternal catnap. Once she was no longer pregnant, she really wasn't very fat, but the name stuck anyway. I've probably mentioned this before, but I was amazed that we didn't lose any cats in the winter when the temperature dipped to -25. I figured if they could survive that, they could handle pretty much anything. But I guess when you're talking about feral cats, it's really a matter of when, not if. She was a gentle cat, I hope it was quick.

So cheers, Fat Murry, your serene, fuzzy face will be missed.

Feline Evangelist [Eye Roll]

Want to know how to tell you're a crazy? When you start comparing yourself to other crazy people and you say to yourself you must be ok because at least you aren't like them.

I went to the grocery store today for 3 things. 3. Just a survival run. Milk, tea, and catfood. That's it. The first two took me about 2 minutes, so I go whipping my cart into the kitty section. I'm scanning for the biggest bag I can find, when this other guy in the aisle sees me perusing and says, "Hey, can I make a recommendation?" Sure, why not, and hopefully you're going to point out the stuff that's on sale.

So he points out the only Purina catfood flavor that's not made with animal byproducts. Ok, kinda interesting. He then describes what 'animal byproducts' actually are. Ooo-kay. Then he explains why beaks, claws and feathers are bad for a cat's digestive system. Fine, I got it. Then he proceeds to give me an anatomy lesson on feline kidneys, and the proper diet to care for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah... I look at his cart and it's FULL of cat food, but interestingly, not with the brand he recommended. He then goes into great detail about how the wet food he's buying is way better than the dry stuff he recommended. Glazing commences, no more eye contact. He tells me about how this particular wet food is produced at a fish cannery and not a catfood plant so it's higher quality. He says blah-blah tuna blah, when Chris calls me with a couple more items to pick up. Oh, I love that woman and her timing! I pull back. He leans in. The smell of dirty cat wafts toward me. I stand still, thanking God that my wife wouldn't put up with our house (or me) smelling like that. Then, I kid you not, he then starts to suggest milk alternatives for lactose intolerant cats. Now I'm trying to figure out an exit strategy. He then shows me the two bottles of Lact-Aid buried in his cart under the cat food. Leaving is no longer optional and is now paramount. He says that he learned all this because his other cat died of kidney problems and the vet explained all this to him. KTHXBYE! I leave without a bag catfood. Dude, I was just happy to get out of that aisle.

I came back later, but he had cornered some other woman. Sorry sister... he's sexually harmless, so you're on your own.

Here's the thing, I was looking for food for the outdoor cats. Feral cats have an average life expectancy of about 3 years, 5 max. And frankly, I suspect far more die from a Chevy overdose than renal failure. And I happen to know that they can survive -25 degree nights on whatever food is on sale. But there was no way I was going to pick up the 20 pound bag 'o dehydrated chicken eyeballs in front of that guy after that lecture.

Well, not there anyway...

Now, I'm not exactly an emotional cornerstone when it comes to the death of a pet, but seriously, at least I'm not that guy.

Fat Murray is not impressed with the outdoor buffet.
(Yes I stole this pic from Chris's blog. It's a great shot.)

Kitty round up, bound up, and ground up: Spring'08

Ok, this is a really rambling catch-up blog, but I promise it'll be the last one about cats for quite awhile... You've been warned.

I caught the b/w female (CodeName: Rica) before she had kittens. On a whim I left the trap open and baited before leaving for work the other week. I came home 10 hours later and found her inside.

I apologized to her because she had probably been in there 9 and a half hours already and then was going to have to spend the night in the same cage, as well as any waking time the next day at the vet.
Sorry little girl, it's for the best. Apparently she was a horrible patient, but from our angle, she recoup'ed pretty quickly. After two days in the basement, she was eating normally so we left the back door open for a couple hours and she found her way out. That's the way we like it, nice and easy.

The cat before her (CodeName: Crested Murray, because we're oh, so clever) was the exact opposite. After two days, no food had been eaten and the litterbox hadn't been used. I knew she was hiding in the one dark, unreachable place left in the basement, perching on the pipes behind the utility sink... the cast iron utility sink that is riveted to the floor. This is when my inner voice said, "The only thing worse than trying to get a cat out from behind a bunch of plumbing is trying to get a dead cat out from behind a bunch of plumbing." So at about midnight, I found my old friend Janis and together we made sitting on the pipes less... "inviting." The downside was that Janis literally scared the pee out of this cat. I cleaned it up as best I could at the time, which wasn't nearly good enough. I think I'm going to have to bleach under the washing machine to really eliminate the smell. Won't that be a nice project. All facts considering though, that's the first accident we've had to deal with from one of the stray cats.

One of the reasons I've been so zealous this year about caring for the strays is that last year at this time, the back deck smelled like death and it lasted for half the summer. I swore to myself that I'd do whatever it took not to have to deal with the smell and wondering what the hell died under my deck this year.

And people, let me get on my soapbox here for a minute... a couple years ago I was sitting in the reception area at the Vet's, when this older woman came in with a kitty carrier. We started talking and it turned out that she was there to get some pregnant female fixed. I remember thinking to myself, "Jeez, just pawn off the kittens and be done with it," but now I totally understand. Cat population growth is exponential, and it's yearly. The only real way to control it is to nip it in the bud. I've been dealing with 3 pregnant females this season, but in 2 months, I'd be trying to figure out what to do with another 10 kittens. The economics of the situation make decisions easier, and dealing with it sooner is definitely better than later.

I know, I know, some of you are thinking that I should have just had them terminated, but honestly, I don't mind them being around, I just don't want any more of them. The average life of a stray cat is something like 3-5 years max anyway.

On a totally different note, from the Kitty-Karma-Police Department... The other night coming home from a party, I hit a farm cat. In my youth I thought that there should always be time to swerve. Yeah, well, I'm older now and sometimes there just isn't. I remember white legs and two thumps and that's about it. It was disturbing, but not as devastating as you might think for a guy who has spent a year now caring for feral cats. Surprising, but at least it was over quickly, and in that sense, fairly compassionate. My conscience is clean about the whole thing, but I've got to tell you, two days ago some dirty white cat that I had never seen before showed up in our backyard. He sat on the fence long enough for me to get a good look and I haven't seen it since.

All I could think of was, "OMG, The cat came back, the very next day..."

No Country for Old Racoons

As a quick summary of recent events, the last time I walked into the veterinarian's office, the vet tech behind the counter looked up and said, "Hello Mr. Gardner, finish spaying the neighborhood yet?" The answer is no. I've got one more very shy, elusive girl that needs a fixin'. The feral cats have a very specific pecking order for eating, so catching them has been pretty easy and methodical. I put one bowl of food out until it's the target cat's turn to eat. Then, I put the food in the cage. Wait about 10 minutes and then 4 out of 5 times, I've caught the cat I'm expecting. But this little one (Codename: Rica) has either figured out the cage or is so far down the pecking order that she eats hours after the other cats. For about 3 days I've been feeding the other cats, then taking the food away hoping that at some point she'd figure out the food schedule. Well, again, she's either too smart or too stupid. So started leaving food in the trap throughout the day figuring that since the other cats were fed they wouldn't sniff around the cage, but she still might.

It hasn't worked yet, and worse yet, it threw off my system.

So, the other day I had a passing thought that if I left food in the live-trap overnight there would be a pretty good chance I'd catch something other than a cat. We know other critters have come dining on the cat food, I just really didn't want to have to mess with anything else. Then, the other night after forgetting to bring the food in, I found this on my deck:As you can see, this sucker was about 10 feet long and not at all pleased with his dining arrangements. Note that the gaping wound on his back no doubt added to his pleasant demeanor. I had toyed with the question, "What am I going to do if I catch a wild animal?" before, but now I had to have an answer. I mean seriously, what the hell was I going to do with this thing? So, I think I followed a pretty logical course of actions.
1) First, I grabbed the camera and took a couple pictures. What you don't see in the above shot is Famine sitting on the railing over the cage enjoying the show.
2) I tried my one cat trick. When you throw a towel over a trapped cat, it chills out. When you throw a towel over a trapped raccoon it pulls the towel through the cage and eats it.
3) I call for backup. I grab my cellphone and call the first person I could think of who owns a gun. He tells me he can come out the next morning and take care of it. I tell him I may be able to handle this on my own, I just wanted to know his availability.

Legally, I'm not exactly sure what the 'proper' course of action is in my town. My best guess is that it involves hiring a professional trapper to transport my already caged critter. So, without incriminating myself, what I can tell you is that the raccoon is "in a better place now" and we'll just leave it at that.

There's a reason why they call it a Snow Day...

I was hoping to get a chance to go out and shoot some pictures

but it was my turn to shovel

And my cat was useless

And so was this one

And my berries were cold

So I didn't get any pictures

I can has dream?

Unnamed gray tabby, CodeName: "Fat Murray"

One of the nice things about working for a government agency is that when these federal holidays like MLK Day come around, you can visit all of your favorite capitalists without using a personal day. Today I hit the dentist, the recycling center, Ace Hardware, Lube Pro's, Taco Bell, and the gym. That's a week's worth of lunch hours right there. I had also scheduled an appointment with the Vet in hopes of catching one of the "Outsiders" and getting it's little gears put in neutral, so to speak. (Much to Chris's chagrin, I keep calling them "The Outdoorsies" which is absolutely as lame as it sounds) Under normal circumstances, we feed them before going to work. They know the schedule and come running. But it's been so ridicu-cold lately that even though we put food out early, the cats don't show up until much later after the sun comes out.

Intolerant Tabby would like to celebrate
this day by being left the hell alone.

Anyway, today, I don't know how they knew, but 15 minutes after canceling the appointment and explaining to the Vet that there was no way I would possibly see, let alone capture a cat in this weather, they showed up and brought friends. It's as if they all have little feline cellphones and texted each other.

FREE FUD, NO TRAPZ

ORLY? SW33T

KTHXBAI

So, there I am standing in the snow feeling like Boss Hogg at the end of every Dukes of Hazard episode with nothing to do but throw my hat on the ground, clench my fists, and take pictures of the freeloaders. Happy MLK Day little punks. You won't out smart me next time!

Yar! She's a cold one!

So for those of you who are not in the mid-West (my blog has a HUGE following in Southeast Asia...) we're finally getting our winter weather. Temperatures are dangling around zero degrees Fahrenheit and the wind drops that another 15 degrees. So that's like -85 degrees Celsius or something.

How does it feel to look Death square in the eye?
Do you feel lucky? Well, Do ya?

Cold like this turns normal routine things into problems. For instance, when you turn your car off, you legitimately have to wonder if you are going to be able to start it again before April. Some of us with older vehicles worry about that kind of thing daily anyway, but now it becomes a real concern. You have to ask yourself, "Have I done absolutely everything humanly possible to help this car start again? Turned off light, defroster, and radio - check. Said 5 hail Mary's - check. Gently stroked the dashboard and whispered, "It's ok girl, you can rest now..." - check.

And pretty much anything left in your car that contains liquid is forfeited to the elements. That can of Coke that rolled under the shotgun seat three months ago, is now going to seek it's revenge on your apathy. Heck, I left a pen in my car this morning and I'm debating whether I should sacrifice it or call in a rescue party. Batteries? Drained. Lotion? Solidified.

So Chris and I laid in supplies on Friday in hopes of not having to leave the house again until Tuesday. It's not going to work. We're out of ice cream already. And frankly, if I were in a Zombie movie, I'd face the hordes for ice cream... not that they'd be moving very quickly in this weather anyway. Come to think of it, it would be pretty easy pickings, I mean, it's not like I wouldn't have plenty of time to reload. But I digress...

Speaking of the frozen undead, the remaining kittens of the apocalypse seem to be taking the cold snap in stride. I noticed today that my neighbor's garage door is open about a full cat-width so I suspect that's where they've been shacking up. They come out and sun themselves during the day, so we really only see them on the weekends. I really didn't want to turn this into a cat blog, but they're the only things moving around these days and I got some decent pictures yesterday. So here you go. Oh, and if you ever need to shoot a picture of a black object in snow, here's the trick: BUY A PENTAX. These were shot on automatic (2 points for the idiot proof camera!)

Famine giving Death the hard goodbye.

Kinda makes you wonder about how much infighting there was between the Pale Rider and the others...

Famine posing for a chilly photo op. Death lurks.

Vote for Rico

How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains?

War is out. Rico is in, and it only took us a month to work that one out. We may do something silly with the spelling, but for now it's Rico as in Puerto Rico, as opposed to Ricoh like the copier, or Reiko like an anime character. It meets our basic cat name requirements. It doesn't have anything to do directly with his coloration, and it makes us smile whenever we call out for him (not that he cares yet.) I was hoping for more of a Japanese sounding name and ended up with a thoroughly Mexican one. Chris calls him Uncle Rico, I think Rico is humorous on it's own because he has really short legs and definitely rides lower than our other cats. (If you think I'm poking at a Mexican stereotype, you're missing the WAR reference... Get it?!?!1?)

So why is it so hard to just name a flippin' cat? Well, the way I see it, there were three things working against us, and bear with me, I've been meaning to bring this up for a while...

First, we can't use the same name as anyone else's pet we've ever known. This is my way of saying, you people with clever pet names have made things extremely inconvenient for us. Jeeves, Noko, Red, yeah, I'm talking to you. And that leads me to my next point...

I read somewhere (maybe Freakonomics?) about how my generation defines itself by it's individuality, not necessarily by traditional rights of passage. So for example, if you take a modern day wedding, there's generally more emphasis on how you're going to make it unique and memorable than how you're going to accommodate a rich history of marriage traditions. I believe the same is true for even fairly mundane things, like naming a pet. Giving an animal a traditional name implies that we weren't up to the challenge, even though Felix would have been a perfectly acceptable name for a black and white cat.

Lastly, names based on what an animal looks like are completely unacceptable. I call this the Obvious Rule. I know I'm going to offend somebody here, but really, Boots, Socks, Shadow, Marshmallow, etc, etc, blah blah blah are just insulting. What if you went to the zoo and all the zookeeper said, "Please don't feed Stripes the Tiger..." That really inspires the imagination, doesn't it? Don't you want to know more about this Tiger? The only time it's ok to give a pet a name a four year old could have thought of, is well, if you let your four year old name it. I met a cat named 'Moo' once, who was named by the resident two year old, and I'm fine with that. Ok, ok, there's ONE exception to the rule, and that's irony. If you want to call your fat dog 'slimjim,' or your black cat 'cue ball' you go right ahead. That's comedy gold. But otherwise, please have at least one degree of separation between an animals looks and it's name. If you want to name your golden retriever 'Brittany' because they're both blonds, that's minimally acceptable. 'Golden Grams,' however, is not. There is an Irish Setter clause though... you can name them pretty much any name from Guiness to Bono and it's cool. Thus sayeth the Lee.


As an addendum though, nicknames for pets are exempt from the Obvious Rule. We've occasionally called Rico ShortRound, which is technically is an 80's reference, but it's also extremely obvious. Murray is often referred to as Chucky or Ralph when he throws up. MooseCat or Sheds is always Sibbie. Oh, like you've never done it...

Hey, you! Yeah, you with the fuzzy butt!

I can has name yet?

So this is, like, week 4 of having a cat tooling around the house without a name. He has a couple of working titles, but nothing official. We should probably just stick with War, because as it turns out, naming a cat through the process of elimination is not particularly efficient. It's kinda like American Idol and feels like it's going to take about as long to find a winner. Anyway, today we learned that his name is not Kyle; however, we added Heathrow, Chester, and Kubla to the list of possibilities. In true cat fashion though, he's been equally unresponsive to every name we've tried.

Stay tuned for more gripping details as this crisis unfolds!

My little Pestilence...

If you're a reader of Chris's blog, you're probably familiar with the 4 kittens we 'acquired' (read: found in our backyard) early this spring. The Kittens of the Apocalypse, (that would be Famine, Pestilence, War and Death,) have become a constant source of reward and frustration. As much as we enjoy the little fleabags, taking care of them comes with some sacrifice. For one, our backyard has become a big green, private litterbox, which isn't surprising given how much they eat. Also, I noticed that we don't have any birds this year, go figure. But lastly, Chris and I have done our best to stay emotionally distant from these strays. We know we can't take them in, and yet we also know that they won't make it through the winter without our help. So for the past 4 months we've gone back and forth about how much we were going to take care of these cats. To feed or not to feed? Do we get them neutered so we don't have 800 cats next year? What are we going to do in the winter?

So last Sunday, Chris and I get in the car to head to church and find that Pestilence had been hit by a car the night before. Let me just preface this with the fact that I had absolutely no intention of getting attached to this cat. It's an outdoor cat. Outdoor cats starve, freeze, or get hit by cars. Logically I know this, and I've seen her dart in front of my car in the driveway. I have even given myself the, "We'll take care of these cats as long as we can..." speech several times. But here's what makes Pestilences death so frustrating... of the 4 kittens, she was the one that we had nurtured the most. Over the summer months she went from staying 3 yards away to walking over my feet to get to the food. During her brief stay in our basement after being spade, she'd nuzzle and let us pet her. Oh, and we haven't even gotten that Visa bill yet either. Sigh... Twist that tiny dagger...

So this is the part where I learned more about myself than I want. I don't know where I thought death-coping skills came from, but I was reminded that I don't have any. I am apparently a sensitive sentimental dope who grieves uncontrollably for feral animals. So I buried this cat, in hopes of some form of closure and that maybe it'll be easier next time around.

I find it interesting to see how people react when you tell them that you're grieving, probably because I'm really self-conscious about how I react to other people's tragedies. One of my cat-hating friends gave me a genuine, "That sux, I'm sorry" which I appreciate on many levels. He could have joked or laughed. He didn't, that was a gift. I think one of my other friends, who also recently lost an outdoor cat, summed it up as, "No more cats for us, too much heartbreak."

Indeed.


(Really when else would I get to use this picture?)

So, in case you're wondering, we're batting a thousand on ironic names. War is the friendliest, Death is still alive, Famine is always the first to the food dish, and Pestilence never got sick.