Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Oh Good

Last night I dreamed of kittens. There were eight of them in the litter, including a couple of black ones (I love black cats; they are so gorgeous), and one that was this lovely sort of solid roan shade, a color cats don't really come in. When I woke I was like oh no.

Tonight I made (well, I'm still making it) some chicken in my new crock pot what Tara got me for the recent holiday, and took the trimmings out to the feral cats. I wouldn't give the inside cats chicken fat, but I figure the feral ones are out in the freezing cold and need all the fuel they can get. So I took it out there to them, still on the cutting board.

The Grrls were out there, Spot Splotch and Smudge (who sometimes get called Splunge or Splot or Smotch when I get mixed up) as well as The Interloper.

The Interloper lives up to his/her name; The Grrls are not particularly welcoming to him/her, so while the three of them were on the floor by the chow dish waiting for me, The Interloper was up on the windowsill that I leave open so they can come and go and get a bit of shelter.

Now while The Interloper has been more friendly than usual, he/she is still not tame or anything, and so was shying away from me a bit.

But I had a cutting board full of tasty chicken scraps, and well that's one of the best cat magnets there is.

So I held out the board to intrigue him/her. Sure enough, he/she leaned forward, and his/her tail went up in delight at the smell.

And then I finally got a good look at the thing's butt, in decent light, fairly close up, and with my glasses on.

The verdict: The Interloper is very definitely male. Oh golly yes.

Wow am I relieved.

He is still pretty round in the belly though; I'm going to see what I can do about maybe getting an over-the-counter wormer into the poor thing, assuming that's possible. I imagine all of them could use some, so hopefully I can mix it in with their food somehow. Wish me luck.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Crap

Oh crap. Crap crap crap crap crap.

You may recall a certain Kitten Situation I blogged about a couple years back; in short, a feral mommy-cat showed up with her three brand-new kittens in tow, and I couldn't turn them away. Given that it was all new to me and that the local charities were overwhelmed, by the time everyone got caught up with the spaying and neutering and adopting out I ended up taking in six cats (and Tara took one herself).

After that it settled in to a routine of taking care of the indoor guys while feeding the outdoor girls (whom I've been calling The Grrrls). It was a nice stable family unit out there and though here and there a tomcat or two (as well as an opossum or two) came by for a snack it was perfectly manageable. And yes, I feed The Grrrls; it keeps them safe in the back and out of the road.

One of the occasional tomcats was a stripey number who I dubbed The Interloper. No, I don't know why; probably because he was infiltrating the nice power-of-three family unit out there of Spot, Smudge, and Splotch. It's hard to tell with a stripey, since the coat pattern isn't sex-specific (unlike tortoiseshell or even marmalade), but from the glances I was able to steal it did look to be a boy under its tail.

Yeah, well, tonight The Interloper showed up looking distinctly round about the belly; it was also distinctly friendlier, which in a feral cat is usually a sign of counting down to kittens or I suppose rabies. The funny thing is that looking under its tail tonight if I had to guess I'd still say male. Maybe it's just patterning, or shadows?

If it is female, and it is pregnant (which barring a pretty hideous case of worms I imagine it is) then I'll have to start up the trap spay release stuff again. Thing is though that if the charities are anything like they were it may take me a couple months before someone will lend me a trap again. And by then the thing will have exploded in kittens and I'll be here trapping them and socializing them and getting them their distemper shots and giving them away through the shelter again, and besides not wanting to deal with the, shall I say, duplicitous person at the local place (I mean she did help me, but far too many times what she said and what she did were two completely different things), it really is just a lot of work.

Argh!