I know my blog was full of information and a great deal of
sadness. Life is full of both happy and
sad. We appreciate the happy more when
we experience the rain of sadness.
Lately it has felt like a gully washer rain of sadness around here, but
the sun does come out and I do appreciate the happy that is mixed with the
sad. No matter what anyone says, sadness
and hard times show you what you are made of and how much you can handle. I am
a firm believer that we are not given more than we can handle. It amazes me how rich my life is after going
through the sad and hard times. Of
course, we must be willing to embrace the sad and hard times to experience this richness. We are usually more compassionate
and giving to others in their sad and hard times because we’ve been where they
are now.
Vinny’s appointment with Dr. John was July 13th. Vinny lost 5 oz. He is now down to 7lbs 4oz. He will continue to lose weight from the
kidney failure. His thyroid level is
6.4, down from 9.1 a month ago, which is a low Hyper thyroid level. Remember
normal thyroid levels in cats are: 0.8 to 4.0
Dr. John did a complete blood work up on Vinny. The results are good. His kidney levels are 3.1, which is good
kidney function. His red blood cell count went up a point. This is good too. He
is a little less anemic. Basically,
Vinny is holding his own. His electrolytes are good too. My pushing as much
fluid at him as I can is paying off. Dr.
John and I are keeping Vinny around his current level of 6.4.
Vinny does not need to go back to see Dr. John for 3 months,
unless he takes a serious turn. This turn will come sooner than later, but for now I enjoy my time with Vinny. Dr. John
instructed me to keep doing what I am doing for Vinny.
Vinny's routine is to eat all day and into the late
evening hours. We have hit a bit of a
glitch in this routine. He stopped
eating any of the fish wet cat foods.
Now Vinny no longer likes any form of canned cat food. Not even the
cheap stuff!
Now what?
I stopped at our local dollar store looking for anything new
he has not had. They had nothing. On a
whim, I bought some Caesar canine cuisine.
I figured he fit the small breed category. If he does not like it then the dogs will
think this is the best day ever! I mixed some up with warm water, just as I do
with the canned cat food. You guessed
it. He loves it! In my mind, as long as
he eats I am good with it.
Here is the kicker.
This stuff is expensive for ground up meat by products and organs! My word, I thought cat food was expensive.
HA! Dog food is worse. But if the boy will eat it and is happy, then
I am happy too.
Caesar has a whole line of cuisine. They have the sunrise
breakfast food, which includes, sausage and eggs, grilled steak and eggs, ham,
eggs, potato and cheese and of course an egg and cheese soufflé. There are the various steaks, chicken and
pork meals too. Where are the desserts? (kidding).
I do not like to look at the stuff as I mix it. I see organ
parts and valves more often than not! YUCK!
But the boy does not eat those pieces, thankfully. He just likes to lick
the juice and flavor out of the food. I mean it is dry by the time he is
finished.
I did pick up a couple of holistic natural super food dog foods…..he
won’t touch it, let a lone smell it. The dogs ate it mixed with, that’s right,
the cheap tasty stuff.
Vinny has decided he likes to have certain flavors for
breakfast, different flavors for lunch and something entirely new for dinner
and of course those in between meals need to be different as well. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN! Well, for the most part anyway.
He likes the Predigree small dog wet food too. Actually so
far he likes almost all that I have presented to him.
He still eats dry cat food. He has not taken to barking or rolling on
dead things like the dogs. His breath is dog breath, not fish breath. He is still
Vinny the cat. I do offer him wet cat food
but he rejects it flat out. I do have
canned cat food in reserve for the day he rejects dog food. Until that day, Vinny the cat/dog is happy.
Amie had her last follow up appointment with Dr. Stefani on
July 18th. All her wounds
are completely healed!!!!!!! No more cone
of shame for her and no more bruises on the back of my calves from her cone! Yippee!!
Amie is back to her happy busy self. Click link below. This so fits her.
http://www.karateforkids.net/peanuts.mp3
http://www.karateforkids.net/peanuts.mp3
However, we now need to integrate Amie back into the dog
population. She still thinks she should sleep with us at night and spend her
days lounging on our bed……..The trouble with her lounging on our bed is she is
cone free now and can easily eat the plate of wet cat food. She cleans the
plate dry for them. Now our work begins!
This is Amie, Elle and Sarah.
She still has some fur growing in on her very last healed
wound. She likes to lick it. This makes
it a hot spot, meaning an angry red patch.
To help her with the itch of fur growing in, Dr. Stefani introduced me
to a spray called: Genesis Topical spray.
Now I tend to give too much
information, also known as an acronym TMI.
Dr. Stefani began the litany of if you have an auto immune disease or
are pregnant or nursing, blah, blah, blah, this could make you sterile. “I am
sterile,” I said. Poor Dr. Stefani, she
about busted a gut, but was choking it back.
I smile. I told her I had a
hysterectomy, so being sterile is not a concern. Besides I have handled so much
of the animals medicine I must have a resistance. Too much information, you think???
Probably. Are you covering your eyes, saying, TMI,
TMI….!!!!! All this to say, if you use this product you might want to wear latex gloves when applying it.
I talked to Dr. Stefani about Sarah the wonder dog, (wonder
she is still alive). Explained we were
hot wiring the fence this weekend. Told
her about my complete utter dislike for shock collars for dogs. She explained that Sarah is the type of dog
that would muscle through the pain of the shock collar and escape. Yep, that is Sarah. We are hoping the hot fence will deter
her. Dr. Stefani was kind. I am sure her
mind was saying the hot fence won’t keep her in either. She told me once the fence was hot to show
Sarah, by throwing a stick at the fence to make it spark, that it is hot. Hopefully the intelligent part of Sarah's
brain will understand this is a bad thing. But I fear her common sense side, which is dumber than a box of rocks, will say, “Cool, let me do it!”
click on link below to understand Sarah's side of this fence issue.
Dr. Stefani told me to look for burns on the pads of her
feet and nose. See, she thinks the fence
won’t keep her in……I am in great hopes that it will. If she gets burns, we will
be visiting our favorite vets for help. I will let you know how this goes. By the way, the temperatures this weekend will be in the 100's.
FYI: In case you are not aware of this, NEVER touch a hot fence
with the palm side of your hand to see if it is hot, WHY? Because your hand will automatically
close, or grab the hot fence. Use the back of your hand to test a hot fence for
voltage. Using the back of your hand will automatically cause your hand to
recoil instead of grab. Same goes for testing
to see if a stove top is hot.
Now the tech Susie told me, while at Amie’s appointment,
that she would be happy to come over to my house and help me subcutaneously hydrate
Vinny, whenever. She was the tech that
assisted the vet when I brought Molly in after she was mauled so badly. She lives about 20 minutes from me. Now I think that is just about the nicest
offer I could get. When Vinny gets to
that point, I will probably seek out Tech Susie’s expertise. I believe we go to the best Vet’s office
there is!
I want to share this picture of Little Dude with you. It is hot here now. Tomorrow is going to be 102 degrees, which
means the heat index will be 106. I
just put fresh water in this water bowl for the birds. I turn around and there he sits. The pools are about three feet behind him, but
he chose the bowl.
Little Dude is doing his best to protect his fickle female
Oma from the overcharged boys.
Phoebe caught her first frog. She decided to swallow it whole. The frog was
still alive when she did this……I think it went down fighting. She kept stretching her neck to clear her
throat. She did this for at least half
an hour. I kept an eye on her just in case this went terribly wrong. It did
not. I was hopeful she would learn to
kill the frog first, but she has not.
Oma and Buffy hopped into the small pool together
yesterday…..that does not happen. If Oma
is in the pool only Dude can join her. I
knew they both spotted a frog and were diving for it. I was filling the girl’s swimming tub in the
coop while this was happening. I drop the hose in the tub and head out there.
Buffy jumps out of the pool. Oma ignores me.
I see the frog. It is a good two
inch or more body sized frog. Oma grabs for it as I grab of her, meanwhile the hose is
still running.
Oma grabs the frog before it could leap out of the pool.
When she did this the poor little frog screamed. Yes, you read that right, it
screamed. Animals do feel pain. I truly hate to hear them scream. Oma has it by one leg. I am trying to catch
Oma before she swallows it down. Around in circles we go. Me yelling, “Oma drop
the frog!” Poor frog is on the worst roller coaster ride ever. Finally I grab Oma! She won’t let go. I have to pry her beak
open, not easy by the way. She drops the
frog and Blinkin swoops in to grab the frog. I manage to stop her, for
the moment. I fight off Blinkin and
Oma. I shoo the frog along, no I do not
touch frogs! I finally get the frog out
of the area and under some cover. The frog is safe for the moment.
Meanwhile the hose has filled and is overflowing the swimming tub in the girl’s
enclosure!
When I was a kid, I had a wart problem on my hand. Of course, I believed that touching a frog
was the reason for the warts. My warts
were cut off and burned off. Now my
doctor, Dr. Woodward, was fabulous with kids.
He explained that touching a frog does not give you warts. Being a kid, I knew he was wrong. He was not a
scientist, he was a doctor!
The last wart he burned off my hand left a lasting
impression along with a slight scar. I
was probably twelve years old, so my mom did not need to be with me. I am lying on the examine table with my arm
stretched out on the little slide out side table. Now the doc had his little iron, reminded me
of a soldering iron, out warming up. He had the alcohol bottle and cotton balls
ready to go. Of course, he numbs the area.
Finally all is ready and he wipes the wart and area with the alcohol
soaked cotton ball and sets it down and brings up the hot iron. All looks good until he passes a little too
close to the alcohol soaked cotton ball, POOF! The cotton ball goes up in
flames!! The doctor jumps and his stool
on wheels goes backwards. The flaming cotton
ball is close to my alcohol soaked hand!
He is hitting the flaming ball with his free hand and finally gets it
off the table and stamps out the flame.
He sits back down smiles at me and says, “That was exciting.”
I am laying there watching this in a bit of horror, with saucer eyes, thinking I want my mom to free me before my hand bursts into flames from that hot iron!
But the wart got burned off with no more incidents. Thankfully that was the last wart I had.
To this day, I do not pick up frogs. I will herd them along
but no touchy. Yes, I know they will not
give you warts, but……….
I told you about Little Momma the raccoon that stayed in our
semi enclosed carport while she was pregnant.
She had her two little ones. They
live in the woods now. Last night they
were out eating the food we leave for the critters. They are so cute! I so enjoy the energy and playfulness of the
little ones, human or animal.
While momma eats, the little ones explore, climb the Crape
Myrtle trees and get into trouble with the visiting skunk. They were out of range for my phone to
video. I will do my best to describe
their antics. One of the babies is
timid. This one hides under the SUV. I
had to move the food bowls out from around the vehicle because timid was dragging the
food bowl under the vehicle. I broke a bowl pulling out one day because of this. Now it comes
out grabs some food and darts back under the vehicle.
The other one is curious. It wonders around eating from
place to place. The curious one has a
shorter tail. I hope it grows out. The curious one saw the skunk. It went up to
the skunk. The skunk put its tail straight up in the air, warning the little
one. The little one took off then spun around in a defensive stance in front of
the skunk. Now the momma is eating and watching it all. The little one decided it showed the skunk and
off it went, only to turn around and run full bore at the skunk! Well, the skunk did not take kindly to this
and charged the little one. The little one ran. The
one that is timid finally came out from under the car and ran up toward the
porch where a food bowl is, but when it touched the first step changed its mind
turned around and ran back to the safety of momma.
Momma finished eating, went over to the pan of water we keep
out there for them and cleaned up and called the kids to keep up with her. The curious one stopped at the food bowl for
one more bite, but momma snapped an order, off the little one went. I hope to catch them on video or at least a
picture to share with you. I will keep trying.
We took a hot water heater drain pan and my husband used a threaded
piece of pvc in the hole and placed a cap on the threaded pvc end to close the open end
off. We keep that filled with fresh water everyday for the birds and the
nightly critter visits.
Dr. John wanted Oreo to lose weight. Well, what we tried exploded in our face. I changed out the dry food to weight management food. This food is expensive! What bugs me about it is this: the first ingredient is corn gluten? What is that? Come to find out it is a by product of processed corn! Now the science geeks are finding that this corn gluten is good for weed control. This is the first ingredient in a cat food, along with chicken by product or flavor? A very expensive cat food. These science type diet foods for cats are very expensive for by product ingredients. We spent $33.00 for a 15lb bag!
But to help Oreo lose weight, I will bite the bullet. Well, a month and a little go by and I notice Oreo has two bald spots on the back of his hind legs and his tummy....whaat? Then I saw the bald patch on Grumpy's neck and that Sneezy's ears were fur less and bloody!!! WHHAATT????
here is Munchkin and Oreo.
Come to find out they are allergic to the weight management food! Now we are back on Costco Kirkland brand food. Know what the first ingredient is on the Costco food? Chicken! Not chicken by product but chicken! The cost is $18.99 for a 25lb bag....got to love it!
Good news is Oreo, Grumpy and Sneezy are growing back their fur nicely. Oreo lose weight? Dr. John and I agree it probably won't happen, but I keep trying.
Sneezy sleeping out in the Cat Lounge
You are now up to date on our farm. I have to go feed Vinny now. He is sitting on my shoulder giving me the vulture stare. You know the stare...
My husband calls him Vulture Vinny.
My husband calls him Vulture Vinny.
Click on the link below and enjoy!
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