See you later ---

We have not taken in a new foster friend for the last week or so, for a couple of reasons.  One of those reasons is that I am headed to St. Louis tomorrow for some surgery on my left eye.  I probably will not be posting for the next week or so.  We are looking forward to recovering and being able to foster once again.

Be sure to check out the upcoming volunteer classes being offered.  You can find information at the Champaign County Humane Society web site.  We have found fostering to be a terrific experience for our family.  It has brought us great joy and some sadness.  Just playing a small part in helping these animals is an extremely rewarding experience.  And obviously -- since we need to take off these weeks for the surgery -- it is a commitment that you can work into your life as it fits.

See you soon

Shadow and Lark

And our two doggie residents?  We've had Shadow several years now.  We adopted him from the Humane Society following the tragic death of our first family dog, Rusty.  Shadow is a mixed up mutt with a lot of spanial in him, which means he is not exactly bright and is extremely affectionate and enthusiasitic.  It took several years, but he finally does respond reliably to a sit command.  He continues to pull horendously on a leash and is NOT a pleasure to walk.  Regrettably we have not worked with him consistently on this problem, it is far too easy to let him have his exercize in our fenced back yard. Unfortuanately, on one walk -- while on a leash with my son who was about 15 at that time -- Shadow spied a squirrel across the street and bolted right into the path of a car.  He broke a rib, punctured a lung, and broke a back leg very near the hip joint.  He did recover, but the cold weather really bothers him.  His out door trips tend to be brief in the winter.  He is very quick about getting his business done, and getting back in the house.
Shadow is the older of our two dogs -- but Lark is the larger.  She is mixture of Lab, German Shepherd, and Husky.   She is a smart girl and has finally grown out of her puppy years and is becoming a very pleasant companion rather than just goof ball.  She enjoys walking, and needs to do so more.  She also pulls -- not as bad as Shadow, but bad enough.  It really is not that the dogs need more training -- we need more training in being more effective and consistent with them on a leash.  The both have good house manners -- but I must admit that I have failed miserably at teaching them good leash behavior.
We got Lark because my youngest son very much wanted a dog of his own.  My husband and I had told him that if he maintained feeding, watering and caring for Shadow independently without being reminded for some period of weeks that I no longer remember, that he could have a dog of his own.  Within a day of being told that my oldest son brought him home an abandoned puppy that he had found.  The puppy turned out to have a chip, had been adopted from the Humane Society, and later dumped out beside the road.  We adoped the puppy, and Judah fully lived up to his agreement.  Unfortunately, that dog was too smart for his good and found a way to push under our fence, was hit by a car and killed.  A few weeks later, my husband found Lark being offered free by a farmer in Indiana and brought him home for Judah.  She was a pretty young puppy at the time;  looking back at the pictures it is  hard to remember how young and small she was.  We did not have a crate that first night and placed her in two laundry baskets wired together.  She made it clear from the outset that she would sleep absolutely anywhere -- anywhere that she could see Judah that is, crate or no crate, but she had to see Judd.  She knew whose dog she was from that first night on.

Mike and Ashes

Mike is pictured with Zippy in the side bar.  He is the cat closest to the front.  Mike is our smart cat.  My brother-in-law  rescued him and his sister from a ditch in Indiana as tiny kittens.  They had been abandoned as coyote food since there was no way they were going to survive.  He and his wife bottle fed them and cared for them, however when their baby was born they did not feel like they could keep them and they came to live with us.
It was the same summer we were catching feral cats and they brought our numbers up to six cats living in the house right then.
When Mike and Ashes came to us, they still were not full grown -- sort of in their teen years.  One day when I went in the kitchen, Ashes was laying under the table, and she looked a little odd.  I leaned down to look at her and realized there was a mouse between her paws.  When she sat up the mouse walked around her in a circle, stopped back in front of her, stood on its hind legs and stretched up to her.  She tipped  her head and touched noses with it, laid back down, and the mouse curled up between her paws.
Now don't get me wrong, I thought this little scene was lovely -- but not in my kitchen.  So I went and got Valiant who was about 8 inches long at this point.  But since he was raised by a wild mama cat, not a human with a bottle he knew exactly what to do with the mouse and was very eager to give Ashes pointers.  Being an intelligent -- although inexperienced -- kitty, she learned quickly.
Ashes eventually went to live with a neighbor, but Mike has stayed on.  He is by far the most intellegent of our crew -- and he knows it.  He is obviously disdainful of the other cats.  He listens -- and I do mean LISTENS -- to classical music and responds to it.  There is one piece by Schoenberg that he has an obvious distaste for.  He believes something lives in the printer and scanner.  He knows what the door knob is for.  He watches television.  He knows he is not allowed in my room, but that the foster animals are.  He sits at the door and looks in at them if we have it open for a moment, although the other cats never even realize anybody is in there. 

In the summer we block off the living room with blankets and put a window air conditioner in the room.  There may or may not be a gate behind the blanket depending on if the ferret is out.   Zippy and Dart act as though it is always there and jump up on the couch to go over it even when it is not there. Jack just runs into the gate.  Mike will carefully pull the cover aside every time and check.

Mike has a very soft purr. You almost have to lay your ear against his body to hear it. But he is very relaxed and affectionate -- loves to rub his chin and head on your arm. He doesn't mind if you are not petting him, he will rub his head on your hand or arm and pet yourself.

Dart's Story

We caught Dart that same summer that we caught Zippy and his family.  In fact it was actually Dart's family that moved into our yard first.  Her mama evidently had her kittens in our garage, or moved them there.  We came home one day and she had brought the litter out to see the world -- probably for the first time.  There was a little boy kitten playing on a stack of lumber in our driveway.  I was able to walk up right behind and pick him up, and though he had never seen a human before he stayed perfectly calm on his trip up into the air -- til he turned and saw me and everything came unglued.  I was doing my best to keep ahold of him, and didn't understand why my husband was yelling and making so much ruckus at the other end of the driveway.  Then I turned -- and saw mama coming for me.  I escaped over the top of a car -- a Valiant -- and retreated to the van.  It took awhile to catch the kitten again inside the van, but eventually we did. 

I had thought that Valiant was old enough to be weened -- but he wasn't .  He ate food fine, and drank well, so I am sure that he had eaten before, but he evidently also still nursed.  Valiant was a very sweet kitten and nearly immediately tamed and became a member of hte family.  But one night soon after he joined us, he was laying in bed with me and kept nuzzling my bare arm.  Finally, he found a nub of fabric in the armpit of my T-shirt where all four seams met -- and that was close enough to a nipple for him.  He nursed quite contendedly for probably 15 minutes and went to sleep.

The day that I caught Valiant, there had been four kittens - but two others disappeared in a manner we don't know.  Probably a bird or some type of predator.  We saw the mama and the last kitten quite often, but this last kitten was very skittish and was not going to be caught so easily as her brother.  I didn't have a live trap yet, so finally we put Valiant in a cat carrier inside the front door, propped the door open, and let him meow.  It wasn't long till his sister came in to find him, and we were able to shut the door behind her.

It immediately became apparent that we had not thought that through well enough, because now we had a wild kitten loose in our house, and she had no intention of us finding her.  We named her Dart -- not for her skittish nature, but because the Dart is the sister car to the Valiant, yet the name suited her very well.  Dart was quite a bit older than Valiant by the time we caught her, and she naver has completely become tame.  I was taking classes at Parkland when she was young, and she would come out of hiding and watch me working at the computer.  It took months, much patience, and many stages but eventually she and I became friends.  She still, after several years, will only be petted by someone when they are sitting at the computer desk.

Dart is an outdoor cat at this point.  When she first was trapped in our house, we eventually got  her confined to one room -- with a litter box -- and she did use it.  Once we believed that she would use the litter box, we let her in the rest of the house, however when she was about two she quit using the litterbox and began using laundry baskets of clothing.  We took her to the vet and had her checked for medical problems, but there were none.  She simply does not like litter.  The vet suggested trying to retrain her by putting her in a crate.  We tried.  She slept in the litterbox and peed on the towell.  The vet suggested that we set up box for her with paper towells and change it often.  However, we have four cats -- and it seemed like this was just going to get confusing for everyone.

I am a strong believer that cats are not native and do not belong outside -- especially in town.  But finally we opened the door and let Dart out.  She no longer pees on our laundry, and she comes and goes as she pleases. 

Dart has never been able to get along with the other cats.  I don't thing she believes they really are cats with their lap kitty ways.  During the time she is inside, she generally is in my kitchen ceiling.  We had a chimney that we were tearing down in one corner, which left an opening up into the drop ceiling.  She jumps to the base, and just keeps running going up the wall and into the ceiling -- and the other cats know better than to try and follow. 

Eventually, we found an excellent home for Valiant.  He was the first child I had  nursed that grew up and moved away.

Dart is still with us and will be til the end.  The yearly trip to the vet is always traumatic.  She is sort of like a shy baby hiding on my lap with her head tucked beneath my arm.  I am her human and she trusts me completely.  It is a sacred trust not to be taken lightly.

Story of Zippy

And a bit about Dart --
Several years ago our neighborhood had a major problem with feral cats.  A drug house down the block was shut down which had MANY cats living in the walls.  The house really had been inhabitable; it was what is referred to as a Flop House.  After many arrests the remaining 'occupants' disappeared.  The cats ended up completely abandoned and began roaming farther, scavaging more for survival.  I aquired a live trap and began catching cats. The orignial thought was that I would 'find them homes', being very naive about how hard that was and how very many cats there were.  I was able to find a few homes, several others we ended up bringing to the Humane Society and letting them do the job they are so very good at.  Zippy and Dart ended up staying with us forever.
After catching a cat in the live trap, we transferred it to a crate for a few days to become used to humans at least being present.  The day we decided to let Zippy out of the crate for the first time we were on the back porch to have a fairly small space.  Zippy remained hunkered down in the back corner of the crate very quiet as I popped the door open.  He stayed there as I slowly opened it.  Never moved a muscle as we stood and spoke to him quietly.  Then he was not in the crate anymore -- it took a few seconds to even comprehend that he had moved.  But he was now on the ceiling.  There is a small trim board at the top of the wall and Zippy had literally flown from the crate gripped the board, barely the width of one paw and by sheer momentum he managed to circle the entire porch on that board above our heads before dropping to floor.  Zippy eventually became a very affectionate lap kitty, but he kept his name from that first day.
Zippy is a very ugly kitty.  He has major allergies that took us years to finally completely identify.  In the meantime there were times that he bled from every pore of his body, developed large open wounds, and bouts of diarhea and vomiting.  His mother and siblings were all pretty things with a unique pinched up face that we were sure would be able to be adopted and we took them to the Humane Society.  But we kept Zippy.
Zippy is essentially an indoor kitty.  But he does remember his feral roots especially in the spring.  He has been known to sneak out the door -- and take down a squirrel.  It took him several hours, but he never let go and eventually he won.
He is very cold natured- especially when he is having an allergic reaction to something and very much prefers laying on a  human or another cat.  He has a loud irregular pur -- sort of misses a cylinder -- but for him it is perfect.

My first animal friends

I've always loved animals -- and I've always had them with me.  Bo-Bo, pictured in the side bar,  was  a member of the family before I was.  We moved from the country into the city and as every truck load of household goods left, Bo-Bo grew more and more worried.  But when we had him get up in that last load and come with us -- he was one happy dog.  Cindy was my cat -- and my preferred solace.  This picture is when I had the mumps -- but Cindy did not leave me.  Ben was my companion through my teen years.  He and I had many adventures in the pasture behind our house.  And Shawnee was still with me when I married and had my first two babies.

I believe in the value of animal friendships -- not just for the humans but for the animals as well.  It  is one of the main reasons we foster.  Animals do have emotions -- they have a lot of love to give and deserve to have that respected.  We enjoy being able to be a part of the respect that the Humane Society gives.  They are caring people and we see them giving of themseves tremendously to treat these animals with respect and dignity.  There is not a happy ending every time -- because animals are mortal.  Yet there are way more happy endings than there would be without these people there caring.

Our own animals:

I'll be volunteering at the shelter for the next few weeks and we'll be taking a break from fostering.  Just for a couple of weeks -- but in the meantime I thought that I would introduce you to our permanant residents.  I've put up some photos and in the next few days you can watch for some posts describing our animals and my experiences at the shelter.

Just a quick rundown --
Bo-Bo -- It all began with Bo-Bo many many years ago.
Shadow -- Picture Odie as a black spaniel -- really happy and really stupid, but we love him.
Jack-- the comic. Jack is partially blind which combined with his playful nature and tendency to consider himself topcat gets him into ridiculous situations. I'll tell you about some of them.
Mike and Zippy -- Mike was abandoned in a ditch as a kitten -- not even weened -- along with his sister Ashes.  Zippy was a feral kitten in our yard we adopted.
Dart -- Dart was also a feral kitten we took in from the neighborhood  along with her brother Valiant and mother Chrysler.  You will enjoy those stories!
Lark-- Lark joined us from a farm in Indiana.  She is now full grown and a true sweet heart.
Fraya-- not pictured yet -- a ferret.  She tries had to be friends with everyone else, but Lark thinks she is a chew toy and the cats just play aloof.  Except for Jack who will play a bit -- but he can't quite figure her out.

More than just a UTI

Topaz and Indigo returned Friday for their check up -- and still have a lot of blood in their urine.  Which means that we are not dealing with just a Urinary Tract Infection after all.  There must be something much worse going on for these wonderful kitties -- but whatever that something is it is it makes them not adoptable.

This is a very sad outcome for two very friendly wonderful cats, yet it is a reality that cannot be escaped not only at the Humane Society but in many pet owners lives.  Our pets can get very sick at times -- with illnesses that we may not be able to rescue them from no matter how much we love them, how much money we have, how much time we can give them, or how friendly, loving and wonderful they are.  It happens at the Humane Society also -- and because of the volume of animals they care for it happens there more often. 

I have a tremendous amount of respect for the people who put themselves out so much for these animals.  I have so many people tell me they could never foster because they would just get too attached to the animals.  And I have to respect that.  But these people at the Humane Society care too much about the animals to protect their own emotions and not care for them as much as they are able.  They know that they are going to be hurt and experience loss and pain over and over again -- but that is not a good enough reason to not try to help some.  I have to respect that kind of deep caring as well.  They are unique and wonderful humans.

Topaz is sick again - -

Topaz has started puking again. There had been no puking since I had brought him in to see the folks at the Humane Society until four days ago. He puked during the night and I noticed the next morning that someone drank A LOT of water that night. So I hoped he had just drank too much and made himself ill. This was one of the possibilities that the staff at CCHS has suggested.  But he has puked the next two nights as well, and yesterday he puked three times on my bed while we were gone and again during the night. During the night it was VERY WEIRD because he made an extremely unusual sound before puking. He sounded like a mechanical baby doll crying. Both my husband and I sat right straight up in bed saying "What in the world was THAT?!"  I leaned around to peer in the crate and Topaz was up and began puking at about that moment -- conveniently aimed into the litter box.

Poor Topaz!  I feel so bad for him.

Topaz and Indigo are doing well

Topaz has not thrown up now in at least a week!  Hooray, for Topaz!  Not since we had the long conversation at the Humane Society about what could possibly be the problem.  They are taking the medicine very well, eating and drinking a good amount and just as affectionate and playful as ever.

They spend their days roaming our room, and their nights in the crate which enables us to sleep through the night without frolicing kitties.  During the time we thought Topaz was puking because of stress from the crate, we did leave them out all night long, and they learned not to play on top of us quite easily, but they still like to chase each other about which can get noisy.  Since we decided the crate was not the issue, we have returned to crating them at night.

Hoping for the best on their next check up.  These kitties just need to be healthy to find their forever homes.  They are so affectionate and lovable we are sure they will be perfect match for someone.