Roxy is now visiting us

I was able to bring Roxy home yesterday -- and sweeter dog you could never find.  She is exceptionally calm and quietly friendly.  She will be a great dog with kids, or older people.  I took some pictures, but I am having some battery issues this morning and I can't get them uploaded just yet.
She looks like an old man -- my sons all agree.  The people at the Humane Society call her a Lab mix, but she is brindle colored with wiry hair and fuzzy eyebrows -- which all combines for a slightly comical look.  We love her already.
Roxy is EXCELLENT on a leash -- not even the slightest tug, which is just what the doctor ordered -- literally. 

Roxy will be coming to visit

We are looking forward to bringing Roxy home to visit next Thursday.  Roxy will be treated for heartworms, so she will be needing to stay quiet.  I am told that she is pretty calm.  Since she will only be able to go on short outings -- she and I will be able to return to good  health together.  While my eye finishes its healing process she will be a good friend to get to know.

Preparing to foster again

Well, the surgery on my eye turned out to be quite the experience -- and although it was not painful, or debilitating, the recovery was long and required a lot of quiet time.  We are now through the worst of it, though, and finally able to return to a life.  I am looking forward to being able to foster again.  A few animals have come up lately, but the ones we thought we could take have gone to other foster homes.  Which is fine, they are being cared for.

Keep checking back, we'll be having a guest soon.

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.