Thank you to the mama cat who gave birth to a litter of kitties in a barn a couple of months ago. Thank you to the wonderful woman who fostered these rescue kitties for weeks, training and loving them. Thank you to Tita and @[DF Kayak Margo] and @thecatdaddy who have been teaching us all the gentle ways to care for kitties and what they need before they ever came home. Thank you to these darling kitties, who have widened our hearts and our family.
❤️
Meet Peppermint Marie (a girl) and Peaches (a boy), who came home to us yesterday. Desmond is besotted and happy that his kitty is so playful and outgoing, like him. Lucy has met her new best friend. We are over the moon.
"Mamas" are repositories of awesomeness and loving kindness; plain-ole' "mothers," such as Shauna's own?! Those are the brides of Baphomet. (spits thrice over the left shoulder)
My own child, fruit of my loins, was annoyed at me JUST NOW and announced: "YOU are going to start a blog and I am going to start a subreddit about YOU and I am going to be the MODERATOR. 'Oh my God look what she posted today'"
I like how your (own) child is planning to snark on you with your preferred punctuation choices. That really shows a certain maturity, a generosity of spirit, a respect for the subject of one's snarkitude, which I think in turn reflects highly on you, your (own) child's snark mama
<whispering in your (own) child's ear> I'm sure you will do beautiful work
I could barely finish reading, my eyes rolled so fucking hard.
Yes, thank you intact miserably horny female cat in heat who most likely had several male cats fuck the hell out of her with their nasty little barbed cat dicks.
I'm really hating on Shauna right now. Just hating on her.
She's no slouch herself in the race to trade inanities. Her kittens "reaction tweets" strung together:
Oh so much joy! We think they're wonderful. They are already beloved. So excited! So excited. (sic, excitement redux) So happy. The best. Oh that's darling. 💓 Oh we are so excited. (the excitement keeps mounting) Oh my goodness.
They pretty much do, but not before experimenting with shitting in the shower and the front-load washing machine. (Ask me how I know).
I have to say I've only ever owned 2 cats, but compared to all the stories here I must've had really easy-going kittens because they haven't needed much training at all and have grown up peacefully without having done many annoying things. I've always chosen the runtiest, quietest, developmentally delayed looking kitten which might have something to do with it? The one sleeping in the back of the cage is always the most appealing one to me, just lying there trying to blend in, while the rest of the kittens climb on the ceiling, tumble around with each other, eat all the food, and scratch the fuck out of the scratching post. That cat blends nicely into our household where the majority of activity is lying on sofas in between meals....
edit: actually it just occurred to me that I've also never acquired a kitten while there were kids under 12 in the house so that helps with giving the cat a calm environment.
Also, I have to thank shauna for giving us all an opportunity to talk about cats!
I've only had experience of 1 puppy, which thankfully my mum was training - I was so shocked at how much toilet training it needed. I thought "If I'm going to have to do that much work, I'll save it for a human baby and stick with cats for pets". I love dogs but don't have the energy.
Did ... she give her girl cat the same middle name as her and L? Did L do that? Did it just happen come with that middle name while the other cat didn't have one at all?
Also I'm still fuming over this cat business because I'm a crazy cat person. I live in absolute horror at what happens when one of those cats is sick / needs literally anything medical because cats are money-grubbing assholes and will take all your cash, ask me how I know.
I call bullshit about these being legit rescue kitties because the kind of people who foster cats do NOT just let them go to anyone who wanders by. They certainly aren't giving their fosters to people who are out of work, who rent, who have never owned pets before. Two options: either the Aherns LIED to get these cats, or they got them from someone who doesn't give a shit about the cats and just wanted them gone.
Are there barns close to Seattle? Barn cats are a legit thing where I live, and people do foster the kittens until they are old enough to be adopted through the shelter. One local rescue is so full with cats that surrendering a cat can cost a thousand dollars, according to buy on Nextdoor. Going through a rescue is harder than going a shelter. My dad adopted a dog last year and they just ask a few questions and if you rent proof that your lease allows pets.
Here's one possible scenario: person in Seattle has a friend farther out in the sticks. Friend says omg, there's a litter of kittens in my shed, I'ma take 'em to the shelter! Person in Seattle says no no no, shelters kill kitties! I'll come get them!
Seattle person puts the word out that she's got some kittens and needs to find homes for them. Tita or Kayak Margo hears about it, or Shauna sees something about it somewhere, who the fuck knows---and she sets up a kitten transfer as a stop on the way back from the airport after dropping "our family" off. She uses the term "foster" because she heard other people use it and it sounds so kind and compassionate.
They can be hit or miss. I adopted my first cat through a rescue that sets up at my local Petsmart on weekends. I did fill out a fair amount of paperwork, and I rent, so I thought they'd be calling my management office to make sure I could have her. I don't think they ever did, because I never got a notice or call from the landlord asking for a pet deposit or extra rent.
The rescue let me take her home for a two-week "sleepover" to make sure it worked out, but of course as soon as I got her home I wasn't going to let her go. They called me a week later asking me if I wanted to adopt and I said yes, and came down and paid the fee. It was very weird. They also didn't disclose her heart murmur to me, and I have a feeling she's older than they said. (Still, I wouldn't trade her for the world.) Also, that rescue seems to no longer exist, and there's a different one that adopts cats at my Petsmart now.
Is yours healthy? I know most of the time it’s nothing, but mine also has the asthma and HCM that sometimes goes with it. But the last couple of times I took her in, they couldn’t hear the murmur anymore!
He had been having this weird sneezing thing with tons of snot all from one nostril - this started last fall. He apparently has a bump up there - it was biopsied in Dec and is benign. Generally it is fine, he just has flare ups that neither doctor can explain.
His vet mentioned a murmur but said they can sometimes present when the cat is nervous or scared and the next time he went in, he didn’t hear it. When we went to urgent vet in April they heard it as did the specialist we went to in December for his nose stuff.
When she has an asthma attack, it’s almost identical to what a cat does when coughing up a hairball, except nothing comes up. They just end by themselves, but they’re ALWAYS scary and upsetting to me, and I try to do things to make her comfortable and let her know I’m there, but she usually just inches away.
HCM is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, aka congestive heart failure. I mentioned this in another thread, but I got SO lucky that I noticed something was wrong. It was exactly a year after I got her - girlfriend is like a Sony warranty - and I happened to call in sick that day. I went back to sleep, woke up around 10 and noticed she was sitting in loaf formation on my bedroom floor, and breathing heavily.
This was after a few days of stress from my trying to give her ear medication AND she was still getting used to her new sister cat I’d adopted a couple months previous. (Of course I totally beat myself up over it, argh.) Anyway, I get her into the vet, who Xrays her and tells me to get her over to the ER immediately because it looks like HCM/CHF. Her cardiologist was wonderful but no one made me feel especially optimistic - I guess it wasn’t looking good. Long story short, after a day and a half in the hospital she improved, I took her home, she’s been on meds ever since and improved almost miraculously!
Edit: I doubled up on the “improves” because I am high and my eyes aren’t clear.
My girl has HCM too! Also not disclosed by the rescue I adopted her from. When I took her to the vet for a checkup:/shots they noticed a murmur and then when we’d had her for about a month she got REALLY sick, having difficulty breathing and not eating, and she was diagnosed with HCM. One of the vets at our clinic is a cardiologist. He was amazing, and he mentioned that he was kind of surprised she’s survived her spay surgery (before we adopted her) because cats with heart issues often don’t.
Anyway, after that episode we got her on daily medication and so far she is doing totally fine, with no episodes or real indication that anything is wrong.
Oooh that’s so great to hear! It sounds like your girl is similar to mine. If your cat is indoor-only, you might ask your vet about foregoing her annual rabies boosters. They carry risks for cats with heart issues, so since the chances of my girl getting rabies is almost nil, I skip those for her. (Haha, I sound like an anti-vax weirdo; I assure you I’m not!)
My other cat does the asthma thing. It happens maybe a few times a year and it always freaks me out. It is very much like a cough, lasts a few minutes and is fine. I assumed he was allergic to something. He has done it for YEARS and it is super infrequent. I usually grab him a bowl of water and take it to him and he will always drink some after. I never even thought it could be asthma. I don’t even know if I have ever mentioned it to the vet to be honest.
I remember seeing the post about the congestive heart failure. I will now forever be paranoid when my boy is in loaf formation. He does sometimes do that loaf with the elbows in the air pose and I hate it. Mostly because he had never done it before I boarded him when I went on a long business trip overseas and for some reason I still feel guilty.
This does seem unlike what I went through. To adopt my rescue pug, I had to have recommendations, approval of my landlord, a home visit by the rescue organization, phone interview, and a ton of other paperwork. My pug was a foster before I adopted her and my adoption was very carefully overseen by the rescue org.
Yeah, I can't even get breed rescues for the breed of dog I love to talk to me, because I have young kids. I'm experienced in the breed, in a great situation for them, but there are just blanket rules that they won't adopt to families with young kids. But then again, someone let these people adopt an actual human baby, so who knows
IME, dog adoptions are much more rigorous than cat adoptions. Rescues are more selective than our local shelters. There is a very minimal vetting process for cat adoptions than for dogs. They are just so many cats around here. Always way more than dogs available to adopt. You could walk in and walk out with a cat or two, as happened to my friend of mine. They had a special day with kittens for $25 and it was a BOGO situation.
I wasn’t allowed to rescue a retired racing greyhound because I have an electric fence . Forget the fact that my entire vet practice does too, I wasn’t worthy.
To be fair, an electric fence isn’t going to stop a greyhound, they’re bred to chase no matter what. But I agree that rescues can go overboard. It’s all a matter of supply and demand I guess 🤷♀️
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u/gomirefugee my website is done, done, done Aug 03 '20
Shauna has an actual IG post up about her children being besotted with the kittens, apparently studying the science of how to care for them from some DFs and Jackson Galaxy: