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Commentor Mary G. missed my original post with her cat Sophie, so I offered another chance if she sent new pictures:
Here are a couple of pictures of her favorite winter location, right in front of the wall heater. We had record heat – 84 degrees! – Sunday and she was still upset that I wouldn’t turn it on.
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(I’ll admit I may be prejudiced, because Sophie is a dead ringer for our cat The Demon Kishkan, in attitude as well as appearance.)
Incidentally, I’m down to only a dozen more Happy Tales… not to whinge, much, but this would be a great time to send me your pics’n’stories at [email protected] (or click on my name near the top of the right-hand column).
Ranger 3
FIRST BITCHES!
stuckinred
Meeeeeooowwwww!
Nethead Jay
@Ranger 3: What an… intelligent and edifying comment.
Beautiful pictures Mary G, and that’s just pure cattitude Sophie is expressing. Oh and Anne Laurie, love your The Demon Kishkan name :)
Platonicspoof
@Nethead Jay:
The day will come when #1 realizes he’s finally on a zombie thread, waiting in vain for the new thread that never comes, and being last means watching everyone else disappear one by one . . . .
BGK
(26000 feet over central Florida…)
Interesting. Sophie looks like a Maine Coon, and my Maine Coon mix Rizzo loves when it gets cold out. It was about 35 when I got up this morning, and he insisted on going out on the lanai to romp around. Jack ran back inside so fast he about knocked me over, and spent the whole time yammering, probably upset that his little buddy was going to freeze.
BGK
OK, make that 40000 feet. Our original flight level was decidedly lumpy…
WereBear (itouch)
RJ is our Maine Coonish cat, and he is so sad when the windows are closed for winter. “I’m not cold!”
Kat
I’d like to take this opportunity (near the top of an open thread) to thank everyone who offered suggestions for taming my four feral kittens.
We’re making slow progress. Three out of four are now sleeping with me and my older cat, who’s been really good at putting up with the antics of these wild thangs [sic]. He even lets one of the female kittens pretend-suck on his stomach!
Now… What in the world should I do with their mama-kitty? As is, she’s still locked in my furnace/laundry room. For a variety of reasons, this can’t go on much longer. But one of the main reasons is that she bolts up onto the main furnace duct every time I go in there. Since that duct gets hot enough to raise a blister at the slightest touch when the furnace is on, I haven’t turned on my furnace this year — and it can get damned cold here. So far, I’ve been able to heat about 1,000 square feet with two portable electric oil-filled radiator-type heaters, and a five-gallon pot of water continually on medium-low on my stove to provide some much-needed humidity. But this won’t work when bitter cold sets in — and, as it is, my next utility bill is probably going to be double the usual amount.
So, what to do? She’s only about 9 months old herself. I got her fixed in anticipation of taking her to a shelter. But when I called, several shelters all told me the same thing: since she’s darn-near as wild as a cougar, any shelter is likely to euthanize her the same day I take her in, because she’s extremely unlikely to ever get adopted as a pet. If I just put her back outside, she’s quite likely to starve or freeze to death this winter; and if she doesn’t freeze or starve, she’ll still probably end up as one more feral cat that’s contributing to the FIV epidemic.
All of which means, the only way I can think of for her to go on living in my basement is if I buy a roll of hardware cloth (which is sort of like chicken wire, only stronger and with smaller holes), and hire my jack-of-all-trades friend to fit it around the main furnace duct and a couple of smaller ducts – and around a couple of water and gas pipes – and around about 80 square feet of 10 inch X 2 inch rafters which inconveniently run in the opposite direction of the main duct, and then staple all this snipped, bent, twisted, and shaped hardware cloth to the unfinished ceiling. The good news? I’ve already got a really decent stapler. The bad news ought to be readily apparent — even if I’m willing, this still isn’t a very good long-term solution for her.
My only idea for actually trying to tame her is to spike her food with a sedative, and progressively lower the dosage over time. I once had a schizophrenic cat — based on her meeting the DSM III diagnosis for humans ;-) — who was prescribed 2mg of valium a day by my vet. Worked wonders for her! But, in spite of her problems, she was quite socialized compared to this wild mama. All the shelters I talked to thought this idea had a very low chance of success, even if I managed to find a vet willing to prescribe something for her. Has anyone here had any experience with something like this?
If anybody has any other ideas/suggestions, I’m all ears.
Phyllis
Our kitties would pile up on the heating vents in the front room like that. Yeah, we’d be sitting there in sweats and socks and lap blankets…so the children could be warm.
ChrisS
Beautiful kitty. I just love those long hairs.
I’ll try and get some daylight pics of Jack and the snow we’re getting. He absolutely loves it.
Maody
@WereBear (itouch): Re Winter blues: Though Mao Mao is an indoor/outdoor cat, she sits at the door staring out the window hating this sub freezing weather. She manages to go out for short jaunts and then not so deftly (fat) jumps up on the screen door pleading to get in. Reminds me of Simon’s Cat. Some tell me I need a new screen door. I answer, “Why?” since she will just wreck a new one.
Sophie is lovely.
Josie
@Kat: Two things I have used to tame feral cats over the years are food and another animal. Either one takes time and patience. The food is offered every day while getting closer and closer. The other animal can be cat or dog and is petted and talked to while sitting near the feral. They eventually get the idea and come for their own petting and talking. Some combination of the two has always worked, but it can take months. To keep her from bolting into the ductwork when you go into the room, you may have to use a live trap to catch her until you can put up the chicken wire. Under no circumstance should you try to pick her up or hold her until she is ready. Ask me how I know and how many rounds of antibiotics it takes to get rid of the infection from cat caused wounds.
Kat
@ Phyllis: Our kitties would pile up on the heating vents in the front room like that.
I suspect Phyllis was commenting on the original post rather than on my comment (#8).
But just to be clear, wild mama gets on top of the main heating duct, which is about 2 feet wide and 12 feet long, and comes directly off the furnace. And that sucker heats up to at least 300 degrees. The last time I accidently touched it for a split-second when the furnace was on, it raised a nickel-sized blister that hurt for weeks.
stuckinred
@Kat: SOunds like a safety hazard.
Kat
@stuckinred
So far, both the wild cat and the duct have remained quite-passively overhead.
I could be wrong, but it seems to me that if this 40-year-old furnace (or its duct-work) was likely to cause a fire, it would already have done so.
harlana
I can relate, my kitty has her butt firmly parked in front of the heating vent these days. I have an old furnace that is really inefficient so the heat doesn’t rise to my bedroom upstairs. Needless to say, it is very, very cold up there. Of course, she wants to sleep next to me to keep warm. However, I am a very restless sleeper, and she is easily disturbed by my constant flipping from one side to the next.
This season, I had a eureka moment and put a heating pad on the bed – she loves it and I sleep better because she doesn’t jump up and meow nearly every time I turn over.
R-Jud
One of our cats was so intent on getting thisclose to the space heater in my (unheated) office that she actually started to smoke. I shooed her away and tried to get the stench of burning cat hair out of the room.
Two hours later she came back and DID IT AGAIN to the other side of her body. She’s not burned, but her fur has big melted/singed patches on either side.
She is also banned from the office.
harlana
@Kat: How cold does it get where you live?
WereBear
@Kat: You know, I’d just live trap her and put her in a big dog kennel; she doesn’t need room. She needs security. Cats like her find smaller spaces reassuring.
And I was going to suggest psychiatric medicine. I think it’s worth a try. And who cares about the odds? The alternative, as you pointed out, is an lonely death.
@R-Jud: A cat’s fur is such a good insulator they don’t know they are risking too much heat when they get close. They just love the warmth.
It’s not because they are hedonists (though they are.) It’s because they run hot. Any heat they can pick up from their environment is heat their body does not have to provide.
Buck
Sophie is absolutely beautiful.
She reminds me very much of our cat, Ms. Kitty. (who coincidentally hangs out near the floor heater – even when it’s not on!)
Steeplejack
@Kat:
Would it be practical to wrap the furnace pipe in insulation? If it is as hot as you say, it seems like you are losing a lot of heat, or at least having it misdirected. Anyway, that might provide a solution, because your feral cat could still get up on the (insulated) pipe to feel safe.
And I second WereBear’s comment about interacting with another cat in the presence of the feral. They observe and gradually get the idea. It’s worth a try.
WereBear
@Steeplejack: It wasn’t my comment this time, but it is true, and worth repeating; seeing other cats benefit from human interaction gets the point across to ferals.
Jack
@Kat: I don’t have any suggestions, I just wanted to say you have a very good heart working so hard for this stray.
fourlegsgood
I have some happy tales (and tails!!) that I’ll send you. I also have some maine coon pics that will make you crai.
And thanks for posting these stories, they always make me smile.
Kat
@harlana: How cold does it get where you live?
In the 10 years or so that I’ve lived here, the low at night has gotten down to around minus 12 (Fahrenheit) at least a couple of times every winter. And it’s not at all unusual for it to go below zero for several nights in a row.
@Steeplejack: Would it be practical to wrap the furnace pipe in insulation? If it is as hot as you say, it seems like you are losing a lot of heat, or at least having it misdirected.
I do loose a lot of heat because this main duct isn’t insulated. The duct’s quite accessible, so I could probably install insulation myself. The problem is, I’m not sure what sort of insulation could take that kind of heat — and I’m leery of trusting the advice of a part-time, $10-an-hour employee at some place like Home Depot.
Call in some experts, you say?? HA! A couple of years ago I paid two experts to blow about 20 more inches of insulation into the attic. This is a townhouse, so the attic’s less than 16′ x 30′, but it still took them more than 8 hours. As the one with the hose in the attic got tired later in the day, he knocked over a lamp. He told me about it as they were finishing up — said he’d sprayed the small spot of smoldering insulation with water several times, and he thought everything was okay. I taped a smoke detector up in there on a rafter, just in case.
At 11pm that night, my just-in-case smoke detector in the attic went off. I called 911, and began banging – very loudly – on the doors of the other 3 townhouses in my building. By the time I got everyone out, the fire dept was arriving. I dashed back in my place, threw one cat in a carrier, and carried it out to the backseat of my vehicle in the parking lot. By then the firemen were in my house. They tried to keep me from going in again, but I told them I had to get my other cat out, and pushed past them. I dashed downstairs for the other pet carrier, and brought it back up to the living room, where I’d just seen my other cat sleeping as a familiar lump under the blanket on the couch. While I was in the basement getting the carrier, the firemen had tossed my 95 pound tv face-first onto that lump on the couch — but they didn’t tell me that. I only noticed that my sweet ‘lump’ had moved over a little, and that the tv was now laying where he’d been before. In the middle of this crisis, I didn’t register what must have caused him to move — I just threw him in the pet carrier and rushed him out to my vehicle.
By midnight, the firemen had gone. They said there was no structural damage – just a little smoldering insulation and smoke. But firemen don’t try to squeeze themselves through your small attic-access hole — that’s too dangerous, and probably impossible as well. In my case, one of them poked his head up through the attic-access hole to figure out exactly where the smoke was coming from. Then they chopped a huge hole in the ceiling there, which allowed this one square foot area of smoldering insulation to rain down from the attic onto the carpet in the hall, on the stairs, in two bedrooms, and in the living room. First, they sprayed the perimeter of the previously smoldering area in the attic (which was now a hole) with some sort of chemical stuff from a fire extinguisher. Next, they sprayed the smoldering insulation which had rained down from the hole, which by then had burned holes all over the carpet in those five areas. Then they gathered up about 80% of this soggy sprayed insulation and piled it on the lawn just outside my front door. But lots of bits of smoldering insulation, lots of patches of smoldering carpet, and lots of very sticky chemical fire-retardant spray add up to sticky smoke — which means all my walls and ceilings had to be washed and repainted. By the time I got the hole in the ceiling repaired, and washed the walls and ceilings, my $800 insulation job had turned into a $5,000 job.
I still haven’t replaced the carpet yet because… wait for it …about 5 days after the fire, I figured out that the cat that had been asleep under the blanket hadn’t been eating for those 5 days, and as a result, he had developed a helluva case of fatty liver syndrome. I didn’t notice he’d quit eating because, for those five days, I’d been cleaning sticky stuff and smoke off every single thing in my house, and re-washing and drying every piece of clothing in my closets, which have loovered doors. The cat’s x-rays showed that his spleen was swollen to about 4 or 5 times its normal size — most probably from having a 95 pound tv thrown on top of him. It took me 5 1/2 months of force-feeding-and-watering him every 3 hours, around the clock, plus another $2,000 in vet bills and meds, to get him well again. My vet said, although she’d read about a few such cases in textbooks, she’d never personally known a cat that got well from fatty liver disease after being sick for that long. I’d say, most people just don’t have 5 1/2 month’s worth of time and energy to devote solely to force-feeding and medicating a very sick cat. Plus, I think I was just so pissed off about the whole episode, especially about the firemen not telling me they’d accidentally thrown the tv on top of the cat, that I became damned determined I wasn’t going to give up on him, and put him to sleep — I was going to keep stuffing him with food, water, and meds until he either dropped dead of his own accord or got well. When he finally started eating and drinking again on his own, and had been doing so steadily for a solid week, I took to my bed to catch up on all the sleep I’d lost. It took 20 hours of sleep a day for a month for me to recuperate.
And yes, this is the older male cat that’s now letting one of the feral female kittens knead and suck on his stomach. He’s such a sweet, smoochie boy!
Paul in KY
@Kat: I think the mama cat will come out of that duct when it heats up. Then when you know she is out, put some kind of mesh over it so she can’t go back up in there when it is off.
You can trap her with one of those cages that has the touch plate that closes it.
Paul in KY
@WereBear: It is thought that the ancestor of the modern cat developed in a very hot climate. Conversely, the ancestor to dogs is thought to have developed in a cold climate.
I’m talking about ancestors millions of years ago.
asiangrrlMN
Sophie is a doll-baby. Can’t get enough of that face and fur.
2liberal
does this mean people will turn their hatred on the hated (by me, anyway) New York Jets as the new cheaters ?
“Alosi instructed players to form wall, suspended indefinitely”
Platonicspoof
@Kat:
I will say your love and dedication makes you one in a million.