Some much-needed happy news — a rescue update from catspaw commentor Marc:
A little over two years ago, DemTaters had a sweet kitty show up at her home, and sent out a bleg, as she could not take in another pet. I responded, having lost my little kitty Sabrina two months prior, and my condo was feeling a bit empty. Dropped off along with Miri was a generous donation by juicers for her spay. I setup an appointment with Banfield for her checkup and wellness care. During her vet visit, she was pronounced to be ‘in the family way’ — with three little ones. On 14 August 2015, five little ones came into the world.
When the time came, I was able to find forever homes for two – several people stated they were interested in getting one of the others, but all backed out for various reasons. November rolled around and I was starting to worry about the three left – if they stayed too much longer, I’d get attached. Shortly after Thanksgiving was when I threw in the towel, and so Miri wound up filling my home more than I expected.
Here are a few pictures of my Tribe of Tigers at Two:
Miri is the most ‘people’ cat I’ve known. While her kids scatter if another person comes into the condo, she walks up to them ‘meows’ and asks to be petted. While not a lap kitty, she loves lounging on the computer desk while I’m using it.
Tigger is the biggest of the Tribe – and a real bird toy killer. He played so hard with a chirping toy, that the soundbox came out of it – but only after it had run out of power.
Sylk is a sweet Princess – still adventurous, but also very much a lap kitty. I’ve found her on top of doors, and on top of the plate cabinet in the next photo.
Flynn is the clever one – he opens cabinets, dresser drawers, and the door to the computer room (if left unlocked).
You can’t spell homeowner without a ‘meow’.
If Miri doesn’t have some ‘oriental’ Siamese-style genes — and her nosiness about people coming into her home argues she does — her kittens sure do. Even apart from Sylk’s blue eyes, those aerialist climbs and drawer-opening skills are well-known Meezer stunts. Meezer-type cats can be hella aggravating, but they’re never boring!
***************
Apart from blessing all the rescuers, what’s on the agenda for the new day?
Sab
We “rescued” a meeker kitty about five years ago. He was a kitten from a household that fed stray cats, neutered none of them,and thought that putting a couple of dishes of catchow out every day was caring for them.
When he turned up at our bird feeder hoping to eat our birds he was about nine months old and thin as a rail. During a sleet storm in November he begged my husband to take him in,and my husband the cat chump agreed.
We fed him, to towelled him off until he dried, and the little guy (little only by human standards) He’s now an 18 pound moose.
He hasn’t been outside since. I open the door occassionanally and he is horrified. Inside he has attending people, multiple cat friends, and dependable food and warmth. Outside is fear , rain and hunger.
OzarkHillbilly
Great way to start the day.
Anne Laurie
@Sab: Lucky you. We have a red-tabby ‘Oriental shorthair’, quite possibly a purebred, that a local rescue found scrounging in a strip-mall dumpster. Even on the spendy anti-bladder-stone diet we have to feed both him & his feline housemate, he’s ballooned up to 15lbs. The evil bastid repays our generosity by eating holes in every textile he can get his teeth into (from cotton towels to silk dresses to canvas totes to denim jeans to nylon scrubbing brushes), opening kitchen cabinets (childproof latches didn’t phase him — we have to keep them bungie’d shut), pooping in the bathtub… and making regular attempts to escape back into the wild, always at the worst possible times. I managed to sprain my wrist once, when I grabbed him before he could race into the street, and he twisted his kangaroo-shaped torso at a meezer-unique angle.
(Honestly, I normally love meezer-cats! Not my favorite housemate, Rocky the Viking, but he adores the Spousal Unit, who returns his devotion.)
eclare
Thank you for the update and pictures! The pride looks very content and happy.
Schlemazel
Nice little family, thanks for sharing this pictures
ET
A few weeks ago I was wondering about your brood and hoping for an update. Thanks!
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
rikyrah
Update on my sister.
She had dialysis yesterday . She was alert and knew who I was. Please keep the prayers coming.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
Sending prayers and healing to your sister. How are you holding up?
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Best wishes for your sister.
pamelabrown53
@rikyrah: @8.
Good Morning, rikyrah. My prayers are with your sister and your family. Holding her in the healing light. Thanks for the update.
Zach
Thoughts on Trump’s early morning twittering:
Roy Moore: “MUSLIM ELLISON SHOULD NOT SIT IN CONGRESS”. Exciting, indeed. http://www.wnd.com/2006/12/39271/
There’s a new WaPo piece coming and this is a preemptive strike.
eclare
@rikyrah: Glad to hear your sister is getting the care she needs.
JPL
@Zach: I had a dream that a raving lunatic was ranting, and I couldn’t figure out where the noise was coming from. Finally I hopped out of bed and turned on the light. There is no worse day ever with Trump.
MomSense
I love the tribe of tigers. Such beautiful cats.
satby
@rikyrah: Good morning rikyrah. Keeping your sister in my thoughts, and hoping that after a rest her kidneys start working again. It’s been known to happen, so I hope that happens for her soon.
satby
Marc up top, your tribe looks wonderful. Happy, contented kitties are a great start to the day. Thank you.
Quinerly
Kitties! Poco and I adore these pics and post!?
Quinerly
Don’t normally read this site but Crosby’s response to Nugent’s whine made for a nice AM smile:http://washingtonjournal.com/2017/08/15/nugent-just-whined-politics-kept-hall-fame-david-crosbys-response-epic/
Izabela
This post about the cats made me smile a lot in spite of the political hellscape in America currently.
Quinerly
@rikyrah:
Hugs from Poco and his tribe.? Sending positive thoughts your way. Thanks for the update.
Kristine
Lovely kitties–thanks for the update!
@rikyrah: more good wishes for your sister. and for you.
rikyrah
@MomSense:
I am doing better. Monday was pretty bad. One day at a time and all that.
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah: In the light, as Mustang Bobby says.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Zach: Guess we know Trump never orders anything on Amazon, they’ve been collecting sales taxes for years now.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@rikyrah: Good to hear you sister is doing better.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I can’t believe a wealthy New York real estate developer is so out of touch.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: Best wishes to your sister, you and the entire family.
rikyrah
The tribe is so cute ???
JPL
@rikyrah: Hugs to you and your family.
OzarkHillbilly
I don’t know who writes the headlines at the AP, but they need to get out in the real worls: Business leaders quit Trump panel; he hits back hard
Ooooooooooooo, he said mean things about them….
Really AP? Just like when he gets his big brother lawyer to beat up the small business kid who wanted to get his lunch money back that he loaned to wittle donny?
debbie
@rikyrah:
@MomSense:
You both are in my thoughts.
Baud
Baltimore removed Confederate statues last night.
OzarkHillbilly
Another headline, this time a funny one from the STL Post Disgrace: Man points gun at St. Louis police, who shoot three times and miss
ETA: Heh, “Officers found a pistol at the scene and took the suspect into custody, Hayden said. Police also took him to a hospital as a precaution after he fell and scraped his finger during the encounter.”
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: Business CEOs are notoriously alt-left.
Debbie(aussie)
@rikyrah: Glad dialysis is helping. You, your sister and your families are in my thoughts.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
That’s all you can do. Please take care of yourself.@debbie:
Thank you. I’m also thinking about immanetize and his family. Sending them love and wishing for a miracle.
oldgold
During the campaign Hillary gave a speech labeling some of Trump’s supporters as “deplorables.”
This speech was sharply criticized by the pundits and mocked by Trump and his followers. After the election, it was cited as a classic example of Hillary’s political tin ear and emblematic of the poor campaign she supposedly ran.
Given recent events, particularly those surrounding Charlottsville, this speech should be reconsidered.
“We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”
“But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Doncha know?
Baud
@oldgold:
Don’t forget this guy, in April 2017.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/01/bernie-sanders-trump-voters-not-deplorable-clinton-warren
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
Good to hear that your sister is doing better.
Those kitties look a happy tribe indeed.
I am considering guitar-pedal options for the near future — a few months down the road, let’s say. I’m particularly interested right now in cheap multi-effects pedals like this one. While I can’t expect such a thing to have effects as good as from pro-level multi-efx pedals or discrete pedals, it should do most of them well enough for a lot less money.
satby
@MomSense:
I join you in those thoughts. Sending love Imm family.
Steeplejack (phone)
@rikyrah:
Strength and healing to your sister.
debit
Marc, thanks for the update. I was thinking about you and your kittens the other day, and am so happy to see them doing well. They’re all gorgeous and obviously well loved.
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Good morning. Glad to hear your sister responded well to dialysis; hope she continues to improve. How frightening.
What’s up with MomSense? Best to her. And, of course, to Imm and his family, and Mrs. Imm in hospice. Hugs there.
Elizabelle
@Baud: Baltimore took down its statue of Roger B. Taney too. LOL.
From FTF NYTimes:
If I ever meet John Roberts, I am going to say “Hello there, Roger B. Taney.” History has not been kind to Taney; Roberts is keenly aware of that, and I suspect it’s one of the only moderating influences on his judicial decisions.
linky: https://nyti.ms/2v0OJmB
TaMara (HFG)
LOL. Love waking up to happy news. And Marc, that’s how I got 4 cats, too. I had two of my own and fostered a momma and her 5 one day olds. Everyone found a home, but momma and Jake. My life has been better for it. Congrats!
EllenH
@oldgold: You might enjoy this rant on Wonkette about that speech. I know I did.
Elizabelle
Love the update of Miri and her kittens at 2. Hadn’t realized Marc ended up with a permanent family of 4, but they’re darlings.
Good looking cats, each with her/his own personality.
Tokyokie
@Anne Laurie: I grew up with meezers, and a few years ago, after my beloved Neyle (who was part meezer) died, I found three 8-week-old, apple-head meezer boys at the local PetsMart as part of the local pound’s infrequent clear-out-the-cages effort, and that’s how I got my lilac-point buddy Marvin (and only because he climbed over his brothers to be at the top of the pile when I bent over to pet them). Marvin quickly became the tribe’s alpha cat (as in whacking Neyle’s successor in the nose not even 2 minutes after being introduced to the rest of the inmate population) and has become a real lard-ass, probably weighing about 15-17 pounds. He complains most of the time (although not as loudly as the ancient Balinese — another part meezer), resets my computer settings by sleeping on the keyboard, and generallly annoys the other members of the household, feline and human alike.
I love him to death. Which isn’t to say I’m not fully aware that he is insane. I only regret not claiming his seal-point brothers as well.
Quinerly
@Elizabelle:
Thanks for this post. I missed it somehow in the FNYT.?
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: I’ve been late to most of parties round these parts for several days, so just kind of picking up the news by osmosis. Best of luck and healing prayers for your sister.
TaMara (HFG)
@rikyrah: Done! And remember to take care of yourself, too. [[hugs]]
J.
Thank you. I needed that post.
Marc, you are a mensch. Also love “you can’t spell homeowner without meow.” :-)
Mnemosyne
I’m beginning to suspect that Charlotte is part meezer. It would explain a lot, like why she yells at G every morning until he gives her thumps.
(She likes to lay on her side and have us thump her on the ribcage. Not just likes it — demands it.)
stinger
What a great series of photos and descriptions — just what I needed in the middle of a crappy week. Thanks, Marc!
stinger
@rikyrah: Best wishes.
Demz Taters
Thanks for the update! I was wondering how they were doing and still regret that I couldn’t have taken one but I was having an impossible time finding a new place to rent with the three cats I had. Eventually I ended up buying but several months too late. Tigger is perfect – I have a solid gray cat, a gray tuxedo, and a solid orange. He would have completed my set!
Marc
I’m glad you folks enjoyed the update! I’m working (full time)) second shift, and days seem to slide by all too quickly – I contacted Anne a couple of months ago, planning to send an update, and….time went by. Having four is a lot different than caring for one – but the rewards are fourfold too. I’ll try to get another together, probably pointing out some of their quirks – but I cannot commit to a deadline.