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Lisa Cuddy, Abbey Cat 3651, originally uploaded by monado.
The mother of the adorable kittens has retired from kitten-rearing. She is quiet, well-behaved, and good-tempered–and you can adopt her from Abbey Cats cat rescue society in Toronto.
The kittens have all been adopted to good homes.
If you live near Toronto and you can adopt or foster a cat, look at Abbey Cat cat rescue.
You can also volunteer to drive or to help out in other ways. And, of course, you can donate.
Pictures of a new pet in the White House and others:
It has been colder than usual for the last week (-9 to -17C plus wind chill). I didn’t even clean the snow off the back porch. and the cats are staying indoors more than usual. Consequently, they are bored and restless.
They are fighting more, playing elaborate games of stalking and king-of-the-mountain, and generally engaging in cat politics: who gets to sleep on the bed, who guards the exit to the downstairs, who attacks whom at the water-bowl. They are wrestling with rugs and tearing up random bits of cardboard. We’ve been bringing out extra playthings for them: toilet paper rolls, small balls, crumpled paper.
more funny cats
Last night they were especially active. Someone defeated a scatter rug in an epic battle and chewed up a ball of tissue paper that came in my new boots. The piece de resistance, though, was starting an automatic toy that, when jostled, squeak and bounces on its own for several seconds. Unless we had burglers, the cats were working the toy last night.
It rained Friday – remnants of Gustav? It was fairly clear on Saturday, after weather reports suggesting it would rain. It then rained steadily most of the night.
Our long-haired cat, Marlowe, came in and I cut yet another burr out of her fur – this time only by wrapping her head in a towel so she wouldn’t snap at me. She felt better afterwards but came back in with several more burrs in her stomach fur. This time she let me cut them out and brush her for a long time. I kept finding more. In the end she seemed much more at ease and let me brush her for a long time. Then she slept on the bed all day for the second day in a row.
It’s been raining again today. I believe it’s the remnants of Hanna, centred on the Atlantic Coast.
First Cloud got rid of his collar. “We’ve got a spare blue collar, we’d better put it on him,” we said. Then Fog gave his red collar the slip. The collars are breakaway so that if they get caught on anything, they snap open. That’s fine except that I think the cats try to get out of them. They also bite each other’s collars. So now we have two almost-identical grey cats running around naked.
Our cat Marlowe can’t be be all that sick. After her trip to the veterinarian, I let her out in the back yard. She came in and I fed her a generous meal; then she went out again. She was back about twenty minutes later with a fair-sized brown rat, more or less unharmed. She played with it for a while but didn’t seem interested in actually eating it. Of course, she wasn’t hungry! It would lie still, then try to creep under her, then away into the grass. (I haven’t been able to mow because of rain.) She would leap onto it and carry it back into the open.
moar funny cat pictures
When she began to lose interest, of of our young boy-cats, Cloud, took over. He was fascinated but is not the experienced hunter that she is. He let it get into the undergrowth of the garden. There, the rat began to shriek its shrill war-cry and leap at him, about six inches into the air, so he backed off. The rat made a break for the fence-line. He managed to keep it from getting away but couldn’t re-capture it. So I brought out his brother Fog. Between the two of them the captured the rat again. When I saw it last, Fog was galloping away with it and Cloud was chasing. I was reminded that polo was originally played with the head of a sheep as the ball.
Later, Fog was eating something in the yard, but when he saw me he came in for some real cat food. I went out and picked up the partially eaten carcass of a rat. But it was a smaller rat than they’d been playing with! I found the larger rat later. Both went into the compost.
It may seem cruel to let the cats toy with rats but anything that keeps down the rats is OK with me. And I can’t stop them in their unsupervised hours. Rats are always with us in the city. The only reason we don’t see them in the open more often is that they are very territorial and are always at war against other tribes of rats. Where they feel safe, they are out in force during the daytime. The waterfowl enclosure at High Park used to have fat rats strolling through the bushes back when people were allowed to feed the ducks. I’m sure there are as many rats as people in the city, perhaps more. The previous neighbours have decked over their whole back yard and the rats live quite safely under the decking (true of any boardwalk at ground level). The businesses across the parking lot keep their garbage in a shed and I know Marlowe hunts the entrances to the shed.
My real fear is that the cats will eat a poisoned one and be poisoned themselves.
Marlowe, my four-year-old cat, came stumping into the yard yesterday morning. She has been hanging out behind the businesses on Pape Avenue to avoid the youngsters, Cloud and Fog, and just coming back for food—sometimes. In the last week or so I think she has been less assertive than usual, so I wondered if she was getting worse. Time to take her to the vet, if I could catch her at the right time!
But yesterday someone set up a power saw where she likes to roam. I guess that the noise drove her away. When she came in and ate, I locked the cat door and called the veterinarian to make an appointment for her. She’s overdue for a checkup on her previous problem—stress-induced cystitis. I kept her in overnight.
She surprised me by being sociable. Part of the time she lay beside me on the couch and later she jumped onto my lap while I was using the computer. She settled down for over an hour. I had other things to do but I didn’t want to disturb her.
The kittens spent the night outside, giving Marlowe a peaceful night indoors. In the morning I closed up access to the litter box so that she’d develop a full bladder for her urine sample. The vet did an X-ray and also took the sample by needle—Marlowe’s most hated procedure.
It took about 20 minutes to develop the X-ray. It turns out that Marlowe’s cystitis has cleared up but she has a raging bladder infection.
I have an antibiotic for her and some “pill pockets” to hide them in. I hope she’ll stick around for them.
more funny cat pictures
P.S. She can’t be too ill. She went out and came back in short order with a rat.
I was alerted by a chorus of bird alarms this morning. Cloud, one of my grey cats, had caught a just-fledged robin, still with some spots on its breast. He was teasing it in the back yard. First I took him away from it, which made him struggle; then I took it away from him, which made him search frantically. I carried it out to the back lane, looking for a good high place to put it. Unfortunately, it leaped out of my arms and fluttered down to the ground. Rather than chase it, I walked back to the yard.
more funny cat pictures
Cloud was still looking for his prey. Eventually he exhausted the potential of the back yard and ran out into the lane. The alarmed chorus renewed and he was soon back with the robin. This time I let him keep it. He shortly killed it and started nibbling. The next time I looked out, Cloud was sitting and his brother Fog was eating.
They ate part of the robin and I dropped the rest into the compost.
It was thundery in Toronto; in fact a bolt of lightning sizzled, spit, and cracked over my head this afternoon. But in Hamilton it was warm and fine.
I picked up Andie in the afternoon and we went to the Hamilton lakeshore trail. We biked from the 600-m mark to the end, up around 8 km, and a bit beyond.h When we looked back, we could see the big bridge where we’d started. The weather was glorious. We saw lots of red-winged blackbirds. Many of them seemed to be trying to perch on tufts of goldenrod. I wonder if they are staking out nesting sites for the second brood of the season. And we passed a turtle crossing the path, so I had to go back and take another look. It seemed to be heading for a swampy area that might not always be wet. Did it go down to the lake to lay eggs? Or was it just out for a stroll along with the cyclists, roller-bladers, walkers, and wheel-chair rollers?
Just after we turned around to come back the wind changed and rain threatened. We booted it back fairly quickly. We stowed the bikes in the van and went for a burger and milkshakes and some delicious, soggy french fries.
After our supper we walked back to the van. And we saw the biggest dog… it was an English Mastiff that weighed 250 pounds. According to its owner, it’s unusually small for the breed. I asked Andie to stand with the dog for scale.
Perhaps you need more than one picture to see how big this dog is. Here he is with his owner.
The dog was well behaved, but when he decided to go somewhere he was hard to hold.
The man himself was fairly tall. His companion, in the background, was dwarfed by the mastiff.
Here is the dog with Andie again.
Here’s a link to a picture of a large mastiff. Just scroll down until you come to it.
Notice that this multi-use path is wide enough to be shared. It’s about twice as wide as the paths in Toronto. People could walk four abreast and we could still get around them on the path.
