New Arrivals -- Part 1

Karen Jo:  I have a confession to make.  One of the reasons that I didn't want to blog about what happened to Oja is that I felt horribly guilty and ashamed about what happened to her.  The other reason is that this is what greets me whenever I start to upload pictures from my camera.  This is Oja in her prime, Alpha cat and mighty boss of the house.  Now that I have told you all about it, I feel much better.  Now let's get on to the new cats.  There are four of them, but they came in pairs, sort of.  I got 2 cats fairly close together, then a long time passed and I got another 2 close together, so I am going to introduce them 2 at a time.

Gandalf:  Hi, I'm Gandalf.  I arrived without a name, so Mom gave me one.  I was found wandering around the rail yard in Santa Fe and was obviously a pet, so I was taken straight to the shelter and efforts were made to find my parents, but no one came forward.  Since I was so friendly and adoptable, they tested me and found that I am FeLV+.  The shelter contacted Felines and Friends and they contacted Mom and I came here.  I arrived late last February,  just before Spyro and Horus left.  When they went away, that left a power vacuum.

Karen Jo:  Spyro immediately took over as Alpha when Oja disappeared.  He knew that she wasn't coming back before I did.  Horus was next in line, but he was gone, too.

Gandalf:  Oh, the photos.  The top one is my arrival photo in the safe room.  I stayed in there one night and then joined the rest of the kitties.  The bottom one is how I look today.  Anyway, somecat had to take over as Alpha.  I was the tallest and longest, so I thought that I should be Alpha.  Rocio had been here the longest, so he thought that he should.  Bambino was Spyro's lieutenant, so he thought that he should.  Anyway, the three of us were fairly amicably try to sort things out when Clancy showed up and changed everything.  I split.

Karen Jo:  Gandalf got out the door.  I had gotten careless with no escape cats in the house.  I saw his tail disappear around the corner of the house and went to get him, but he had completely disappeared.  I hunted and hunted for him and did all the usual things but there was no sign of him for three whole weeks.  Then one day, I was approaching the screen door and saw a familiar tail go by.  I rushed out and Gandalf was in the back yard, but he ran and jumped over the fence and I lost him again.  I put up another lost cat notice on the town news about town website and got an immediate reply that one of my neighbors had put up a found cat notice saying that he had been hanging around her house, eating dog food for a week.  I got him back the next evening.  He wouldn't let the neighbor lady near him the first day. I have no idea where he was the first two weeks, but he came home too skinny.

Gandalf:  By the time I got back, Clancy had established himself as the new Alpha, so I made buddies with him.  I was the first cat to make friends with him.  Things started to settle down a bit after that.  Things are pretty calm now and I haven't gone near an open door since I got home again.

Clancy: I'm Clancy.  I'm a rough, tough street cat with an attitude.  I was caught in a Trap, Neuter and Release program when I was one year old.  I was trapped, neutered, had my ear tipped and tested.  When I came out FeLV+ I was put on death row because of my attitude, but a nice foster lady rescued me.  She fostered all kinds of cats, so I was put in a small bedroom by myself.  I could hear and smell all the rest of the cats having the run of the house and it made me mad.  Finally my attitude got so bad that she said that she couldn't take care of me anymore and she contacted F&F, who contacted Mom and I came here.

Karen Jo:  Clancy was most likely born a street cat and had to fight for scraps until he was caught.  Then he spent two years in a small bedroom by himself, so he never got socialized with other cats.  He was a real handful when he arrived, as he wasn't overly fond of people, either.

Clancy:  When I arrived, the first thing Karen Jo did was put me in another small bedroom and shut the door on me.  I loudly announced my displeasure with that arrangement, so she let me out.  Wow, a whole big house to roam around in and 6 other cats.  I didn't know what to do with them, so I hissed and growled at all of them.  Then one of them disappeared.  I quickly sized up the situation.  There was no Alpha cat here.  I am a big, tough mancat, so I took over.

Karen Jo:  Clancy weighs in at 16 pounds and the vet assures me that he is not overweight.  That means that he's even longer and taller than Herman was.  He is also very strong.

Clancy:  All the other cats quickly learned who was the new boss, even though none of them liked me.

Karen Jo:  You were too rough with them.  Their last two Alphas ruled by the occasional smack on the head.  You rule by fear.

Clancy:  So?  Anyway, the gray and white cat came back and he made friends with me, but even he screamed.

Karen Jo:  You were still too rough.  Yes, Gandalf wanted to play with you, but you chased him like you wanted to tear him apart and you used your claws when he tried to kitty wrestle with you.

Clancy:  I have learned a lot in the meantime.  Now most of the other kitties either like me or tolerate me.  Bambino still hates me, though.

Karen Jo:  Bambino had convinced Gandalf and had almost persuaded Rocio that he should be the new Alpha when you showed up.

Clancy:  How did he manage that?  He's just a little squirt.

Karen Jo:  The same way that Oja and Spyro did.  By displaying leadership qualities and a willingness to keep the other kitties in line with the occasional smack on the head.

Clancy:  I like my way better.  I am much more gentle now.  Gandalf and I play together with no screaming.  The new kitten loves me.

Karen Jo:  She will get her chance to talk next time.

Departures

Karen Jo:  It's been nearly two years since I last blogged.  Lots has happened and I will try to explain what happened as best I can.  A couple of weeks after Bentley went to the Rainbow Bridge, Oja just plain disappeared.  Above is the first picture that I ever took of her and below is the last.  She had been acting strangely since before Bentley got sick.  She wasn't friendly toward the other cats any more, she stopped sleeping on the bed with me and she got so aggressive toward Missy that Spyro and Bambino smacked her to make her stop.  That's when Missy moved in with Jonny.  Then she was gone.  I couldn't believe that fat cat Oja could have gotten out of the house unnoticed, so I spent five days tearing the house apart trying to find her.  Yes, I did look outside for her the first day that she was gone, but she had never, ever left the yard and there was no sign of her.  I put up a lost cat notice and got several mistaken sightings.  Finally I had to accept that she was gone.  My theory is that her changed behavior was the result of an flare-up of her FeLV and being the Alpha, she didn't want anyone, including me, to know about it, so she found a way to sneak out, somehow.  Then she ran off to find a place to die.  She was never found.  This was quite a blow.  Oja was part of the happy threesome that I had for quite a while: Herman, Spyro and Oja.  When Herman left, Oja took his place on the bed, so I wouldn't be so lonely and she loved the attention.  She adored getting attention from me from the very beginning.  I still miss her a lot.

A couple of months after Oja left, Jonny left, too.  He was getting bolder and letting me see him more.  He loved having Missy in his room and I sometimes saw the two of them cuddled up together on the couch when I peeked in.  I used to leave his door open while I got his and Missy's food, because sometimes Bambino or Spyro wanted to drop in for a little visit.  One night I came down the hall with Missy's food bowl and Jonny was actually out in the hall, looking around.  He dashed right back in again when he saw me, but I thought that it was tremendous progress.  Unfortunately, when I opened the door the next morning for breakfast, Missy came tearing out like her tail was on fire.  Jonny was dead, next to his food bowl.  It looked like he was waiting to be fed, until I got close up and found that he had run off to the Bridge.

I can't seem to get between the two pictures above.  The top one is Sea Shell.  She never got blogged about at all.  I only had her a few months.  She came to live here March 2016 at 5 months old.  That made her one month younger than Maddie and Maddie loved it.  Because Missy and Jonny were in the safe room, I put Sea Shell in the computer room and let the other cats visit, as Sea Shell didn't object.  Maddie found her right away and decided to move in.  The two of them became fast friends almost instantly.  In a week, they were romping all over the house together.  They had a wonderful time for six months, then Sea Shell got sick.  It was a FeLV flare-up.  There is a new drug that came out just in time for me to try it on Brody and Cissy, but it didn't help them.  I decided to try it on Sea Shell and it seemed to be working.  Sea Shell was getting stronger and gaining back some of the weight she had lost and was even showing interest in Maddie again.  Then she just crashed.  I rushed her into the vet and discovered that her spleen was very inflamed and she had some weird growths on her foreleg.  The vet kept her and removed her spleen and the growths and sent them off for analysis.  Sea Shell didn't get any better and we helped her to the Bridge.  She was 13 months old.  The analysis showed that she had developed cancer of the blood vessels.

The picture immediately above is Missy Mysterious.  With Oja and Jonny both gone, Missy moved out of the safe room and mostly hung out in my room and the computer room.  About a month after Sea Shell went to the Bridge, I went into the kitchen to get breakfast for the kitties and found her on the floor, crying pitifully.  I immediately called the vet and was told that there were no openings, but I could bring her in and leave her and a vet would look at her when one of them got a chance, so off we went.  She was so weak that I didn't even put her in a PTU, just carried her in wrapped in a warm towel.  The receptionist took one look at her and whisked her off to the back room, where the surgeon who operated on Sea Shell examined her.  They called me back there.  Something really bad had happened really quickly and she needed to be helped to the Bridge, because whatever had happened was causing her pain.

Now for some departures of a different kind.  I don't remember if I ever said this before, but if a FeLV+ cat lives for over four years without a flare-up, there is a chance that they have beaten the disease and are completely healthy again.  Here are a couple of success stories.  Spyro, above, Horus and Bambino had all gone their four years with no problems, so they were all retested.  All three of them tested negative on the first round.  Then we wait at least three months and try again.  Spyro and Horus tested negative on the second round and Bambino tested positive.  Spyro and Horus got whisked off back to Feline and Friends of Santa Fe to be adopted as normal cats.  They both found forever homes.  Spyro got a home with a cat buddy, which made him very happy.  Bambino is still here with me.

Horus, above, got adopted as an only cat, which is what he had always wanted.  They are both very happy in their new homes.  This happened about a year ago.

Losing so many cats in what has seemed such a short period of time really floored me.  All of the happy threesome that I had for so long are gone now, though I am delighted that Spyro is well and happy now in a new home.  So that's why I haven't been blogging.  I didn't feel like reporting on death after death, then I just got out of the habit.

There are always arrivals as well as departures.  I will tell you about them next time.

Vet Visit and a Surprise

Joni: The silly Food Lady thought I was sick.

Karen Jo: You hadn't been eating properly in over a month.

Joni: She came looking for me and I ran away from her and that didn't give her a clue that I wasn't sick.

Karen Jo: You were so still and you let me touch you.

Joni:  You never heard of playing possum?

Karen Jo:  I called the vet and made you an appointment for the next day (Thursday).

Joni: And where was I when you came looking for me?

Karen Jo: In a sort of tent I made with the sofa cushions up on some storage boxes.

Joni: And that didn't give you a clue?

Karen Jo:  I had to be sure that you weren't sick by taking you to the vet.

Joni:  She had to chase me all over my room and when she caught me I fought like crazy and got away twice and she still didn't get a clue. She put me in a PTU and packed me off to the vet.  I told them a thing or two, until one of them stabbed me and I went to sleep.  When I woke up I discovered that they had stolen some of my blood and my pee.  And what did they find out after all that?  I'm a strong, healthy MANCAT.  That's right, I'm a mancat.  So what are you going to do about that, silly Food Lady?

Karen Jo:  I'm glad I took you in.  Now I know for sure that you are a strong, healthy mancat with strange eating habits.  I changed your name to Jonathan and I'm going to call you Jonny from now on.

Jonny:  Good. At least you put my room back together after tearing it all apart trying to catch me.

Missy:  Mom needs to take some new pictures of me.

Karen Jo: I would if you would stop running away from the camera.

Missy: I moved in with Jonny about a week ago.  It gets me away from Oja and gives Jonny some company.

Karen Jo:  You are one smart kitty, Missy.  The vet even said that having Missy in his room might be good for Jonny.  She could show him that it's safe to be out in the open and that I'm a nice lady.

Jonny:  You are NOT a nice lady.  I like having Missy around though.  She's nice.

Comings and Goings

Karen Jo: A word of explanation first.  About a year and a half ago my cousin persuaded me to join Facebook in order to keep in touch with my far-flung relatives easier and it certainly worked.  Unfortunately, I got all involved in the games and have been neglecting my blog shamefully.  I shall have to find the time to do better.

Mysterious: What about ME?

Karen Jo: Go ahead and introduce yourself, Missy.

Mysterious:  Hi, everyone.  My name is Mysterious, but Mom calls me Missy.  A nice vet lady found me wandering around near her clinic in Espanola and took me in and tested me.  When it turned out that I was FeLV+ she contacted Felines and Friends and they contacted Karen Jo.  I have been here for about three months and I love it, mostly.  Oja is mean to me.

Oja:  You have to know that I am the boss around here.  I don't want you trying to take over my Alphaship.

Mysterious:  I don't want your old Alphaship.  I just want to be left in peace.

 Maddie: Hi, everyone.  My name is Maddie.  I am five months old.  I don't remember much about the before time.  I just remember being put into a cage and being stuck with needles and being put to sleep and waking up with a sore tummy and being put back into a cage.  A nice man came and put me into a PTU and gave me a ride in a car and I ended up here.  I LOVE it here.  There are so many kitties and toys and good food and TREATS!  Horus and I wrestle every day and I have FUN, FUN, FUN!

Karen Jo: Below is the only decent picture I ever got of Bentley.  A good reason to start blogging regularly again, so I have pictures.  Sadly, Bentley strolled off to the Rainbow Bridge the week before Christmas.  His FeLV flared up and he left an hour and 20 minutes before his vet appointment.  If I am right about how he ended up outside, he is already with his person in Heaven.  I hope so.  He was such a dear old fellow.

Rocio: Here I am sunning myself.  Our weather can't make up it's mind whether to snow or shine.  I like the shine much better.  The new kitties are great, though Maddie is a treat thief.

Maddie: You just don't eat them fast enough.

Bambino: I love the new kitties.  Missy is a little stand-offish, but Maddie is a ball to have around.

Horus:  Here I am in the kitchen.  I am hoping that Mom will open the back door, so I can escape.  I love romping around outside and I don't care how cold it is.  I want out!

Julius:  I am still scared of Mom.  I don't know why.  She is very nice to me and gives me treats, but I won't let her very close to me at all.  Sometimes, in the middle of the night, when I am very sure that she is asleep, I will jump up on the bed and sleep on her feet.  If she moves and inch, I'm off.

Tabitha: I am in the computer room, just hanging out.  See that big tiger behind me?  It's a giant cardboard scratcher that Mom brought home one day.  We all love it.

Karen Jo: It was pretty expensive, but I had been looking at it for months.  When I found out that the pet supply store was having to move and would be closed for a while, I just bought it.  I'm glad that I did.

Spyro:  It looks like I'm inspecting Mom's big duster, but I'm really waiting for her to open the back door, so I can run out.  It's so sunny and looks warm to me.

Karen Jo:  It's freezing out there.

Spyro: I want to find out for myself.  If it's too cold, I'll come right back in.  Please let me out?

Oja:  I'm just hanging out in the living room.  I just might move over to that nice sun puddle in a minute.  I do wish Mom would stop bringing home new kitties.  I have to give each one of them the lecture on how to behave around me.

Maddie:  I listened the first time and haven't bugged you since.  I wish you would leave my friend Missy alone.

Joni:  I'm still in my room.  I am never coming out.  Mean Mom kicked me out of the closet and shut the door.

Karen Jo:  I was afraid that if you got sick or something, I wouldn't be able to get to you.  I made a new hiding place near the closet with some boxes for you.

Joni:  I don't like it.  I'm staying under the couch.

Introducing Joni

Joni: Hi I'm the newest addition to the cat family.  I'm feral and 10 years old.  For the last several years a very nice old man was taking care of me and my buddy.  He fed and watered us and let us in the house in bad weather.  We had a cat door to come and go as we pleased, but we mostly stayed outdoors.  One day there was no food or water and the cat door was locked.  We were very sad.

Karen Jo: The nice old man went to Heaven.

Joni:  The next day or so we found food in cages.  We were so hungry that we went in and were caught.  My buddy tested negative, but I tested positive, so we were separated.  I was due to be packed off the the Rainbow Bridge because of my age and distrust of people, but Felines & Friends rescued me.  There is a place in Utah for cats like me.  A refuge for feral FeLV+ cats where we can run around outside all we want and F&F wants to send me there.  The problem is that they are at capacity now and I have to wait.  The only place F&F had for me was a cage, so Karen Jo got called in to help.

Now I have my very own room and lots of food and water and toys and a window to look out of.  Karen Jo leaves me alone and doesn't come looking for me.  She just comes in and leaves the food and water and goes away, closing the door behind her.  I like it here in this room and have no desire to ever leave it.  I miss my buddy, but Bambino and sometimes other cats come in to visit.  Sometimes Bambino even spends the night with me.  It's too scary outside my room.  Do  you know what's out there?  I'll show you:

 Spyro:  Come on out.  I love other kitties.  I have come in to see you and I like you.

 Oja:  You can come out if you want.  Just remember that I am the boss around here.

 Rocio:  Stay in your room.  If you come out I will hiss at you.

Karen Jo:  Rocio, you have been in to visit Joni and you didn't hiss at her then.

Rocio:  That was in her room, her territory.  If she comes out here, I will hiss at her.

 Bambino:  Please come out.  I want to play with you so much.

 Horus:  Stay in your room.  I don't like new kitties and I will hiss at you.

 Julius:  Please come out.  I love new kitties and I want to play with you.  I would come visit, but I'm too scared of the Mom to go in when she opens the door.

 Tabitha: Come on out.  I like all kitties and want to make friends.

Bentley:  Come out.  That room belongs to me and the Mom had no right to give it to you.  I want it back.

Karen Jo:  Bentley, that's not nice.  Each kitty in turn has had that room to themselves for a while.  It's Joni's turn.

Karen Jo:  I haven't found my camera yet.  If I don't find it soon, I guess I'll use my phone.  I forgot to say yesterday that one reason Bentley was so grumpy when he arrived was that he had four rotten teeth and was in pain.  Once we got him all fixed up, he mellowed tremendously.

Meet Bentley

Hi, it's been so long since I've blogged that you've all probably forgotten about me.  Losing Brody and Cissy really knocked the stuffing out of me.  I had faithfully promised the vet lady who had found them and hand-raised them (they were abandoned by their mother at birth) that I would take good care of them for the rest of their lives.  When that turned out to be only a matter of months I felt awful and guilty, though there was nothing more I could have done.  I lost my heart for blogging and went back to playing games and one thing followed another and I just didn't blog.  I feel better about the whole thing now and will try to blog fairly regularly, though my life is rather hectic right now and I don't know how often I will do it.  It's been so long that I can't find my camera.  I had my bedroom windows replaced with more efficient ones and everything got packed up.  I will make a concerted effort to find it.  There have been two more additions to my cat family and I'm going to start with Bentley.

Bentley: Hi, I came to live here several months ago.  I had a pretty good life for most of my life, despite being front declawed.  I'm 13 years old and shortly before I came here some mean people got hold of me and turned me into an outside cat.  That's how I got FeLV.  I lost all trust in people and started to dislike everyone and everything.  Some other people came and put me in a cage and took me to the vet, which I hated.  I hissed and snarled at them all.  I was diagnosed and it was suggested that because of my age and my nasty disposition that I be packed off to the Rainbow Bridge.  Luckily for me the Humane Society stepped in and they rescued me.  They contacted Felines & Friends of Santa Fe and they contacted Karen Jo.  She took me in, but I didn't like her either.

Timed passed and Karen Jo kept petting me through the hisses and snarls and I finally decided that not only was she ok, she was great.  I call her Mom now.  At first I stayed in my room, but that got boring after a couple of days, so I came out and started hissing and snarling at all the other kitties who live here.  Eventually I settled down and stopped hissing and growling at the other kitties, except Oja.  I don't like her at all.

Oja: That's because I let you know right away who's the boss around here.

Bentley: Oh, go ahead.  Rub it in.  I'm the oldest, so I should be boss.

Oja:  I was boss before you came and I am going to stay the boss.  Just get used to it.

Bentley:  Anyway, things were going great until Mom got mean and gave my room to another cat.  I stayed mad about that for a couple of weeks.  I got used to it, though, and things are back to normal.  I spend most of my time just lying around, but I do love to get attention from Mom.  I also love large catnip toys.  I rub my face all over them and drool on them.

Spyro:  Much to the disgust of us other catnip toy lovers.  Bentley drool is a bit off-putting when I want to rub my face all over a catnip toy.

Bentley:  Big deal.  It dries in just a little while and there are plenty of toys to go around.  I don't indulge in kitty wrestling, which is a big sport around here.  I snarl at any kitty who tries it with me.

Bambino:  I'm the only one who tried it and you smacked me in the head.  I won't try it again, I promise.

Tabitha: Bentley smacked me in the head, too, and I was only trying to be friendly.  I rubbed up against him and he hit me.

Bentley: I am sorry about that one. I wasn't used to you yet.  I won't smack you again unless you pounce me like Bambino did.  I still miss my room and go in sometimes when the door is open, which isn't often.  There's a weird kitty in there who hides all the time.

Karen Jo: That's Joni.  We'll talk about her next time.

Farewell Cissy

 Karen Jo:  This is the last picture I took of Cissy and I'm glad she was out of her cave.  I was going to write a really upbeat post about Cissy.  She was moving around the house more and Monday morning I woke up to find her sleeping on my feet.  I had noticed that her abdominal muscles were working in an unusual manner on Sunday, but I thought she was working a hairball through or something.  Monday afternoon it became apparent that she was having difficulty breathing, so I called the vet and had her taken in on an emergency basis.  Her chest cavity was full of fluid.  She had only 1/4 breathing capacity.  The vet said she had the equipment and training to drain Cissy's chest, but she had only done it once before and fatal stuff could go wrong.  I told her to go ahead since Cissy was so bad already.  The vet came out again a few minutes later to tell me that Cissy had gone into cardiac arrest and I told her to just let Cissy go.  The vet had just set Cissy up for another x-ray so she could be sure of the best place to put the needle when Cissy decided that it was Rainbow Bridge time.  Brody was probably calling her.

 I missed Herman's remembrance day, which was Veteran's Day, so I thought I would just add it on here.  I was sad and lonely after my Mother's death and I found a notice of a cat who was sad and lonely and desperately needed a forever home.  He was FIV+ and FeLV+ so no one would adopt him.  I went to see him and it was love at first sight for both of us.  Herman got lonely for feline company and I heard about Emma and brought her home.  I have written many times about how they didn't get along, but most of the time they sort of got along.  There always seemed to be a truce at the buffet.  They greeted Cissy at the Bridge.

 Austin was also there to greet her and ask how his buddy Rocio was getting along.

Of course Brody ran to greet her.  I am sure they were both thrilled to be reunited.

On another note, Tabitha went to the vet for her first rabies shot and checkup.  She is 100% healthy and needs another FeLV test when she turns one, as she may be fighting it off now, as the vet noticed some activity in her lymph system. Go, Tabitha!