Tag Archives: Georgia

Welcome to the Animal house

We have a bit of a strange menagerie at our home…most of whom have made a spot here for themselves without Brian or I even realizing it until it was too late. Or so we like to tell ourselves.

When we first moved in to our house, there was just the four of us – Me, Brian, littleb and Gizmo. Not long after we moved in, we decided to get involved with a local cat rescue organization, Tails High, through whom we fostered kitties in our home. We fostered a number of cats through Tails High, all of whom eventually found their forever homes…until Georgia.

Georgia was one of a litter of kittens that was born at Tails High. We fostered her and another little black kitten for a week or so and decided that we needed to adopt Georgia before the week was out. According to the ladies at Tails High, Georgia was a bit of a spitfire from the moment she was born – which included her being the first kitten they had ever seen explode out of her birth sac before her mom could even begin to assist. She has not lost a single bit of this sassiness and 2 years later, she is still almost as tiny as she was when we first brought her home.

She’s our aloof cat – a much bigger fan of Brian (or when she’s hungry, whomever is near the Kitchen) and prone to sleeping in the sun beam that hits the top of our cat climb bookcase.

Then, of course, we have The Count. Sterling was another one of our foster cats who was actually living with us when my parents came to visit in 2011. Sterling was found in a parking lot and was covered in grease and oil. As such, he had to have his beautiful tail shaved. Not something he likes to talk about these days. He also, due to a nasty infection, had to have all of his teeth removed :( (here is the original story about Sterl, before he came to our foster house). Luckily the no-teeth thing hasn’t slowed him down one bit…in fact it probably assists his gobbling action when it comes to food time.

We call Sterling ‘Poppy-Jack’s cat’. More than likely we never would have let him go back to Tails High…but it’s always easier to blame someone else for the addition to our animal house.

Basically what this all boils down to, is that we FAIL as foster parents. But happily so ;)

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Last, but not least, we have Sir Digby. After Gizmo passed away, it was noticeably quiet in the house. The lack of a shorty puppy made for a huge hole in our barnyard and so we decided to start looking for a new addition. Thanks to some extra sluething by Mama Marr – we found Digby in VA Beach. We weren’t sure from the start how well he would get on with the cats, as he had never been around them before. Gizmo was always terrified of the cats and Sterling definitely used this to his advantage.

As of now, we have our good days and our bad, but mostly the zoo gets along okay. Digby is still pretty much convinced that all the toys in the house are his, Sterling is absolutely convinced that he still has all his teeth and Georgia…well Georgia just looks and acts like a bird.

Welcome to our nuthouse.

Raw Cat Food

We have had a lot of cats through our house. At the moment we have two long term residents – Sterling (Nommer of Evil) and Georgia (Guardian of the Holy Light). Each of these four legged monsters has their own issues…Sterling has no teeth (through no fault of his own) and Georgia is basically bulimic (with the binging and minus the throwing up – she is just TINY!). We also have some…erm…litter box issues (enough said). Sterling is a big fan of anything even remotely resembling food (he is a HUGE fan of brussel sprouts – go figure) as is Georgia. The problem with Georgia however, is that if anything other than canned Trader Joes cat food passes her lips…her litter box issues become world problems. At one point i think our neighbors may have complained.

Kidding. Mostly.

So…there is a favourite cat of mine whom I babysit every now and then when his parents head out of town. His name is Simon (the pieman) and he is my other love. I have known Simon for about 9ish years and he has been through a lot of ups and downs with weight and health problems but lately his mom has been telling me about this new raw diet that she has him on and how well he has been doing. It prompted me to do some more research into the idea and to really look at what our pointies are eating.

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I think my biggest question (other than the health benefits) was, was it possible for me to feed them a good quality raw diet for the same (or slightly more) as what I was already spending. In all honesty, after doing my research, the health benefits (to me) of a raw diet far outweigh the increase in cost. But…after I made my first batch this weekend…I realized that I was out the same amount of money for a weeks worth of food compared to how I normally bought it. Brilliant. So it takes a little longer and its certainly a little grosser than buying pre-made cat food. But as I said before, the health benefits outweigh everything else…and now i finally know EXACTLY what is going in to their food bowl.

So where did I go to get started?

  • Feline Nutrition This site presents everything in a clear way. It seems like a ton of information at first (and it is) but every page on this site is worth a read. I know that actually making your own raw food isn’t an option that is applicable to everyone…this site also has a TON of links on where to find pre-made raw diets. Simons Mom orders pre-made raw cat food through Hare Today – originally I was going to pursue this option, but the freight costs were throwing me for a bit of a loop. We only have a small freezer, so even buying in bulk to save on shipping was not an option for us.
  • Cat Nutrition An AMAZING treasure trove of information on feeding raw and why its a great idea. This site comes more from a personal standpoint than the Feline Nutrition site which I love, because it tells me that someone like me thought that this was a good idea too. It also makes me feel that someone like me (ie. a dunce in the kitchen) can do this without causing a nuclear meltdown.
  • Cat Info This is Dr Lisa Pierson’s site and is chock full of amazing information. I can’t stress enough that this is one site you should read from top to bottom.

So with all that being said…how did my experiment with raw cat food go?

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These two monsters would give the thumbs up, but a) eating and b) no thumbs.

WOAH CATS!

When we first brought Sir Digby Chicken Caesar home, we knew that he had never been around cats much. It was a little concerning, but we figured with some immersion therapy, a baby gate and a lot of time we might be able to convince all animals involved that this was a good idea.

6 months later we tore down that wall. It was…interesting….to say the least. Little Georgia hid behind a chair before making a run for the cat wall and spending the rest of the day sleeping in peaceful comfort. Sterling (the bully) made sure that Digby knew EXACTLY who was in charge and corralled him around the house.

All in all we were pretty excited about how things went. There were only a couple of chasing incidents, most of which ended with Sterling being the clear winner. Naturally.

This was the result at the end of the day..

It’s tough being a bullied dog.

Wanted: MOAR WEEKEND

After my last lovely jaunt in the garden, i started to get a little itchy. Then a little more itchy…then a WHOLEHELLAVALOT itchy.

Oh yes. Poison Ivy. How i loathe thee.

screw you poison ivy i hate you so much!

Thats kinda where it started…a week ago. I would show you an updated picture, but sometimes things are best left to the imagination. Trust me when I say your imagination has absolutely no grasp on reality ;-) Ugh! I thought I was getting a handle on the itchies this weekend, with copious amounts of oatmeal baths, etc. But yesterday I was proven wrong (don’t worry, that happens RARELY) so i took myself off to Urgent Care after work. I now have a lovely round of steroids to deal with. You may from here on out refer to me as SHE-HULK.

SMASH!

The other awesome weekend fun, was a large storm that rolled through the DC area. We lost power just after 11pm on Friday night and managed to be without for around 18 hours. Not too bad considering there are a lot of peeps in our area that are still without and could be for up to a week.

oh look at her, she's just NASTY!

Georgia don’t care. Georgia don’t give a shit. And she will also give that damn Honey Badger a run for his money. Ignore the carpet that looks filthy – thats just the remains of two underage cats getting into the nip. We need to have a talk with them. It’s already on my to-do list.

So yeah. It got a little hot. Well, it actually got a lot hot…the cats managed, as always, to find the coolest spot in the house. Sir Digby we dealt with in another way..

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Contrary to what you are seeing here, he actually really enjoying being in the pool. I think we’ll bring it out again this weekend. You know, while i am in the backyard suited up from head to toe and trying not to look in the direction of anything even vaguely green or leafy.

Oh…and it wouldn’t be a post without some silliness from Count Sterling.

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This cat sat like this for a good 5 minutes watching the squirrel at the window eat the bird seed. I mean. I just don’t have words. Photos like this are a daily occurrence. It just never stops. Perhaps we should open a shelter for silly homeless animals. Oh who am i kidding? Shelter! Ha! We would just keep them all.

Purrkour wall

The B and I have been talking about making some sort of minimalist-ish cat climbing wall for a while now. We didn’t want to have something that would take over the entire house and announce to any visitors

WARNING! CRAZY CAT PEOPLE!


Source: elitechoice.org via Leanne on Pinterest

That would be STUPID.

So we came up with a plan that would utilize our existing furniture with the addition of a few pieces. Something more along these lines..


Source: moderncat.net via Leanne on Pinterest
So. Materials…i had broken down some shelving at work the week before and saved one of the side walls. We also had an old rug rolled up under one of the beds that we were no longer using, that was perfect for the job.

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Place and hold…juuuuust right. We grabbed the staple gun and hit the center of all four sides.

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The corners were a little tricky, but we just pulled and added more staples. It was like a fever, but instead of more cowbell we just added more staples. There can never be enough staples…am i right?

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Cat wall! Fancy. We hit up lowes and picked up a package of these bad boys, which were designed to hold up to 265lbs (which is just a little more than Sterling weighs) and the screws were 2.25″long, which was plenty of length to go through the cat wall and the dry wall.

(fast forward a few days of us teasing the cats by placing their food on top of the shelving unit)

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BAM! Please ignore the fuzziness…contrary to popular belief it is actually quite difficult to capture a cat in motion.

Luckily our cats didn’t take too long to figure it out, even though Lady Georgia spent most of the first night jumping from the ground to a certain shelf over and over again in the hopes that something would change.

We still have more plans to add some shelves to the other side of the wall unit to give them some space around the window, and act as an easier way to access the top. But we figured we’d start with the hard stuff ;)

At least we haven’t had this happen…

YET.

Animal house

Sometimes I really have to wonder about the animals we live with. I always smile when non-animal people talk about cats having no personality or dogs being just dogs.

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Come spend a day at our house. SRSLY.

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Miss Georgia is definitely the princess of the household…and Daddy’s little girl. Little being the operative word here…she is WEE. She will tolerate me, but mostly only around dinner time or when B isn’t home :) She is pretty much our most cat-like cat. And she’s kinda cute. At the moment though, her favourite toy is a travel size packet of kleenex tissues. And that, my friends, is why cats don’t need store bought toys. But they both have plenty of those too..

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Giz is just our big goofball. Really. Words cannot describe how chock full of personality this dog is. We started spelling out the names of his treats recently to stop him from going nuts when we said the actual word…but now he knows what we are talking about even when we spell them out. I really need to videotape this nonsense.

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Sterling is just a big ol dork. We love him to death…we like to think of him as the real life Pusheen. He has no teeth, due to an illness he had before we adopted him, so he walks around A LOT with his toungue out. Mostly everything that is in this house is here to entertain him. Including us big hairy people. Sterling’s favourite toy is a little rattly mouse that he throws all over the Living Room until it ends up under a piece of furniture. It’s at this point that us two-footers come in handy and he will search the house for us and cry until we get the broom out to dig out his mouse.

So thats our animal house in a nutshell…we’re all a little crazy here :)

The Gatekeeper(s)

This is my view almost every morning when I leave the Strewth house…

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These two have now formed the local neighbourhood watch group. Luckily they don’t have opposable thumbs or we’d all be in trouble..

The current bunch

We have a new foster in the house – a little girl who goes by the name of Missouri

Missouri

She thinks that the Giz is the bees knees and spends a lot of time with him. She has some form of upper respiratory infection that, while non-contagious, has not been diagnosed as of yet (she is on medication!). She mostly just walks around the house wheezing like a little old man suffering from emphysema, but she is truly adorable.

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Lady Georgia – still as sassy as ever. Some things never change!

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And my little man. The one in charge..kind of. You know, when a cat is not trying to beat him up :) He has a hard life.