Categories: uncategorized
Date: 08 October 2008 13:06:55
My father had decided that his several cages of breeding bunnies were too much for him -- about the time Hurricane Gustav hit, he came to that conclusion. Yesterday, my daughter and father-in-law finally had the opportunity to drive out to Daddy's place to pick up the rabbits, to carry them to daughter's husband's uncle Steve. Ol' Steve raises just about any critter you can think of, for the table and freezer of course, so he was naturally interested in the rabbits.
Daughter also brought me a kitten from her Pappa's place. He has about a dozen cats around there, and wants none of them! But, my step-mom and her daughter love their kitties, and nobody can afford to get them "fixed".
They are in a residential neighborhood, not out in a rural area with a barn -- in such a setting, perhaps a dozen kitties makes sense. Not so, the way they live today.
I certainly can't afford to spay and neuter so many. Maybe I can offer to help send them to the ASPCA in New Orleans, or find some other low-cost situation. I'll look into it.
Meanwhile, my daughter brought me a cat. A silver broken tabby, with the stripy spots arranged as we see on some of the wild cats and big-cat offspring.
It was the only male. That's what I prefer.
His mother had birthed the litter in Daddy's tool shed. Since then, he'd let her out daily, but he'd kept the kittens locked in there. Not sure why -- perhaps, with the cane fields all around his neighborhood, there are still enough wild things about to eat the little ones? Or maybe the six or so always lounging on his front porch were enough for him.
Anyway -- All those cats are delicate, dainty things, little fairy-cats, compared to the great rangy bruisers I prefer. And this one now here with me is almost the size of those adults. So that can't be a little six-week kitten, as Daddy recalls. It's got to be two months old or even more.
And it's shy, and wants to creep into corners, and it's apparently never seen a dog before -- calmly slept in a shoebox next to their kennels after its bath yesterday. Only decided to hiss at Loup last evening when he was running loose and investigated the new kitty with his usual enthusiasm.
The little guy is a bit bony. I'm not sure he was ever fed cat kibble - daughter says he was still nursing.
Not my usual cat. Timid, skinny, mentally warped from never being out of the tool shed, needed bathing for fleas and medicinal oils for his dirty (probably mite-infested)(huge bat-like) ears.
But, we needed another cat, since the missing Earl appears to be permanently missing. *Sigh*
When I was in the checkout line at KMart yesterday, buying some kitty litter etc., a lady asked me if I wanted a kitten. I told her I didn't particularly want the one I'd just received! Turns out I couldn't have taken her kitten, anyway, since it was a storm foundling and still bottle-fed. No time -- I work.
Its little eyes had barely begun to open when the storm hit. They found it stuck in a fallen tree, amongst debris in the branches. No sign of its mother or littermates.
Ah, well, I already have the one project kitty. That's enough.