Because they didn’t feature in my post the other day…
In the background is Nick. Mother, fluffball, waddler, Princess of Knives, singer of songs about her teaser toys. She has claimed my blanket.
In the foreground is Sam, who has settled against my butt to purr after a strenuous ten mintues gently gnawing and clawing my ankles. He’s always been more affectionate than his brother, but he does like to bite when he’s happy. It probably wouldn’t even hurt if I had fur. Alas, my ankles are unprotected and nommable.
We never pressure the cats to spend time with us. Nick is mostly with us, choosing a prime place on the back of a chair or on an unguarded lap blanket, but Sam has spent most of this winter sprawled on the arm chair on the back deck. He’ll occasionally come and take a turn around the room like an Austenian heroine, but otherwise, just accepts pats and food with happy purrs. Tonight, he felt like company, so I thought I’d document that Winter isn’t alone in wanting to be near us under his own terms.
Nuh uh not moving.
November 2016, I saw a tiny tabby kitten slink under one of our cars. Soon, we realised the stray fluffy black cat that lived in Mum’s front yard had two kittens, one black, one the tabby I’d seen.
By March 2017, she’d relocated to the back of the house and, with her kittens was stealing Mum’s elderly cat’s food. I pointed out she’d been living on mum’s property for over a year, and that this was her second litter. We began the process of feeding, socialisation and medical care. We had to get them accustomed to being handled before we could get them desexed, for example. The mother cat was letting us pet her after a week. The kittens, who had never been touched by a human and were by this point close to six months old, took longer.
This evening, Winter, who has been enjoying the gas heater this winter season and coming up for pets semiregularly, climbed up onto the couch and parked himself on my lap for the very first time. It’s been about half an hour, and he’s still there, purring. My tiny scrap of a kitten is now a chunky tom who probably needs less breakfast (my mum overfeeds them), but he’s happy, and the living proof that rescuing animals is worth it. Perhaps I’m more willing to wait and have contact on their own terms because I’m autistic, but there are plenty of people out there who say that there’s a narrow, several weeks long window for socialising kittens born wild, and after that, there’s no chance of a cat accepting a relationship with people. Well, look at my boy. Never touched till he was six months. Not desexed till nearly nine months. Born under a car, and breastfed until I started feeding them, supplemented with whatever they could scavenge or kill. Maybe too many people out there just aren’t open to a relationship that you have to wait and work for.
Unexpected Benefit of Black Panther: my local pet shelters went from having something like 50-60 black cats between them to having NONE, becuase they’ve all been adopted out and named after the characters. “T’challa” is the most popular, but there are a fair number of “Okoye”s and “Shuri”s as well.
…and one very confused Elderly Humane Society Volunteer wondering why someone would name such a sweet cat “Killmonger”.
As the proud mamas of three former strays named Nick, Sam, and Winter, two of whom are black, black cats are the BEST. Sam almost got called T’Challa, but we thought Sam would be easier for us white people to yell at dinner time.
this poor baby showed up at my house a few days ago, refused to leave, isn’t microchipped, and is currently hanging out in my front yard while i look for a possible owner and figure out if he could potentially be a good fit with the rest of my fur babies. he’s very sweet, but he’s not fixed, which is an issue i would definitely have to take care of and don’t know if i have the resources for. but he’s so sweet???
(p.s. dog side of tumblr, any ideas on what kind of pupper he is? don’t know if you can tell from the pic but he has one ice blue eye and one dark brown. not pictured is his big, fluffy tail.)
additional pics
just dropped the baby off at the vet for a bath to get rid of his ticks and probable fleas as well as a general health work up. they’re running a special this month on spaying/neutering for $99, so i’ll probably talk to them about setting up an appointment for that when i go to pick him up. still looking to see if he’s been lost, but i get the feeling he’s mine now. dude definitely picked the right house to fixate on. god knows i’m the softest of soft touch when it comes to animals.
frankie is currently sulking and making sad puppy whines because his new best friend has disappeared. dude. he’ll be back this afternoon. chill out. you’ve known him all of four days. there’s no need to go all romeo and juliet about it.
indiana bones is home from the vet. he’s all vaccinated up, confirmed to be heartworm free, has had a flea bath, was held down and force fed an oral treatment for the many many MANY ticks on his poor self, and has an appointment to get his manhood removed on friday.
so i guess i have another dog now.
at least frank sinpawtra is happy about it.
i really, really, REALLY debated doing this, because it seems like so much to ask, but i’ve set up a ko-fi account. my bills are high because of the holidays and i’m currently looking at my next bi-weekly paycheck being roughly half of what it usually is and while i’ve always budgeted to account for my pets in the past, i was seriously not expecting a new one to turn up out of no where. if you can spare even a little bit to help offset the unexpected vet bills i’m currently looking at, i’d be so incredibly appreciative.
I think he might be a husky mix, between the brown/blue heterochromia and the face markings and some things about his overall shape. Not sure what else might be in there, though.
If you were Australian, I’d think he was a Cattle Dog mix, but they’re not as common in the USA.
Today the Department of Awesomely Good Deeds salutes a true Caturday hero: 5-year-old Shon Griffin from Philadelphia, aka “Catman” according to his aunt Kris, who helps take care of the city’s street cats while dressed as a superhero.
Aunty Kris and her fiancée have been involved in cat rescues and fostering for many years, and had recently taken to looking after a local group they named the Kolony Kats. One cat, Bug, would just not cooperate when it came to getting shots and being neutered. “Nothing we tried worked,” Aunty Kris said. However she had noticed that her nephew Shon had formed an instant bond with the cats so she let him help out. “The cats took to him right away. Bug came right over to Shon, rubbed against his legs and allowed him to pet him.”
Shon has been Catman ever since and now he helps his aunt take care of the Kat Kolony kitties while dressed up in his favorite superhero costumes. Amazingly, these cats who are usually wary of humans if not downright unfriendly all seem drawn to Shon.
“He’d scratch their bellies and scratch their heads. It was amazing to see these cats who wouldn’t even allow us to touch them, but immediately took to him. He must have this magical effect that the cats can pick up,” Aunty Kris told The Dodo.
Head over to The Dodo to learn more about Shon the Catman and then visit the Kolony Kats Facebook page to learn more about how they’re helping Philadelphia’s street cats.
So about 4 days ago my brother was working in the yard and he was getting rid of this big old plastic pot we had that was already falling apart. To fit it in the garbage bag he had to smash it into smaller pieces with a shovel.
But when he dumped out the dirt….
…eggs. Ten little eggs.
My mom brought them in to show me. Not knowing what they were or if they were dangerous or not, she asked me if I wanted to take one and open it up outside to make sure it wasn’t full of baby bugs or something. I told her that they were definitely reptile eggs but she was still giving them the ‘I-still-don’t-trust-that-they-aren’t-bugs’ look.
I knew there was no way it was full of bugs and I wouldn’t be able to get it off my mind if we cut one out and killed it. But then I remembered candling.
If you don’t know what candling is, it’s when you put a flashlight under an egg to check if it’s fertile or not.
So I told her to hold on and I ran to get a flashlight.
Lo and behold they were not bugs.
It was our first time ever candling anything so we weren’t exactly sure what to look for. The only videos I had ever seen for candling an egg was a video talking about how some geckos lay eggs without a mate but there is a rare chance they could be fertile anyway; the eggs in the video were always empty though. So we checked all the eggs and they were all alive and responsive. I managed to convince my family that I was 99% sure they were lizards of some kind.
Since we kind of accidentally destroyed their nest and a storm was coming we set out to give them somewhere safe to hatch.
We got a pot and filled it with damp dirt like the one we found them in but smaller. After candling each egg, we made a divot in the dirt and placed each egg half in and half off, careful not to turn them too much and damage them.
My mom did some research and found that the eggs needed to be kept somewhere with good humidity so we got a plastic book crate, drilled some holes in it, and filled the bottom with wet paper towels.
The mystery eggs were put in the garage where it was just as hot as outside but safe from the huge thunderstorm.
Day 2 of eggs and nothing happened. We didn’t think anything would happen just yet but we were all a little worried that we were doing the wrong thing. It was my day to go finish up cleaning up the dirt and shards from the broken pot in the yard when I found another egg.
I picked it up and it wasn’t as firm as the others. In fact it was leaking. I called my mom and candled the little guy. He was just as alive as the others were. There wasn’t much room in the new incubator with the other eggs so we got a tiny beta fish tank we haven’t used in years and fixed it up for the egg. We put it in the garage next to the others.
Now this egg had me worried. He had been out in the storm with a damaged egg. I would go out and check on him throughout the day. Not a thing happened and I was starting to worry that he didn’t make it.
Day 3 of eggs was interesting. I went out to check again on little egg 11 with my mom. She asked how the others were doing and wanted to see. It was fogged up on the inside so I shone a light through and saw it. A head! A little baby lizard head poking out of the egg!
The incubator was taken inside and everyone was gathered around the table. We would all switch from watching the eggs, to someone doing research, to checking the eggs, to setting up the empty tank we had, to checking the eggs again.
All together 4 little lizards were hatching. They’d kick for a bit in their eggs but then fall asleep because it was so tiring.
After a while my mom got concerned about one that hadn’t opened its eyes in ages. It wasn’t moving. I picked up the egg and put it in my hand. I rubbed the shell and gently gave it little tugs. Then out the baby came!
This little guy came out healthy and fast. After a brief look-around he ran out of my hand and back into the pot. Then over the edge of the pot to explore the hides we fit in.
After 4 of the babies fully hatched and we figured out what we were going to do, we put the incubators in the spare tank we had so we could keep an eye on them. At that point it was a little past 1:00am and a 5th egg started to hatch.
Day 4 of eggs and lizards we went to the local pet store to get something that these super small babies could eat. Luckily, Petco carries super small crickets and meal worms. We loaded up on reptile supplies: bus, vitamin dust, hides, heat lamps, you name it we probably bought it.
Upon getting home my mother and I readied the tank.
At that point all but two eggs had hatched. One we thought wasn’t going to make it because it didn’t react when I candled it, and the other was number 11 who was found a day late and broken. We decided to move the two into one incubator instead of two while we moved 9 of the lizards into their temporary home.
When we look for them they were hiding in the incubator all curled up together under a plant we had put in. They actually seem to do that everywhere they decide to hide which is kind of surprising to me. I thought they were going to all be really territorial with each other. But they seem to like each other more than I thought they would.
After a few hours, number 11 hatched and he was just as healthy and fast as the others despite being through the storm earlier. Not too long after that, the last egg hatched. He was much smaller than the others but equally as fast. We added them both to the tank with the others and they hid as quick as a ninja.
Day 5 of lizards was mostly setting up heat lamps and lights and worrying if they were okay. They stayed hidden under rocks and brush. We never saw them eat so we went back to researching.
Day 6 of lizards and they are alive and well! They’ve taken a liking to the new heat lamp and have been scuttling around there all day. I even saw one eat a cricket!
Even the smallest of the bunch was enjoying himself in the warmth 🙂
I will continue to take care of them until it comes time to release them back to their natural habitat. I’ll keep you all updated. It’s such a strange and wonderful learning experience 🙂
Skinks! Don’t know what type, but these are skinks. I ADORE their blue tails. In my part of the world, if you have a garden, you have tiny skinks living there. And if you have a big garden, you might even have blue-tounged skinks living there, which grow to a foot long or so. They’re great!
knitting in the dark 