Belated Birthdays

My slackness in posting means I have a couple of belated birthdays to mention.

Mirabelle turned 14 in April. I can't believe we've been together so many years!


The kittens all turned 6 in April. Khar'pern, Parm and Per'la have certainly made life in the clowder a little more interesting.




Happy belated birthdays, Belle and Kittens!

Hours Of Entertainment

When Reyna came home from boarding at VetHab over the weekend, she discovered Parm and Per’la in the crates on the back porch. She spent almost an hour watching them, walking around the crates, and trying to paw her way inside. She repeated the process several times throughout the evening, and again this morning. Parm and Per’la don’t seem particularly impressed by her intense interest in them. I’m not worried about it, because I know she can’t get in there. And hey, its something to occupy her brain and her time so she’s not spinning and barking in the living room.



Speaking of entertainment, I took this short video last Wednesday...

Grumpy Test Subjects

You know, these may be called dog crates, but it doesn’t mean you can’t put something else in them.

I hooked the two crates together with zip ties, put in some towels, a small kitty condo, food, water, and a litter box, and turned them into Parm and Per’la’s new home. And boy, are they mad.

Per'la is hiding in the far left corner of the crates in this picture, and thats Parm in the right front.


And here Per'la's decided that the kitty condo is the safest place to be.


I’m testing my theory that Parm and Per’la are the only two cats engaging in the Unacceptable Behaviors. Parm has confirmed his part in the nastiness multiple times, including today. The only reason I caught him as easily as I did was because I startled him while he was Behaving Unacceptably on my bedroom floor. If, over the weekend, everyone still inside the house behaves as they should, then I’ll call my experiment a success. I don’t know yet what that means for Parm and Per’la’s future living arrangements, but we’ll figure that out later.

And Spreads…

Belle, Loki and Mikey are all over their respective colds, thank goodness. But now Parm and Per’la both have it. Parm’s record is a 17-sneeze fit. Pretty impressive, really. Khar seems to have missed out on the bug so far. If we’re really lucky, this will end with one cycle through the clowder, and not keep hitting the cats over and over.


And speaking of sickness, Duncan has been sick this weekend in a different and much more unpleasant way. I’m hoping its just the heat making him feel icky and he’ll get better as it cools down a bit next week.

Suspicion

Poor, Poor Parm

Thursday morning, Parm jumped off the bed. This normally wouldn’t make the news, but this time he apparently landed wrong and hurt his leg. He was limping just a bit, and when I checked his leg, I couldn’t find anything obviously wrong. Friday evening was the next time I saw him (he’s a hider, so I don’t see him every day) and he was limping pretty badly. Saturday morning, he was still limping, so I called the vet and made an appointment for Monday afternoon. Monday, his limp was on and off, so we went on to the vet. The exam showed that his right front elbow is swollen and painful to manipulate. The vet said that he was probably hyper-extended when he landed, and that’s what caused the injury. Keeping him quiet is the best option at this point, which isn’t hard to do. The difficulty is keeping him from jumping off of high surfaces (like the bed). Every time he does that, his limp gets worse. When he sleeps on lower surfaces, his limp gets better. So, we’ll just wait and see. If its still a problem in a couple of weeks, we’ll go back for a follow-up. On the upside, Lardbutt managed to lose some weight – he is now a petite 18.5 pounds...