Another 4 word Wednesday

We hate Santa hat!!!

Opt to Adopt - Winnie's Wish

If you have never heard about this small private rescue, you need to click and read. Chrystal lives in Southern Illinois and does her best on her own. With the help of her dedicated followers, two cat houses have been built on her property to house the cats that need her help. But, like all pets, they would love to have a home of their own....

Peter Pan

Slate

You can find the entire list of available cats on the Petfinder list. And don't think Illinois is a haul....we have helped them place adoptions in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, California and Canada!!

Exciting News

Sangria and Stoli were ADOPTED!!! TOGETHER!!!

Mom was contacted via email before Thanksgiving by a family looking to adopt. They had seen these two during their brief stay at Petco and were interested. They have 4 kids and the 12 year old daughter had been begging for a kitten. They were in the process of moving into a new home, so mom agreed to hold on to them (what a hardship) until after Thanksgiving.

Saturday was pictures with Santa hosted by our rescue vets (we made over $900 woohoo!!!). The kittens were picked up then. Syd is the 12 year old and had a lego convention all day (they do that??) so the family came to pick up the kittens and were going to have them up in her room to surprise her when she got home. 

They have promised lots of updates so hopefully we will here all about it when everything gets settled. The oldest boy got to rename Stoli (you knew that was going to happen - MOL) and he is now Oliver. Syd will get to rename Sangria and we will let you know what that ends up being.

Concats to Stoli and Sangria and their new family!!!!

Random Fridays

'Tis the season and all that, so we are going to show you some things going around that allow you to give back:

First, bloggers are getting together to do a Santa Kitty Toy Hop lead by Summer

From December 12-19, bloggers are going to gather up donations for a rescue. And then blog about it and link to Summer's blog. What fun...and a great way to give back. Some are doing local rescues, some are doing rescues they know and love. Whatever works for you.
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On Saturday mom will be with other volunteers from the rescue doing Santa pictures at the rescue vet's office. If you are in central Ohio and want to come visit, it is 1-4pm at 1117 W. 1st Ave, Columbus OH

There will be something else going on that day, and we will tell you about it next week.
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Mom will be out on Sunday at an adoption event too....  busy weekend.

We hope you are staying warm (or cool depending on where you live) and safe this weekend. Take care - and take a good long nap.

And here is our e-card for Christmas made by the wonderful Ann of Zoolatry (we are sending others too but love this one).

test results of a sort

So Daiquiri and Kahlua were tested for FIV/FeLV and were spayed yesterday. Kahlua was negative no problem.

However....Daiquiri wasn't.

Here's the thing....the rescue uses an ELISA (or snap) test. Which can give a false positive. Every tiny variable has to be exact or it could come out wrong. Negative is negative, positive is not always positive. Once the test is started (snapped), it has to run for 10 minutes. At the one minute left mark, a VERY faint positive for FeLV showed up. [you can read more about FeLV in a Best Friends article here]

Mom spoke to the vet and they agreed to try something else. Normally the test is run with whole blood. But again, any infection could possibly throw it off (though Daiquiri may win the prize for the healthiest kitten to ever pass through this house). So the vet suggested spinning out the red blood cells and just running the serum. So they did that....another 10 minute wait (mom went to get coffee by this time - so much for a quick test).

This test was negative.

Now what???

The vet had the tech call the company that makes the test and explain what we did and everything else. They agreed that the second test was more accurate - not actually because it was serum based but because it had been out of the fridge longer (see - twitchy test). Enough blood had been drawn that the remaining sample has been sent to the company and they are going to test it as well.

But what about Daiquiri (and everyone else)? Mom said to the vet - if I take her home now, you are confident enough that she can be out with the resident cats and the fosters...and any other cats she comes in contact with? Yes - absolutely according to the vet.

This leads us to the rescue. And this is more an image problem than a test problem. Most vets are going to run a whole blood test (if they rerun it for some reason). If we adopt Daiquiri out as negative and an adopter has her retested and it shows that faint positive, regardless of other tests, the rescue looks bad. Very bad. And as anyone in rescue can tell you, bad PR is a very bad thing.

Mom decided to talk to the head of the rescue and leave it in her hands .....

Anyhow, mom spoke to the rescue lady last night: for now both Daiquiri and Kahlua are back with us due to lack of space at the adoption center. She agreed that for our purposes, yes, Daiq is negative. Once the company runs the test, if we can get the results in writing, then we will attach that to her records and she will be negative and our PR butts are covered.

And we know what some of you are thinking: why let them out if they aren't tested. Normally we don't but in this case it was a coordination issue - the older two were tested and were negative. Daiq's mom was later caught and tested negative. So, the risk was fairly small until mom could get it together with travel and the holidays and having them old enough to get them tested.

Now to get them online and get their furry buns adopted!!

four word Wednesday

Kahlua

Stoli

Sangria

Daiquiri

Opt to Adopt Mae West

It was back in July that we originally posted about our rescue girl Mae West.

Well, she is still at the adoption center waiting for a family to take her home. As you can see, she has superior snoopervision skills:

Unfortunately, when mom was up at the adoption center over the weekend, Mae was in the sick ward with a cold. For some cats, the stress of being there affects their immune systems. That seems to be the case for Mae. She is so sweet and lovey...and has been coming out of the quiet room and been seen roaming around. The volunteers all seem to know who she is when mom checks on her....between her looks and her voice, she is well known. We think she would do best in a quieter home but would be fine with other cats so long as she is given time to be properly introduced. And honestly, if you are interested, mom would help arrange transport cause she really wants to see Mae in a home of her own.

If you don't want to click the link, the video below is of Mae having quite the conversation with mom.

House Trashing

As most of you know, mom was gone from Thursday to Saturday. Sunday was pretty quiet around here. But....she came home to find this:

 We tried to tell her it was a natural disaster, but we don't think she believed us. But hey - there is no  video evidence, so what does she know.

Anyhow, she got out some packing tape construction materials and fixed the house back up.

Well, except for the missing chimney....no idea where that went.

As you can see, we are more than happy to have our house back and hopefully with the reinforced construction, we will be living in it for a while.

Random Fridays

Sangria wishes you a relaxing weekend. Mom should be home soon.....

HAPPY Thanksgiving

HAPPY
TURKEY

DAY

(to our US friends)

or

Happy Thursday

We are thankful to be part of a wonderful community and that you are our friends.

wordless wednesday

weekend update

It was a pretty quiet weekend. Jericho is now with our friend Miss Beckie. Mom is abandoning us for the holiday weekend and was concerned about leaving Jericho for the weekend with just the pet sitter coming in. And he was pretty snotty and mom wanted to be sure someone was watching him. Of course, that means she has to clean the bathroom....he has some projectile snot. MOL

Otherwise, mom decided to do some reorganizing in the kitchen. She cleaned out the pantry and put down some lining and then put things back....for some reason she kept saying non of us were a whole lot of help.

Otherwise, it warmed up a bit here - not enough to open the windows, but the snow is gone.

 hanging in the tree....waiting for someone to walk by to pounce on

even tipped over that basket isn't getting any love

check out Daiquiri's racing stripe - mom loves that white stripe down her back

 Kahlua found some sun on Saturday

Random Fridays

In addition to the gingerbread house, mom bought some snowflakes to put on the window. So far we have lost 3 - Mo took two down and one fell off cause the window is so cold.
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Our friends at the White Dog Diary are part of a charity call Paws to People ... set up charitable funding to help find cures for cancer in pets along with other diseases through comparative studies as to how diseases effect everyone - people and pets. They have an auction going right now on their facebook page (click here) - you need to like the page so they can contact you if you win. The click on an item you want to bid on and leave a note. We have bids on a couple of things.
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Our friend Miss Andrea of Celestial Kitties - mom to Leo, Glitter and Cashmere, is having another FUNdraiser to help Miss Chrystal and the kitties of Winnie's Wish. This year it is beds and they look awesome!!

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We've had some questions about the "magic" microchips. Here's the deal - Tim, Tom and Mo were not microchipped when they were adopted. Some time after that, a local vet with the university here was doing a study on cat collars (you can read the study here). As part of the study, the boys had to wear collars for 6 months and were microchipped for free. No one said anything about them taking temps. The first time our mobile vet came, she scanned one of the boys and couldn't figure out why the number was flicking back and forth...then realized one was the chip number and the other was a temp for the cat. How cool???  Only, she said later she checked with the chip company and they claim to have no idea and don't market the chips that way..... which sounds weird to us. In case you want to check, the boys all have Home Again microchips.
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our new house....

Last week mom saw a post from the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee about a gingerbread house available at Target (she tried to find a link and couldn't find it online). For $10 she decided she had to do it. Well...it was easy to put together (though she suggests using some tape to reinforce the inside corners so that somecats don't wreck the house).

Sangria checking out the interior - deciding if it needs some work or not

Mo and Tim check out the front door, Stoli decides to use a window

 So far everyone has checked it out. 

Daiquiri and the rest of the kittens like to go in and out of the windows.

roof inspection

(appears to hold up under a 2 pound kitten - adults not approved)

Some kittens have even tried to get in from above. 

Hey you guys - only Santa is supposed to climb down the chimney!!!

Mom ended up getting some stickers from the store and decorated the front and sides. She has a bazillion pictures and we have only had the house for a few days. MOL

wordless Wednesday

a new basket

At BarkWorld, Miss Amy from Sebastian's blog won a prize. It was in a nice basket, but Miss Amy was flying, so she gave the basket to mom. Mom brought it home and put a blanket in it for the kittens. umm....yeah, about that.....

Mo checks it out first to be sure it is OK
snoopervised by Daiquiri and Kahlua

Sangria and Stoli come over to check it out

Uncle Tim supervises

 Stoli making the first entry attempt

entry fail....

Stoli climbed in and it flipped - no one has been in it since. MOL  Mom says she wants to find a smaller blanket to put in and see if the kittens will sleep in it then.

weekend wrapup

Mom did some shopping on Friday. The ess has been retired but she found this great arch at Target. Plus it was on sale....so far so good.

Mom was at the Petsmart National Adoption weekend on Saturday. She picked up a kitten from the rescue vet...he was down there to help socialize a kitten they found. Unfortunately, Doug doesn't like Jericho, then Jericho got the snot. So he spent a couple hours curled up at Petsmart with mom and is now in the bathroom. The other 4 kittens are out during the day and mom set up the playpen for them at night.

We have the "omg it is cold" going on here. We are lucky that we are all indoor cats and have those warm air floor vents. Mom did some work in the garage to clean up the bedding for Allie (and whomever else wanders in) and get the crates used for shelters into better positions.