First, Bessie came home Thursday afternoon after dental surgery in which she lost six teeth. Ouch!
All of these rescue cats have similar dental issues, something about life in the great outdoors, I suppose.
But despite her losses, she seems to be doing fine. She is now supposed to stick to wet food for two weeks. That’s going to be tough, since her “normal” diet is about 60% dry food, and I’m not sure how she’s going to adjust to the soft food fare. And how are we going to keep her away from the dry food that usually stays down for Kali and Kinikini? I suppose we’ll have to pick that up at night, and when we’re not around to monitor. That’s going to make it tough for me in the early mornings, since I’m the front line when it comes to fielding complaints from hungry cats!
Let’s see. Oh, there’s one photo of Bessie looking out a window with funny little multicolor cat decals on it.
Those are an attempt to save the birds! At least once a week, a bird flies into the clear window or doors looking out toward our back deck. They can see through the house to the kitchen window and the windows on either side of the front door, and think they can just fly right through. Bang! Sometimes they are stunned but shake it off and fly away. Some, though, die immediately.
Searching online, I found these cut little plastic cutouts that catch the light like prisms, and warn the birds that the way through the house isn’t clear. At least that’s the theory. We’ll see. One thing I can report is that they are cat magnets. On our first try, we put them up on the inside of the window. Within a few minutes, Bessie was there scratching at them and methodically ripping them off the window. Second try, they went on the outside. We’ll see if it cuts the toll among our feathered friends.
If you have experience with these, or other methods for warning the birds, please share your experience!
And then don’t miss the yellow cat toy that Kinikini dug out of the toy basket one day and tossed around for a while. I happened to have a camera nearby, so captured the scene.
In any case, enjoy the cats. Please.
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Gonna hafta get myself some of those bird deterrence stickers. Almost every day is a big bang of collision and like you say, it’s a 50-50 chance of survival. Amazon?
Just hope my fur bosses aren’t as attracted to the stickers as yours are!
My favorite pics are the sun nap and kitty stretching on counter! Too cute
My favorite is Bessie looking out the window. Such a peaceful picture with a lovely yard and the window stickers are so pretty. With our cats, I’ve noticed that rescues we got as kittens didn’t have dental issues. The older ones almost all did, losing many teeth. I think it might be because the kitten rescues had better early nutrition.
Yes, same with our kitten rescues and adoptions. Those early months appear to be very important for developing good teeth.
I used to feed my team both wet and dry. One cat was a diehard dry food eater. He did not drink enough water and long story short I had a $400 vet bill for constipation. The vet said it is best for them to only have wet food. So I made the change. The diehard dry food eater went almost 3 days…yes 3 days without eating. There were many dirty looks and complaining. I almost gave in so many times because I was so worried that he wasn’t eating. Finally the “high noon” standoff was over and he ate the wet food. We are all totally on wet food and no more constipation. I just have to share this because getting them totally on wet food can be done.
We got one die-hard dry food eater to eat a broth/food packet every day, which helps with hydration. We get them from Pet Co. or on-line from Amazon. It has a little bit of wet food plus flavored broth. My kitty prefers the fish flavored ones. She still likes her dry food, but at least gets some added liquid now. The other thing that really helped was a water fountain. Something about running water makes even the most water-resistant cat drink. I think we got it a long time ago at Pet Co. for $50 – $60 bucks. It has filtration pods you change periodically, so the water is always very clean.
Old cds/dads suspended on fishing line attached to the rafters of our eaves (they’ll spin) to keep the birds from crashing into the sliding glass doors & picture windows. Inexpensive & effective.
Yeah, but then you have old cd’s suspending on fishing line spinning outside. We’re trying to find something less obtrusive.