I missed posting on the 24th which was Mojo's half-birthday. He's six months old and totally full of himself. He had the temerity (or perhaps a death wish) to go up and start whacking at Puck. Puck put a stop to that instantly. Mojo definitely knows his name now. He was about to go dumpster-diving and when I called his name sternly, he bounded off like a bunny. He wants to play too roughly, so I've been trying to gentle him down. The other day, he decided that he had to eat a button on my keyboard. He couldn't actually get his fangs around it, but he tried. He spends quite a bit of time in my lap with his excellent purr-machine running.

I have a new keyboard and mouse to replace the ones that were cat-damaged, but a minute ago I discovered that the cord to my computer microphone has been chewed entirely in half. Cats is a four-letter word.

Some of Jetta's intestinal problems may relate to her fetish for chewing on plastic. She's almost as obsessed with it as Owl was. She has a thing for duct tape and I'm sure it can't be good for her.

I've been feeling bad about Ariel, who continues to lurk in her box. When I give out the canned food, I put some close to her and she'll come out to eat it, but that's it. I've been reaching in each day to let her sniff my fingers and to carefully stroke her back a few times. Today she went completely feral on me and I have a couple of claw punctures in my arm as a result. Randy and I have discussed whether she'd be better off outside free to live as feral cat, but I'm torn about the idea. I guess I'll wait and see whether we can get her past this bad spell. I would love to see her relaxed and happy again, hanging out around the office, lying in a bed not far from me and getting along with the rest of the Horde the way she used to. This feels like such a set-back.

I caught Theseus rolling around on the floor disembowelling a catnip mousie. It's rare to catch him playing like that.

Simon continues to throw up occasionally, but he's packed on a good amount of weight and no longer feels the least bit bony anywhere, so it can't be doing him too much harm.

Randy and I had started our daily walk a few days ago when T. came down the street in her jeep and stopped to chat with us. T. owns The House That Is The Source Of All Cats, which she doesn't live in, but has left accessible to feral cats. She comes up for short visits as she can. I asked her how the Great Kitten Capturing Crusade was going. She took 72 kittens down to Santa Barbara for adoption at a shelter! She must have been finding them everywhere. Now she's trying very hard to get the last dozen ferals caught and neutered. What an effort.

I spent a couple and a half hours at Lolette's on Friday afternoon cleaning cages. She continues to be in terrible pain from her bad back and urgently in need of any donations that can be sent her way. There's a link for CAUSE4CATS on the left side of the blog.

The monster mogs found a new way to torment me. Way up on a top storage shelf, I had a large box with a roll of bubble wrap in it. They knocked the box to the floor and my office is strewn with shredded bubble wrap. Strewn, I tell you!

Ariel continues to hide out in her box under the plank walkways. I haven't seen her budge outside of it for weeks. She must be coming out at night to eat, drink and use the boxes, but she's sure not coming out when I can see her. It's partially because of Zoe harrassing her, but also partially because she hates the kitten. She has decided that Mojo is a huge terrifying brain-eating kitten! I make a point of checking on her, putting my fingers in there for her and sometimes I gently stroke her a few times on the back. She hates that, silly girl, but I do it because I am determined that one day she will understand the pleasures of being petted by a human. Of course, she seems equally determined not to understand it. We shall see.

A business crisis yet to be resolved has been eating up my time for the past couple of days, consequently I'm late in posting that the Moggyblog: Tales of the Moggy Horde was chosen as the Blog of the Week by Franny Syufy's About Cats site. It's one of the entries for 10/18/06.

We're having problems with Harley, the large F2 Bengal or whatever-he-is that was left behind by his original owners. Another woman further down the street is taking care of him, but he's an outdoor cat who prowls around his old house across the street from us. He also thinks he owns our porch and yard. He's a beautiful cat, quite large, tan and black spotted and he really deserves to have his own dedicated people. We can't give him that. The problem is that he's attacking and driving away all the feral cats that we're trying to help. We wondered why we weren't seeing the usual cats. We also hadn't seen our friendly visitor, Bob, in about three weeks and we were worried that something had happened to him. Bob finally showed up again the other day, but now we can be sure the cause was Harley.

We had to chase Harley off several times in the past few days when he was attacking Bowie and Natasha (black female who was TNR'd by someone before us). Sadly, we have resorted to chasing Harley out of the yard with the garden hose. I hate to do it, but he is too much of a bully. He has a house with plenty of food right down the road. He'll have to learn to stay there.

Diva had almost completely healed up her hotspots, but today she has scratched open the spot above her right eye again. And I was feeling so hopeful about how well she was doing.

I found a mousie floating in the water bowl. It's amusing that the four kittens from the same litter, though separated when about five months old, have the same habit of dunking their mousie toy in the water. I put it on a high shelf in a bookcase to dry off. Jetta, Saffy and Zoe kept trying to climb the bookshelves to get to it. Perhaps the smell of wet catnip was too enticing.

We've had no luck catching the raccoon, primarily because the cage we borrowed is way too small. It's also getting very cold at night and we hesitate to have any creature caught outside in a trap when the temperature is dropping as much as it does at night. He may get away with his thievery for a while longer.

The Horde gets terribly excited when I have to move things around in my office. I've been rearranging my computer and a new monitor while I wrestle with variouis computer problems. In their excitement over the changed terrain to explore, Zoe knocked my keyboard and protective cover off the desk with such force that the keyboard fell apart into its respective pieces and the batteries popped out (it's a wireless keyboard). I had to put the pieces back together, after which the keyboard didn't work! Gaaahhh! I took out the batteries, put everything together again and now it works.

The office is a disaster area because my new monitor came packed in large styrofoam pieces and Saffy finds the styrofoam irresistible. You'd think it snowed in here. Or I have really bad dandruff. I was going to vacuum this morning only to discover that the cleaner bag is full and I'm completely out of spare bags. Therefore, the office is still a mess.

I've been worried about which cat has had the diarrhea lately, including a bit of blood in it. I figured maybe Kate or Theseus or one of the older cats. Then, while cleaning the catboxes, I discovered exactly who it was and it was someone I never would have suspected in a thousand years -- Jetta. In every other respect, she seems perfectly fine. Happy, healthy, active, etc. I don't know what to make of it.

Pippin was uncooperative about having his nails trimmed. Usually he's calm and utterly relaxed about it, but not today. This was a Do Not Touch The Claws day.

I put some chicken skins in a bowl for the feral cats last night. Around eleven, Opal became excited as she watched the front porch from the living room window. I heard the bowl being scooted around on the deck, which made me suspicious. I looked out the window and a large raccoon stared back at me. He had polished off the skins, but he took off when I went to the front door, leaving a trail of greasy chicken-fat soaked pawprints across the porch. I brought the dry food in for the night as there's no point feeding it to the raccoon. This afternoon, I borrowed a trap from a neighbor and with luck Mr. Coon will come back tonight and conveniently get himself caught. I hope.

A batch of moggy pics: Mojo, Pippin, Opal, Kate, Simon, Sapphire.

I gave the Horde a couple of new toys -- furry mice that are hollow and have a velcro opening so that I can stuff them with catnip. I used the last of my catnip stuffing the mice and sprinkling what was left on the "cat spa", then tossed the empty catnip cup container on the floor.

Hilarity ensued. Happy moggies rolled around on the floor. Jetta and Zoe were delirous over the mice. Afterwards, I tried to get Saffy to fetch the fishie. I tossed it, she gave me an owlish look and didn't budge. A minute later, she brought the catnip cup over and dropped it pointedly at my feet. LMAO! Do you think she was trying to tell me something?

And now I know that Mojo is a total catnip junkie. Here he is in the throes of his newfound addiction. "My Catnip, O My Catnip, how I love thee!"

Diva's hotspots are looking slightly better. Keep thinking positive thoughts in her direction.

I've tried using my thumbnail to gently scrape some of the dirt from Mojo's nose. He actually tolerates this better and it works better than anything else I've tried so far. But he still had a perpetual line of dirt across his nose.

Jetta is a lovely cat, but what a scruffy girl she is. She must not do a good job of grooming. I could brush her every day and she would still look scruffy. She's not fond of being brushed either, so that's not an easy job. After I brush her...she looks as scruffy as ever. Sigh....

It occurred to me that I might be able to at least reduce the damage Diva does to herself by trimming back the claws on her right rear foot, which would be the one she'd use to scratch her hot spots. She was extremely good about letting me do. She didn't budge or fuss at all. It may have helped, but it's too soon to be sure.

Kate is still throwing up, unfortunately. It's always liquid, rather than food, so I'm worried about her kidneys. It reminds me of what started happening with Knobby. I can't afford to get all the tests done on her right now, so I'll have to wait and hope she doesn't get worse.

Zoe continues to harrass Ariel. Ariel isn't hiding all of the time, I'm glad to say. Right now, she's in a cat bed to the right of my desk and....dammit! Even as I typed those words, Zoe chased her off. I don't know what else I can do except discipline Zoe each time I catch her at it, though that doesn't seem to be having much effect.

I ran into D., the owner of Tondo, at the post office the other day. Tondo is the dog that bit me. D. gave me lots of hugs and was emotional about seeing me again. We haven't talked since the dog attacked me. As I suspected, D. didn't have the heart to put Tondo down. He's setting up an electric fence enclosure with a shock collar on Tondo to make sure he doesn't get free again. I hope it works, but I won't be taking that walk any longer. D. also wants to give me money, enough to cover the torn clothing and a bit extra. I'm waiting to see whether he comes through with that.

The moggies have been having fun chasing the Red Bug. Saffy is so smart that she knows the subtle sound of me taking the laser pointer out of the desk drawer. She races over to me and instantly goes on alert, looking around for the Red Bug to appear, every muscle a-quiver. That sets off the other cats who gather around her. The hard part is trying to give each one of them a fair chance to chase it without running into one another.

I discovered that Opal hasn't lost interest in fetching the mousie. We've had nice fetching sessions for a couple of mornings. The trick, it turns out, is that Pippin can't be on the stairs or anywhere around or Opal simply abandons the game. I don't know why this is because she's never intimidated by Pippin in any other way. She holds her own with him in other forms of play. But for some reason, she won't fetch the mousie in his presence. I think it may be a female-deferring-to-male behavior. I've seen that in Saffy, too, when we play fetch the fishie. She'll drop the fishie rather than carry it past Puck or even Mojo, though she'll turn around and intimidate Mojo any other time. Ah, the mysteries of moggy psychology.

In keeping with the patterns of the past, the cortisone shot hasn't done much to keep Diva from scratching herself raw. The spot over her eye looks terrible tonight, blast it.

I haven't seen Zoe go after Ariel again in the past couple of days, but Ariel has been in hiding most of the time, unfortunately. She was getting happy and relaxed before this, so it feels like a setback.

I spent a bit over an hour at Cause4Cats this morning cleaning cat boxes, taking care of water and food. Lolette is in terrible pain from a back condition and her husband, Russ, is still recovering from a severely broken ankle, so they need all the help they can get. I wish I had more time to give them, but work is heating up suddenly and my schedule is about to become tighter than ever.

Cause4Cats is also in dire need of donations for food and litter, so if anyone can spare her a donation, please do. See the link on the left side of this page. Thanks.

I was unhappy and disturbed by Zoe's behavior today. She spent the afternoon chasing and harassing Ariel. Poor Ariel has gone into Deep Hiding, which is even worse than her usual hiding, plus she's growling, hissing and spitting each time Zoe comes near her. And with good reason, since Zoe was aggressively going after her. She chased Ariel away from getting a drink of water at one point. I grabbed Zoe by the scruff of the neck and has Serious Words with her. I have no idea why this is going on suddenly, but I need to put a stop to it immediately. Here I thought she was my darling sweet Zoe and instead she's turning into Miss Puckette.

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