I'm worried about Zebedee. I'm still finding diarrhea in the cat box, he seems to be getting thinner instead of gaining any weight, he's lost interest in his treats and he doesn't seem to have as much energy. I think I may try yet another vet in this area, one that was higly recommended by cat lovers. The only reason I haven't tried them yet is that they aren't located as conveniently for me to get to and that adds complication to my work schedule, but Zeb is worth the extra effort. Tomorrow I need to buy more of the special food and I'll ask the current vet to give me a copy of the tests they did so I can show them to the next vet. It's not that I expect another vet to tell me anything radically different, but it can't hurt to get another opinion.

We're getting a dozen birds or so at a time, causing Pippin and Opal to do much chattering.

Zebedee has been getting his new diet, which at $1.75 a can I can't afford to feed to the entire crew. I started giving him his bowl inside a carrier because he doesn't mind being in a carrier. Now he's so hip to the routine that he dashes into the carrier as soon as I open the door because he knows the food is coming.

Get this, his choice of meal is venison, duck or rabbit. Talk about a gourmet diet. The venison smells so good, I'm tempted to eat it myself, and the duck makes hungry for pate. I haven't been able to catch him in the act in the catbox, so I have yet to know whether there is improvement, though I suspect there is.

Slowly, the bird congregation is growing. I think the big count so far has been a whopping three birds in the yard at one time, but the word is getting out. At first, it was only finches. I've now seen a couple of sparrows, one Towhee, One Junco, and a blue jay. Oddly enough, the only birds who seem to understand using the feeder have been the finches. The rest of the birds have been scrounging on the ground.

Pippin has been lying by the glass doors chattering away. Oh, and the other day he got to chatter at a squirrel who also came by to scrounge some seed.

After two weeks on Metronidazole, Zebedee still has diarrhea, so I took a sample to the vet for the additional, specialized stool tests she wanted. I had severe sticker shot paying for them, I'll tell you what. I don't understand why the cost is so outrageous. The main thing is, they came back negative. The emphasis now is trying to get Zeb under control with diet, so I'm going to keep him (and the others) on the Science Diet dry, while Zeb gets this nice, ultra-expensive canned food to himself. The others get to have regular, off-the-shelf canned food.

Zeb nearly got tossed into the washing machine. There was a blanket left piled on top of the machine. I grabbed it to toss it into the washer and felt a heavy lump. Zeb was happily curled up in the depths of the blanket. I felt bad having to roust him out, but he relocated to my lap once I settled down in front of the computer.

We passed a pet store that was going out of business and had everything marked way down. Randy bought an enclosed cat bed thinking Opal would like it. But she prefers to stick to burrowing under the blankets, so I brought the cat bed to my office cats. Zebedee loves. Part of the time he lies inside it and part of the time he mashes it down and lies on top of it.

It took a week, but we finally had a house finch visit the bird feeder much to Pippin's combined delight and frustration. He didn't chatter at it, but he did meep.

Tosca has to check out the new bed first.

Zebedee makes himself at home.

Pippin says, "I has two mousies."

"MY mousies!"

Opal pursues the Red Bug.

Saffy has been more into playing fetch recently. Usually she brings me the plastic mouse husk which she loves to chase. Tonight she brought me the shredded remnant of a furry ball toy that remains firmly attached to the string and stick it came with. What cracked me up is that she would chase it and drag it back with the stick trailing along behind. Zebedee loved that. For a while there, Zeb played with the stick which would jiggle the furry blob and Saffy would yank on the furry blob which would jiggle the stick and so they kept one another occupied. Then Saffy ran off with the furry blob and Zebedee went bounding along after the stick. LOL!

We seem to have hit a plateau with Zebedee, in that I'm still finding fairly bad diarrhea in the catbox, but he seems to be doing okay otherwise. He decided he didn't like the pumpkin anymore, so I had to give up on feeding him that. I won't be satisfied until he gets over the runs and starts putting on some weight so I don't feel his bones when I pet him.

I made the mistake of storing a new bag of birdseed in my office. Zebee would not leave that bag alone. He ripped it open and I had birdseed EVERYWHERE. There went my spare moments tonight, sweeping up the blasted birdseed.

We finally got around to putting up the bird feeder in the back yard, but it's been up for a couple of days and we have yet to see a single bird. We don't get any birds coming here. So far, I've only seen a hummingbird visiting the flowers on the rosemary bush in the back and some other flowers in the front yard. I hope some birds eventually discover the feeder. I love a bit of casual birdwatching, and Pippin really loves it.

I think Zebedee is slowly getting better. He's acting more like his bouncing little self. Last time I caught him in the catbox, he still had diarrhea, but not quite as bad as it was. He hasn't been on the Metronidazole all the long, so I hope to see more improvement.

I noticed organic pumpkin puree while we were shopping at Whole Foods today and it reminded me that pumpkin is supposed to be very good for cats with diarrhea. I bought a can and gave a dollop of it to Zeb tonight. He gobbled it down with his usual enthusiasm.

My computer has a Thermaltake case, which has a door that covers the on-switch, DVD drawers and so on. Then there's a second door with a filter in it that protects the front fan. I periodically open the second door to clean the filter. I hadn't done it in a while, ahem, and I was staggered by the pads of cat hair that had somehow managed to work its way through both doors *and* the air filter to plaster itself against the grill of the fan. Cat hair...it can infiltrate ANYTHING.

Saffy was sitting in such a way that the tip of her tail was poking up between her hind feet, and of course it was twitching. She kept biting at this irritating thing that was tickling her, silly girl. I wish I could remember the definition I once read of a cat that went something like this: "CAT: a small furry animal with a separate lifeform attached to its butt."

Quite a few people showed up at work in costume for Halloween, but by far my favorite was the woman who came as a LOLCAT. She donned cat ears, a tail and wore signs on front and back that read "I can has candy?" and "KTHXBAI". LOL!

I was upstairs getting ready for bed last night when I heard a loud CLATTER-CRASH that sounded like half the house coming down around our ears. I raced downstairs to find a mess in the kitchen. The dry food bowl had been overturned and cat food scattered across the floor. The heavy ceramic water bowl couldn't be overturned, but all the water was in the large puddle on the floor (with the cat food) and splashed across the walls! Randy had been downstairs and said when he raced in, he saw Pippin tangled in the vertical slats over the sliding glass doors in a panic, trying to fight his way free of them. We tried to puzzle out what on earth could have happened to spook Pippin so badly and how he managed to empty the water bowl with such force, but an explanation eluded us.

Zoe and Simon, who are being fostered by Lolette at Cause4Cats, were nearly adopted today. I received an email from Randy at work that Lolette needed to get in touch with me because she had a woman who had fallen in love with them and wanted to adopt them. By the time I was able to get back to Lolette, it was took late. The woman had adopted two other cats. I have deeply torn feelings about this. On the one hand, it would break my heart to have them adopted out. On the other hand, I have no idea how long it might be before I can get into a living situation where I could have them with me again and it would be better for them to be in a good home as soon as possible. So I gave Lolette my permission to let them be adopted if the chance presents itself again.

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