Tales of the Moggy Horde or How I learned To Stop Worrying And Love Bast

Or post comments at: Facebook Moggyblog

Christy Marx likes

Moggyblog

Create your Like Badge

Baby rat #4 met its demise during the night. It was waiting for me at the bottom of the steps into my office. I carried it outside and left it in the back yard where it quickly became breakfast for a lucky crow.

The day has passed quietly with no more baby rats making an appearance, but somehow Zoe managed to snag a teeny-tiny, itty-bitty skink. I rescued it and placed it in the garden where it lay limp and looked like it was in bad shape, though it could have been in shock. I went out to check on it an hour later and it was gone, so hopefully it's alive and well somewhere in our garden.

As I expected, I found the baby rat dead when I came into my office this morning. The cats had left it next to the water bowl. Considering how much they like to drown their toy mousies, and recently I found the fuzzy ball dunked in there, I should be glad they didn't leave the baby rat IN the water bowl.

By Bast, Jetta is a demon mouser. By mid-morning, she flushed out baby rat #3. I managed to snare this one a wastebasket while Jetta was toying with it. It was in much better shape than the previous one I rescued. He went outside into the garden.

Now it's mid-afternoon and she's flushed out baby rat #4! This one is holed up in a safe place for the moment where neither Jetta nor I can get at it. Eventually, it will have to move and then I'll either get a chance to rescue it or Jetta will score another kill.

Norway rats can have litters of anywhere from six to fourteen pups, so this may go on for a while.

Yesterday, the landlord had a contractor come around and rat-proof the outside of the house. He replaced the hatch to the crawlspace beneath the house, fixed other holes in air vents where rats had chewed openings, and replaced the exterior vent for the dryer.

But what this also means is that we have some rats trapped under the house. And the baby rats have found a way into my office. This morning, Ferocious Huntress aka Jetta caught a baby rat. She then played Torment & Release with the poor, little squealing thing. Then Tosca got hold of it and played with it. Finally, I put on some leather work gloves and with the aid of a flashlight, a box and long rod I went to the rescue. I hauled a bunch of junk aside until I could get at the shelves where the rat was hiding. I used the rod to flush it out and it ran into the box. It didn't look terribly mangled, so I took it ouside and let it go in the garden. Yeah, we're softies like that.

Now it's mid-evening and Jetta just caught ANOTHER baby rat and once again has lost it at the same set of shelves. I will confess that this time I'm letting the situation be. I'm not in the mood to go hunting baby rats again. I suspect one of them will catch it during the night.

But I must say, Jetta is quite the good mouser. Tosca has always been a good mouser. Zoe seems mildly interested and not sure what to do about it.

Randy has spotted the pretty calico around the yard a couple of times in the past few days. She always takes off in a panic once she's been seen and she always runs off in the same direction. I suspect a neighbor's cat has discovered that our yard is full of yummy critters.

I haven't taken Zoe to the vet as yet. I've been weighing her to see whether she's continuously losing weight or whether this is a more normal weight for her. When she was on the tranks and getting tubby she weighed around 12.4 lbs. The first time I weighed her, she was at 11.4. About a week later, she weighed in at 11, and a fews days after that (today) she was at 11.1. There's bound to be some natural variation, so I'll keep doing this and see how it goes. I haven't found any sign at all of tapeworm.

I'm still getting bitten by fleas. The three office girls had a Frontline treatment at the beginning of the month and will get another one at the beginning of next month. I hope I don't carry them into the house!

Ikea performs an experiment in cat-herding. They let 100 cats loose in one of their stores overnight.

Your laugh for the day: Advanced Cat Yodelling. If you didn't see their first video, you should watch that one, too: An Engineer's Guide to Cats.

It looks like I need to take Zoe to the vet. She's continued to lose weight, rather than settling into a slightly lower weight. Also, I've been finding lots of vomit around the office, but couldn't catch who was doing it until yesterday when I found Zoe throwing up. I don't know for sure it's all coming from her, but combined with the weight loss, it has me worried. Oddly, she seems fine in every other respect. She's energetic, playful, eats well, etc. But always in the back of my mind is that worry about FIP because she was around Zeebeedee as a kitten. I foresee blood tests and a big vet bill in my near future.

Randy and I sat down to watch an episode of Warehouse 13. It's a chilly night, so I was wearing a heavy flannel shirt over a turtleneck. Saffy loves to worm her way inside my shirt, wrap herself around my back and pin me down to the sofa while snuggling in her "cave". When it was finally time for me to get up, I surrendered the shirt and left her as she was, happily hiding inside it.

I've being bitten to death by something, leaving little red bites that itch like crazy. Sounds like flea bites, but I haven't seen any indications at all of the cats having fleas. No scratching, no obvious signs of fleas on them. In the past, I could easily catch fleas if they got on me and started biting, but I haven't been able to spot a single one. Randy isn't getting bitten, though, and he's as susceptible to flea bites as I am. That leads me to suspect that the girls in my office have fleas once again, even if they aren't showing obvious signs.

I had to deal with a minor flea problem last summer after at least one baby rat (quickly deceased) got into the office, so I can't be too surprised if that's what it is. I made a quick visit to the vet's office and Zoe, Tosca and Jetta have had their Frontline treatment for the month. Hopefully, it means my own misery will slowly come to an end.

		Animal	All Bird Cat Dog Horse Pig Rabbit Reptile Small&Furry	Breed		Zip Code