Hug Your Cat Day June 4th .... gift Did you miss it? You can still get the bookmarks and hug your cat...

Hug Your Cat Day June 4th

DID YOU MISS IT?  You can still get the bookmarks and HUG you cat.

For Hug Your Cat Day or Any Day, Free bookmarks!

 WHY!

• they're your companions,
• petting them reduces stress,
• playing gives them and you exercise in an easy manner,
• activity, movement and burning calories,
• think of all that bending, crawling under sofas, fun you'll have,
• You will--cat and human enjoy it. 
• PDF format, ready to print in color as above.
• everyone needs bookmarks - give some to friends!

GIFTING           

If you have a friend who needs some help with confidence and self-esteem we have Grayce the Talking Calico Fable 

photo book (words affect you).

Printable color PDF.

• Done with cat photos
• suitable for all levels 

Reflection exercises are included as well.

Find it here.

 

Cats and International Cat Day Celebration August 8th

International Cat Day- August 8th

Hey Everyone!

Grayce here it's that time of year again!

...International Cat Day!!!!  

It's a great time to remember all the serenity we bring to your life.  Or as goes on around here the chaos!

Mom says I've gotten very mean since none of us have flea problems anymore.  Just because I stake a claim to the hallways, the TV room, the bedrooms, the dining room, kitchen, and growl at anyone who tries to trespass. 

Biggles chases me just because I growl at him.  Then I scream and run and hiss. Gets Mom mad.  She can't understand why I do that as he's twice my size and muscular.  

Buddy!

Buddy is still with us and holding his own.  He liked it when it was cooler and he could go out, we could leave the door from the lanai and house open and we could all wander in and out.  Can't do that when it "feels like" 103. UPDATE:  2021 Actually Buddy passed in August of 2020. A grand old cat. He's with all his family friends.

We are holding our own in this pandemic and being in one of the hotspot states makes it even harder.  We hope everyone stays safe and hopeful that this will ease at some point for the whole world.  UPDATE:  2021 Our human Dad passed recently due to breakthrough Covid Delta. The state being number 3 in hot spots, just the sort of record you want to be known for. PLEASE get the vaccine!  Innocents are passing.

Since we're all watching our budgets I wanted to share some of my Grayce Cooks photos.  Maybe they'll cheer you up some.  It's a kindle version.  Put together a print version, but it's so photo-centric it'll be priced way out of whack, so haven't done it.  

  

Want more?

Homage to Buddy-A Great Cat's Walk Through His Heaven

 Our Buddy and His Friends!

Buddy has taken his last long walk.  On August 16, 2020, he made a peaceful transition to Cat Heaven.

He was so proud of his homemade bed!

                Just rearranged the stuff and plopped right down on it!

8/16/2020  Buddy has moved on to a higher plane to be with all our other adopted strays.  He quietly passed today.  It’s bittersweet, he had lost so much weight, but was eating, drinking and liking the master bathroom as his rental home.  He was such a gentle giant with all the others and there were a lot over the years.  We’re gathering the photos and will have to scan some in, as we don’t seem to have digital photos of 1 of the cats that he will be reunited with. We just can't find Mittens' photos.

It’s been difficult to not see him, he was such a presence for so long.  The gentle giant of the household.  He was the calm one, the tolerant one, the one who caused no problems, the one who loved all people as well as cats.

He loved presents and boxes

Buddy and Lily

Buddy and Baby

Buddy and Rusty

Buddy and Grayce

    Buddy and Biggles

Roll Call

It fit in our hand, found on a dark Halloween night. A pure black cat on a black night on a blacktop road in the rain.  Our downstairs neighbor kept asking – how is it? And we’d say it’s fine.  By the time he was big enough for us to know what he was, he’d concluded IT was his name. He was part Siamese. The vocal part, 10/31/1992 – 4/4/2014

Corkette (Corky) found us when we moved in, she had cuts and gashes was around 7 months old. A long legged, thin long cat and long tailed--Abyssinian  1/1996 -12/23/2010

Tom T. Hall came with the house as we discovered.  Had no home, showed up 3 times a day for meals, loved walking on a harness around the neighborhood. Had no voice, but could purr.  A large gray and white tux. 1989-90-5/31/2011

Casper pure white used to hiss and we could only pet him when he was eating.  He became a lap cat.  He was our Angel Fund Cat with cancer of the eye.  1998-3/8/2008

Mittens showed up on a cold Thanksgiving, thought she was a kitten, she was small, but turned out to be 2-3 years old.  For 7 years the rest of the cats didn’t know that the sliding screen door could be opened.  Mittens showed them how to get out.  Including Casper, who was blind from cancer by then. She was a black and white. 2001 – 5/14/2011 We know we have photos of her, just not where they are.

Lily Marlaine was about a year or less when she started coming to eat. Someone broke her back and we saw her dragging herself up our driveway to come eat as we got home from work.  Another immediate trip to the vet. The back left her with a limp and difficulty walking and jumping.  Lily then developed a thyroid condition as she got older, you couldn’t pill her.  Compounded medicine rubbed in her ears twice a day was the routine and that was not to her liking.  She was a pretty black and white tux.  7/1/2005-1/2/2016.

That leaves Squeekie as our oldest rescue at 10 and the kittens at 7 now, already!  Biggles/Big G came in Hurricane Hermine, he's grown up here.  He's filled out and since we're rid of fleas now for 2 years, he looks great.

That's our little family over the years. They've been missed each was unique.

Buddy Finds a Home

Buddy's Story   

What are we looking at?

 Buddy first came to our attention when he began showing up in our driveway. We fed strays outside, who it seems ended up inside eventually.

We thought he had a home and didn't pay much attention he would eat whatever the others didn't. He has always been a pushover at the food bowl. A real gentleman.

He was friendly, we did notice he didn't have any front claws, which we thought was a.) cruel, b.) not ideal for a cat to be outside.

He adopted the name "Buddy". We'd say, Hi, how're doing buddy when he would show up. And he decided it was his name.

Working his way into the house

We came home from work one night and found he had a deep hole like gash and fur missing on his neck, from someone/something. Without any front claws he had no way to defend himself. Rushed him to the Vet for cleaning and repair.

He became a house cat. 2008

With Baby Grayce 2014 

He’s our Greeter:  Rusty is our watchcat- if he sees anyone coming up the walk, he growls and runs to the other side of the house to hide.  Buddy is right there, saying Hi, come on in.  I like people.  

With Baby Rusty 2014

It's my bed, I made it..  2014 

You know what else I like.  

Christmas, so much fun.  

Xmas 2015  

Love the boxes, the stuff, not so much.  2016

                     

Cautious Update

After a week and a half of the new diet experiment, he’s been having fewer splats, more contained and some normal.  He did throw up for the first time in 2½ months, but that was because he got into some mashed potatoes and they didn’t agree with him.  Nix that forever.  Those who have the mashed potatoes work for their ill cats, I applaud you.  We tried and it’s been a failure. There are only so many options and we are keeping our fingers crossed as we continue this regime.

The photos are from a homage we are trying to put together on Buddy.  We are finding that we have a lot of photos missing from 2008 to 2013.  We have some printed copies, but not scanned and even those are sparse. 

TIP:  If you have family that you take for granted, remember they aren't forever.  Make sure you have photos and other reminders for your memory box and label them.  You won't remember when you need to down the road.  

Buddy's Life-Getting Old is....

Buddy Sickness

If you are familiar with our blog you know that we have an older and ill cat.

We have been quiet on this end as we are dealing with Buddy's illness. 

He was better for a while, even gained some weight.

He was playing and even running around.

But things have gone downhill in a hand-basket rather quickly.  We aren't able to contain the diarrhea, got the vomiting under control and gone, BUT. 

He's continued to drink and stay hydrated, giving him homemade pedialite, chicken soup, water and water.   He's continued to lose weight and pumpkin and other remedies are not doing it. He's 15 and it appears it's his time soon. 

Buddy with Baby in 2014 she was 6 months old.

You can get a sense of how big he was in the photo.  That’s him with Baby when she was six months old in 2014.  At most she's 7 pounds.  He’s never really been a lap cat, but boy can he purr… sitting next to you.

He's always been a huge cat, has pretty blue eyes, even though they are crossed, he's been agile over the years. Not so now that he's dwindled away. 

He’s hanging on, and the constant diarrhea is slowly turning into smaller, less runny splats. BUT still splatty.

Changing the diet to deal with this

Thank goodness the vomiting stopped. His appetite is good and we’ve beefed it up with food that has grains in it mixing the wet and dry foods into a mush for him.  We leave dry food, but he ignores it until we wet it. Hence the mix of wet and dry mush. We tried the chicken with rice, the chicken with mashed potatoes, no go on either. Tried just plain canned chicken, cooked pieces of chicken breast.  Nada!

The vexing part of this is that it alternates from a good to splatty all in one day.  We can’t get a handle on what is working.

We’re seeing some improvement in the splats with the grain food and canned food.  We’re trying not to get too optimistic and too hopeful.  Because we’ve been down this road before with him.  So roller coastery –probably not a word-but it describes the emotional toll of the ordeal.

No more grain-free for him, the others have problems with the dyes, so they are still on grain-free and are okay.  I, Grayce and Rusty used to throw up the food with red dyes all the time. 

The pumpkin worked for a while, the antibiotic, unfortunately killed all the good flora and can’t be used much and it didn’t do anything anyway.  He won’t take yogurt or yogurt drinks to counteract the antibiotic damage. Tommy who had chronic impacted bowels was easy.  Tommy loved the yogurt and it was great for him.  Biggles loves yogurt, he’s not sick. Isn’t it always the way?

Squeekie will miss him very much, she's not a people cat, but a Buddy cat, she's 10.

Squeekie 

Baby will miss him too, that's her pal, her favorite target to headlock.  The tiny 7 pounder taking a flying wrestling leap at the 25 pounder was always fun to watch.  She has taken to just tiny head-butts and a soft head rub without knocking him down.  As a kitten she took care of It, until he passed.  Now 7 years later, her Buddy is going.