Status Check -

[kyburg]

Because I hadn't mentioned it - but Mom came through the last procedure to remove the stent holding the ureter path to the stoma clear, in the office with no additional hospitalization needed. Now, they need to check that path to make sure it remains patent, but she might have an issue getting a referral to see the doctor within the window recommended.

And Sis isn't taking calls. WTF. Stay tuned, this is not a good sign on Sis' part. If she's tired of the follow-through that's required these days with insurance companies, doctor's office and just plain CYA all around - she needs to hand the job off. I've done it - and I can do it without complaining. Much.

Last night?

Kitten fucking meltdown. We came home to find both Ai-chan and Hiroshi with claw marks on their noses - looks like they both got bopped by either Rei or the Kid, and I need to check Rei completely to make sure she isn't hiding a claw mark or two of her own. What over?

Looks like the litterbox change to two rooms, two boxes in one, the large one in the other was not a good decision. Someone must have started guarding that box and the fun began.

Uh, there was also poo where poo does not belong, and I have a trip to make to IKEA this afternoon before I get home.

But it was the claw marks that got me - and to be honest, none of the cats had had claws clipped in too long for safety, so we rounded up the towel, the clipper...and Jim decided that small and cute was going to be a cinch.

Uh.

Small and cute EXPLODED when she discovered she was going to be wrapped in a towel and have her feet messed with.

Reader's Digest version? I had her wrapped in a towel howling while I screamed at Jim to put her mother in the bathroom behind a closed door. This is after she tagged me on the neck and alllll up and down my right arm, with some additional fun on the left. Little miss has no compunction about using all her claws, and her teeth - she has no hesitation to bite. The tag on the neck was of the most concern - she got stuck there and if I had allowed her to rip out of there, I would have been on my way to the ER with a torn jugular. TOO close - but I was able to hold her still long enough to get free, but it wasn't kind to little kitty.

"Let go" wasn't an option. Got the job done, but I've set the hand-shy issue back to square one. And I'm wearing a whole box of band-aids and neosporin today.

The other three? Piece of cake. Even Rei, who was easily convinced this was a Good Thing and nearly purred throughout, even after she began grooming the towel we'd had Kibo in. "Smells like scared baby," I told Jim.

Then we looked at the littler pans and decided that was at the bottom of the whole mess. They're going to get changed more than once a week from now on. "We forgot to do it Tuesday," he said. "We won't forget again now, will we?" I sniped back.

I'm not just clawed. I have bruises where I was punctured in some places. Scratches, sure. But I have grooves carved in some places.

Just before I'm to spend the weekend in the garden with my hands in the dirt. Lovely.

Got up at five this morning, after getting to bed at midnight (AGAIN) - to observe Rei calling Hiroshi out to play, and Hiroshi freaking out and running away. So she then did the same thing to Kibo, and the two of them wrassled around on the floor with great abandon. She wants to play.

Ai-chan? Hisses at everything. No surprise there.

And we moved the third box back into the same room with the other two.

I'm mortified. I was screaming at Jim nearly all the way through. And then made him change the boxes - all of them - while I was in the shower debugging myself with Dial soap, and then begged for help to get bandaged.

You can't get mad at a cat for being a cat - and I can't get mad at Jim for being completely unprepared. His experience with anything alive really does begin and end with people; he didn't have pets growing up and this is all new to him.

No, you can't soothe a mother cat down while the kitten is squalling across the room. You have to restrain her where she can't get to you while you deal with the squalling kitten. That's a small area with a door, with her behind it.

Poor little kitten, but I'm certain we had to do something about those claws - and will have to work harder with her on just about everything.

And the thought has crossed my mind, it has. Really, the load out there right now? I'd be kinder to put them both to sleep myself and save them the time in a shelter where the same thing would happen. Don't tell me to turn them loose, I won't. There are worse things than dying, and the life of a feral cat in Los Angeles? Please.

But I'm exhausted. And no end in sight.

Comments

[fufaraw]

Have you tried Rescue Remedy? It lowers the anxiety levels all round, and several feral adopters--um, adopters of ferals--recommend it.

I'm so sorry about the carving-up. I hope the hand-fear can be overcome with little setback. Poor cats. Poor you.

Just Goes to Show

[silverkun.livejournal.com]

Cats are evil. Eeeeeevil.

-R

[riverheart.livejournal.com]

Sympathy!

We trimmed the girls' claws on Saturday with a minimum of trouble; they were fairly cooperative, but then, I had Charles holding kitties while I did the trimming, and we've done this many times before. (Jasmine, our big black-and-white longhair, is the tough one to do, of the cats, and darn near impossible to give a bath to.)

I honestly find it easier to do with the cat not wrapped in a towel, because the wrapping seems to make the cat much less cooperative.

However, we've had to resort to keeping the bathroom sink and the bathtub filled with standing water except when we are actually using one or the other, because if we don't, Pixie poops in one or the other.

[poetpaladin.livejournal.com]

Ouch, Donna...

*hug*

[rhicat.livejournal.com]

Ouch! Much sympathy from a scar-bearing victim over here. Peroxide and Neosporin are going to be your best friends for the next few weeks.

Despite having had him since before birth, it still takes two people to trim my Tenchi-Akuma's claws. Bruce (with the bigger, stronger hands) scruffs the neck like a mommacat which results in mostly paralysis while I speedly clip the claws and check his extra toes. I tried wrapping him in a heavy terry bathrobe but he shredded his way out of it. He's five years old now and only starting to become less feral and more social. Time and patience, time and patience.

With the other skittish ones, I regularly handle and play with their paws while rewarding them with boiled chicken or turkey if they are good. The way to a cat's heart is through its stomach :-)

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Good luck to you--and thank you for being responsible about the animals. It's not easy.
Also, it is odd, how people raised with pets have acquired a whole set of reflexes that they're not even aware of until they realzie somebody else doesn't have them. I've had to show somebody how to hold out their hand to a large dog, for instance--palm up, coming in low down, *not* coming down high over the dog's head. Holding cats by the scruff, and so on.
As with kids, so much of it is paying attention to what the animal's response is, and a lot of non-pet-people haven't paid attention to non-verbal reactions that carefully before. Ears back=bad!!
Not sure of all the issues you may be dealing with, but we've never clipped claws on our cats, but we've also only had up to 4 at a time. The learning-weird-behaviors-from-each-other gets harder with more of them.
we had an engineer cat who loved to run toilet paper down the toilet, and step on the flush lever, just to see it twirl away. Yes, we caught him red-pawed, about four times. We *think* it grew out of his fascination with running water--Maine coon genes. And also--notice the complicity of humans here--the silly habits of those people who never remembered *putting the darn lid down*!!! I kid you not.)

Two of our rescue projects were pets, not feral but only near-feral, very hand-shy. They still aren't cuddlers, but after some years they do trust us, they'll come up to you if you're sitting down and quiet for awhile. (Dog people, sit still, and stop *yelling*...)
They became more comfortable over a period of year, year and a half, as they learned the einvironment was stable and nobody was going to startle them too much or too often.
What was a real pain was that they were pretty rough on grooming each other, and they had no idea how to control the use of their claws with people--any touch was claws in deep, any grooming touch involved biting. One of them liked to crawl up on the pillow when people were asleep, and chew on people's hair, and then bite. *That* got a few midnight eruptions!
(We also made copious use of the water spray bottle, though it's never in reach and handy when you need it!)
They'll never be quite normal pets the way a lot of people understand it, but they do like to be petted on their terms, they liked to come up and say hi, they lke to sit nearby and will end upf ollowing you around the house.
"I meant to be here all along!"

[moropus.livejournal.com]

They make little plastic claw covers you can super glue onto each claw. I don't know what they are called because we had our cats declawed.