Cat update

Jeeves seems chipper again; he hasn't had any accidents since the (heh) run he had of them earlier. We've been feeding them wet food, per the vet's instructions, and have been working harder on making sure that their water dishes have filtered water instead of the very hard tap water that we have. I suspect that we're ashamedly bad at keeping cat water fountains maintained -- the pumps seem to burn out after a while -- but have decided that rather than trying to get the right tiny, submersible size of replacement pump for our fountain that we'd just get another fountain. The falling water encourages cats to drink, we're told (they certainly find it more *interesting* than a water bowl), so we now have a fountain back in service. I also splurged and got a type of kibble bowl that has a cover with holes in it so that cats have to fish out kibble in order to eat it. Supposedly it makes them eat less because they have to work for it. ;-)

We made bets as to which cat would figure out how to get the kibble out first, but we both lost and Jeeves figured it out first, the clever boy. He has always been the one to try and decode the timer food box and push it past its last tooth at 8:45am, so I suppose we shouldn't be that surprised.

We'll probably go back to the timer bowl and dry food if we go on vacation, but for now, I'd say that their water intake is definitely higher than it was. We're to get Jeeves' urine re-tested in a month to see if we've managed to reduce the crystal concentration.

Also on the subject of cats, today was the turn-in day for Momcat (they're all called "Momcat"!), a.k.a. Juliet, the feline mother of my 6 foster kittens. A space opened up at the Humane Society's satellite adoption center at a Petco, so I was to deliver her this morning. When I went into put her in a carrier, however, I noticed that her teats seemed a bit larger than one would think this long after her kittens had been weaned, and I felt some hard areas inside. So, to be safe, I swung by the HSSV (if you can call it that, being in the opposite direction) for a quick sanity check. They squeezed me in, and the vet tech took a look, hmmed, managed to get a moment of a vet's time, she took a look, took Juliet's temperature, and decided that she was just late to dry up, and that she didn't have mastitis, and was good to go. They'd make a note in her medical records so that any adopter would know what was going on. Huzzah! Reassured, I thanked everyone and drove back down to Petco and dropped Juliet off. There were 3 people there, with some big cages and also an open area where some cats were socializing with each other. She seems in good hands.

Meanwhile, four of her six kittens were adopted at the Humane Society over the weekend. The only ones left are Foxtrot, the solid black (not a big surprise; the color isn't very popular) and Yankee, the longhaired brown tabby. That one I'm surprised about; perhaps longhairs aren't as popular as shorthairs? Yankee would have been the kitten I'd have taken; he has his mother's love-everybody personality, loves to plunk himself down between your feet, and loves to have his tummy rubbed. Hopefully they'll both find good homes soon.