Kellbot!

I am a part-time cat lady. Most of the year, I am too busy to be willing to deal with a pet. But during kitten season the local shelter posts photos of homeless kittens on their Facebook page, and I am powerless to resist.

This time, I went in to pick up what I thought was a family of a mom and 3 kittens who were about six weeks old. I left with a box with a mother and 5 kittens, whose eyes were still closed. At this size, they’re almost too little to be cute. Almost.

As many of you know, I have terrible luck with foster cats. There is always some sort of medical emergency. I am assured that this is because all stray kittens are horribly broken, and at least at home they can get better care, but still. Why I thought this litter would be different is beyond me.

But before I tell the story of Yet Another Cat Emergency, here’s a video of the kittens this morning. They are looking cuter and fuzzier today, and their ears are starting to look like ears.

Ok, so cat drama. After eating some and drinking some, I noticed Mother Goose, the mom cat, sitting off to the side of the crate, away from her babies. Then when one kitten started crying, she stood up… and I could see she was sitting in a pool of blood. COMMENCE FREAKOUT.

After a panicked call to the vet, I learned two things: the kittens were less than 48 hours old, and it’s “not uncommon” for queens to bleed for a few days after giving birth. I was given a checklist of a few signs to look for that would indicate problems (Mother Goose had none), where to buy levitra and then proceeded to clean up the omg eww cat blood.

Chris then informed me that a similar thing happens to humans after giving birth! Oh, great! So much to look forward to!

This past weekend we went camping in upstate New York. We stayed at North-South Lake Campground in the Catskills. Originally we’d planned to have a group of 10, but with a 30% chance of storms many of our indoor-cat friends bailed. Their loss, because the weather was absolutely beautiful.

Since there was rain in the forecast, we put tarps up above the tents (and I put one under ours for extra protection). Unfortunately none of us knew any fancy knots (please don’t tell my scout leader) so tying them in the trees was a bit of an adventure. But we figured it out.

Then, in a display of manliness, two of our friends decided they should swim to a nearby island. The air temperature was in the 60s, and the water was much, much colder.

It wasn’t quite as doomy as this photo makes it look, but it was indeed overcast.

The plan was to then pick them up in a canoe. However, when we got over the canoe rental we discovered we needed a drivers license to rent one, which we did not have. So we told the guys they would have to swim back. They were, as you might imagine, a bit disappointed by this.

There were only a few very light showers during the day, I don’t think any of them lasted more than 5 minutes. The showers did however give us a DOUBLE RAINBOW ALL THE WAY. Oh, is that meme over?

We grilled lots of meats, and it was delicious. We also made banana boats, where you take a banana and slit it down one side, then fill it with marshmallows and chocolate. Wrap it in tinfoil and set it on the coals for a while. You then eat the resulting banana goo with a spoon.

It did rain all night, but thanks to the tarps only the front two corners of our tent got any rain on them at all. We stayed nice and dry inside.

In the morning, we took oranges, sliced them in half, ate the orange, and then put cinnamon roll dough (the kind that comes in a can) inside. As with the bananas, wrap in tinfoil and put on the fire. You end up with a slightly orangy cinnamon roll. It is amazing.

We finished the trip with a half mile hike to a huge waterfall, and then a trip to Cracker Barrel.