Cat Sitting

Renown dog sitters (us) will now be cat sitting - eight of them.

Okay - Inky, Hoops (aka Hoopy), Harry .... um, ah .... Webster, Harvest, Billy .... let me think ... oh yes, Marcus, and Ali (aka Uncle Al).

Who goes out and who stays in, who has the run of the house? Who eats what and where? Who cuddles? Who attacks? Who sleeps where?

Written test tomorrow.

 

Barney the Neighbourhood Cat Comes Home

Rose Mary and Tony picked up Barney at the vet's office last Wednesday. They worried that he might run away as soon as the cage door was opened but he was fine and settled down to a bowl of food.

He came down the hill to visit us the same day and has shown up regularly since. He was sleeping on a patio chair this morning so perhaps he stayed overnight. Yesterday, he and and our cat Genny were lying on the grass looking very content and enjoying the sun and breezes - they reminded me of cows in the meadow chewing their cuds.

Cost for neutering Barney: 14,000 colones or about $28 CAD and that included worm pills.

Genny and the Cane Toad

It is said that cats have nine lives. If this is indeed true, Genny is rapidly using them up. She certainly is chipping away at the only one I have.

This morning she had an encounter with a cane toad, known here as sapo grande. The scientific name is Bufo marinus. They look like this ....

.... and this was a small one that I photographed a year ago. They are poisonous - as eggs, as tadpoles, as adults. The venom is secreted or possibly squirted.

At around 6:30 am today, Lance saw Genny backing away from a toad and she ran up onto the patio. Sure enough, she started drooling profuse salivation which told us she had contacted the venom. We had educated ourselves on what to do for a cat if this happens so we immediately washed her mouth out with two large glasses of water, then wiped the gums, teeth and mouth with a wet cloth. If I had been thinking more clearly, I would have used the garden hose - on a trickle of course - to more thoroughly rinse the poison out.

You have to be very careful not to force any liquids down the animal's throat - it could go into their airway. After this treatment, we watched to see if she would vomit, have difficulty breathing, stagger, convulse - thank goodness, none of this happened.

Given the current state of her overall health, we decided to get her to her vet in Santa Ana as a precaution. They said we did all the right things, including bringing her in for observation. She was due to go back this Thursday morning anyway for more renal blood work, so we opted to leave her in their good hands until then. It's stressful for her to be travelling back and forth.

People who live in Costa Rica and have pets already know about the cane toad but it can't be repeated often enough that we must keep our animals away from them. There is a lot of very good information on the internet also.

Barney Don't Need No Stinkin' Street Signs!

This is Barney, a young unneutered male cat who showed up at our house about four or five months ago. He was also visiting neighbors, in particular Tony and Rosemary. We named him Barney the Barn Cat because he's welcome to stay around outside, but we are not turning him into an indoor pet cat. With the year 'round good weather we experience, he does fine outdoors.

Barney and Genny became instant friends. Barney has a very loud voice and doesn't enjoy being petted or touched very much - perhaps being unneutered makes him more aggressive. He was on the thin side so we started feeding him whenever he showed up. He would hang around for a while, then go on his way.

We decided to do him a favor and have him neutered, inoculated and treated for anything else, like ticks or worms. We started feeding him inside Genny's airline carrier and eventually he was comfortable eating in there.

Two months ago, when we had the use of a vehicle, Lance shut the door on the carrier, loaded Barney into the car and off they went to Atenas and the vet. Right outside the vet's office, as Lance was unloading the carrier, Barney made a break for it and escaped thru the bottom half of the carrier's door. Either it wasn't secured or he somehow opened it and the space he escaped through was quite small. He was last seen running down one of Atena's streets. Lance felt terrible about it, of course, and we've always wondered what Barney's fate had been. There are so many dogs in Atenas, many running loose.

Whose face was staring through the glass patio door this morning? Barney's of course. Like any Costa Rican, he didn't need street signs to navigate his way back from Atenas, two to three miles away, to our house in Vista Atenas. It took him two months.

He looks pretty good considering. We are going to try again to get him neutered. If we can get him in the carrier, Tony and Rosemary will drive him to the vet and we'll split the cost of his treatments.

Thank You Very Much, Tuffy

Here are three things that do not mix: water, library books and curious cats.

I always have a large plastic container of water next to my side of the bed, plus a current library book. Reading is relaxing and the water takes care of night time thirst. There is a lid on my water jug, with a hole for a straw but water can still escape.

It was inevitable, I guess - either Genny or Tuffy would one night knock the water jug over. Sure enough, that is what Tuffy did last night. Trouble is, I didn't realize it until this morning so the book was good and soaked - and ruined. I also had the pleasure of stepping in the wet carpet.

I even tried ironing the pages to flatten and dry them - does no good. So, the upshot is that I had to pay full price for a used, wrecked book plus $8.00 to cover the replacement book's preparation for the shelves.

Who Dunnit?

This has absolutely nothing to do with moving to Costa Rica, but it's good for a laugh. The three pictures below show what I found in our dining room when I came home today. My husband says he didn't do it, so that leaves our cat Genny (you can see her head in one of the photos) or the cat that is not ours, but moved in anyway.

Froggy was a gift from a good friend of mine a few Christmases ago - he keeps breaking his legs and this will be the third time he needs surgery. He spends the summers in the garden and comes indoors for the winter. Always has a smile on his froggy face and forever paddles through life on his lilypad.

Costa Rican Furniture

Why drag your old used furniture down to Costa Rica when you can rent a furnished house OR go shopping here in San Jose:  www.laartistica.net/main.php?.action=quienes.

All the corners of our 3 year old sofa and loveseat have been shredded by our cat Genny and her visiting feline neighbour friends. I think they leave messages for each other. The condition of our furniture is why we are not shipping it to Costa Rica but I wonder what we can do with it.