Monthly Archives: October 2017

Oct21

Iggy Update

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We visited with Iggy kitty today. He is completely relaxed at the Vet’s office: nothing seems to get him upset. Doc mentioned how chilled out he is with a bit of surprise or admiration, not sure which!

His face is still leaking from the abscess but it is healing. He made sure to rub goo and drool all over me and hubby. My chin was a bit crusty afterward – Iggy loves to be held close and give sloppy headbutts. 

Of course, he is still full of love and cuddles – he didn’t want me to set him down! Quite the drool machine, too, and got so excited to see me he did nip a little, but not hard. The excitement overwhelmed his little kitty circuits at first. 

They are letting him heal for a bit longer and will do the neuter on Monday. He can go to a new home on Monday evening, if I can find one. I have a new coworker who is interested, and he got permission from his mother, but I’m a little concerned as I don’t know him well. Iggy needs to be kept inside as he has no sense of danger, it seems. I don’t know if this guy has really understood that, yet. I sent him a text yesterday but had no reply, which doesn’t speak well to his dedication to the idea of taking Iggy in. Or on. I expect Igs will be a bit of a challenge. 

He is using the litter box in the cage no problem – we saw him do it!

Doc N agrees that our two-cat one-dog household is very stable, especially with how Lumi loves all over the dog and Siamese Lokii. He thinks that introducing another cat would be a bad idea for our current happy family. We showed him pictures of Lumi cuddling with Lokii and hanging out beside the dog. The first thing he said was, ‘Don’t mess with this, it’s rare and easily broken.’

Going to be about €150 if he goes home somewhere Monday evening; if he stays longer it is €15 a day.

Oh, and he needs a bath still. He’s rubbish at the washing up. I’d make a joke about him being the typical male, but none of us believe in stereotypes or think they are funny! I’ll save that one for the work lads.

No new pictures, I didn’t think of it and the doc was closing up for the evening. Here’s a blurry older one. 

Oct19

Iggy’s Adventurous Day

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Yes, I named him. Since he comes when I call for Peggy (and just to confuse things further, I call Piggy Piggy Piggy when I’m looking for her), I chose a rhyming name. Iggy it is.

It rained nonstop from when I got to work until 1:30 when I went to lunch. First thing I did on my break was get soaked while walking around the building calling and looking for him. No sign of him, or Peggy. To be expected in the rain, really, but it worried me for my plans.

I sat in an open doorway and ate my lunch, looking for him and hoping he would come to where he last saw me the day before…nothing. Just as I was about to go back to work, my phone rang. It was my favourite coworker. 

“Get in here, quick! Your cat is in the warehouse! The managers are all right here, they will freak out!”

I bolted for the area Iggy was in, wrapped him up in a moving blanket and took him back outside. I gave him a can of tuna, closed the door, took all my stuff back to my workbench and went back out to see how he was….no cat.

He was already back in the warehouse, as comfortable as he could be. Shit!

Another coworker was bringing her carrier in, but she was still at lunch. Shit shit shit.

I couldn’t leave him in there. He followed me everywhere. It is a crazy busy place, not safe for little kitties! Not to mention getting me in big trouble for encouraging him.

Another of my favourite lads said that there was someone in the office who wanted him. So I went and got her. Iggy-to-be loved all over her…but also tried to bite her twice. She is very young, still lives at home, and had to ask her parents if she could bring him home that night. To make the hours I waited shorter, the answer eventually was no. Well, maybe for the best. Iggy never tried to bite me.

Eventually the carrier arrived, and I popped the remainder of the tuna inside. I’d also brought in a tee shirt of mine as bedding and to hopefully make him feel safer when caged – familiar smell and all. He went right in. Door closed…tuna gone…the howling commenced. I covered the carrier with the moving blanket, but he was going a bit berserk, pulling the blanket into the carrier. And noisy? Oh yeah.

He calmed down a bit, but not before one of the aforementioned managers said I should move him to an outlying building in case the Big Boss heard him. So I did.

I rang hubby to give the update, and he suggested I ring the vet and ask if I could bring him in tonight. It would be a huge favour. I work until 6:30 and the vet we love is 45 mins away from where I work, even when someone drives as fast as I do. The doc on duty said he would wait for me. This is why we love this place!

I made it in 35 minutes, due to very little traffic. Iggy was incredibly good in the car, I have to say! I covered the carrier again, and that may have helped. He did pee on my shirt, however. I don’t blame him one bit.

On arrival, he came out of the carrier not in a rush but happy to be free and happy to see me and be loved on again. Doc Richard squeezed the abscess and it…fizzed. Like spit bubbles. He said it was oxygen generated by the bacteria festering in Iggy’s cheek. Iggy didn’t complain or try to get away, either. Instead he rubbed the bacteria juice on me, yay!

Doc said he is between 2 and 4 years old, and has been indoors before by his behaviour. Not just in a warehouse, but a real house. He gave Iggy an antibiotic shot which was huge and only hurt him toward the end of the syringe. It was a lot of cc’s. Doc Richard also pointed out that the small wound by Iggy’s ear is the other side of the bite that caused the abscess.

Best of all, Richard thinks that Iggy will easily adapt to being an indoor cat and toilet train himself quickly. Doc also scanned for a microchip (none of course) and agreed that Iggy ‘is a lovely fellow.’

I’ll ring tomorrow and see how he is doing, of course. He might need a few days to heal before being neutered, too. It’s okay, I’ll figure something out for him. Everyone who met him thinks he is just lovely, and he is. 


Pic of him roaming the warehouse. You can see how swollen the left side of his face is. 

Oct18

Saving a New Friend

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I have definite plans to bring the new work-cat home tomorrow and then to the vet Friday morning. Circumstances are perfectly aligned to make it quite manageable, if I can get him into the car…

He is really, really lovely. Unlike Peggy, he loves to curl up and stay on my lap. Unlike Peggy, he has no problem at all with being picked up and carried long distances.


This was today. Once I stuffed him full of tuna and chicken, he hopped up on my lap, curled into a ball, tucked his head under my jacket and purred. He also has a weird, hitching breathing style that worries me.


He also, unlike Peggy, is absolutely filthy dirty. I rubbed a damp paper towel over his back today, and pure black dirt came off of on the towel. He definitely does not have a clean place to sleep. People might be feeding him, but no one thinks of him as their cat – the main reason I’ve not catnapped Peggy yet.


Incredibly dirty and a bit bald around the ears. Also in centre of the frame is a small scab under his ear.  He doesn’t mind me poking at this one.

I know he is a much more desperate case than Peggy. Especially when I noticed he had some difficulty eating today’s chicken. I took the first chance to have a closer look, and yes, he has a swollen left cheek and what looks like an open abscess. I likely encouraged him to rip it open by scratching his head so much yesterday.

I wasn’t about to grab his face and make him show me the wound, of course. The dark spot is wet fur and the orange crust is likely pus.

The plan tomorrow is to catch him and bring him home, but not inside the house. Maybe in our shed overnight, as small and junky as it is. In the morning, a run to the vet and leave him there with all the info I can give them. Fix the abscess. Worm him. Check on that odd breathing. Neuter him. All of this; if he doesn’t have a horrible, deadly disease that is going to kill him anyway.

After that? I don’t know. I don’t know if I can take him home – hubby points out rightly that one indoor outdoor cat and two indoor only cats will cause havoc. I’ve also realised he is about 1/3 the size of Lumi – like having a housecat meet a Lynx he rightly could be terrified. Of course we have a big dog also, and he could be scared of dogs. And…he knows how to spray to mark territory, I saw him do it in a very inappropriate place. I think being in our house with two other male cats would likely make him pee on everything.

He needs a warm safe place with cuddles and laps, access to the outside, and fewer cars as he has no damn sense around them. I don’t want to see him dead on the road and know I could have prevented it. 

I’ve never asked before, but if you want to donate to helping so-far-nameless kitty, you can send a donation via PayPal to my blog email address, heretherebespiders @ gmail . com (spaced it out so maybe the spam bots won’t find me, hahahah). 

Oct13

What Scares You?

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I’m scared of large groups of ants to this day because of something that happened when I was about 10 or 11. 

My older sister and I got into a fight when we were home alone (I belive it was about whether Boy George was a man or a woman) and she slapped the HELL out of me. I ran out of the house, around the corner to the next block, and sat on a big lump of dug-up concrete that wasn’t quite on the side of the road but also not quite in someone’s yard. 

I sat there sobbing my little-kid heart out, face in hands, until I felt something bite my right side. I looked down and I was covered from the waist down in gigantic red wood ants.


Aka carpenter ants. Credit embedded in the photo – that is what I looked down on! Those jaws.

I do remember running. I don’t remember screaming.

My sister heard me from a block away (I remember her saying she never heard screaming like it) – from inside our brick, air conditioned house – as I ran for home. She had me strip naked in our back yard and used the garden hose to get the ants off of me. I don’t remember what happened afterwards, but I think our stupid fight was quickly forgotten and I am still grateful that she forgot our silly fight and helped me so quickly and efficiently. Even when I still had her perfect red hand print on my face!

It’s been a few decades since this event, and if I am ever surprised by an ant, or worse a colony of ants, I calmly freak right the hell out. Or at least I think I am calm when falling over backwards to get away…

What scares you, so long after the immediate threat is gone? We likely all have some serious flashback memories – I will never ask for those.  I don’t mean real trauma, but small things like this that have never left you. 

Oct11

Peggy’s Friend?

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Maybe friend, maybe a brother, or one of her grown up kittens?


Whatever their relationship is, they do look alike. Except the last few inches of his tail aren’t black, can you see it?


Even when he is in blur-motion, while checking to see if my phone is edible.


She hissed at him a little, and kept her distance as pictured. But he cares not at all about her opinion of him! I think she was a bit miffed that someone else had my attention. And my chicken. 

New boy kitty is very vocal and dirty (you can see here that his white feet aren’t very white). He definitely has ear mites, likely other parasites as well. Looks like I’ll need to buy two doses of Advocate next time we are at the vet! 

Worryingly, he is a lot less afraid of cars and big trucks than he should be; like Piggy Peggy is, and any outdoor cat should be. In a year, I’ve seen two black and white cat corpses in the road in front of where I believe Peggy calls home. 

He is also definitely not neutered, either. Easy to tell with the lads. Dammit. He wasn’t afraid of me one bit after I gave him part of my lunch, and even let me pick him up and put him on my lap. He hung out with me by flopping on the ground beside my chair after the food was gone and he no longer cared to be loved on. Unlike Peggy, who always wanders off to do cat stuff.

There is a third cat around, too. A huge pure white tom who wants nothing to do with me. Likely daddy to most if not all of Peggy’s kittens. Maybe her daddy, too. Yuck.