Mirtaz

[Ridley99]

I had to speak to Spooky today about eating Sally's food again. I've got different bowls for them, and they know their bowls. He walked off muttering as usual. Smoky hasn't showed, but he's not dependable in that regard. Spooky will let me pet him, asnd he's quite the detective. He knows Pumpkin has his own entrance (my back door off the deck), as I've caught him lurking on the steps. One night when Pumpkin wanted to go outside, I heard several meows that sounded like a young kitten. I shined my flashlight over in the corner of the deck and it was Spooky! I told him no deal, and quit trying to be an actor. I think he had Pumpkin almost fooled too. Pumpkin, in the past has brought me young juvenile strays, and let them eat his food. Pumpkin knew he could eat whenever he was hungry. Maine Coons have a way of just staring intently at another cat, and they'll usually just leave after a little growling.
A few months ago I heard loud yowlings out front, when a strange stray ran into Pumpkin. I went on the porch and told him not to let that cat talk to you that way, we don't need all that trash talk around here! Pumpkin stretched to his full height, through out the lion ruffle around his head and chased the feral away. Haven't seen it since.

I use Revolution becase it treats fleas, ear mites and intestinal parasites per the vet. A few years back we got a bad flea infestation from some out-of-state pitt bulls and Revolution was the only thing that worked. If photos are allowed here I will send you a pic of Pumpkin and Miss Kitty...

 

[fionasmom]

Photos are allowed with no problem on TCS and people post them all the time.

My ferals have their own bowls as well...all of them. But eating out of someone else's is a big thing for them. I have noticed that it is the unneutered males who will especially bully the spayed females. I have to stand next to one cat so that she can eat her food and not lose half of it to a very aggressive male. He is one cat who could move away and I would not miss him or care which is not something that I normally feel.

A cat book I was reading once showed how cats will space themselves out intentionally in relationship to other cats. It certainly is the rule around here. Everyone has their own territory even if some consolidation of the territories would be helpful to me.

I do agree that Maine Coons have a very presupposing personality and can take charge of a situation. Given that they are bigger, that is on their side as well. I was very proud of my cats last night. No one over reacted to the fireworks outside and in fact hung out in the main part of the house. My two calico girls spent two Fourths outside as ferals, so they probably consider being inside safe and don't think about hiding. I know that they did outside as one was always covered in dirt as if she slept under a bush someplace.

 

[Ridley99]

Another odd thing about Maine Coons they can sleep in a drainage ditch and appear perfectly clean. Pumpkin spent his time behind the washing machine and seemed very upset; Miss Kitty stayed in her room (my closet) sleeping peacefully. First time EVER! Guess she figure it wasn't as scary as the trip to the vet, and the finger up the butt!
It's also amazing that a Maine Coon, with their thick legs and huge paws and floofy tail, can walk among delicate objects and never disturb anything! Pumpkin is around 8 yrs old and most all of those years were spent outside as a stray. Oddly none of my neighbors like him and chastised me for helping him! My closest neighbor, a policeman, asked me: "Why are you helping that old mangy orange cat? Take him to the pound!" I've saved his life several times over the years. One year he ran into a neighbors garage through a side door and got locked in for four days--no food, no water in 80* degree weather. I looked everywhere for him, even for just his body. Luckily, on the fourth day I was looking for him and heard a faint meow. I said his name and he "meowed" louder! The neighbor lady came out and unlocked the door for me and Pumpkin came zooming out and ran to me. He followed me home and I gave him water and food; he would drink some and eat and run and hug my leg, back and forth. Some kids imprisoned him in a deserted house and I had to break a window for him to jump out -- he was trapped for two days that time.
If a Maine Coon likes you he will follow you around like a dog. One day I was waiting for the senior bus and he ran ahead and jumped on the bus too! There's some senior ladies that drive by about once a month and if he's on the porch they stop and take pictures of him. He poses for them but not for me! I'll include the best picture of him EVER that they took and gave to me. They wanted to take a picture of Spooky because of his strange color (front part black to just past his shoulders and then brown on back to tip of his tail) but he wanted none of it and walked over muttering as usual!

 

[fionasmom]

They are beautiful cats! I love orange boy cats the most although I have only had three and Miss Kitty is just adorable. How could anyone turn their back on Pumpkin or want to hurt him? He has the most expressive face.

My friend has a rescued huge gray male who insists on going outside and was locked in a construction site for 9 days. She begged the workers to check each day, and maybe they did, but never found him. He made it home in bad shape but made it through and still goes outside to check his territory.

I always worry about garages and around here there are a lot of them, really too many to check. One littermate of my avatar was killed as a kitten by a coyote and the mom cat took the others someplace that she thought was safer, but of course did not tell me. To this day I don't know where they went, but they returned. The thing about garages is that even if someone opens them, if they have a ton of stuff in there you still may not find the cat.

The Maine Coon that I had, Eliot, was black and white. He was evidently a stray or had only been on the outskirts of human society, but possibly fed. I found him sitting next to another cat who had been hit by a car, probably his friend. It was a hugely busy intersection and I picked him up and carried him home. The shocking thing is that he let me. No one ever claimed him and he was a wonderful pet who died too early of a heart condition. He was very dog like in his personality although I don't necessarily think that cats have to be like dogs.

 

[Ridley99]

They both have lived rough lives. Miss Kitty's time was running out in a shelter, when Paws for Pals saved her and had her vetted. Someone dumped a bunch of kittens off, but no one wanted Kitty -- none of them were quite ready to leave their mother. She stayed at the shelter, and grew up there and still wasn't adopted. She grew up around dogs, and Pwas for Pals here is mainly dogs. She really doesn't know how to be a cat, I'm hoping Pumpkin will finally teach her! I told her one time that a lot of cats like to sit in their humans lap and be cuddled. She stared at me, her eyes got big and her mouth dropped open and off she ran! Yet she sleeps with me, seeks me out when frightened or not feeling well, follows me to the bathroom, tilts her head like a dog does, and works her mouth the same way. Doesn't know how to groom; doesn't like to be brushed, won't cuddle. But she is endearing in so many ways. Never knew why no one wanted her! Whenever I take her in the carrier, she's nervous that she won't get to come back home! When I assure her she will, she settles down pretty well and trusts me.
Pumpkin was abandoned as a juvenile. He did what he had to do to survive. He climbed onto roofs, jumped into the air and pulled birds down for a meal. He climbed trees after squirrels, and was often successful. He heard that I offered free meals and followed some other strays to my house and helped himself to their food. I was trimming bushes the 2nd day he came. I grabbed a thin leafy bush, waved it at him and he thought I wanted to play! He slapped at the stick, tried to bite at it, rolled on his back and showed me his belly! He had won me. He would eat slowly and when the other cats would leave, he would look at me wanting 2nds (sometimes 3rds). I gave them to him. We began to trust each other. I started letting him eat inside when it was cold, and his food would freeze before he could eat it all. He still favors cold weather, he doesn't like heat even in the winter. A Maine Coon is usually not a lap cat and that inculdes Pumpkin! He insisted on going outside, so I've let him out. If it's not quiet tonight I'll see if he wants back in..

 

[fionasmom]

That is all very interesting. My current GSD was a rescue from MO due to the help of the GSD network I am involved with. He was born in the Kansas City area and the four pups were taken from their mom at about 4 weeks old, still had blue eyes, and were brought to a high kill shelter. The other three were euthanized right away and for some reason he was not, was put up on a website and spotted by someone who contacted me as my previous GSD had died from degenerative myelopathy several months earlier. But they needed someone to spring him from the shelter in KC as the woman who found him online was on Long Island. She found a well known rescuer who had 10 cats in the house, so this tiny puppy ended up living with all these cats who were bigger than he was for about a month before he could be brought out here. He completely bonded to cats and has never reacted to any cat I have brought in the house but he dislikes dogs intensely. The odd thing is that he is not aggressive at all but really fearful of them just as a cat might be afraid of an attack. He even used to do cat like things like lie on the upper back of a sofa and stretch out. It is almost like he imprinted to cats.

Pumpkin sounds like a real character. My Eliot did not want to be inside in the beginning, but any pet cat here really has to be because of traffic and coyotes. In this area, there is really not much of a feral cat population as compared to other places because of high attrition from coyotes. It is more uncommon to see a cat who has been hit by a car. It gets hot here and while my cats adjust more than the dog, they like cold weather better as well. Of course, out here cold is not that cold so they probably think of it as just nice and fresh. I worry about the outdoor cats more in the summer than the winter actually.

 

[Ridley99]

Years ago, when there were stray dogs around here a female GSD started sleeping in some bushes around my yard. She was friendly (not pregnant) and I fed her and brought her inside. I had no other animals at the time, so I'd decided to check her out and possibly keep her. She wasn't malnourshed and skeletal, but very hungry and thirsty. She tried very hard to please and I named her Penny. She came to me when I called to her by that name. She slept that night by my bed, and greeted me in the morning. I went in to take and shower and when I came back out, she nuzzled me and wanted me to follow her into the living room, where she showed me a big, steamy dump! I raised my voice and opened the door and said: "Get out!" She licked her lips, put her head down and walked out slowly. I started to close the door then thought you shouldn't do that...what are you doing? I opened the storm door again and said, "Come on back in Penny! I'm sorry I yelled..it's ok!" She turned around and came back in. I loved on her and explained all you need do is go look at the door and I'll take you out! She stayed with me for three days, doing as I asked about the door, we played, and played in the yard she was very happy. On the night of the third day, she asked to go out a little later than usual, so I told wait just a minute I'll get my shoes and the flashlight, but she cried at the door, so I thought it must be an emergency! She walked out the back door and I never saw her again! I looked for her, called for her, just gone without a trace.
Needless to say my heart ached for her and I felt very lonely. I was born in the rural south before moving north. Southerners of that time era would have known what happened and I tend to believe them. Do you know of 'moon' children and 'forestals'?
But then again, maybe she was running away and looking for a new owner and just stopped to check me out and I didn't make the cut.
I did find out GSD sheds a lot, and it feels like little needles sticking you...

 

[fionasmom]

That is a very touching story about Penny. GSDs are very faithful to one owner and it is possible that she knew that person was someplace nearby or thought that she knew. Maybe she had an owner who allowed her to roam at will and suddenly she knew that she had to get home. One of my GSDs I rescued when he was abandoned in the Angeles National Forest and left tied to a tree. Someone had dumped a chow there and people who took this side road home, like me, were feeding the chow. Finally AC set a huge trap for it and finally caught it and it went to a rescue, but I later learned had problems with aggression so I don't know what happened to it. Evidently the people who dumped the GSD had seen the trap and figured that AC would come by eventually and take their dog as well. It did not happen as the trap and chow were gone, but the GSD was still tied to a tree. When I found him, it was getting late and I called AC who said they would get someone out there. Right. That night he would have been packed by coyotes or killed by a mountain lion so I gave him some food....he was bone thin....figured he was not vicious, and put him in the back of my SUV. I learned that someone who drove a small truck had been his owner as he was obsessed with looking in every small truck we passed for about a year thinking that the owner would come back for him. It was really sad, but he ended up being a great pet, wonderful with cats, easily trained. Most are very easy to housebreak like Penny was. You just ask them not to go to the bathroom in the house and they get it.

I have been in LA my entire life, even born in the city, so I am not sure what moon children or forestals are but am sort of guessing something like spirits of nature?

 

[Ridley99]

When I was a pre- and early teen I was very close to my grandmother. She was kind, wise, loving and very proud and very poor. She had 6 daughters and 1 son. Her husband (my maternal grandfather) I never knew - he ran off and left my grandmother to raise the kids on nothing. My mother was the youngest. When Social Security was legislated she wouldn't enroll because she didn't want charity of any kind. When her daughters grew up, she would live a year or so with them. I was the one that always wanted her to live with US! I was her favorite grandkid. (When she would go back down south she lived with a relative named Marsha, whose husband was John Sevier V or VI, who was a direct descendant of one of the founding fathers of Tennessee. The city he lived near always drug him out on the 4th of July to be parade marshall, etc ...but he was very strange and I was afraid of him).
Grandma told me stories of the Depression, how hard life was because of it, and southern folklore. A 'forestal' was a tree, usually an oak or walnut, that was a 'boss' tree of all the trees in the woods of any size. Dad told me it was nick-named a 'hanging' tree because the limbs grew just right, and if you failed to 'respect' the other trees, or creeks, or the wildlife protected by the guardian tree (the forestal") it could harm you, 'hang' you by its branches. An odd story: Dad and my uncle was horseback riding (galloping) along an old trail between farms in early afternoon on a warm, sunny summer day. Dad had me on the saddle behind him and I was holding on for dear life! Glancing around him with my head bouncing up and down, I saw it first! A forestal tree with a nice patch of shade underneath it. I thought we might stop underneath it and cool off! I was wrong. The horses started whinnying, and wouldn't go forward, side-stepping, biting the bit and then rearing -- I heard Dad yell for me to hang onto him as tight as I could, and I did! Then, to make matters worse..the shady spot under the forestal raised up from the ground to the top of the tree and disappeared. My uncles horse was jerking and turning circles and I caught a look into its eyes -- large and scared. Dad and my uncle got the horses calmed down, dismounted, and walked them back the way we came, talking, and soothing them. Dad never talked about it...
A 'moon' child (or animal) showed up suddenly when you were at your wits end. Your kids had run off, or died your wife was sick in bed, or run off to, and you HAD to get the wood chopped for winter, or the crops harvested (or planted) and you didn't think you could get it all done alone or with what help you had, you might have a visitor. A moon child, who would just be about the right age to help.
But they would be unable to speak, or just speak gibberish. They would be all smiles, learn what you were saying to them quickly; catch on to how you were doing things also quickly, be very pleasant company and hard workers and you'd have everything almost done in no time. Then they'd leave at a time you didn't realize they'd gone until you looked for him (her). My grandma claims she was helped home by a 'moon' dog one bitter winter evening and stayed with her a few days. It went to sleep by the fireplace one evening, and at dawn when my grandma awoke it had left. I like to think there are such things -- it reminds me of guardian angels.
My grandmother claimed to be 3/4 blackfoot indian. When I was little I used try to look at her feet when she took her shoes and socks off
to see if she was telling me the truth!
One of the most abused domestic animals throughout history has been the horse and the cow...

 

[fionasmom]

That is a really fascinating story! I had never heard of a forestal and tried to look it up, but was not successful really. What an experience to have had and I do believe that animals like horses are gifted with an understanding that we don't have. Possibly all animals are. There are even articles on TCS about cats who seem to see things and stare into space.

Can Cats See Ghosts? Hair-raising stories from our members! – TheCatSite Articles

The part about the moon child did strike me though as that is sort of how I found Jamie who is 5 now. It was 5 summers ago and I had gone to a dermatologist as I was unhappy with my regular doctor at the time about a spot on my scalp. He had told me it was nothing and we could just burn it off but I was not comfortable with him doing that safely, to be honest. The derm took one look at it and said that he had to inform me that it might be melanoma. He described the follow up that is done if it were to be that and I just freaked out. Normally I can get a grip but for some reason this time I could not and it just played and played in my mind. About a week later the derm removed the spot surgically, had to cut part of my hair which did not even make any difference to me at that point, and we waited for the results. It came back as basal cell, which was great, but with squamous cells also. Given it was above my jaw area, he was concerned that we still needed to check out whether or not anything had moved into my jaw area and asked if I had jaw pains, which I did because I had TMJ...so now everything overlapped and nothing was conclusive so we went to an MRI. Now I was terrified, tried to figure out what I would do for my animals if I had this, and for some odd reason, even given that I had a lovely dog and three really nice cats, began to wish that I would find an animal who could help me get through this time of my life. As I said, odd because I had great pets. the MRI was on August 16 and on August 10 I heard a very faint mew from my neighbor's back yard. I investigated and it was a tiny sick orange kitten...having nothing to do with my neighbor. I tried to get it but it was under her woodpile but as it bolted for the wall I grabbed it. Well, the rest is history and that is my orange boy Jamie and I have always thought that the way in which I found one solitary kitten with absolutely no sign of other kittens or a mother was very strange. I did not even strongly suspect dumping given where he was found and that someone leaving him for me, even wrongly, would probably have put him on my front porch. So a moon child, I guess.

 

[Ridley99]

I have never met another southerner from ANYWHERE south who has heard of either one also! I tried to research many times over the years, but have found nothing....it may have been Indian stories since grandma was largely Indian.
I went to a dermatogist several years ago over a rather large strange spot on my lower abdomen. He examined it said it was an SK (subcutaneous Kersotes) and was basically harmless. He found one of top of my head, and one on my back. He said the treatment was to freeze them off with liquid nitrogen. He said the one would take several treatments. I asked how that would feel, and he said I'll show you. He got a small canister of the nitrogen and treated the one on my head. It started out VERY cold, but then my skin began to feel really warm...it was very uncomfortable! After about 90 second he stopped and said that's how it feels! He said after about 4-5 days it would begin peeling off and it did. I went home and slept the rest of the day. But to have my abdomen froze....
He said no danger in them, they just look bad. As a young kid I had eczema off and on really bad. When it got real itchy and sore the doctor sent me out to the hospital and they would burn it off with X-ray!
Pumpkin does look 'mangy' now! I trimmed a lot of the mats out of his fur, but now he wants petted AND talked to while he eats! Miss KItty slept on the other side of the door with him last night because she thought he needed consoling after loosing quite a bit of fur. Sally, the bullied stray, rolls over and shows me her belly now but I"m not allowed to touch. She acts like she's trying to get over her fear of EVERYTHING! Smoky showed up today, but not Mumbles (Spooky). Yesterday he appeared twice and was mumbling and watching me expectantly, and I said: "Sure, Spooky, I'll feed you some more! Wait and I'll get your bowl" I gave him more cat food and he snarfed it down pretty quickly. He gets the wet cat food all over his face and nose, what a messy little guy.
Do you feed st
rays on throwaway stuff or in regular bowls? I've been using ceramic and stainless steel but I'm getting tired of washing them! They NEVER lick them clean!