It's another atypical Florida late summer weather wise. The sun is bright, bright enough to give all the dark green leaves that shimmery gleam of white where the yellow ball burns. There isn't much of a breeze, when the wind does pick up, it's as listless and hot as the people in the parking lot with us, look. The parking lot is full to the brim of people coming and going, parents with screaming toddlers or eye-rolling teenagers in tow; the sky seems unaware of the collection of humanity pouring in and out of the building below it. In contrast, it's the bluest sky I remember seeing in a long, long while.

We're on our way to the dreaded Walmart, because with Raven sick I had to convince myself and Shawn that we needed to cut costs. We went to a different Wallyworld than the usual-soul sucking one, this one is happy pink and new, trying to promise a different experience.

We plunge into the great massive overhang atop the electronic doors. Just before entering my mind notices two things: there's some dude working for some charity attempting to ask for money and a small crowd milling around a plastic coated wire cage to my left. What's in the cage? Kittens.

I walk on by fast, for obvious reasons. I try not to look, Shawn follows.

We shopped, it was fucking horrendous inside. Far more crowded than the last Walmart we went to over six months ago, and far more crowded than our beloved Publix on its busiest day. We were pushed and shoved and nearly ran over more times than I can count. What should have been a half-hour deal turned into at least an hour an a half with a 20 minute wait in line.

When we wheeled our cart out the same shaded front doors I noticed that the man sitting in the middle of the doors asking for donations to charity is gone, but the man with cage of kittens? Still there. There isn't anyone milling about the tiny cats anymore and I finally approach. There's a man standing off to the side, he's actually shorter than I am and is smiling wide. His hair is a dark brown easily mistaken for black with brown eyes and the grin is making his brow, eyes and cheeks wrinkle. He has a single chair with him, the cage proped up on an empty Walmart grocery cart, and his child. His son is sitting in the collapsable chair with a nice cold drink.

There are three kittens in the cage, one kitten as I approached groggily lifted its tiny head to look in my direction. His or her second eyelids remained drawn over it's eyes as it blearily and with great disinterest looked my way. She/He is lethargic, wobbly, and frightened half to death. So too are his/her brothers or sisters. One is huddled in the corner and cries at anyone who moves, the one opposite the kitten in the middle who can't seem to close her/his inner lids is silent. They have been in 90 degree Florida humidity for at least an hour and a half, as he was there when we walked in the store. There is no food, no water, and nothing in the cage but the three cats.

"Hi!" And I cannot help be instantly irritated with his cheerfulness.

"This kitten," I start, pointing to the middle one, "isn't blinking back her inner eye lids and seems generally unresponsive. That's a common sign of sickness."

"Oh, yeah," he laughs, almost dismissively. "Probably an eye infection." --Clue #1 this guy has no idea what the shit he is talking about. There's no evidence for any sort of cold or infection, but I'm not going to argue. I'm not a Vet actually nor 100% in the ability to argue the point.

"Did you bring water for them?" I am blunt, harsh, to the point. I don't care at all however. I look from the cage of kittens to the chair his son is sitting in, with it's giant styrofoam cup with straw, condensation beading down the side. When I look back at him, he is still smiling and the urge to say something to wipe it from his face is strong.

"Oh--no, we didn't."
"You need to give them water if they're going to be outside in this heat for any lengthy periods of time."

Here's the kicker. He looked off into the parking lot and then looked back at me with that smile still on his face before saying, "We've only been here for --what?--" He looks at his son like he'd be any help. His son looks off into space. "About ten minutes."

I didn't even wait to reply. "Ten minutes? Really? I find that funny, as we walked right past you and this crate of kittens on our way in, an hour and a half ago."

His witty reply was, "Really?! Has it been that long?"

I have no reply, and lean down to inspect the three kittens again. The one in the corner brushes his or her cheek against my finger. The one in the middle still stares off and through me with what little she/he might be able to see through her eyelids.

He dared ask me, "So...do you want a kitten?"

"I can't," and it takes me a few seconds to reluctantly say that. "I have two cats, a dog, two birds and two hamsters already."

"Ah--"

I run over whatever he was about to say. "Get these kittens some water, before you end up with all three either very sick, or worse, dead."

I walked away because I knew if I didn't, I'd do something stupid. Like, sure, we'll take all three and at least we'll do our best to try and find them a home, or at least take them to a shelter where, while overcrowded and probably not a good chance they'll find a home? At least they'll have a chance at being cool, fed, watered and loved.

On the way back to the car Shawn said: "We could go back. We could go back and tell him we'll take all three, then we can find homes for them in better ways." I admit I agreed at first, but then I remembered that we can't afford any more animals. We really can't--and what if we can't place them? We can't keep 5 cats, let alone afford their medical care, food bill, litter. And that's when Shawn snapped his fingers and brought out his cell phone.

We contacted Animal Control. We told them what we found and were told they were sending someone out immediately to investigate.

I hope that they found those animals and took them. They deserve better than a Wal-mart parking lot and a smiling man who cannot even tell the truth about time.

And now for something I have been meaning to upload for a while and share with you but forgot. On the same distant pet theme, here's a video of Guppy talking.

Several things to note before playing this video:

1.) I have pet-owner's voice. You know the one--the annoying chick that can make her voice go subsonic and talk cutsey-wootsey to her pets. Don't click if you don't want to hear it.
2.) It was shot on my cell phone--which means the sound is okay, my voice sounds like it is coming from inside the video into your brain, and Shawn's dad, coughing and talking sounds like it's also coming from your brain. Don't have your speakers up to 11.
3.) It's crappy quality and only here to let you listen to Guppy.

O.K. If that hasn't scared you off yet, go ahead and click play. :3

Raven has gone from 19 pounds of cat to 16 pounds of kitty.

She is missing even more fur now up to the back of her head. There are several burned holes/places in her skin that we have to clean and watch, but they didn't give her a lion cut, which I thought they might.

Since it never grew back originally, I suspect that our cat will forever be a shaved...cat. (Ahahahaha, you thought I was going to say the other, weren't you?)

Crappy cell phone pic of preparing for vet visit day before:



( Here are some crappy cell phone pics of today's Vet visit )

We take Raven to the vet again today.

Pretty much for the same reason we took her the last time. She has these odd bumps--they grow, and when they grow from just a bump they end up looking just like little brains. Tightly coiled bundles of spirals and hoops that are her skin, and they begin to loosen and break as they grow larger. If we aren't careful when we pet her, they break apart. We know they're skin because when they break on their own, they bleed and scab.

When we brought her to the vet the last time, they took a sample of a lump on her butt and a sample of one of the 'brains' as I like to call it. The vet seemed completely nonchalant, and when they called us a week later to tell us things were fine--they still were.

So (back then) we brought her in, they shaved nearly her entire back and burned off what they could. She seemed like a different cat after that. More energetic and happy.

We're bringing her back because all the little ones they couldn't get before, have regrown. All the hair they shaved off hasn't grown back. At all. Not a single bit. She's been on a strict diet to lose weight for a year, and I don't think she's losing it.

I don't know about you, but if I were covered in bumps and scabs I'd be a might uncomfortable, and that's what we're worried about. We'd like to see her bump-less, but these things keep cropping up. Again, the Vet seems pretty casual about it, but the comfort of our cat, especially at this age, is most important.

It's a good thing Raven doesn't care what she looks like. I'm pretty sure there's going to be more shaving involved in her future.

--you'd think that I was starving her TO DEATH.

Ah, the sounds of a fat cat an hour before feeding. She does this anywhere from 4-6 until we feed her at 6pm. Which has been her feeding time for nearly as long as Shawn has had her.

Today I went to Turkey Creek Sanctuary after watching Prince Caspian.

Possibly one of the worst ideas yet because it was approximately Satan's asshole hot outside and after twenty minutes in the sun I wished I was dead.

I love Florida in the summer!

I will give one thing to Florida, it's so very, very green when it wants to be. Even in the middle of a fire haphazard where at any moment everything could burst into flames; there's Florida, all cheery and green anyway. "DUDE. WE LOVE HOT!"

At any rate, while we were there Shawn rescued a turtle that was wandering across the road to go eat and forgot to check both ways so we picked it up. While we were carrying it he/she seemed pretty laid back about the whole floating-through-the-air thing and was even doing this lazy ehn-ehn flap of his legs half-heartedly until we set him/her down. Soon as we set him/her down him/her actually moved pretty fast to get out of there.


When we got home we cleaned out hamster cages (which we just finished up) and naturally, the best thing to do with a hamster while cleaning out it's cage is to put it in the safest place in the world.


My rack.

How was your day today?

Some of you may remember my post a while back about Raven, our getting-elderly-pee machine.

The issue wasn't that Raven was going outside the litter box purposefully, the issue was it seemed to be such a struggle to get into the box, she'd hang half her ass off the side (because she'd only go as far as RIGHT at the front) and then pee. Without squatting. So of course, there she'd be IN the litter box, peeing...out of it.

We've mostly solved that issue with a random find at a local pet store. This experiement has been running since a few days after asking advice and I gotta say, it's been pretty kick ass.

This dog litter box.





Yes. Dog. I am so far behind the 'pet times,' I guess. I hadn't a clue that they were making dog litter boxes. The one we have as pictured above is roughly as deep on the back and sides as the largest cat litter box, but without the huge wall of plastic at the front for Raven to jump over.

In fact, I'm not sure if you can tell by the picture, but there's a little plastic piece that fits over the opening that can be removed too--forming a lip that's nearly flush with the floor. Maybe no higher than an inch or two. Essentially, any cat with joint problems or too old to jungle-gym all over the place just to go poop can waltz right in and go.

With the old litter box, I was cleaning up her pee on the mat (a little blue mat that picks up some of the litter from their paws) four or five times a day. Now, with the newer, lower doggy litter box I might catch her having an accident once a week. With the added bonus of the puppy training pads around the front, I have even less clean up than before.

This dog litter box was a large--apparently you can order much, much larger ones. This will set you back $30 dollars, but, for Shawn and I, that really wasn't much to ensure our ol' kitty comfort and ease. Flora took to it in seconds too. So that's one worry out of the way.

It's heavy duty plastic and really durable so far, even with all the scratching and clawing. It's surprisingly light and easy to pick up when empty and clean. I really, really, really recommend this instead of the usual cat litter boxes if you have room for it and don't mind the fact there's no cover for it.

In other pet news: Some of you may recall that I was trying to move Nugget from a mostly seed and some pellet diet, to an complete pellet diet. We figured out what was wrong with the first set of pellets: they came in three colors, two shapes. Red, green as little beads and yellow/beige as banana shaped as well as smelling like fruit. He would eat all the red and green and leave the banana. So when he ran out of the little round red and green pellets he'd behave as if he were starving to death, tweeting and chirping and chirping and tweeeeeeting--leaving the 'naner shaped ones. So we didn't get it at first, as his food bowl would still be pretty full.

Eventually, we caught on and changed him over to Zupreem pellets. These pellets are round only with pieces of real dried fruit mixed in. He eats all of them without issue and we haven't fed him any seeds at all for over a week and a half. I'm very relieved we figured things out, as we realized that seed diets were simply awful for birdies.

And that's it on the pet front!

For the tl;dr crowd: Cat's peeing less due to a doggy litter pan and the bird's now eating an all pellet & fruit diet. Mel's a crazy animal lady. Blahblahblah.

P.S RANDOMRANDOMRANDOM: MY CAMERA WASN'T DELIVERED FRIDAY SO IT MIGHT COME TODAY AND I'M STILL EXCITED OH LAWD.

Did you know that April 10th is ASPCA Day?

No? Let's find out what the ASPCA day says about it!

ASPCA website says:

"On Thursday, April 10, cities all over the country will be going orange to celebrate the ASPCA’s victories on behalf of animals and the joy they bring to pet parents everywhere. Lend us your voice on April 10 by dressing yourself, your kids, your pet—even your school or company!—in ASPCA orange, and show the world you support the ASPCA and the pets we protect."

Sounds pretty damn good to me. I don't think I have anything orange, however. I think Shawn might have an awful Hawaiian shirt. I'll have to drum up something! Won't you wear orange on April 10th for me? Won't you help speak for those who don't have a voice?

If not, do it for Nugget:


EDIT: APRITH? I ORIGINALLY HAD APRITH IN THE TITLE. WHAT THE HELL IS AN APRITH?