Techno-Cats

The cats are getting readied for a long drive to Maine, with new tags showing their chip information on each of their harnesses and the twice a year flea treatment ready to go. Getting the records set up for each has been interesting, especially since each is registered under a different outfit. One of the services will, for a fee, send out notices online and printed posters (including your animal's photo if you uploaded it) to clinics, shelters and nearby other pet owners upon getting the call that your animal has been lost.

It's actually pretty impressive, and easy to see why microchipping pets has made such a big difference in recovering lost or displaced animals. The return rate for microchipped pets is up over 90% the last I knew.

Both chips can be read by the standard scanners used in vet offices and shelters and both have extensive owner information as part of the registration, so overall either should work well. But the use of technology to get the word out very quickly in one is akin to the alert network available to track lost children. Then again, for some these are almost children.

Cats Rule

We were at a folk song gathering today, one that has now run for over 30 years. At the end of the day there was a parade of large paper mache puppets followed by children and pipers. This is a mascot parade that has gone on for many years.

The lead mascot was... an orange striped tabby cat done large. This figure towered over the others in the parade by at least 2 feet, smiling down on the crowd and wearing the name of the festival across his (or her) chest. There was a dog behind the cat, but the face painting on the children in the parade left little doubt as to the favored animal at this event. I suppose that the dog owners who regularly attend this event (with their dogs) are used to it by now.

Annual Trip

Our two cats went to the vet for their annual visit. This was a relatively cheap one. Neither needed rabies shots, and for the first time in many years we are down under three. Andy was in his shiny new harness, one with better construction than the last which he escaped too easily. Atlas was wailing away in the carrier, out of the carrier being weighed, in fact all the time until we put Andy down next to him and they started his examination. Atlas then started to purr, loudly.

The appearance of more hands, needed to keep Andy's paws down while his teeth were examined, seemed to delight Atlas. Or perhaps he enjoyed seeing the needle Andy get his shot. It would be a stretch to assume that Atlas felt much charity for his housemate.

The nice thing about going the vet's with multiple cats is that each person in the room gets to pick a favorite. This time it seemed to work out evenly. The tech aide responded best to Andy and the young vet seemed to find Atlas funny. (Someone should... he's not easy to live with.)

Up Up and Away

The barn swallows were just about falling out of the nest on Monday. All four heads and chests were visible on Monday, and the parents couldn't get any closer than to hang off the side of the nest. The youngsters took flight Tuesday, unfortunately heading right through the open doors of the riding ring where the riding therapy sessions happen. They were apparently working out the flying thing with the lessons going on.

As of this morning it seems they were still in there. The barn folks left the side door open all night for the fledglings to find their way out, but it didn't work. It was far too rainy today to leave the big double doors open, so they are probably going to be in there for another couple of days.

The three young Decorah Eagles, stars of the internet thanks to good video feeds from a tree top nest in Iowa, started disappearing off the screen on Monday. All three had flown-hopped out to the end of a long limb that the cameras could be repositioned to scan, and seemed to have spent most of the weekend out there. By Tuesday at midday, someone had visited the site and and confirmed that one was already airborne and the other two had just started their first real flights.

These two bird families made air just 48 hours ahead of the Solstice, the end of spring.

Eagles and More

We spent the day paddling on the Hudson River. A mature bald eagle flew over us at one point, and two immature juveniles flew low over the water towards us then landed in a tree at water's edge as we went by. We were not looking hard for eagles - these three pretty much put themselves in our line of sight. There are several nests in the area, so it is normal to see at least one eagle in this stretch of the Hudson on a day's paddle.

Osprey, which have become rare sightings in this eagle-dominated stretch, were more present than we have seen before. We saw an active nest on a transmission pole, with one parent sitting close by, and were overflown by a pair of osprey further north. It looks like the osprey and the eagles are doing better at sharing the same space.

As we returned to our launch point at the end of the paddle, we saw someone in a kayak paddling along the opposite shore. The paddler, a woman in a red decked fiberglass kayak, pulled into the same launch point while we were unpacking the day's gear from our boats and getting ready to load them onto the cars. The conversation turned to where we had been paddling and where we were from.

We found out that this woman regularly paddles the stretch of river that we had just been traveling. She had never seen a bald eagle on the Hudson River. This is not the first time we've heard this, but it is confounding. None of us understood how anyone who spends time on that stretch of the Hudson can miss seeing a bird with an 6-9 foot wingspan, a bright white head and tail and a penchant for eating fish.

Swallows

Yesterday and Monday I was being dive bombed by a pair of barn swallows every time I carried a load of stall cleanings out to the pile, or stepped outside to check on the horses in the paddocks. This same pair of swallows, or at least near kin of theirs, have made a nest at that end of the barn every year for a long time now. And every year they dive bomb us so we won't hurt the chicks, which the parents leave no more than a tall person's arm length above our heads by the nest they use. There are three chicks this year - we can see their heads popping up above the nest to call for food every couple of hours. Until they are fledged, the parents will help control the mosquitoes.

Tonight we were practicing on-water rescues on a local pond in our kayaks. As we finished that work for a final paddle the swallows were out skimming and bounding over over the water, scooping up the small bugs that congregate just inches above the surface.

The barn swallows are quite pretty birds, a well marked rust colored head and wings with black and white markings. The swallows over the water this evening were less bright, but still beautifully marked with white bellies and soft blue-grey heads and wings.

Swallows are a lovely family of birds, or whatever would be the correct term. At times it seems as though they are following me around.

But Do We Want to Find Him?

Our now-oldest cat is a Siamese male who has spent most of his life proving that this breed can be a total pain in the arse. He has one or two truly redeeming traits, of which we remind ourselves when wanders around yowling himself to sleep. He can do this for half an hour at a time, multiple times a day, so there are times when patience turns to throwing a slipper with the intent of knocking him over. Sometimes this distracts him.

But when he suddenly falls silent, leaving us in peace and quiet for a long while, we find ourselves scouring the house to find him. Of course, all we do is wake him up and are shortly choosing again between remembering why we have kept him and tossing another slipper (or stuffed animal or pillow....).But we are masochists when it comes to this cat - we will hunt until we have found him just so he can make us crazy again.

Tonight was a classic round of cat versus sanity, and the cat won again. Once we were both home, we realized that it had been half a day since he had been heard wailing miserably. So we went looking for him. We found him curled up in the dirtiest room of the basement, an unusual choice for him, from which he would not be extracted. He ran from two attempts to catch him. But he will emerge later covered in cobwebs and dirt from the old wood floor, and well rested. He'll probably yowl off and on for a good hour, and we'll half joke again about accidentally leaving a door to the outside open.

Come and Get Me!

I am the primary pet sitter for one of the long time clients of my service, a woman who had two cats that I first met when both were past ten years old. I saw both through their final days.

I had a visit with the male, a big dramatic long haired black with green eyes, hours before the owner had to make the hard choice. It was a tough visit. I cleaned up things as well as I could and lied a little in my note about what I had found. The owner was only away for an overnight, and the state of things was going to be as obvious to her as it was to me. His kidneys were completely unable to do their work.

The other cat, a long haired black female with white markings, faded away more gradually. She finally stopped eating for the last time and forced the decision. The owner had been through every idea to stimulate her appetite - changing the food daily, rounds of baby food and finally warmed up baby food in an eye dropper. But there came a time when they stopped working. The owner was staying home more so I didn't see this cat so close to the end.

The household is now down to one much younger cat, a short haired black cat named Willie. He arrived not long after the death of the older male cat to be company for the female. That never worked out, so each had their own portion of the apartment. The owner watched television in two places each night so each had petting time. Willie has the whole place now, but like all of our cats has claimed the bedroom as the prize.

This last weekend was my first round of visits with just Willie at home. Instead of being underfoot as he had been in his separate space, he decided to play hard to get. He still liked petting when I got to him, but I had to lie down to coax him out from under the bed and sweet talk him to eat while I was there. Owning the whole condo may have gone to his head, at least temporarily.

It didn't last. By the last visit of the weekend he was back to his old self. He came out to greet me, weaved between my legs and got right to chowing down with me standing nearby. I may have to please his highness to pet him again, or he may forget about it now with me. It's never easy to tell with cats. But their cunning extends to humans as well as prey.

Horses will be...

The rain finally stopped and it cooled off as well. Everyone is happy for the break.

I spent some time yesterday morning being a side walker for a couple of lessons at the barn. It was a good lesson in the sometimes odd behaviors of horses. The horses were all a little more alert, probably because of the sudden change in temperature from very hot to fairly cool and damp and having been kept inside most of the day during the last rounds of rain. But no one had any problems until the second lesson near the end.

The second rider I walked with was a young boy on one of the Welsh ponies. He needed to be taken to the bathroom just before the last planned exercise, so his father lifted him off the saddle and left carrying him. When he returned, still carrying his son, the pony caught one look at him from the corner of her eye and decided that this was scary. She hunkered her hind end down in readiness to run. We tried walking her around to calm her down for a second attempt, but the little mare had quite made up her mind. The boy and his father were scarey, and no one was going to ride her with that weighing on her nerves.

There was no sure way to tell what had her so concerned. The father was a big guy, so the visual impact of him carrying his son may have been too much for the little mare. He was a fair distance off but still came up from behind her. It's not the direction from which horses like to be approached.

The session ended with the pony standing in front of the trainer and the father and son, seated, sniffing the boy and being petted. There isn't a bite in her, so that was quite safe. She was acting more like a big dog than a horse, and it seemed everyone enjoyed it. But her spooky response was quite an education for the father on the sometimes erratic behavior of horses.

Casting Around

I've been casting around on where this blog is going, frankly waiting for inspiration, and we've had major distractions on the home front. But I heard an interview on the radio yesterday from a writer who said that in order to write, you have to do it. Her advice is to sit down for some time every day, preferably on a schedule, and skip waiting for inspiration.

My experience of the last couple of weeks tells me she is right about waiting for inspiration - it isn't going to just hop out of the closet and sit on my shoulder. I'll have to muddle along on most days without the guiding voice of a Muse.

Casting around turns out to be an apt title for this post. One of the older horses got cast in his stall at yesterday's barn shift. We got him up after after several minutes and he never panicked, so all ended well. But it was very hot and we could have done without the excitement.

When a horse gets cast, usually in an enclosed space, they have gone down to roll and ended up choosing a direction where they can't complete the roll without getting stuck against a wall or other blocking object. Even if they could solve the problem by rolling to the opposite side, which is sometimes possible, the horse will keep trying in the direction they first planned. That is one reason that the inside of horse stalls have to be solid rather than open slatted walls - you can't have openings where a horse could get their leg trapped if they get cast.

A horse can get cast if they are rolling around trying to relieve the discomfort of an intestinal blockage (colic), and that can end very badly. Yesterday's event was much less dramatic. All of the horses were hosed down because of the heat. When he was returned to his stall, the aging chestnut thoroughbred decided to add a comfortable layer of shavings and dirt to his newly dust-free coat. He has the biggest stall in the place with plenty of room to manage this safely, but this old guy could get himself stuck against a cactus in a 100 acres of desert.

Luckily he didn't panic or get scared, probably because this wasn't a new event for him. I tried sitting on his neck to keep him down until the other white haired volunteer got a halter and lead line to help pull him up. But I need to eat a lot more ice cream and fried potatoes to weigh enough to keep a horse on the ground. It didn't take much for him to put me halfway across the stall at one point - I was doing better when I was just holding his nose down lightly.

He came up fine when the other white haired volunteer leaned all 125 pounds of herself against the end of the lead line, though in hindsight we should have put a second person on the end of that line. The old guy got a second hose down, another round of fly spray and a brief walk around the lot after he got up. He was relaxed and enjoying the heck out of the extra attention. It is possible he planned this.

He repaid me for sitting on his neck later. We added water to everyone's grain and fed it in increments because of yesterday's heat, starting about an hour after the chestnut's second round of care. I went into his stall to check whether he had finished what he had so far, and he lifted his head to spray wet grain on my head and torso. I swear that if it had been anyone else he'd have missed dousing them with his dinner.