daily dose of dogs (aka cats with your coffee)

Wildlife Wednesday - Inundation

Yesterday I wrote about my Wisher Rocky moving on to The Bridge.  (Thank you all so much for your sweet, comforting comments.)  We discovered in the last days of his life that he was a very old cat.  The old move on, and new ones come.  And today’s post is about SO many new ones.  In just a two-day period Older Daughter received three calls about abandoned baby wildlife.  Suddenly, she has her hands very very full.

The first call was about three little baby bunnies.  The person who called said that the dog on the grounds had found and dug up a bunny nest.  Someone on the grounds put the baby bunnies back in the nest, but the dog got them out again.  So they called Wild Angels.  It’s unfortunate because baby bunnies do not do well on formula.  They need mother’s milk.  Fingers crossed that these babies will survive.

 

 

 

The next call was about two little opossums.  The person saw a dead opossum on the side of the road.  There were also dead babies scattered about.  But one little baby opossum was walking right into the road.  And there was still one in the dead mother’s pouch.  These babies are not in good shape.  They have minor injuries and bruising and they were very weak when Older Daughter received them.

 

 

 

The final call was about baby raccoons.  The person who called said that they could hear the babies crying from the vents in the house.  Older suggested that mom raccoon would be back for them, but they said they had not seen any sign of a mom and the babies had been crying for an extended period of time.  They were very grateful to Wild Angels for taking them. 

 

 

 

I spoke to Older Daughter on Monday morning – Sunday night was the first night with all three sets of babies.  She’d had four hours of sleep and was headed to work.  As her mother, I worry when she is inundated with spring babies.  The expense is entirely out of her pocket and she gets SO very little sleep for a very long time.  

THEN, yesterday, she received three more baby bunnies.  One was already dead, in the box with two living babies.  Not knowing what went wrong with the deceased one means that Older isn't sure if the remaining two will survive.

 

 

Fingers crossed Friends that somehow ALL of these babies survive and thrive.

 

Rocky

Yesterday I had to say goodbye to one of my precious Wishers.  My Wisher numbers were never supposed to get above 30, but somehow they crept up to 33.  Of those 33 Wishers, three are known as my “Untouchables.”  Though many of the cats here started as ferals or semi-ferals, nearly everybody eventually tamed to me.  Most of the cats here scatter like leaves in a windstorm the minute ANYbody (other than me) walks into their world.  But those very cats actually come TO me every day when I’m in their world cleaning and feeding and passing out the daily showers of attention.  The only three who never came around to that were Fannie, Prim, and Rocky.  Of those three, I simply never touch Fannie or Prim.  Rocky, on the other hand, would occasionally sit close enough to a food or water bowl, while I was filling it, for me to sneak a stroke down his back.  He always scampered away immediately and looked back at me like I’d lost my mind.  But I DID manage to get those sneaky strokes in once in a great while, always hoping that one day he might decide he liked it. 

Between Older Daughter and the vet, the conclusion is that Rocky had a brain tumor or a stroke.   Some of the symptoms are similar.  What shocked me was the rapid onset and decline.  In hindsight, there were a couple of behaviors that were odd for Rocky.  But it wasn’t until he fully failed that I considered those behaviors.   For instance, he recently sat very close to me as I sat on the floor petting Kizzie and Blue.  I talked to him and asked him if he would like some of this attention and when I calmly reached towards him he didn’t move away until I had almost touched his face.  Also, Younger Daughter was in my cathouse and she said Rocky remained inside, sitting on a bed, the whole time she was there.  Normally he shoots under the couch or out onto the kitty deck.  It wasn’t until Saturday morning that I knew something was wrong.  When I came into Rocky’s room in the cathouse, he was lying on his side on a blanket in the floor.  He didn’t look right and I walked towards him knowing he would jump up and run from me.  But he didn’t.  I was able to go right up to him and even to start petting him.  I knew something was terribly wrong.  The rest is a horrible         48-hour period of time during which Older Daughter examined him and tried some medications.  I observed his behavior all day Saturday and Sunday.  He never rested again.  He paced, he circled, he lost his vision.  And he cried out over and over.  There are some treatable conditions that we hoped might be the case, but as it turned out, this was a full-blown brain disorder.  A favorite vet of mine once told me that cats are so resilient that they can be very sick and you won’t know it until they are near death.  With all other avenues exhausted, we assisted Rocky to The Bridge yesterday morning.   

One thing that has given me some peace about Rocky’s passing is that Older Daughter, during her examinations of Rocky, discovered that he was a very old cat.  Not having been able to touch him all of these years meant that we’d never tried to age him.  With this brain condition, everything about his behavior changed overnight.  He was touchable.   As she was looking at his gums and teeth, she reported that he was a very old cat.  He’s been here six years and could easily have been 10 years old when I first took him in. 

Rocky was a stray cat in my parents’ neighborhood.  There are so many stray and feral cats in that town.  Over the years, a few of them have decided to take up residence in my parents’ yard.  At the time that I was trapping Momma Monday and her three offspring (Pipes, Pippin, and Clover), a large male tuxedo started showing up to eat the food I was leaving out.  This guy had a slightly twisted back leg and he was definitely feral.  Once I managed to get Monday and her kittens, the next job was to get this big guy.  My Mom named him Rocky and he became a Wisher.  I regularly told Rocky how lucky he was to have shown up in my parents’ yard because now he was living The Good Life at Winnie’s Wish when hundreds of others were still straying around in that town.  And Rocky truly did live The Good Life.  Even though he never warmed up to the idea of being handled by a human, he had a roof over his head, food and water, heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer, beds and cat trees, and a room full of friends.  Rocky was such an odd one.  He was a big ol' male but he was never a bully.  He didn’t want to be friends with me, but he was friends with every single cat in his room.  And one of those cats was his best friend in the world.  Rocky and Kizzie were always together.  They ate together, sat together, bumped heads, and walked beside each other.  They could easily have been rivals, but they were always best buddies.  Even though I was never allowed to shower Rocky with attention, I know he had a really good life here at Winnie’s Wish because I saw his contentment, especially with his cat friends. 

This picture is from two years ago.  I hadn't realized how much younger he looked even just that far back.

 

Rocky – Farewell.

 

Wildlife Wednesday - Buzzard Business

Hi Friends.  This won't be a long post.  But I wanted to update you about the buzzard that is now in Older Daughter's care - a buzzard who was trying to survive with a steel-jaw leghold trap on its foot.  The foot was broken off in the trap.  But the would is clean and healing nicely.  AND - this buzzard is eating like a champ!  He is also hopping around.  He has absolutely no problem flying,         so . . .    as soon as there is reasonable assurance that no infection has ensued, this bird will be ready to be released.

One lucky buzzard.

 

 

Now if we can just get this America of ours to do the ONLY right thing and BAN steel-jaw leghold traps!!

 

Wildlife Wednesday - This Has to Go

I’m going to start this post with the story itself.  And then I’m going to end with a rant.  Bear with me.

And WARNING.  This post and its pictures are graphic. 

Late Saturday afternoon, after a day of nonstop work, I sat down for a break, cup of tea in hand.  My cell phone started ringing.  I have a particular ring for my daughters so I knew it was one of them.  Looked at the phone and saw that it was Older Daughter calling.  It was rather odd because my daughters usually text.  If they are calling, it means it’s too much to text or they need something right away.   

Hello.     Mom, what are you doing right now?     Nothing at all. What’s up?      Got a bit of a crisis and wondering if I could get your help.

Now I was at home and my daughter was half an hour away at work.  I couldn’t imagine what crisis could be occurring that she needed my help at the shelter where she works.  But then she started explaining.    Older’s husband, my son-in-law (SIL) was down at the river below the bluff from where they live.  He and my daughter live right on the bluff above the river.   SIL had the day off.  He had been out working in the yard when he just happened to notice a small group of buzzards surrounding what was probably a dead fish that had washed up from the river.  He went on working in the yard and when a noise below the bluff startled the buzzards, he noticed that they all flew away except for one.  This one appeared to have tried to fly away but was having some kind of trouble.  He watched for a minute and saw that this buzzard would lift off but only get about a foot off the ground and then sort of crash land, over and over.  So he got on his four-wheeler and proceeded to the road that takes us down the bluff to the riverbank.   The buzzard had moved on quite a bit, but it was clearly still struggling.  He called his wife (Older Daughter) and they discussed the situation.  She told him to get her net.  He went back up the bluff and retrieved the net and a towel.  When he got back down to the riverbank the buzzard was nowhere to be seen.  So he drove his four-wheeler a distance along the riverbank and then spotted the bird.  He parked and went off on foot.  Every time he got close to the buzzard it would lift just enough to fly a few hundred feet.  But he kept at it.  Finally he was close enough to net the bird and he could then clearly see what was wrong.  The buzzard had a steel-jaw leghold  trap snapped closed on one of its feet. 

He called Older Daughter.  She was outraged, of course, but she had no time for that in the moment.  Her husband needed someone to find him down on the riverbank and take a large cat carrier to him.  He had the buzzard netted and had placed the towel over the netted bird to calm it.  But he certainly couldn’t get home with it.  He was a long way from his four-wheeler and couldn’t have transported it that way anyway.  And if he dared try to start hiking back (the long distance) with the large bird there was a good chance he would lose it.  Injured birds do best if placed in small containers.  For instance, if you have an injured robin, the best place to keep it for transport is in a small shoe box.

So I told Older that I would immediately get one of my bigger cat carriers and Husband and I would take off for wherever SIL was on the riverbank.  We jumped in the truck, down the gravel road to the river, and then off through a field to a place on the bluff where Older said she thought SIL was waiting.  We hurriedly hiked down the bluff and started calling SIL and eventually we found him.  I placed the cat carrier directly in front of the buzzard and slowly we lifted the towel and then the net.  It immediately started moving forward which is where the carrier was sitting.  Straight in it went, dragging the trap and that leg behind it.  I couldn’t see the condition of the leg very well, but it looked like the leg might be snapped in half.  I could feel the rage rising.  But I had to keep my wits about me until I could hike back up the bluff with the bird in tow.  SIL had to walk the riverbank back to his four-wheeler and go home that route.  Husband and I finally got back to the truck and headed to Older’s house to meet SIL.  When we got there, we turned the bird over to him.  Older had given him instructions about where to put the bird until she could get home from work a little later.  Husband and I went home.

And then it hit.  Hard.  I thought the top of my head was going to blow off.  A steel-jaw leghold trap!?!?  ON OUR PROPERTY!?!?  It’s bad enough that these traps exist at all.  But then Husband said it was very possible that the buzzard had been doing the low-flying, dragging movement for a long distance up the riverbank.  Truly the bird could have stepped into that trap anywhere.  However, that made no difference to me.  I was furious.  I felt a rage rising that desperately needed an outlet.   Did I know that steel-jaw leghold traps existed?  Yes.   Did I know that they were used in the United States and specifically in my own area of the country?  Yes.   Did I already hate them because of the knowledge of the horror of them?  Yes.   But had I ever seen up close and firsthand what they were capable of?      

No. 

 

 

 

 

 

I was seething.  I found my way to some articles on the internet about these (and other similar) traps.  I’ve taken this from one of those articles (click here for the entire article): 

An archaic device used for centuries, the steel-jaw leghold trap is the most commonly used trap in the United States by commercial and recreational fur trappers. Triggered by a pan-tension device, the weight of an animal stepping between the jaws of the trap causes the jaws to slam shut on the victim’s leg, or other body part, in a vice-like grip.

Most animals react to the instant pain by frantically pulling against the trap in a desperate attempt to free themselves, enduring fractures, ripped tendons, edema, blood loss, amputations, tooth and mouth damage (from chewing and biting at the trap), and starvation.

On land, leghold traps are most frequently set for coyote, bobcat, fox, raccoon, skunk and other furbearing animals. However, leghold traps are inherently indiscriminate and will trap any unsuspecting animal, including dogs and cats, threatened and endangered species, and even humans.

 

Listen Friends.  Why in the world is a trap like this still in operation in this country???  I have never fought for the banning of these types of HORRIBLE traps.  I simply had not thought about it intensely enough.  I guess better late than never . . .

 

From the article While the World Moves On (click here for the entire article):

Although more than 85 countries have banned or heavily restricted the use of steel-jaw leghold traps, the United States—one of the world’s largest fur producing and consuming nations—continues to defend these inhumane devices.

Each year, millions of animals are killed for their fur in the United States, and many suffer prolonged deaths in traps. An extremely conservative figure of 4.9 million furbearers met this fate in 2010, and in 2011 that figure rose to 6.8 million. It should be noted that these figures are most certainly gross underestimates, as they were compiled by the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA) and rely on data from state game agencies, a number of which failed to submit any data at all.

Among the most commonplace—and most egregious—devices used to capture furbearers and other species are steel-jaw traps. Acknowledging the extreme and unnecessary cruelty associated with steel-jaw traps, the National Animal Control Association and American Animal Hospital Association have condemned the devices.

 

And from the article The Jaws of Death (click here for the entire article):

All animals killed for their fur suffer, whether they are wild-caught in traps or raised in a cage on a fur farm. In both cases, preserving the “quality” of the pelt is the primary concern—not preventing the animal from suffering. It can take the skins of as many as 40 of them to make just one fur coat.

Animals who have struggled in vain to escape from traps (or languished on fur farms until they were slaughtered) are no different from the cats and dogs who share our homes. They have feelings and unique personalities, and they value their lives.

Animals caught in these traps are terrified and in excruciating pain. They are forced to suffer just so that their head can be mounted on a wall and their fur can be made into a coat.

You can help stop animals from suffering for their fur!

NEVER buy anything made of fur.

And ask your local and state government officials to ban steel-jaw traps, and support legislation that limits or prohibits their use in your area.

 

My rant is now at an end for this blog post. But my heart will never be unburdened now that I’ve had to see this for myself.

As far as the buzzard who is now in Older Daughter’s care (remember she is a Wildlife Rehabber) - she and her husband were able to remove the trap from the bird’s leg.  The leg bone had been snapped in half but the skin of the leg was still caught in the jaw of the trap (which is why the trap continued to hang on the bird's leg).  The buzzard is now in Older Daughter’s care.  It has had antibiotics and it is being fed an appropriate diet.  Adult birds do not do well in captivity so the faster it can be released the better.  A buzzard CAN survive very well in the wild with only one foot.  This one is being fed, medicated and kept in a low-stress environment.  We will see . . .     Fingers crossed.

 

 

 

I cannot imagine how this trap is still legal in this country.  But it HAS to go!

 

 

Can I Pet that Cat?

Today’s post will be short.  But I’ll be back tomorrow with a Wildlife Wednesday post.  And I AM NOT happy about the subject matter for that post.  Today, however, I am very pleased to report that I am now petting Neo!  Yep.  Not long, drawn-out love fests or anything of the kind.  But I’m actually stroking down his back and he is allowing it.

At first, I had to catch him not looking at me.  And for a while, I did try to use the tools that WW supporter June sent.  (Neo, however, thought those were toys to be grabbed and played with.)  Since he has been living out of his cage for a while now, he does just walk comfortably around in the room with me.  So I would sneak up on him occasionally and try to get a stroke in.  He would do one of two things – either scoot away quickly when he felt my hand on his fur, or he would turn to grab with his claws or get in a little bite. 

 

 

But last week once, when I slipped up and quickly ran my hand down his back he didn’t do either of those things.  So for several days, I kept with the same technique.  And clearly Neo was allowing this to happen.  I tried and tried to get a good picture of this while it was happening, but he is usually in constant motion when I’m in his room.  So the pictures are really not good.  And then just a couple of days ago, Neo rubbed my legs as he swished by me and I reached down and petted him as he went by.  I’ve gotten in several more strokes that he is allowing without fight or flight.  Only one at a time, mind you, but definitely progress!

As I’ve mentioned before, of the 34 Winnie’s Wish cats, there are three that I cannot touch.  And I am completely OK with that.  They are happy and healthy and safe and they have kitty friends.  It would have been fine with me if Neo had been one of those.  But it is increasingly looking like I might make a lover out of Neo yet.  Fingers crossed.

 

 

See you tomorrow for my angry Wildlife Wednesday.