Freezing Feral Cats Outside My Door

The coldest days of the winter decided to arrive in mid-February this year, and it is at times like this that my heart goes out to the feral cats in our neighborhood. Unlike the picture you see here, the ground is covered with snow from snowstorm after snowstorm, and this and next week are our coldest days this winter season.

One cat in particular, a black cat, likes to sleep on the warm sunny side of my house where on the coldest of days the sun and protection from wind is best. Sometimes it sleeps in our front doorway as the wood is a dark color and soaks up the warmth from the sun.

Our Township has a program in which they will spay or neuter feral animals, but we must first catch them, and take them to the animal shelter. Once the surgery is complete and they have recovered, they are returned to the wild. Their ears are notched while they are in surgery so that we can identify the ones that have been spayed or neutered.

There are two cat lovers in our neighborhood who have managed to catch each one and have this surgery done, which has saved us from having many kittens born...that used to happen pretty regularly. These neighbors have been feeding the cats as well, putting out dishes of food and water. I never got in the habit because Aspen, when she was still with us, would chase them away, but am grateful to the neighbors that do.

I have heard that you can make shelters with, for example, a large Styrofoam cooler that you cut an opening into, and place it somewhere where they are likely to roam, or near where you put out food if you do that. But our property and house seem to provide natural shelter to our "wild" feral cats.

Image via Pixabay

Attended My First Twitter #pawpawty

Today when my owner was on her twitter account, we noticed that #pawpawty was in the list of trending topics (visit the twitter link to learn more about twitter if you're clueless) and so she decided to let me twitter.  We do that a lot lately.  She changes her picture to mine, and I tell her what to type for me.  Today I'll be taking over for the day since it's a monthly "PawPawty" day.

This is a special day that takes place once a month, here is the information that someone shared on www.examiner.com explaining the event:

So far, these fund raising virtual parties have raised more than $5,000 for organizations such as The Humane Society, Kitten Rescue of Los Angeles and Orphans of the Storm in Illinois. The next pawpawty is scheduled for May 2-3 to benefit the Margaret Green Animal Rescue.

For each pawparty, a theme is chosen and "party-goers" are encouraged to change their Twitter default pictures to something theme-related (see the slideshow below for some cute examples). Prizes are given away for various contests such as trivia and scavenger hunts – all the while people are encouraged to donate even just $1 to the featured charity.

Who can attend the #pawpawty?

The pawpawties are open to anyone with an interest in raising money and getting the word out to friends about the fund raising efforts. Many of the party-goers are animals, or people who tweet as their pets. There are thousands of Twitter Critters online, ranging from dogs and cats to hamsters, gerbils and even a moose!

It is not necessary to be an "animal" to attend these virtual fundraisers, however. Everyone is welcome – the more attendees, the more opportunity to raise as much money as possible for animal charities.

If you decide to join in, be sure to follow us and say hi, I share my owner's account and we trade off regularly - http://twitter.com/happynutrition.  And if you click on this #pawpawty link, you'll be taken just to the search results for pawpawty, and see only the "tweets" related to the event. See you there, I hope!

Next Week It's My Turn on Twitter

On friday my owner does something called "followfriday", that means you suggest people that you know and like to other "followers" on Twitter.  You do that by sending a message that has this word and symbol - #followfriday in your "tweet" and then you put the user names of people who follow you in the "tweet" with @ in front of it, for example, my owner is @happynutrition.

NEXT WEEK we are going to tweet about our dog and pet loving followers on "follow friday" so if you aren't following us yet, please do!  Click here to follow me and my owner, I share my owner's account.

My Owner Sent This Cute Video

My geeky owners send emails to each other and chat with each other when one of them is at work, and today a really cute one came, it's even more than cute, it's really nice and something that you'll probably never see unless you watch this video:

I Feel a Lot Better Now

I'm back to my old tricks again after not feeling good for a day or so.  Yesterday I started feeling pretty good, and today, I'm feeling too good...that means I'm begging for treats, begging to have my owners throw my toy bunny, begging for them to kick my ball, a whole lot of begging.

At this update, we're adding the post that came just before what is written above, because it was lost when we transferred the blog to a new site:

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Sorry that we haven't posted in a few days, I've been a little bit sick, and my owner has been busy taking care of me.

I don't want to gross you out with details, lets just say that I had a tummy ache, and had to go outside a lot, when we could make it on time.  My owner gets all worried when I get like that, because I am small, and if I lose my food and water, it's more serious than if I was a big dog.  But today, after I got all "cleaned out", my owner gave me just a very little bit of chicken cut in tiny pieces, and I love chicken so was able to eat it. Then I took a long nap, then when dinner time came, my owner was so happy to see me come to the kitchen to play ball.

Whenever she is in the kitchen, I bring my tennis ball to her, and she kicks it into the other room, then I get it and bring it back, and...well, you get the idea.

I had a little more chicken, and my usual organic healthy salmon snack tonight, and so far, so good!  We'll see how I am tomorrow.  We will go to the vet if I don't keep improving.

Hope to have something more fun to write soon!

Health Benefits of Owning Cats and Kittens

I can't believe my owner convinced me to add a page on owning cats and kittens, you'll see it listed in the right column under "Pages". I think it's because so many people in her family have cats...there's more about that on the page.

I made sure to add a comment or two of my own, that was our agreement, if we have to write about cats, I have to add at least my two cents worth.

We think we noticed that you can't make a comment on the pages, so if you have something to say after you read the article, come back here and comment!

Have a happy day! Aspen