Pajamas Media

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Bill, My wife and I fostered orphan kittens for a local shelter for a couple years. At one time we had 31 of the little ‘twinkies with feet’ in the house. Five in this bedroom, 6 in the cage downstairs, 4 more over here, some in that bedroom, more in this one.

These orphans almost always came to us a week or so old, found in the wild or someone’s yard and turned into the shelter, thought the logistic were usually that they’d call in to the shelter, who would refer them to our home phone, and we would meet the finders directly at the local McDonald’s or something.

So we’d start by removing the fleas. Warm water and a flea comb and boiling water nearby to deposit the fleas. Most had more than 30 and seriously, these dudes are smaller than twinkies at this age. During the bath we’d help them do the potty. Because Mom has to help them go for the first couple or few weeks, they haven’t gone the whole time they’ve been abandoned.

After that, dry off with a lukewarm hair dryer, and finally get something to eat. KMR kitten milk replacement delivered via special bottles, readily available in all pet stores now with a variety of nipple sizes.

By this time the little dudes would be purring up a storm and quickly off to sleep.

Feed em 3 times a day, and they will go all night by themselves. We had a great time even though it wasn’t all peaches. Diseases show up and you have to get them adopted out before you end up a crazy cat lady – or guy in my case.

We got their pictures on petfinder.com post haste and my wife was great about checking out potential adopters to make sure they would care for them. We were lucky and almost always adopted them in pairs. In the end we kept 13 of them because we either wanted to keep them or they weren’t very adoptable for a few different reasons.

It was hard to let them go, but soon after, at our request, many of the new owners sent us picture of them in their homes playing with their other animals and whatever and at that point it was very gratifying.

I guess no one will send you a picture but hope it won’t be hard for you to use your imagination about how happy Howie is. Howie will be happy.

btw – one of the cats we kept is Handsome Howie. A grey tiger with green eyes and a peeping Tom cat who talks up a storm.

If I can hop on the soapbox for a minute:

- If you find an orphaned kitten in the wild, more than likely the thing they need most is to go to the potty. Take a rag or napkin, apply some warm water or spit and rub their bowels below the stomach in the direction of tail to head and head to tail. If nothing is happening make sure the napkin is warm and wet. The mom licks them here and actually consumes the waste the first couple weeks. Body temp of a cat is 101.7 or so.

- If anyone is interested in doing this, it’s got its challenges, especially letting them go. Make sure you know the new owners.
- Never give a kitten away to a stranger, some people take free kittens to feed their reptiles.
- Vets will tell you – you cannot help a kitten with an upper respiratory infection. BS. This is a common disease especially with kittens who have been in the shelter. Mix Tiger Balm and Petroleum Jelly 1 to 5 respectively (1 of Tiger Balm). Make a small QTip using toothpick and cotton and apply just inside the noses of the kitten. Continue twice a day until healthy. You may dry up their nostrils to the point that they start cracking and bleeding a little and if so back off on the tiger balm but don’t stop all together.
If you do nothing, their noses clog, they don’t eat because they cannot smell and they develop pneumonia and drown in as little as 24 hours.
-Make the case to potential new owners that litter mates will always get along. If they Ever feel like they’ll want more than one cat, this is their only chance to get 2 or more that are guaranteed to not get into pissing contests with each other. And if you’re adopting, take this advice.
Thanks for the soapbox time.

Bill, you might consider more rescues. It’s a rewarding experience over time. One comes to terms with letting them go.

Ah, Bill, how great the difference between us and the Creator. And knowing your love for Howie, imagine the Creator’s love for you. On a more immediate note, our 12 year old Speck pup went to be with the Creator 2 years ago,(all dogs go to heaven!)and we have just been thinking it might be time to go look for another rescue dog. Thanks for the timely push.

A very nice posting that brought a little smile to my usually cranky face. I have nine cats that allow me to share my home with them, and all of them have come from shelters or somehow have found their way into my yard. I guess I’m ’spreading the wealth around’ but to furry friends that really need it!

I remember having a haircut like Howie’s! I think it’s called “bed head” these days. Except for the glasses, Bill, I can see you, me and probably millions of other guys resembled Farmer Ted from 16 candles. Before we morphed into the behavior of Samantha Baker a year later. It’s moments like this that I realize that it’s good to be old! I hope the Hindus are wrong and there IS no reincarnation. I don’t want to go through junior high and high school, again!

Don, I don’t mind it there is reincarnation, as long as I don’t have to go through the 70’s again (which, come to think of it, was when I went through jr. high/high school).

That should be “I don’t mind if

What you didn’t mention Bill is that they “genuinely want to help and protect us” from ourselves. They have specific ideas of how the rest of us are supposed to act, and if we choose not to do so, why, we need to be forced into doing so. As you did say, they are intent on infantilizing the populace, keeping everyone from becoming fully adult. They genuinely want to make us into proper drones.

Amen

A couple/three summers ago, there were two occasions where I saw a little sparrow hopping around on the ground, in my backyard.

The second time this happened I noticed that the best he was able to do was hop up to the lower crossbar on the fence: at that point I realized that he could not fly, for whatever reason.

Then came the point when my pet huntress, Gina the cat, could not resist the primal compunction and made her move on the disabled bird. I screamed at her that I didn’t want her to do that, (kill the bird) as it was, uh, it was so un-sporting to kill a flightless bird.

She didn’t listen, and I was forced to bean her with a dirt clod or a small rock or something. When I did this she (Gina) screamed and the bird left the clutches of Gina’s mouth.

So, long story short, I did not see the little sparrow again, but neither did any forensic evidence turn up in the back yard of her demise [as a result of the birds disadvantaged condition], not to mention the fact that Gina has presented me with a total of, I think, 3 mice (one she managed to bring all the way into the house, (while I wasn’t paying enough attention)), and an adult bird just a few days ago.

which leads me to conclude that the flightless sparrow’s flightless condition might have been temporary, and that the sparrow survived.

I also remember watching the squirrels rummaging out in the front lawn under the oak tree, and as they do so, they sit up and feed on the acorns they unearth, and one did so facing me looking out the window, (this was a couple of seasons ago too),

And I noticed that one of the squirrels hands wasn’t fully formed, and yet it still allowed him to grasp with two hands his food and bring it to his mouth, just as all the other squirrels do. He seemed unaware of any deformity he might have had and went about his business as any other animal does; he was neither ostracized by the squirrel community at large, and this was one of those life lessons that occurs through simple observation.

Back to the bird, I thought that I might rescue the little guy, concluding as I did that he could not fly and was perhaps doomed. but he was having none of it, and as I said, I found no empirical evidence that he was killed by my cats, and as no remains have turned up, it indicates the possibility that he might well have left the confines of the fenced-in back yard.

I began to think of getting a cage for the sparrow, and I thought of eventually putting the cage outside and opened so he could leave and return as he saw fit to. But none of that happened (I didn’t rescue the guy), so its all a mystery as to what happened to the sparrow.

I’ve also wondered what might have happened if I’d placed the open cage outside for him to re-acclimate [should he have regained the flight ability], would he have to endure a territorial fight with other sparrows or birds who wanted to re-appropriate his cage (and the bird seed there) for their own selves?

I can imagine a number of scenarios such as that one that lead to a wilder, competitive outcome where the fittest, or in fact, the fitter dominates, as a result of a regained place in the outside environment.

again, all a speculative mystery, but it is easy enough to imagine a bond forming with a creature who would surely have run into some formidable adversity, to say the least, if you hadn’t spotted him in the otherwise well chosen site for a nest.

especially between someone who has ascended to the places of the birds domain.

suffice to say that God knows when the sparrow has fallen, and when it has not, as well.

BTW, I theorize that the Big Bang was what happened as a result of a “solution” to all the problems in the old universe was being put into place, but some unforseen contingency that wasn’t paid enough attention to by the geniuses of “that time” happened because the inhabitants of that universe had never even stumbled upon “Murphy’s law” and, wouldn’t you know it- BANG!! [as in BIG bang] happened and everything was re-destroyed and reborn in its infancy as the *new* universe as we know it today.

Ah, Bill, as usual, you have hit on one of the fundamental differences between us classical liberals in the West (known mostly as “conservatives” these days) and those of the socialist persuasion. We say that man does yearn to be free, to seek his own place in the world, and to do whatever his abilities and determination allow him to do. The socialists say no, man is a communal animal, whose horizons should be determined by the group, and nobody should aspire to make more of himself than the group requires. One way leads to freedom, including the freedom to fail, but also to succeed magnificently. The other way leads to dependency, which is simply slavery in a prom dress. No matter how attractive it might be, it’s still slavery.

I’m reading on blogs all over that people are really getting on to this idea that we’re headed for one giant day care center.

This is what most people are voting for. This was Obama’s entire campaign.

Damn sad.

Little birds of feathers and Arrows, they don’t always mix. Glad you found him. Wish you and Howie many hours of joy-us flying.

When we feed and clothe and make dependent people who – unlike this little fledgling – are perfectly capable of feeding and clothing themselves and being free and independent as they were meant to be…

Hang around left-wing and Democratic websites long enough and you’ll see that there is an alternative viewpoint motivating many of the proponents of the direction we are going in.

It’s based on a denial of your statement above. They believe that there is a class of people in this country that is NOT capable of feeding and clothing themselves. They believe that the reason such people are in that state is because our society is run by white men who deliberately arrange the laws and capitalism to subjugate people who are non-white, poor, etc., etc. They think that our society’s stucture blocks anyone who is non-white and born to a poor family from advancing their economic status and progressing as their ambition and abilities would otherwise permit. They think that American society is so racist, etc., that the only way that such people can overcome that is for the government to give preferential treatment to them and to take large sums of money from white people who have it – which in any case the people who have it have gotten only because of exercise of privilege that this society illegitimately grants white men.

They believe this fervently. Non-whites, and any woman, has no chance to advance for themselves. They can only get what rich white people permit them, and rich white people permit others little. Go on such boards and suggest that people in America can in fact advance (and should only advance) on their own efforts regardless of their station of birth and you’ll be judged either a) part and parcel of the power structure that needs to be destroyed or (if they’re feeling charitable) b) ignorant and naive.

In other words RonF, they’re completely delusional.

[...] clipped from pajamasmedia.com [...]

“Now obviously, Howie is aware of none of this. Because he just has the little pea to work with, you see? But if there’s that much difference between a pea and a cantaloupe, how is it that I once believed that there is nothing beyond the perception of a cantaloupe made of grey jelly?”

That’s a wise cantaloupe you’ve got there, Bill.

“What I have learned from Howie is that we are bleeding freedoms not because people want to enslave us but because they genuinely want to help and protect us.”

I don’t think this gets said enough: freedom and helping others needn’t be mutually exclusive.

Big government socialists like to set up a false dichotomy, implying that citizens must be forced to sacrifice liberty for the sake of compassion. The federal budget and supporting tax code reek of this misguided approach.

True generosity proves the lie.

I often wonder whether this false dichotomy is the result of a calculated political ploy to seize power, or simply reflects a mind to which cheerful giving is so foreign that it completely escapes consideration. I’d guess its a bit of both.

Bill, you did a very good thing by taking care of that little bird. I know you know this, but I had to say it anyway. There are too many people who would have just tossed it over their shoulder and gone flying.

3 cats, 2 dogs. Except for one dog, all are strays.

I look after them ostensibly to teach my s compassion; that one emotion that can most easily be confused with pity. Pity is a short term emotion – a gut level response that can be sated by either walking away or immediately fixing their most pressing problem.

Compassion – now that’s different. I can help you, but I can’t do it for you. I can empathize with your plight, but I can’t stop the great creator from taking you. I will make you comfortable during that time.

That’s my story to anyone who challenges me on why I have 2 dogs and three cats.

But the truth is – I actually like them. And I do cry when they die or they go away. I can’t do anything about it of course, but I know that they had it good while they were part of my life.

What a great story about Howie. You and Dana are a class act. Thanks.

Great story. Reminds when I took care of a bird as a kid and the day I let him free he turned many times over me as a thank you, then left.

It shows that conservatives have a lot of compassion.

Not sure people who want more gov are doing it because of generosity. I think politicians are cynical and having more people dependent to the state and most likely the Democratic party is a market share issue as well.

Re #9 Gaffe: The inbred squirrels that live around the state Capitol building in Madison Wisconsin are legendary. They seem to do just fine with extra limbs and toes…