The Jack and Tiger Show

Tiger and Jack's close-up

"How cute am I" (a snowballism)

("I'm so cute that I can even be rotten!")

sleepy Jack

and then there were four - Introducing Tiger

We picked Tiger up from her boarding home last Friday (Jan 30) and brought her home. She has been with us a week now, so it seems to be an appropriate time to introduce her to you. She is a wild child and a sweetheart. Since day one, she has has sleeping between our heads (she also has a bad habit of walking across us, including our faces, during the night, but she's so light we barely notice). She also swats at Jack's tail, chases the laser like a madwoman, jumps into the plants and throws dirt on the carpet, leaps from the floor to the speaker and through the rails to the 2nd floor, follows us around like a puppy, eats like she may never see food again, and is so cute she charms the socks on anyone who meets her. Tiger is a good companion for old man Jack, and Jack is a good brother, toelrating her nonsense! They are already playing together, and Friday they even slept together in the papasan:

PS Today is the 2 month anniversary since Snowball's passing - we miss you boo.

first post of the new year

First off, Jack is doing fantastic - he is vibrant and healthy and has put some weight on those sagging bones. Now that he is feeling better, we are really starting to see Jack's personality- and he has a lot of it! He is a pretty funny character. In other feline news, I coaxed an abandoned kitten out of the woods of a state park a couple weeks ago. She is super sweet and adorable. She is currently staying with R's sister, who also has 2 other kittens for Tiger to play with, because of Jack's distemper and the contamination of the house. After her 2nd round of vaccinations, we plan on brining her home and testing her out with Jack, who is very needy for attention and would probably do well with a rambunctious friend.

Tiger en route to his new temporary home










Secondly, the weather here has been atrocious, so I haven't ventured out as much as I'd hoped. But I did swing by Eagle Bluffs CA on Tuesday where I picked up 4 Savanna and 1 Vesper Sparrows! Plus a few others for my Jan list.

The last couple days have been a whirlwind. I went to St Louis with my boss for my 1st professional meeting with project collaborators. It was quite the learning experience. I met people I only knew through e-mails, so I got to do some networking. Our efforts are to provide a recommended point count protocol and to get multiple state and federal agencies to adopt it - not an easy task!

In other news, I am officially off to Austin for Golden-cheeked Warbler monitoring in March. I'll only be there through early May becuase I am headlining the woodland restoration project here in MO starting in mid-May.

Adios for now!

just Jack

Jack is doing great - he gets healthier every day! Now that he is perking up and acting like himself, he resumed more typical cat behavior, such as scratching. We had bought him scratch mats, because his first few days here he demonstrated a preference for carpets. That turned out to be a side-product of his illness though. Since feeling better, he has taken to scratching both horizontally on the carpets and vertically on our beautiful comforter! He uses his mats - when he feels like it! But he has no qualms about tearing at whatever he is closest to, and we won't even discuss the kneading on the lap. After some investigating, we discovered Soft Paws - nail caps for cats. I trimmed Jack's nails and placed all 10 caps on presto. It took a couple minutes and Jack has been totally fine with them. He has been wearing his 'nails' for several days and we have seen no problems. He continues his normal scratching behavior, but now when he tugs at the carpet, no carpet pieces go flying up in the air.


Check them out:

introducing Jack

While grieving for Snowball the week after his passing, Randy and I stumbled upon Jack. I enjoyed seeing pics of him because he reminded me of Snowball and in some odd way it comforted me to see his picture. Besides just looking like Snowball, Jack is Snowball's age - it was fate! We met him at the shelter and knew immediately we wanted to take him home.

In a strange twist of fate, Jack got very ill the following Wednesday, only 4 days after we brought him home, and was diagnosed with feline distemper the next day. Distemper is highly contagious and usually fatal. It is very rare for a vaccinated adult cat to contract this virus. In fact, the shelter vet had never encountered this situation before. Jack had been vaccinated on Halloween, the day he arrived at the shelter, and we adopted him 6 weeks later. I can only guess that the vaccine didn't take because he was not healthy when he was brought in (which we know).

The vet sent me home with fluids, meds, and AD (special wet food for recovering dogs and cats) and wished me luck. The next 3 days were tough. I administered his oral and SQ meds, and gave him fluids. I started force-feeding him AD through a syringe over the weekend. By Monday he showed signs of improvement. Yesterday he started really eating on his own and finally he is drinking on his again.

We are starting to see Jack's personality finally. He actually got quite playful last night and chased around a twistie-tie (also one of Snowball's favorite games). He likes to follow us around and is even running up and down stairs and around the house. He is really claiming us and Snowball's things and loved his new home.

When we initially adopted Jack we knew we were likely saving him because very few older cats get adopted. Little did we know we were really saving his life. Had he gotten these symptoms in the shelter, they would have been forced to put him down because of how contagious the virus is, especially for kittens.

Snowball's tragic passing enabled this cat to live. We will always miss Snowball, but everyday I get to see some of Snowball in Jack, which brings me some peace. Welcome to our family Jack!

PS His story is on http://blog.ourdoglog.com/search/label/adoption%20stories

Jenn and Eggnog (Jack)

For those of you who don't know, we adopted an older cat just about a week after snowball passed. The cat looked exactly like snowball and he was the exact same age, one month over 10 yrs, well that is what the shelter put him as at least. So we brought the guy home and he followed us everywhere and seemed to love having a loving home.

I should take a step back, his shelter name was Eggnog and Jenn especially felt guilty looking for a cat after Snowbs passed. We found his pic online and decided to just pay a visit to see if we would be compatible. Jenn must have looked at his pic online about 100x, when we got to the place we said to each other that we wouldn't bring him home unless he was special. When we walked into the cat wing of the shelter, we saw that the old man (that's what we call him) had his own penthouse right beside the entry way door, he had a 6'x8' kitty condo as far as shelters go. We had one immediate concern, that he was not in the enclosure. We couldn't believe it but the cat must have already gotten adopted. Well we were wrong, we found that the weasel had gotten out and overtaken another cat's kennel. When we finally found him sleeping, we found that he immediately responded to us, he purred and he continually put his head under our hand when we stopped petting him. Jenn right away knew we were taking him home. As Jenn left to find the shelter people, I decided to test the new cat. I got up and slowly walked way. Just as I hoped, this guy got up and followed me down the hall. I knew as well, we were taking this guy home. Just a note, Eggnog has the crappiest meow that I have ever heard - if you can imagine a full size adult male cat meowing as a little kitten with a chest cold, this is what he sounds like, we thought it was adorable...... but it could have been a sign.

We brought him home and were so happy with him. He ran after us when we walked away, he slept on the foot of the bed (as Snowball did), and he walked very gingerly showing his old man age. From what I have heard, a ten year old cat is equivalent to a 65 yr old man, that is how this guy was acting.

Well fast forward a couple of days, we noticed that "Jack", our new name for this guy, was very lethargic, he wanted to sleep and wouldn't follow us around the house. Finally one morning we woke up and we found that he had very bad diarrhea and he vomited several times. Over a series of vet visits we found out that this old cat had contracted feline distemper, despite being vaccinated when he entered the shelter on Halloween. His prognosis is still very bad, and we were not given alot of hope. Wayside Waifs (http://www.waysidewaifs.org/) helped us out alot and gave us all the meds that we would need to give him a shot. Jenn has previously done animal (wild) rehab and knows the ins and outs of a syringe. At this time Jack's room resembles an ICU, Jenn has a medical chart and she is attending to him at all hours. We are hopeful that this little guy can make it through. The shelter basically told us that if we wouldn't have adopted him, he would have been put down, maybe it was fate that Snowbs passed and gave this guy a possible life. To this minute, Jack is struggling, he won't eat unless Jenn forces food down his throat via a syringe, he is only getting fluids by injection under the skin. From our online research, cats that make it 5 days, have a good chance of making it. It is now day 4 and we hope that the little bear can keep on. We are giving him constant companionship and love. If nothing else this little bear has at least a home. We hope he can pull through, we are doing all we can. Jenn is unbelievable, getting up at all hours to attend to Jack.....