We Heart Cats

i have a little bobtail (chi chi) who will not stay in the house.  i have tried and done everything, but she’s a little thing and awfully quick … and out she goes…she’s also smart enough to know when i have my arms full and can’t snatch her back.  not having a proper tail, there’s not much to grab when she DOES go flying out the door!  so she’s now an outside kitty and very very happy…she sticks around the house and enjoys the company of the other cats from the neighborhood.  

i thought we had gotten her fixed…my neighbor and i have worked over the last year to get all the boys outside fixed first, then we worked on the girls… we have a regular bunch who come to eat and we’ve taken care of all of them.  or so i thought, i think there was a mixup between the two of us and we managed to miss chi chi. 

well, chi chi got pregnant.  i have NO idea who the daddy might be since we’d gotten all the boys done…that we KNEW about!  i was going to snatch her up and put her in the spare bathroom (which i have fixed up for sick kitties or new rescued moms with babies) to have the babies so there’d be no drama.  well, i was a day late and a dollar short - i saw one morning a few weeks ago that she was no longer pregnant! 

night before last, i saw her coming from the rafters in the garage with a kitten in her mouth!  she came down and took him out the garage door, i think she put him under my little front porch, which has a hole there going under the house.  a good place really for this type of thing…safe and dry.  i was going to snatch her right then and there but… what if there was more than one?  big trouble.

so yesterday morning i hear squalling … over my laundry room/pantry area …. up in the rafters of the house…. i thought, ok, she’ll go back up there and take care of him… but all day long - she’s outside just looking at me and he’s up there squalling!  so i got a ladder… climbed it and then got on top of the hot water heater box… and i could see back there… i could hear him but he’s way far back and i couldn’t get to him…  

so i thought a bit and then i decided to call the fire department.  God love ‘em, they said they’d come around and see what they could do.  they came out and one of them got up inside in there and crawled back farther …. he finally had to get a broom to kinda sweep the baby outta there… he was to the side in a crawl space area….

it’s a little girl, a very soft almost pastel calico.  and check the one picture out… what do you see missing?  :-D  yup - she’s a little bobtail.   

munch and elsa, two of my own females, have always been little mommies…. they adore babies and if i have a rescue mom with babies, if i give them half a chance, they’ll snatch those babies up and claim them for their own! 

well, both of them took one look at this baby and took over.  they’ve been loving her and cleaning her and fussing over her.  they’ve about cleaned the fur right off of her!  i, of all people, ran out of kitty replacement milk and i’ll go today to get some.  in the meantime, i’ve been giving her some chicken baby food … mixed with water.  she really likes it.  and when she’s hungry, wow!  she has some voice on her! 

i hope she’ll do well… she’s certainly a cutie…. i named her after the fireman who was actually up in the rafters…they told me when i called later that his name is tommy d, so her name is now tommi dee.

my aunt has already claimed her!  my aunt had a cat named cody that she adored who was a soft, muted pastel calico.  she passed last year and my aunt has been looking for another one since.  when i told her about this one, she about flipped.  i told her no problem, but you might have to take munch or elsa too!  i don’t think those two are gonna give this one up without a fight!  

let’s hope tommi dee does well and lives a long happy life!  

here’s a link to a previous post i wrote … which also involves the fire department!  FIRE DEPARTMENT 

and here’s a link to a great post from a gentleman who writes about our city - charlotte nc… FLASHBACK