Sharon's Blog

Size Does Matter - If You're a Chicken

2012-01-16T11:25:00.000-05:00

This past weekend, the family (husband Jay, daughter Kelsey and myself) went on our planned excursion to the poultry show being held at the Big E, an hour away. Our plan was to purchase a couple of the large breed hens we’d admired so much at the last poultry show we attended in November where we bought another Silkie and a bantam Cochin, both very small girls.

Millie, the bantam Cochin hen

The Mallory Complex Building at the Big E was divided into two areas, birds for sale and show birds. Only one person was selling chickens in the large fowl category, the rest were bantam (miniature) chickens or breeds that didn’t interest us. So we zeroed in on Steve who had a few cages of very large Cochins. Unfortunately, his hens were already marked as sold and we didn’t want a rooster….or did we? We could wait a couple of hours for Steve’s friend to come back from the farm where he’d gone to get more hens to sell, try to talk one of the exhibitors into selling their show chickens (after judging) or consider one of the three colorful cockerals (male chickens under the age of one year) Steve still had available. Jay admired the cape of feathers on the males for fly-tying purposes (a fly-tier will pay as much as $90 for a scalped rooster cape of outstanding quality), Kelsey wanted to get the rooster and go; I was the hold out. As we stood there and debated, two other buyers came up and offered to buy Steve’s chickens. I was being pressured.

I did not want to take a chance on another aggressive rooster, like our previous one who had to be sold. The downside to not having a rooster though is that they truly become the leader of a flock and will protect their hens from predators, often to the death. These boys were the size of a hawk, but a lot heftier. A rooster has no influence on a hen’s egg-laying ability, just whether or not the eggs are fertile (something we don’t care about). The Cochin breed is known for being big, friendly and fluffy; the gentle giant of chickens. Interestingly enough, our bantam hen Millie is a Cochin too. Same breed, just two extreme sizes.

You guessed it; I gave in and we got ourselves a roo. He barely fit in the large cat carrier I had, but we placed him in the back seat and happily left, me still in disbelief that we’d just bought a rooster. His clucking is a low, resonant sound, a deep James Earl Jones-type of voice. “How about naming him Mufasa?” I suggested to Kelsey. “He’ll be like the King of the Jungle, a protector of his flock.” Kelsey came up with a better name, Aslan, the lion character from The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis.

Since we had to go through Hartford on our way home, we made a detour to Whole Foods to pick up gluten free foods for Kelsey. Kelsey has Celiac Disease so we are constantly looking for food that will work for her. We filled our grocery cart and finished by picking up lunch while were there. As we sat in our car in the Whole Foods parking lot eating lunch, I thought about what a wonderful family day it’d been. A brilliant cockeral in the back seat, a happy daughter because she’d found the gluten free mega-load, and a delicious meal for three hungry people. Aslan even got to share in our Whole Foods bounty.

Normally, there is a proper way to introduce a new chicken to the existing flock, just as there are best practices for bringing a new kitten home. Chickens, however, can be evil toward new-comers and tend to attack those perceived as intruders or weak. I hoped that with Aslan’s size and gender, he wouldn’t get hen-pecked, but he’s very young. My hens may not be impressed with a teenage boy. With previous new clucks, I put them in a cage near the coop so everyone could get used to seeing each other for a few days. In this case, the temperature was expected to be about 9 degrees overnight so leaving a chicken in an exposed cage was out of the question. I ignored Kelsey’s suggestion of keeping a rooster in her bedroom. Aslan squeezed through the door of my bigger cage and stayed there until dark when I placed him on an empty perch in the chicken coop. Chickens are blind and helpless in the dark so the hens had no choice but to allow the stranger with the deep voice to nest with them.

In the morning I opened the coop doors and calm, cool Aslan strutted out of the coop with his new harem and began to eat the scratch off the ground. This was the first time the hens got a good look at Aslan out in the yard with them. The first challenger was Pilgrim, our Plymouth Barred Rock, then Lucy, the Rhode Island Red. Both tried to spar with him. A couple of fluttering chest-bumps from the big guy and the hens quickly figured out the new boy was no push over and backed off.

Aslan is doing great so far. I constantly marvel at how truly magnificent he is with his multiple colors and his feathered legs. I took my scale out and weighed him; he’s 9 pounds. He should weigh about 11 pounds when he’s fully grown. He hasn’t picked on any of the girls and has started crowing, albeit an adolescent crow. The hens respect him and no further aggression was observed from anybody. When I let them out in the afternoon to range in our yard, Aslan stayed right with his new flock, returning to the coop to roost when it got dark. It’s been such an easy integration with a large rooster into a flock of hens. Normally it can take weeks for a flock to completely accept new pullets and even then the smaller ones will always be at the bottom of the chicken hierarchy.

Aslan with his new flock

In the cat world, the males rarely dominate the females. Boy cats will “Yes Dear” the girls, staying out the way if she’s in a bad mood and savoring the times she is affectionate. With dogs, we’ve all heard of the little dog bossing the large dog. For them, and for people, an assertive personality is all that’s needed to be in charge. In the chicken yard, however, size does matter. It doesn’t hurt to be the only boy either.

Aslan the Magnificent

Good Enough

2012-01-12T11:00:00.001-05:00

I’m one of those people who know how to spell. I’m from the old school, before spell-check started creating a generation who has no clue how to spell correctly. Since spelling is one of my few talents, I was disappointed years ago to learn that my natural ability has nothing to do with intelligence. If I’ve spent hours creating a new page for my website only to find out later that I have a typo (there is no spell-check built into web design), I will go back in and correct it, no matter how tired I am of sitting at the computer.

My kids cringe when I find a misspelling because I usually declare out loud, “Ah ha! They can’t even spell ‘necessary’! I should send this back marked up in red pen.” “Mom, please don’t say anything to my teacher. Just let it go," they beg. I especially get irked when I see a business has paid a third party for professional signage or documents, only to have typos glaring out. I have found typos in clothing labels “Machine Wash Seperately” and government forms “The Special Administerator shall file a vertification of assets...” My spelling gift is both a blessing and a curse because I find mistakes very difficult to over look, giving me a Miss Know-It-All edge.

All that being stated, I am much less of a perfectionist with just about every other aspect of my life, where I often choose to take the “it’s good enough” approach. For this reason, you don’t want me in an accounting field where numbers and balancing are important. I can spell ledger, but don’t ask me to keep one and have it make sense.

For instance, I like to do pottery. If my pot isn’t centered on the wheel, that’s okay, it’s good enough.

If my husband is doing carpentry work and the corners are not square, he’ll start over. My answer to most home repairs is duct tape.

If I’m following a new recipe and find I’m missing a couple of ingredients, that’s okay.

If I clean the floor and find a tumble weed of pet hair later, I may let it lie.

Painting a wall; why do I need to prime it first if I'm just going to paint over it?

If a cat has a “hanger-on” after using the litter box and the dog gets to it first… well, that just makes my job easier.

Maybe I’m just lazy, but then again, I have to save my energy for the important things in life; like finding typos.

New Year’s Resolutions…for the Cats

2011-12-31T07:55:00.001-05:00

As we get ready to start writing the year 2012 instead of 2011, I, like many people, ponder what changes I’d like to make in my life with the New Year. Losing weight is my usual resolve. But life is not all about me; it’s really about the cats. But I realize that if we cat lovers were to ask our cats to promise to do a few things differently, we should probably compromise and give them something in return.

• If you’ll promise to aim your hairballs where I don’t walk, I’ll promise to comb you more often and take care of any mats before they become uncomfortable for your skin.

• I will feed you food without cornmeal listed in the ingredients so you will vomit less to being with.

• You will all try to get along with each other. If you can’t stand the other cat, just leave the area. Don’t have a hissy fit just because Bubba looked at you “that way he does”.

• When using the bathroom, please think INSIDE the box. Knowing how you don’t like to use dirty toilets, in return I’ll try harder to keep your litter box clean on a regular basis.

• I promise to spend more quality time with you, playing with cat toys or laser pointers so you can have fun and exercise too. In return, stop pretending that human feet under covers are critters that need to be tamed at 3 a.m.

• If you will cooperate better with claw clipping, I will try to trim your nails every 3-4 weeks so they don’t get hung up on furniture and bedding. If the process makes you nervous, I’ll give you treats to nibble on while I do it so the clippers don’t seem so scary. Read my blog on claw clipping for more advice.

• Stop teasing the dog for your own amusement. We all know you have superior intellect (and smell better too). There’s no need to make her look like a fool all the time.

• As I care about your health, I will monitor your diet carefully to make sure you don’t become too heavy, feeding you a quality, high protein dry food and canned food twice daily. Being a Maine Coon doesn’t automatically mean you are supposed to weigh 25 pounds if the weight doesn’t fit your stature.

• Speaking of diet, I don’t put food out on the counter just for you. Kindly refrain from licking the butter or stealing food as if I won’t notice. I don’t eat your food so don’t eat mine.

Wishing my readers and their feline companions a healthy, happy New Year!

Sharon

Trying to Get Crafty for Christmas

2011-12-06T10:16:00.002-05:00

Christmas is coming, the kids are getting restless....let's make Christmas ornaments! I went online to research what opportunities there were for a teenager and two grandkids, ages 6 and 9. I found a few possibilities I liked and printed out the instructions. We spent about $75 at AC Moore and the next couple of days creating personal masterpieces. Some worked out better than others. I put links to the detailed instructions of the ones we liked which also shows you what they're supposed to look like compared to our reality.

Ben, Kelsey and Amanda

Peppermint Candy Ornaments - Not worth the aggravation - Will likely drop on the way to the tree

The individual candies are arranged onto a wax paper-covered cookie sheet and heated in the oven so the candies melt together to form a shape. The candies often didn't hold together unless they were over-melted. They tended to break, but Ben says they taste the same either way.

Amanda adds sprinkle decorations to the soft peppermints right after they come out of the oven

The candy cane on the right is a remelt after it broke the first time

Duck Tape Ornaments - Interesting
http://www.acmoore.com/forum/resource.ashx?a=2613

I didn't get any pictures of the finished product, but we bought clear ornament balls (I think we got the last of the plastic ones at the Waterford store) and Duck Tape with Christmas print. We improvised on the instructions, but essentially cut the tape into narrow strips and covered the balls. I found that a razor blade works infinitely better than scissors for cutting so that task fell to me. Since Kelsey already had a collection of different colors and patterns of tape she'd done little with, she taught Amanda how to make a wallet and the girls got off on a wallet-making tangent. Amanda made a wallet for me and one for her mother. I found out more than I wanted to know about Duck Tape creations as AC Moore has an area with instructional books and sells paper-sized sheets of Duck Tape for the serious taper. My phone book now has a protective cover of multi-colored Duck Tape.

Kelsey's shows off her Duck Tape Wallet

Marbeled ornaments - Pretty - Will actually hang on the tree
http://www.acmoore.com/forum/resource.ashx?a=2665

I chose three colors of small bottles of enamel paint; red, gold and green. Taking a clear glass ornament ball, I squirted each color into the ball and let it run down the sides, four lines of each color. Gold worked great, but the red and green globbed up and fell to the bottom. I gave up on green and did the other three balls in just red and gold. The balls are rotated every ten minutes so that the paint slowly merges and covers the entire inside of the ball, creating a marbeled look. They take days to dry completely, but so far I like them. This was my project as I thought it'd take too long for the kids to get their finished product.

Kelsey's ornament filled with glitter and snow, my marbeled ornaments

Filling Clear Balls with Stuff - Pretty - Will also hang on our tree
http://www.acmoore.com/forum/resource.ashx?a=2664

We didn't follow any of the instructions provided on the website for these, but borrowed the general idea and the kids came up with their own things. They used glitter and fake snow. This would have been less messy if I had a funnel that hadn't been mangled at the tip as it was hard to get material that sticks to everything to go down. I ended up making a funnel out of paper so the snow would flow better. Raised paint was used to put designs on the outside of the ornament. I expect we'll be haunted by glitter and snow until summer.

I really liked all the things you could do with the clear ornament balls. They're much more professional-looking than the reindeer made out of brown pipe cleaners from last year which ended up as cat toys.

Talking Chicken

2011-11-22T12:56:00.004-05:00

A few weeks ago, we suffered a chicken casualty with our backyard flock; a hawk killed our best Americauna hen, Billie. I had driven home after spending the morning at the horse barn where I volunteer and spied the hawk perched about 30 feet up in the trees. It flew off when I got out of the car so I felt better. It wasn’t a large hawk as birds of prey go so I rationalized that if it isn’t big enough to carry its prey away in its talons, most of my chickens would be safe. The chickens were huddled up under our deck, as close to the house as they could get and making a nervous growling sound.

Later, I let the dogs out and noticed their interest in something on the ground. I knew it couldn’t be good. I found Billie, beheaded and partially eaten. Naïve perhaps, but I’d not considered that the hawk would kill its prey and eat it on the ground. The rest of the chickens had undoubtedly seen the whole thing and although chickens aren’t the brightest birds, they were badly shaken. It was days before the girls would venture out from cover without first looking skyward and then running to the next safe place. We buried Billie next to Frodo, the red Silkie we lost last year to a hawk on almost the exact same date. Although I miss Billie and the perfect pale green eggs she laid, I realize we’ve been lucky with predators. We have lost one chicken annually to a hawk. We live in a rural area surrounded by woods and populated by coyotes, foxes, raccoons and fisher cats. Unlike our cats, chickens must live outside. We have since added coverage with a tarp to their chicken yard and limit their free-ranging on our property to their enclosure surrounded by electrified net fencing. The girls seem to like the extra overhead and it will also help to maintain a larger snow-free scratching space for them in the winter. The perfect set-up would be an 8-foot high fence with poultry netting over the top, but we’re still resisting the commitment of money and effort it would take to make that happen.

Chicken Coop Addition

Meanwhile, we had been kinda-sorta looking for a couple of older chicks to add to the flock. Daughter Kelsey wanted another Silkie and I fell in love with the Mille Fleur colors some of the other breeds come in. Mille Fleur is French for “many flowers”; the coloration of mottled gold, black and white. I found out about the Boston Poultry Show in North Oxford, Massachusetts a couple of weeks ago so we planned a family outing to go chicken shopping. I contacted the person in charge of the show to make sure that there would be chickens available for purchase in addition to those being shown. One of the false assumptions people make who come to cat shows is that all the cats there are for sale (most are not), so I didn’t want to make the same assumption and go to a poultry show for nothing.

The show was being held in an open barn area on a cold Saturday, something a teenage girl doesn’t take preparing for seriously. Kelsey’s Converse-covered frozen feet cut our visit short, but not before we had a chance to admire ginormous chickens who were there for the competition under the category of Large Fowl. "Ginormous" is the only way to describe these birds. We have a Jersey Giant hen who is supposed to reach 10 pounds, but she is a light weight compared to the large fowl breeds at the show who were the height of a hawk and much broader; probably four times as large as my standard breed chickens. The first thought was that a gargantuous rooster like this would be incredible flock protection against the birds of prey. Then again, if he sees people as a threat as many roosters do, that could be a major problem. I don’t want to risk being flogged by a feathered pterodactyl roo.

However, we came to look at bantam (miniature) breeds. We ended up buying a white Silkie for Kelsey and a Mille Fleur Cochin for me, both females, and named them Beaker and Millie respectively. Our backyard flock is now at 14 hens.

We really enjoyed talking chicken to others at the poultry show. They told us about the next show which will be held indoors at the Big E the weekend of January 14-15. For more information, check the website of the Northeastern Poultry Congress. I think a couple of big girls are in our chicken cards next.

Millie, my Millie Fleur Cochin

Beaker, Kelsey's white Silkie

Autumn Greetings from Sadie

2011-10-20T20:35:00.000-04:00

Baby Duncan

Dear Reader,

Several years ago when I first started breeding Maine Coons, I was fortunate to sell a female brown patched & white kitten to a wonderful couple, Kristin and Russ. They named her Sadie. The following year, Kristin and Russ got a red & white male kitten from me whom they named Duncan. Sadie and Duncan, like many pets, are loved like human children. Kristin is a very creative cat-mom and occasionally touches base with me through Sadie's eyes. The following is an email I recently received from Sadie that still has me smiling:

Baby Sadie

Hello, Sharon - and howdy to all of our friends at Dracoonfly,

Miss Sadie May here. It's that time of year again...the humidity's gone, Duncan and I have more spring in our step, we leave more hair on the floor and rug and furniture, and with the holidays approaching, we begin contemplating the many things our humans have to be grateful for (namely, us).

There's lots of activity in the yard during the day - squirrels, chipmunks, birds, falling leaves - to help keep our sentry skills sharp. Though we weren't much help to Mom when she came nearly nose to nose with a black bear in the driveway a few weeks back. He came walking across the driveway toward the front porch like he was about to ring the bell, just as Mom was about to head inside after getting something out of the car. Not sure who was more scared - but he didn't stick around long, and when Mom came back in, she said a prayer for all the felines whose owners don't keep them inside, followed by a few rather colorful words of judgement.

Health-wise, we're doing great. Mom wrote a while back about Duncan's back leg, which has been fine ever since the naturopathic vet treated it homeopathically. Oh, the miracles of ancient science and the natural world. I think he's even dropped a few pounds since he's become more active.

Mom thinks I'm oblivious to the fact that she's been fawning over pictures of Ophelia on your website, but I'm laying down the gauntlet. If she contacts you on the sly, the answer is unequivocally NO. My patience is tried daily by you-know-who; I certainly don't need the added strain of a spunky little upstart trying to take over the joint, no matter how cute she is. I do like her name a lot, but let's keep that 'tween us girls.

Anyway, sometimes at night, Mom will read your blogs to all of us like a bedtime story. You've got quite a knack for story telling, that's for sure.

Duncan asked me to pass along his best regards to you... we both wish you, Jay, Kelsey, Tyler and all the four-leggeds a great Fall season.

Sadie

Miss Sadie May

Mister Duncan MacBeth

Cat, Meet Kitten

2011-10-13T09:55:00.001-04:00

So you’ve decided to bring home a new kitten. Great! Of course you realize that if you already have pets, there is the possibility that introducing new cuteness will temporarily disrupt the peace in your house. While most new kitten inaugurations have the desired results of adorable pictures of newfound friendships, some relationships take a while.

I won’t dwell on how to introduce kittens to dogs as the canine species usually feels less threatened than a cat does. My Maine Coon kittens are exposed to our dogs by around eight weeks of age; most will become very comfortable with our 10-year-old Golden Retriever by the time they leave at 12 weeks. Our puppy, on the other hand, has too much energy and plays too roughly for our cats so they maintain a safe distance from her.

Chardonnay gets a massage from Pipsqueak

Most potential kitten buyers I meet take the personality and needs of their current cats seriously when making the decision to get a new kitten, as they should. General considerations for people who have existing older cats at home and want to get a kitten are these: younger cats (under the age of three years) adapt better and should accept a new kitten more easily. If the existing cat has an outgoing personality and greets strangers who come in the house, that cat is a prime candidate for making new friends with a kitten, regardless of age. Geriatric or very shy cats will have the hardest time adjusting. In this case, bringing home two kittens is recommended. Two kittens will stick together and are less likely to annoy the resident cat as they will play with each other. A geriatric cat often prefers to watch kittens play rather than get involved.

There is a method to successfully acclimate your new kitten to your home if you already have a cat. Yes, you could just open the carrier and let the little guy out and watch what happens. Sometimes that does work, but not without additional stress for both parties. Since stress can lead to fighting or litter box avoidance, let’s see what can be done to make it easier for everyone.

Experts recommend you try to minimize the stress by setting up a safe room for the new guy. The safe room should have all the basic necessities your kitten will need; litter box, food, water, scratching post and toys. A bedroom where someone in the family sleeps at night works well. A guest room that’s completely isolated does not. The purpose of the safe room has many benefits; it provides the kitten a place to get accustomed to the smells and sounds of your home and learn important things like where the litter box is kept. After you let your kitten out of the safe room, it will become the place the kitten will seek if frightened. It also keeps your other cat from seeing the kitten just yet. Your adult cat will smell the kitten (and vice versa) under the door. The cat needs time to get used to the new scent in the house so the baby is not seen as a threat. While in the safe room, the kitten will gradually absorb the smell of your house, replacing that of the previous home. You won’t notice, but your older cat will.

As your kitten becomes accustomed to all the changes in its room, this is the time to acclimate your other cat to the idea that the intruder you brought home is not so bad. One method is to exchange scents by wiping the kitten with a towel, then taking that same towel and wiping it over the cat. Repeat. Swapping blankets or cat beds helps too. You want the cat to smell more like a kitten and vice versa.

Another tip is to bathe both kitten and cat so they smell more neutral to each other. Can’t handle the idea of putting Fluffy in the kitchen sink and risking your skin? Corn starch or baby powder sprinkled liberally and rubbed in helps not only to re-scent your cat and kitten, but it also absorbs any excess grease in your cat’s coat. Powder is safe; we use it all the time at cat shows for grooming. Just comb out the excess so you don’t have powder puffs everywhere your cat sits afterwards.

It may take a few days, but when your kitten is running to greet you at the door or trying to get out of the safe room, it’s time to open the door. Let the kitten explore the house at first without the other pets around. Perhaps let the kitten out and put the other cat in the kitten’s safe room for another scent exposure. Once the kitten seems comfortable and the claws are clipped on all parties to minimize injury, allow it to meet one pet at a time. If you have multiple pets, space out the introductions and do not let your kitten become surrounded by everyone at once. With the first face-to-face, be prepared to throw a blanket just in case the older cat charges the new kitten with the intention of inflicting harm.

A new kitten to cat introduction generally follows this scenario: sniff each other, hissing from older cat, hiss reply from kitten. Kitten backs up and gets distracted by all the new areas to explore. Older cat follows, curious, but cautious. Kitten starts playing, older cat is intrigued. Kitten tries to play with cat, but is rebuffed by a hiss and a swat. Kitten backs up and continues playing. If the kitten leaves to check out the rest of the house, the cat won’t be able to let the little one out its sight and will follow, obsessed by the mini intruder. After a while, the hissing diminishes. The kitten should continue to stay primarily in the safe room unless supervised to not only give the older cat a break, but to ingrain the location of the litter box in the geographic section of its immature feline brain.

As you don’t want to reinforce your resident cat’s natural defensive behavior, make sure you don’t coddle or punish hissing and growling. Reassuring anxious behavior by petting only tells your cat or dog that you approve of it. Pet and praise your cat only when it is behaving the way you want it to. As long as there is no fur flying, it is best to let them work it out on their own. In the feline world, older cats establish their place and teach kittens theirs by swatting. Don’t worry; kittens are blessed with short attention spans that enable them to forgive and forget easily.

Male Bonding

If your older cat is still having a hard time after the above-mentioned scent exchanges, try putting the kitten in a carrier in the middle of a central room. The other cat can see, hear and smell the kitten and still feel safe. For the very fearful and defensive resident cat, the above methods may have to be repeated for a week or two.

After the introductions have been made, your resident cat may seem to be okay with the newcomer, but not really comfortable. He’s curious, will follow the kitten around, but still hisses if the fur ball of cuteness comes too close. You’re getting there. To further facilitate their friendship, take out a cat teaser or laser to encourage them to play together. By focusing on their natural desire to play with a neutral object instead of each other, the cat and kitten often form a bond more easily.

I’ve heard of many first introductions in which instant friendships were formed. “You brought me a baby sister! Thanks Mom!” Of course, there are others in which the best the cats could manage was to coexist peacefully. Cats are individuals and friendships can’t be forced. The goal is to give them time to accept the change to the best of their abilities. With patience, planning and a little luck, you’ll have some really cute photos to share.

Our Short-haired Alliance of Remy, the Domestic Short-hair and Bubba, the European Burmese

Not Exactly Spring Chickens Anymore

2011-09-29T14:03:00.002-04:00

Over two years ago, ten baby chicks arrived at the Ledyard Post Office in a box addressed to me and we became backyard chicken hobbyists. I still have seven of those chicks and have since added more. Along the way, the rooster and two hens were sold, we lost a couple of hens to predators, hatched a couple of chicks and gave them back when they turned into little roos; now we have a flock of 13 hens. To those who may still wonder, yes, hens lay quite well without a rooster. We have a diverse flock of four Americaunas, two Silver Spangled Hamburgs, a Silkie, Jersey Giant, Light Brahma, Rhode Island Red, Red Star (a mixed breed), Plymouth Barred Rock and our favorite, Buffy the Buff Orpington.

Foster, one of our Americaunas as a baby chick

Last spring as the days became longer and the snow finally melted, egg production got up to nine eggs daily. Now we’re averaging four eggs per day. My original hens are reaching the age of less egg production, chicken menopause if you will. Chicken farmers often routinely cull the flock every two to three years and replace them with new pullets. That way their egg production keeps up with demand and they don’t end up with hundreds of less productive hens. We, however, have chickens as pets so although Foster hasn’t laid an egg in weeks, there are no plans to “off” her.

The Americaunas - Flo, Foster and Billie, Faye in back

I was aware that hens’ egg production slacks off considerably after a few years, but was curious as to other causes of fewer eggs. I turned to the Back Yard Chickens website and found an article written by J.C. Hermes which goes into more detail. In general, egg production is affected by age, temperature (hot or cold), breed, light, nutrition, stress, broodiness and molting. The article is written about the White Leghorn chicken, an excellent egg laying breed normally used for commercial production. The author states that the young hen starts laying at 35 weeks old, lays 265 eggs annually, her peak production lasting 10 weeks after which the eggs gradually come less frequently.

The egg production from my girls has slacked off more than normal even taking the shorter days into consideration so I’m leaning toward age as a cause. A couple of hens are molting so they are excused from laying for a few months. A molting chicken has to put all her energy into growing new feathers, not making eggs. Pilgrim, my Plymouth Barred Rock hen, is currently broody. Pilgrim prefers to sit on the nest than lay eggs, so she’s excused for now also. Once Pilgrim gets past this hormonal phase, she’ll go back to laying again.

Kelsey with the Peeps

As for other possible causes, I don’t regard my hens as stressed birds. They range freely in our yard and have continuous access to layer pellets, oyster shells for calcium and water. They come running to us in the yard, a behavior reinforced by the receipt of our leftovers. They don’t peck each other’s feathers out until bald spots show, a sign of overcrowding or an active rooster. I did notice that after Hurricane Irene came through, egg production dropped markedly for days afterward. The storm followed by the constant noise of my neighbor’s generator probably caused them more stress than it did my family.

I have a heater in the chicken coop for the cold winter nights which keeps the temperature above 35 degrees. I do this not for egg production, but to prevent my girls from getting frost bite on their combs and wattles. This year I may add a light. Egg production is definitely influenced by the amount of light exposure with the normal recommendation being at least 12 hours daily for maximum egg laying. I’ve noticed that if the weather is overcast and rainy, the following day’s egg production will be smaller. Likewise, sunny days yield more eggs.

Backyard breeds like mine are not expected to be major egg layers. My hens all look different and their eggs reflect their diversity; they can be small, large, white, blue-green, brown or freckled. I usually know each egg’s creator by name. I got the chickens for several reasons; pets, pest control, garden fertilizer and the most delicious, beautiful eggs. We don’t need a bunch of eggs, but it’s kind of special when your breakfast has been produced by someone you know personally.

It's a Good Thing They Have Nine Lives

2011-09-20T11:53:00.001-04:00

I hate to admit it, but there has been more than one occasion when I could be considered an animal abuser. I don’t mean I’m likely to be on Animal Cops or Hoarders; I get just as upset as the next person when I see cases of severe neglect. It’s just that I’ve experienced a few instances where the result made me feel extremely guilty, and lucky that the situation wasn’t worse.

Anyone who’s read my previous blogs about Cassie knows that she is my favorite Maine Coon cat. But even I, major Cassie fan that I am, have unintentionally caused this sweet brown ticked torbie with no trace of torbietude, bodily harm. For the uninformed, “torbietude” is cat terminology which means “tabby with patches of red, aka “torbie”, calico or tortoiseshell with an attitude.” Many otherwise educated cat fanciers falsely label a cat’s personality by its color combination as if it were fact. I can easily dispute that claim by demonstrating my non-torbie’s (male or female) moodiness and my sweet torbies without a care in the world as examples. To me, the label is akin to saying all red-headed women have fiery tempers and all blonds are dumb…ever notice how hair labels don’t apply to men? But I digress….

My more recent cases of Cassie abuse have centered on her pregnancies. Being a breeder of long-haired cats, I’ve found that Maine Coon queens have an easier time if I trim their coats along the vital areas. In anticipation of the inherent messiness of kitten birth, I’ll cut the hair around her backside. A shorter coat makes clean up less tedious for a cat who’s just delivered kittens. Most cats are so fastidious, they will clean not only their kittens, but eat the placentas, tend to their own backsides and tails which become matted down with amniotic fluid and also lick the bedding in their attempt to make the nursery clean for their new family. The instinct comes from the need to destroy any odors which would attract predators.

In addition to trimming the area where the kittens arrive, I trim a swath all along the mother’s belly to make it easier for the kittens to find the teats. Kittens actually learn that when they are blindly searching for the milk bar nozzle to stay in the short hair section. If they climb up to the region where the hair is long, they’ve gone too far and will change direction. The long hair becomes a marker that lets the kittens know where they should look.

Some pregnant queens don’t like to lie still while I’m trimming their bellies, so I’ve found it easier to do it while they are in labor (if it’s taking a long time) or shortly after they finish delivering. Once kittens start arriving, the new mom won’t go anywhere. I just ease over with my rounded scissors and clip a path while she’s distracted with a new kitten or contractions. I was performing this kind of barbering on Cassie, when I cut off the tip of her nipple. This is when the reader should be clutching his/her chest and grimacing. I was horrified! Cassie, however, was fine. She didn’t flinch, didn’t notice the blood, nothing. I got a wet paper towel and applied pressure to stop the bleeding. Cassie kept purring. Once the bleeding finally stopped, there was the nice straight, flat angle on her little nipple. She didn’t even seem to mind if a kitten nursed on it. Since then, Cassie has fully recovered, the flesh grew back and I can’t even tell which teat I hacked now.

When Cassie was younger, more of a teenager, she fell out of my second-story bedroom window. I was downstairs when the dog suddenly jumped up and looked out the back door. I saw a cat. Wow, I thought, that cat looks just like….Cassie! The fallen window screen and the toppled lamp on my nightstand in front of the open window told the rest of the story; Cassie and another cat must have been running around in the bedroom chasing one another when Cassie jumped a little too vigorously into the window, knocking the screen out and following it down to the wooden deck below. Cassie was none the worse after her flight; she was only about eight pounds then and a lot of fluff. I remarked how lucky I was that it wasn’t one of the twenty-pound cats who flew out.

Recently, Cassie challenged my windows again. I was upstairs napping. Cassie was sequestered in our bedroom because she was very pregnant and due in a few days. During the warmer months, we have a tall, oscillating fan in our bedroom. It keeps the room comfortable and creates a white noise which makes it easier to sleep. I had just drifted off to sleep when I heard a noise. I looked up and saw nothing, heard nothing more, so I went back to sleep. Unbeknownst to me, Cassie, who had been lounging in the open window, apparently caused too much stress on the screen locks with her larger size and fell out of the window. Jay was outside and witnessed the exit. He called me, but I heard nothing with the fan going. Left to catch the cat himself, I had no idea what was going on outside until he came in the bedroom with a window screen and Cassie.

Once again, Cassie seemed unaffected by her escapades and I still felt the unborn kittens moving around. Since she was so pregnant and off-balance, there was a lot more concern about potential damage. As Cassie was delivering her kittens a few days later, I anxiously waited to see how they would look. Would the kittens be flat like pancakes, have broken limbs or just have smashed-in Persian faces? Fortunately, Cassie's kittens, like their mother, bounce well.

Cassie's Recent Litter - Quinn, Puck and Rachael

Reflections on Hurricane Irene - Like Camping with Comfortable Beds

2011-09-06T17:16:00.003-04:00

My husband Jay was living in Charleston, South Carolina when Hurricane Hugo hit in 1989. I believe I was living in City Island, New York at the time (we hadn't met yet). Jay has experience with hurricanes, losing power, floods, downed trees, rescue operations (he was in charge of logistics and recovery at General Dynamics and led the restorations efforts after Hugo. He was also a fire fighter during college). I grew up as a tomboy in a rural area, rode horses and occasionally have had to "rough it" by peeing outdoors.

Jay is one of those people who can watch the Weather Channel for hours. If a storm is brewing, he's glued to the TV and gets excited about the possibilities. I call him the Drama King. I've lived in Connecticut for eleven years now. During that time, our basement has flooded on three occasions (we now have a sump pump), but never due to a hurricane. Every time there's a hurricane or tropical storm warning, Jay prepares the yard, securing objects that may fly into the windows, extending the gutter drain with god-awful ugly PVC pipe, filling up buckets with water, cleaning the gutters so the expected deluge of water has a place to go, checking the flashlights, filling the propane tank for the grill...you get the picture.

We've all seen the drama kings on the Weather Channel smile as they predict the impending gloom and doom from the sky, smiling because this is when their ratings go up, when they are worshiped and revered, when they are no longer the geeky kid with the barometer but the Great Wise and Powerful Meteorologists. Then the storm comes and it's not nearly so bad as the predictions. What's a little rain or snow in New England really? To save face, the media will still caution people to stay off the roads, batten down the hatches, stock up on milk and bread, because it could get worse than it appears. It's sickening, but it's television.

Call me a cynic, but every time my husband gets all nervous and the Weather Channel's ratings go up with their grandiose weather predictions, I laugh. Wait and see, I say. Hurricane Irene is already projected to just be a mere Tropical Storm by the time it reaches us. It'll just be windy and rainy. We've had wind and rain here before. Remember the floods in March of '09 when we got 14 inches of rain? Why are you so worked up about a possible 6 inches?

Still, we had planned to visit our friends Jo-Ann and Chris in upstate New York that weekend. I would've gone anyway since I was still poo-pooing the notion that Irene was a major threat, but Jay was afraid of driving back home on Sunday in the wind and rain. My friend Jo-Ann, a fellow Maine Coon breeder, had delivered a litter of nine kittens that Friday night. Her cat Maya, had looked big, but no one expected such a large litter. My cat Cassie was nursing a litter of four 6-day-old kittens and had room for more. So Jo-Ann and I rendezvoused in Springfield on Saturday morning to beat the storm and I took three of her kittens to foster. Her cat Maya was nervous and seemed to be overwhelmed by the large number of mouths to feed. Cassie readily accepted her new babies.

Cassie and Her Brood

The storm came during Saturday night while we slept. In the morning it continued and the power went off at 5 am. Big deal. We've lost power before, but never for more than a few hours. It'll be back. I took a picture of our fallen 10-foot sunflowers, our big tragedy of Irene. After a while, I realized the real tragedy of a loss of power when a household lives on well water. Electricity is needed to power the pump which brings us water. No running water, no flushing toilets. My cell phone indicated that the winds in our area were gusting at 45 mph. Not that big a deal really, but several trees fell on power lines and across roads.

Sunflower Tragedy After Irene

We were lucky. Debris in the yard, toppled sunflowers, but no flooding in our area. The inconvenience of living without power or running water began to wear on me pretty soon though and I had to admit that for once my dramatic husband was right. I was not a happy camper and this was like camping but with comfortable beds. Sixteen-year-old daughter Kelsey had a hard time accepting that it could be days before she'd have the Internet back and another week before she could start school (Kelsey loves school). Everyday we drove past the three large trees which were still leaning on the power lines down our road, the anger toward Connecticut Light and Power grew. Most of our community was without power and suffering the same inconvenience and resentment. We were promised that we'd have power back by Saturday, six days after joining the dark side, but we hoped for action sooner.

So we learned to flush the toilets when necessary with buckets of water from our full bathtub. We texted more to preserve our cell phone batteries. We learned to keep a flashlight nearby at night and take advantage of daylight hours. I drove to four different places in search of ice for the coolers then stockpiled ten bags for fear of not being able to find ice again. Most of the ice melted before we could use it. Finding D batteries in the toy department at Target was a major accomplishment. We visited Jay's niece and her 6-month-old baby girl, Rori, at their home in New London where they still had power. We used her shower and dishwasher, grateful for cleanliness every other day. Jay started taking showers at work. We used the dogs' large water jug to bring water home from New London. We learned that boiling water on the grill and trying to wash dishes was more effort than it was worth. Jay learned that puncturing a Keuring cup and straining it for a cup of coffee could be a little crunchy. We bought a new game to play by candlelight, "Hedbanz". Kelsey, who normally spends most of her time in her room on her laptop pretending to be annoyed with all things parental, learned to come in our room after family game time and keep us up late with conversation and flatulent humor.

Kelsey with Baby Rori

Our neighbor ran a generator which came to symbolize our suffering. We did not have a generator and therefore lost most of our food even with our iced coolers. We rationalized that even if we could find a generator to purchase, the cost of buying something that we'd only use once every ten years or so wasn't worth it. Most generator owners run them for a few select hours to keep the food preserved, take a shower or have light at night. Our neighbor ran his generator constantly. Non-stop. At first it hummed. Our houses are far enough away from one another that when the trees are in full foliage, we can't see each other. We can't hear each other either, but can hear loud noises like a barking dog. It's normally very quiet and secluded at our house nestled in the woods. Every day, I'd drive around to the nearby towns with power, charging my phone, in search of batteries, ice or some other survival tool and hope to come home to a house with all the lights on. Instead, as I pulled up to our house and opened my car door, I heard the roar of the neighbor's generator indicating that we were still doing without. I curse you generator.

Fortunately, the weather was perfect. Not too hot, not too cold, no humidity, no rain. Temperatures were in the high 70's during the day, mid-60's at night. With our windows open, it was good sleeping weather. That is, it would have been if it weren't for the incessant throttle of the generator pounding in our ears. That damn generator teased us, "Nyah nyah! We have power and you don't! We can flush our toilets and and take showers and you can't! We don't have bags of ice melting all over our freezer and you do!" By Day Five, the noise was deafening.

My Nemesis

In between all this, I was bottle-feeding newborn kittens four times a day, weighing them twice daily by flashlight, mixing up Kitten Milk Replacer with bottled water and trying to clean the bottles the best I could. Cassie's milk supply took a few days to catch up with the demand of three additional kittens and the newborns weren't gaining well. Two of the kittens faded and died. I don't blame Cassie or myself as three of Jo-Ann's six kittens died also. Sometimes there occurs an awful thing called Fading Kitten Syndrome. It could be due to an underlying uterine infection that was transmitted to the kittens, but took a while to take effect. Or it could be due to the large litter size and the mother not having enough natural immunity to pass around to everyone. No one is completely sure of the cause. Either way, the results were depressing.

On the fifth day, the trees leaning on the power lines had been cut for two days, but still no power. The newspaper had a headline: "CL&P: We're Working as Fast as We Can". 89% of Ledyard was still powerless. I got an automated call from the school superintendent telling the community that our town would be distributing free bottled water and meals from the Town Hall. Showers were set up across the street at the elementary school. I despaired that it had gotten this bad. Did this mean we were going to have to wait even longer as the rumors suggested?

That afternoon, an orange Asplundh tree truck drove up our driveway to check the lines. We spilled out of the house like hillbillies, cheering it on. Kelsey yelled to the men in the truck, "We love you!" Hey, if a 16-year-old girl telling you she loves you doesn't inspire a flip of the switch, what will? A few hours later, while were playing Hedbanz again by candlelight, it came back. We cheered so loudly the cats scattered at our outburst. Kelsey took off to her room to go on her laptop. As she left to go upstairs, I told her it'd been nice talking to her the past few day and not to be a stranger. Before I shut the windows to turn on the air conditioning, I yelled at the top of my lungs out the window toward our neighbors, "You can turn off your damn generator now!"

Camp Stegall - Yes, We Have Our Own Camp

2011-08-19T16:07:00.000-04:00

My family doesn't really have its own camp named after us, it's just a name that was suggested when we first started our summer annual get-togethers at a beach house in Garden City, South Carolina six years ago and it stuck. Each year is designated with Roman numerals and abbreviated; this was CSVI. Being that my family is spread out all over the country (brothers in Arizona and Georgia, sister in Minnesota, parents in North Carolina and I'm in Connecticut), reunions are usually the only time we are able to visit in person. By the end of the week, the emotions are a mix between "I feel so normal compared to the rest of my family" to "I have the best family ever".

We headed toward this year's vacation by finding out a few weeks before that we would not be meeting my step-brother's new girlfriend. We had all been excited to meet her, but she had recently broken up with Jeff, he was moving out of their apartment and trying to pull himself together. Knowing Jeff, his mood was expected to be less than his normal level of a guy who loves to do things and have fun.

On top of Jeff's break-up, my mother received word that her only sibling, David, had died a couple of days before the vacation was to begin. She and my step-dad had to drive to Washington, D.C. where David lived and take care of identifying his body and arranging things with the funeral home. Please note, when you hear about checking in on the elderly during extreme weather, take it seriously. A malfunctioning air conditioning unit in his apartment and the record-breaking heat led to his death.

The first part of the week seemed to be dominated by my uncle's death. My husband Jay, who was celebrating his completion of law school and having just sat for the bar exam, stepped in to help Mom with the legalities of being appointed administrator of her brother's estate. We held a small service in David's honor in the spacious living room of the beach house. My step-dad John led the service while Mom played the keyboard she'd brought, my sister and I read passages, my brother Paul sang a solo, we all sang a couple of hymns and talked about David. The event brought closure to David's life and my mother had a much-needed cry afterwards with her three children holding her in group hug.

David's service behind us, things lightened up. Jay and I got into our normal beach routine of a morning walk along the beach, followed by a swim in the private pool. We would be so sweaty with the South Carolina heat and humidity after the walk that I just took off my socks and sneakers and swam with my walking clothes on. It was a relaxing routine with no animals to clean up after or feed, no hair on the bed (except what we brought with us), no dogs or chickens to let out or lock up. My bill for my pet-sitter was going to be high, but she was keeping the dogs with her at her doggy day care and sending me pictures of Chardonnay and Coraline with their new buddies. The dogs were at camp. The cats, chickens, tortoise and hamster were all taken care of twice daily. It wasn't just a beach vacation for us, it was an animal-free vacation.

My son Tyler rented a moped to try out for a couple of days to see how he liked it. He wasn't able to make enough money to buy himself a car to take back to college with him, but he figured a moped would be okay. He goes to USC (South Carolina, not Southern California) where winter isn't a big deterrant, parking would be easier, gas mileage is incredible, etc. Of course, I had to try it out and ride the scooter around the block. Tyler initially expressed doubt as to my abilities, nervous that his old lady of a mother might break a hip. After his grandfather rode the moped, Tyler admitted, "Now that I've seen Granddaddy Joel try to ride it, I guess you're not so bad." I hinted at my biker chick past, but I don't think my son believed me.

Tyler with his new wheels

Each year, Dad and June offer to keep the four grandchildren while Generation II goes out to dinner. The kids don't really need to be watched anymore since they now range in age from 13 to 19, but they've accepted their status and agree to hang with the Grands at a restaurant. Generation II consists of my older brother Paul, his wife Denise, younger sister Diana and her husband Rick, younger brother Jeff, Jay and me. Normally we just go out to dinner. This year, we followed dinner with a small comedy club. By small I mean a crowd of about 25. We had to navigate from dinner to the club during one of those torrential southern thunderstorms. Paul and Jeff had been volunteered to fetch the cars around so they were drenched while the rest of us were merely spotted with rain.

The seven of us took the front row at the comedy club, all tables for two with a space allowed for the comedians to walk on the platform stage. Because of the spacing, Jeff sat away from our group and refused to move his chair over and join us. Denise told her husband Paul to sit with Jeff so he wouldn't be alone. She joked that since they were both sporting wet shirts, they looked like a couple anyway. The warm up comedian was painfully long, but the front liner, Jeff Bodart, was awesome. My two brothers, who did nothing to dispell the image they projected as a gay couple, gave the comedian a lot of material to inject about their preferences (nothing mean or hateful though). Our howling laughter just egged him on, my sides and face hurt by the time the show was over. As we left the club, we spoke to the comedian and filled him in on Jeff and Paul's true relationship. He apologized and said we should have told him. Sorry, it was more funny to listen to the jokes and know the truth.

Paul and Jeff Play the Part

We've been back in Connecticut a couple of weeks now. Reality hit as soon as we walked in the door and I made the rounds to check on the animals. Back to the messes, cans to open, boxes to scoop, hair on my clothes, chicken poop on my shoes. No more king size bed and a shower with five heads. No huge house that the maid service cleaned. No more beach walks or private swimming pool. Mostly, I miss my family.

All of Us

Peace and Harmony Gotta Go

2011-07-21T18:04:00.000-04:00

In a May blog, Baby Chicks Part 2, I wrote about how two of the fertilized eggs a friend gave me had hatched. Thelma, our Jersey Giant hen, raised them, giving us wonderful images of a mother hen and her two chicks clucking and peeping around the yard. Since all our existing chickens were kept caged inside the first five weeks with heat lamps until their "big girl" feathers came in, it was nice to see the little fluffy peeps living as nature intended.

Mother Thelma with Fuzzy Peace and Harmony

The blond chick became white and as it learned to fly, would roost in a nearby tree instead of in the coop with the rest of the hens. Last Christmas, I'd thrown out the white dove ornaments, deciding they were too chewed by cats to make it another year. My husband Jay thought it'd be funny to decorate the small maple tree by the chicken coop with the doves (which have suspicious-looking hummingbird beaks; who ever heard of a Christmas hummingbird?). This tactful display remained until the leaves came in this spring and the ornaments finally made it to their intended destination. When the white chick started roosting in the same maple tree, the first thought was that she looked like a dove. Every evening we looked in the tree where she perched about six feet up, got her down and put her safely in the coop with the rest of the flock.

Without names for the chicks and still hopeful that they were both girls, I thought of the name Peace for the white one. I used to have a cat named Peace as a child, so named because I had a pony called Love. I contemplated naming the dark chick Love, but then tried to come up with other names. War, perhaps. War and Peace. Peace and Hope (hoping they were pullets or young hens). Kelsey vetoed those ideas, suggesting instead that I call the other one Harmony. Fine, Peace and Harmony it is.

As Peace and Harmony developed I studied their combs and wattles. If one had a redder or more pronounced head coloration, that one was likely male. They looked the same. With no young roos to compare them to, I declared they were either both pullets or both cockerals. Ever optimistic, I still referred to them as "she".

Chicks grow rapidly and the pullets (technically a hen under the age of one year is considered a pullet) can start laying as early as five months. I couldn't remember how old our one former rooster, Shanaynay, was when he started crowing. A crowing half-grown chick is a sure sign that you don't have a pullet. Thelma decided she was done with child-rearing and began chasing her brood away, somewhat like a mother cat who's trying to wean her kittens. Peace and Harmony hung out with one another, peeping at the bottom of the pecking order of the flock.

The other day Jay was outside when he heard a chicken commotion. Peace and Harmony were fighting. Down South, we'd say they were "rassling". Previously, they would bump chests and play fight, but this time they were out for blood. The other chickens circled around to watch, chanting, "Fight! Fight! Fight!" Buffy, our most outgoing hen decided she'd apparently seen enough and barged in-between the two, breaking the fight up. Peace had a cut on his head and was bleeding. If we'd had any doubt that we had two little cockerals, the fight and Harmony's subsequent response cast all that doubt aside. He crowed.

Two-months-old and fighting already. When we had Shanaynay, he didn't become aggressive until he was about a year old. No way was I keeping Peace and Harmony when they were the exact opposite of their names already. It may just be fighting each other now, but I could easily envision my legs becoming the next target. I caged Harmony, made sure Peace's cuts were just superficial and immediately contacted my friend Lorraine who had given me the eggs. I arranged to give the chicks back the next day where they could live out their lives on her farm. If not in peace and harmony, at least where I don't have to deal with any little cockeral fights.

Harmony and Peace - a Major Misnomer

Educating the Educators

2011-07-03T08:05:00.004-04:00

As someone who breeds and shows Maine Coon cats, I usually enjoy the opportunity to talk about my cats and enlighten fellow cat fanciers. The hard part with having Maine Coons in the northeastern part of the country is that everybody and their brother thinks they have one too. True, the breed is naturally derived and has a common ancestry with many of the large domestic long-haired cats around here. When the veterinarians tell a pet owner that their cat could be a Maine Coon, people love that. After all, vets know cat breeds right? Animal shelters often list any long-haired adoptable cat as a Maine Coon mix; not because they know, but because labeling the cat with a breed makes it more desirable. Such is the curse of having one of the most popular breeds of cats that don’t look as breed-distinctive as some of the others like the Sphynx or the Scottish Fold.

I was recently contacted by a vocational high school principal, Suzanne Green, who was looking for someone to speak on the Maine Coon Cat. The Assabet Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School in Marlborough, Massachusetts was holding a conference for the teachers and apparently there were several requests to have a presenter on Maine Coons. The job paid $100, a little more than the cost of my gas to drive to Marlborough and back; Suzanne pointed out that this was more of public service job. Granted, I would have done it for nothing, but gas money was good. Since I do like to promote and educate, I agreed to prepare a Powerpoint presentation on color genetics and bring three cats of various ages, genders and colors. I was told the audience would consist mainly of animal science teachers, so a Punnett Square wouldn’t be too foreign to them.

Getting ready, I had more than my share of technical set-backs; learning to use Powerpoint and a major malware infection on my PC, but it all came together after about ten hours of work and more countless hours working with technical support people to get my computer working right. Although I’ve spoken to small groups about cats and have done large employee presentations in my former life as a Human Resources Manager, this was to be my first Powerpoint presentation. I went to Jay’s office and did a dry run-through for timing and to get a look at it on the big screen. Wanting to counteract the false information about my chosen breed, I started the slide show with a series of Mythbuster true or false questions. Questions like, “If your cat as a stripe in the shape of the letter ‘M’ on its forehead, it must be a Maine Coon” and “The Maine Coon gets to be 35 pounds”, true or false?

I saved my presentation on a flash drive, intending to use the school’s equipment once I got there. I even emailed the presentation ahead of time so they could make sure my version of Powerpoint was compatible. I planned on bringing three cats; my eight-year-old brown classic male, Bugger, a two-year-old blue torbie and white female, Trifle, and an eight-month-old solid black female, Lulu. Trifle’s coat is naturally low maintenance, but Bugger and Lulu required baths the day before we were to leave. I loaded up the minivan with a large traveling cage with enough room for 3 cats and a litter box. I also packed my grooming bag, a collapsible show cage to display with the cats in the auditorium, and a cart to carry everything in. It was almost like preparing to go to a cat show, but with more emphasis on me. I had printed out the slide show so I flipped through that on the drive up, rehearsing my lines and forcing myself to slow my speech down.

Once I arrived at the high school, the first thing I noticed was that there were cars parked everywhere; in the grass, on the sidewalk, in non-spaces…basically the place was overwhelmed with people. Fortunately, there was one empty space; someone must have left for lunch. I planned on getting there one hour early to set up, clean up any cat messes and make sure the presentation would work.

Towing my cart loaded with cats, I asked at the registration table where I should go. “Oh! Are those the Maine Coon cats?” the lady asked when she saw my carriers. “We’ve been waiting for you.” I was told to go down the hall to room 401D to check in. I got an even more enthusiastic greeting at 401D. The woman there squealed with excitement when I told her my name and instructed a man to call the phone number written on the black board as Principal Suzanne Green wanted to be notified the minute I arrived. Really? I started to get nervous. Everyone surrounded me and my cats; I felt like a celebrity but hoped I wouldn’t disappoint. Suzanne showed up within seconds, personally escorted me to the auditorium and helped me set up. I have never met a school administrator who was so personally involved instead of delegating. There was a sign on an easel outside the entrance to the auditorium with my name and a blurb about my presentation. I felt so important.

A few teachers were staked out in the auditorium before I got there, waiting on my arrival. It would be almost an hour before I was scheduled to begin. The intimidation of the school’s high expectations was mounting. Suzanne told me there were over 700 teachers there for the conference. Many were attending for continuing education credits for their field. 700? They won’t all be in here will they? I was assured that although some were so excited I was there that they were skipping their scheduled workshops, there would also be about 22 other presentations/workshops going on simultaneously with mine so it wasn’t really all about Maine Coons. Minor sigh of relief.

Although the small auditorium looked liked it could hold about 60 people, there were closer to 27 there when I got started. They seemed to like the Mythbuster questions, but I started losing some of them on the Punnett Squares. The educational part of my presentation was to explain color genetics; like how you can get a blue or a solid black kitten from two brown tabby parents. I had pictures of the variety of colors that Maine Coons come in, mostly my own cats.

Of course they just wanted to see the cats. After the slides were finished, I pulled each cat out of the show cage one at a time and talked about it. For another 30 minutes, I answered general questions about kittens, showing, genetic testing, personalities and behaviors while I had a cat on the table. Bugger elicited the same responses he used to get at cat shows. “Oh my God, look at that cat! He only weighs 17 pounds? I would have guessed he was more like 30. He’s huge!” The audience members who were the most enthralled circled around me and my cats, taking pictures with their cell phones like paparazzi.

When my 50 minutes of allotted time was up, Suzanne helped me pack everything back on my cart, proclaiming that my cats were a success. As I left, wheeling my Cart O’ Cats down the school’s hallway, I continued to receive attention and was asked more questions. Of course, after all my efforts to educate the audience about how only 4% of all cats are purebred, not all tabbies are Maine Coons, blah, blah, blah, I came away with the impression that I failed. I must have gotten at least five comments from people after the presentation about their own Maine Coon they had found or gotten for free. One man very proudly told me about the feral female cat he had adopted a year ago and how a stray Maine Coon cat had sired the litter she just had. I resisted the urge to scream at him, “Didn’t you listen to anything I said in there? It’s NOT a Maine Coon! It’s just a long-haired cat.” I politely bit my lip and didn’t even lecture him on why he should have his cat spayed and keep her inside. Instead I just wished him luck in finding homes for the kittens and walked away.

Bugger

Trifle

Lulu

Shave and a Hair Cut

2011-06-04T20:47:00.001-04:00

This year I decided to give our Golden Retriever, Chardonnay, her annual haircut myself. I purchased professional clippers last year and have used them on a couple of the cats who became matted. Finally, it'd gotten so hot last week and Chardonnay looked so pathetic with her tongue hanging out, I decided to go for it. I ended up covered in dog hair, hot and sweaty, with a sore back. Our new puppy, Coraline, savored her naturally short and cool doo and made my job more challenging. She eventually became so obnoxious that she had to be banned from the barber area.

This would have been so much easier on me if we had a dog grooming table

Let go!

Good thing they make puppies cute

"Chardonnay, let me get that hair off your tongue for you."

"You're not going to try to turn me into a Golden Retriever with all that hair are you?"

Bad hair day, but it's okay as long as we don't show Chardonnay a mirror

I got tired and let Chardonnay keep the mohawk for a few days before finishing the job. She looks slightly better than in the above photo. I know it doesn't look professional, but at least I saved $70 and Chardonnay feels much cooler now.

Baby Chicks Part Two

2011-05-22T09:18:00.003-04:00

In my blog Counting My Eggs, I promised to keep my readers informed when the fertilized chicken eggs my hens were sitting on hatched. Although I started out with eleven eggs shared by Mumbles and Thelma, Mumbles decided she'd been sitting long enough and threw in the towel. Then Buffy, the Buff Orpington, thought she'd wax maternal and sit on the eggs. In between all this, there were times when the eggs weren't covered. One by one, they rotted and cracked. They were literally half-cooked, maybe fertile, maybe not. I'm sure the phrase, "last one's a rotten egg" comes from the situation where chicks start hatching and the
egg(s) that never hatches is rotten. The stench is unmistakeable.

Thelma prepares for motherhood

In the end, we have two viable chicks, a blond and a reddish-brown one. Since the person who gave the eggs to me doesn't know the breeds of her chickens or her roosters, this is a guessing game. The brown one has feathering on her legs so it'll be interesting to see how he/she/it develops. I'm automatically referring to the chicks as girls, but I honestly don't know the gender. Chickens, unlike puppies, are very difficult to sex at this age. I'm thinking of naming them adrogenous names like "Pat", "Chris" or "Terry". Any suggestions are welcome.

I felt guilty at taking the pheasant chicks away from Thelma after all her dedication to hatching them and want to give her a chance to enjoy motherhood. If she never becomes broody again, then perhaps she will have learned that children are too much work. Since I'm trying to let these chicks grow up with their adopted mother Thelma (Buffy proved too aggressive to be allowed this privilege), I have a new set of challenges. Normally I would raise the chicks in a cage with a heat lamp in my basement until fully feathered at five weeks. At five weeks they are adolescents and ready to move outside. The nesting box the chicks were hatched in is about two feet off the ground so it would be difficult for fuzzy peeps to navigate that height, even with a ramp. Plus, the other hens are not maternal toward the chicks and could present a danger to anything in their nesting boxes.

Thelma demonstrates how to scratch out a snack to her peeps

Luckily our garden has an eight-foot fence around it, part of which is sectioned off for the chickens to keep them out of the planted veggies. During the winter, we strung fishing line every three feet across the top of it to deter the hawks so the chickens would have another safe place to hang out. Since our compost pile is in the corner of the garden, this provides a lot of enjoyment for the girls to rifle through our leftovers, spread the compost around and pick out worms and grubs.

I decided the hens' fenced in garden area would become the nursery. I turned the bottom half of a large doghouse over and placed a cat carrier on top of that. Chickens need to roost off the ground, thus the doghouse base. The cat carrier can be locked up at night. I drape a sheet of plastic over the carrier at night for further warmth and rain protection. Probably not as warm as the nesting box in the coop, but I keep in mind that Thelma's underside had to be about 95 degrees in order to have been able to incubate the eggs. I put food and a waterer in the carrier with them, which the chicks quickly learned to use. The garden is closed off to the other hens, something they resent, but have to accept. The idea is that as the chicks grow, the rest of the flock will get used to them behind the safety of the fence so that the new members will be able to acclimate seamlessly.

Our contraption we're calling the nursery

Thelma is a big girl and a wonderful mom. I have to lift her up to see the chicks. When it's warm, they come out from under their mother. Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed that we can keep them safe until they are grown and that both are hens.

Thelma and her brood in their nest

As a sidenote, I am now a blogger on the Ledyard Patch, a local online newspaper. I will be blogging about the same types of subjects as I do here, perhaps revamping some of my old stuff. If my followers could please comment or click the Recommend button on the Ledyard Patch blog to indicate their support, I'd give them each a Maine Coon kitten. Not really, but still, I'd be grateful.

Loss of Sanity or.... We Got a Puppy

2011-05-18T09:10:00.005-04:00

After raising our Golden Retriever, Chardonnay, I promised myself that I would never get another puppy. The next dog would arrive in adult form, housebroken and with all its brain cells in gear. This is what I told my fifteen-year-old Kelsey repeatedly last year when she started asking for her own dog. She wanted a small dog, one she could carry. She loves teacup-size Pomeranians. Jay and I don't regard anything smaller than our cats as "real dogs". I can't stand yippy dogs. We compromised. We could get a puppy as long as it wasn't a small breed.

One of the major reasons I opened up to the idea of adding a second canine to the family has been the realization that our beloved Chardonnay is getting older. Even though she's pretty healthy, her hips are starting to bother her, she's already had a benign tumor removed and her sire died at the age of eleven. Chardonnay is ten. The thought of losing my precious Golden Goof eventually makes my eyes tear up every time. I prefer the idea of having an overlap, hoping that perhaps Chardonnay can teach a new dog how to behave in our household; no excessive barking, chasing cats or chickens and a tolerance for small children.

Thinking we'd save money and a life by not going to a breeder, Kelsey looked on Pet Finders for a rescue and found a litter of Shar Pei mix puppies. We ended up going through Help Save One based in Rhode Island. After completing an application and putting down a deposit, we got very little feedback other than being told we were approved. During the process of waiting to hear about our selection, getting auto replies to my email enquiries, being told originally to pick her up from transport at 3 AM in a McDonald's parking lot, then finding out the puppy we'd reserved was not a girl as promised, but a boy....I was tempted to back out many times, but was afraid I wouldn't get a refund.

I had reservations at the idea of getting a puppy whose mother was a registered Shar Pei. Although they are adorable with their wrinkly faces, the breed can be aggressive if not trained properly. I rationalized that most Pit Bulls and Rotweilers I've met have been very friendly, sweet dogs so the breed is not always a determining factor. I also have a personal aversion to a dog whose natural tail carriage is over its back, exposing what I don't want to see every time it walks in front of me.

Nevertheless, we started recording the Dog Whisperer show and bought Cesar Milan's book, How to Raise the Perfect Dog. I was mentally preparing myself to be a pack leader.

This was to be Kelsey's 16th birthday present a month early. She agreed, as most kids do who have to beg, to be responsible for the puppy's care, training, save money to pay for the spay surgery, etc. Kelsey picked out the solid black puppy on the website named "Believe". She had this image of opening a wrapped box with a puppy inside and being surprised. Kind of silly, but I went along. I wrapped a copy paper box, top separately from the bottom, handle holes punched out for air, complete with a ribbon. I took it with me, along with a regular carrier, and met Pam from Help Save One at the Mystic Friendly's around 11 AM. Still a seedy process compared to going to a breeder's home, but much better than 3 AM over an hour away.

As I mentioned, the black puppy turned out to be a male, a fact determined only after Pam took the puppies out as she had no idea which one was ours. I can sex kittens with 98% accuracy at birth, 100% by two weeks. Most vets can't claim that level of accuracy with kittens, but puppies have pretty obvious gender differences from the beginning. Since these puppies were raised at a veterinarian's office in West Virginia, I don't blame the rescue organization for the error as they didn't even see them. If someone wrote it down wrong, it should have been corrected. Only two of the litter in the back of Pam's SUV were girls. I'm glad that I at least got to see the whole litter as it made it easier to narrow down the breed of the father. Judging by the heads and high white with brown freckles on some of the puppies, I'd say Dad was a hound, perhaps a Pointer. I had to call Kelsey and tell her the dilemma. The question was, was it more important to get a girl, or to get a solid black, more Shar Pei looking dog? Kelsey chose the dark girl, a mushroom colored puppy with white on her chest and toes and a long, straight non-Shar Pei tail. The puppies smelled like urine (they'd been in a car for over 24 hours) and complained loudly. Although odoriferous, Kelsey's choice was happy to be held and gave me a bunch of kisses.

When I arrived at our driveway, I stopped and took the stinky, yelping puppy from the the carrier and put her in the gift-wrapped box. Then I continued on to the house (our driveway is a quarter-mile long). I called Tyler and instructed him to bring his sister outside. I tried to present my daughter with her gift and sing Happy Birthday, but I became verklempt. Figures....dogs make me emotional. Kelsey's expectations were low after my phone call, but fortunately she loved the puppy at first sight. "She's so cute!" My birthday song failed, but cuteness prevailed.

After offering food and bathing her new baby, Kelsey finally settled on the name Coraline, "Cory" for short. Kelsey has had two sleepless nights and I've gotten out of bed more than my share, but it's getting markedly better every day. Cory only barks when she's crated and realizes she's alone. She's quickly learning to settle in quietly when going into the crate. She's not yippy at all. Chardonnay loves her, but tires of the puppy exuberance at times. The cats vary in their degrees of welcome as Cory's method of play is a big rough for them.

Cassie is ready to move into Cory's crate

If we survive Coraline's puppy hood to ever look at another dog in the future, unfortunately my preference won't be to go through a rescue organization. I know they're trying to do the honorable thing and it's a lot of thankless work, but I need more reassurances and guarantees. Still, we'll make it work for the new family member.

Don't wake the baby!

Taking Advantage of My Mother's Day Power

2011-05-09T09:40:00.004-04:00

Mother's Day and my birthday are the two days out of the year when my family, which includes two teenagers, feels obligated to do what I want. I kind of like that power of being the queen for the day, justified by memories of living my life around those of my children for so long. Last Mother's Day, I blogged about how we went to a butterfly pavillion where my daughter Kelsey faced her fear of beautiful bugs.

I had read last month in The Day newspaper (yes, we actually read a physical paper; also comes in handy later when one wants to start a fire in the woodstove) about Beltane Farm. Beltane Farm is a small goat farm in Lebanon, CT, offering tours and cheese tastings every Sunday in May. I had been interested enough in visiting that I'd put the dates on my calendar as a reminder although I never mentioned it to anyone else.

Here I was on Mother's Day morning, waiting for the day's planned event of a cookout at 1 pm. The problem was that the farm is only open to the public from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. With a lunch planned right in the middle of that, it would be a tight schedule. Husband Jay was already psyched up to cook, marinating the chicken and cleaning the grill and utensils for their first use this year. Could I possibly sell him on doing both?

As a young adult, one of my mottos was, "Be prepared to be spontaneous." Although I'm fairly certain that motto was referring to birth control, I could apply the same idea to visiting a goat farm. Jay balked at the idea of just picking up and leaving. He argued that it would take 45 minutes to get out there (actually it took 30 minutes, but Jay has a tendency to exaggerate), he had a law school exam to study for, his daughter Erin and the grandkids were supposed to come over for lunch, he's cooking, etc. Not giving in, I gave him the option to stay home or just calling Erin and changing the lunch time to a supper time. Reluctantly, Jay agreed and changed plans with Erin. It was Mother's Day, he had to be nice to me, right?

Tyler, who just got home from USC this past Friday, was still asleep at 10:30 a.m. when this discussion was going on. Being a college student, he was better prepared to be spontaneous and quickly got dressed. Besides, Tyler loves goat cheese so he had a different motivation. Kelsey doesn't like to eat anything different, but was up for a trip involving animals with cloven hooves.

Tyler and Kelsey being greeted by a young goat

Within 15 minutes, we had the whole family in the van, ready to go. Jay had his notes to study so I drove to the farm, thanking my family first for going along with my whims. The first thing we noticed when we got to the farm was the kids (as in baby goats) on dog leashes being held by a woman. My uncertain family lit up as the farm dog, a gorgeous collie, greeted us. Kelsey, who has a strange fear of butterflies and other insects, has no problem with other creatures that share our space (including snakes). The kids (baby goats) won us over with their cuteness and fondness for sucking on our fingers. Jay immediately commented on how beautiful the farm was with its pond, barns, property, friendly people and animals. "Glad you came?" I asked. "Go ahead, admit it, once again I had a great idea."

I expected 15-year-old Kelsey to get a thrill at seeing the goats, cow and donkey as we don't have those animals at home. She got equally excited with the two farm dogs, cat, chickens and the multitude of tadpoles in the pond. Uh, we have those animals at home Kelsey. Critters are always more appealing in someone else's yard I guess.

We tasted all the cheeses and narrowed our purchases down to four kinds to bring back, the Chevre, Harvest Moon, Vespers and Riscotta Fresca. We could have easily brought back one of each, but I tried to show some restraint. If any of you are repulsed at the sound of the words "goat cheese", I advise you to free your minds. My absolute favorite is the Chevre with Herbs de Provence. Finicky Kelsey found she liked the Harvest Moon cheese, which has a harder, cheddar-like consistency. For those of us who love cheese but have mild lactose intolerance, goat cheese is the solution.

Sacrificing my fingers as goat pacifiers

After about an hour, we said good-bye to the wonderful folks at Beltane. We stopped on the way home to pick up a loaf of French bread and devoured two of our four cheeses as soon as we got in the door. My family is happy I pushed them to go there and I had a memorable Mother's Day thanks to the goat farm. It's over seven more months until my birthday....what will I force them to do next?

Counting My Eggs

2011-05-05T08:33:00.001-04:00

I'll bet you've been thinking, "We haven't heard about Sharon's chickens in a while. Wonder what they're up to?" Well, the girls have been busy scratching up bugs, leaving poop around for the dog to clean up, laying eggs and a couple are preparing for motherhood. In a previous post on the tendency for some hens to become broody, I mentioned that when the broody mood strikes a hen, she'll sit on the nest all day and night, taking a couple of short breaks to eat and drink. She'll bristle and cluck menancingly (ever heard a chicken growl?) when I lift up the cover of the nesting box in an effort to scare me away from her nest. Some will bite when you reach under them. A broody hen will stop laying once she thinks she has enough to hatch and start sitting on her eggs so that they will all begin incubating at the same time. This is how birds get their clutch to hatch within a 48-hour period even if it took 10 days to lay all the eggs. A fertilized egg remains in a state of limbo until incubation commences.

Mumbles - Blue Silkie

In this day of mass egg production and plug-in incubators, most modern hens have the broody trait bred out of them. If you don't want new chicks running around all the time, but just want eggs for consumption and healthy chickens in the backyard, broody gets in the way. Some hens, however, are naturally broody and can serve the purpose of being a surrogate mom if one wants to hatch chicks the way that nature intended. Such is case with many Silkies, the funny looking chickens with hairy legs and fuzzy hair that stands up on top of their heads. We have one Silkie, a little blue one named Mumbles. Silkies are well-known for being a broody breed and are often used to hatch other hens' eggs the old fashioned way. Silkies are a bantam (miniature) bird, weighing less than 2 pounds. On the other end of our chicken spectrum, we have Thelma, an 8-pound Jersey Giant.

In casual conversation with fellow volunteer Lorraine at the horse farm, I learned that she not only had many chickens, but also had pheasants. She was interested in hatching her eggs, but none of her birds had the maternal broody instinct. I'll remind the reader that I do not have a rooster, so although my hens lay daily, none of the eggs are fertile. Lorraine has both genders of chickens and pheasants. I was at the point where I needed to break Mumbles of her broodiness, but after talking to Lorraine, we decided to give Mumbles a job.

We put 8 tiny, dark green pheasant eggs under Mumbles, removing the golf ball decoys to encourage the other hens to lay in other parts of the nesting boxes. Hens like to all lay in the same one or two locations, even to the point where one will stand on top of another. They will cue up like women waiting to use the public restroom, waiting for one hen to finish delivering her egg du jour (which can take over 30 minutes) just to use that particular nesting box. The empty spaces on either side of the laying hen are ignored unless there is another egg (or golf ball) there to indicate that this is also a suitable place to leave one's egg. Even with the golf ball decoy, some hens insist upon using the same box each time.

Once Mumbles started happily incubating her pheasant eggs, Thelma decided she wanted to go broody too and took over Mumbles spot. Mumbles was dedicated to sitting on her eggs, but with her small size, it's too easy for the larger hens to push her off the nest. If I did this the right way, I'd have a separate nesting box caged off just for broody hens. The problem is getting a hen to adapt to a new space once she has started sitting. I tried bringing Mumbles inside, setting up a large cage for her and the eggs. Like I'd suspected, she was so freaked out at the move that her unhatched babies were forgotten in her anxiety. Back out they all went.

Thelma - Jersey Giant

Toward the end of the pheasant eggs' 24-day incubation period, Thelma had all the pheasant eggs and Mumbles had two golf balls. I tried splitting the eggs up so each hen would have a job, but the other hens would inevitably push Mumbles off her eggs. None of the other hens would dare challenge Thelma from her spot so I gave in and just let her take all the glory while poor Mumbles hovered protectively over her Titleists. She's not that smart, but little Mumbles is committed.

Finally, the pheasants started pipping their eggs. It can take a day or two for a chick to work its way out of its shell enclosure. Unlike mammals where the mother's body does all the work to push the baby out into the world, the process of hatching is completely up to the chick which has now outgrown its womb. The really incredible part was being able to hear the peeping and pecking and feeling the heartbeat in my hand while holding the egg. Unfortunately, hatching takes a toll. When the hatching started we had 7 eggs as one had broken in the nest previously. Two chicks went through the process of hatching only to die immediately. Two eggs never hatched. Three eggs eventually revealed viable pheasant chicks. We were amazed at how large the chicks were compared to their egg. It was twice as much chick as egg.

Pheasant egg hatching

I had told myself that if hatching eggs worked, fine. If not, I wasn't going to lose any sleep over it. However, I stayed home the day the eggs started hatching, checking on the eggs every hour or so. I was even out there at 10 pm with a flashlight. My concern was that I'd learned from the wonderful resource of the Pheasant and Partridge Forum on Backyardchickens that pheasant chicks are so wild that they will not stay with their surrogate mother, but will run off. I wanted to make sure I brought each one inside to the cage I had set up with a heat lamp as soon as it hatched. Hatching under plain heat doesn't work either as they need the humidity, otherwise the egg sticks to their feathers and inhibits their movement. Once a midwife, always a midwife. Who was I kidding?

New Pheasant

Pheasants are beautiful birds and most often used for hunting. Their feathers make gorgeous fishing flies, hence my husband's interest. The pheasant can not be domesticated like the chickens. They require a separate, completely enclosed area which allows them room to fly. If given the chance to escape, a pheasant will take off; no thank you's, no parting gift, no last glance over the shoulder, just gone. They can't be mixed with chickens as they are likely to pick up diseases from them. They are actually known for attacking chickens and each other if the conditions aren't spacious enough. Pheasants are truly wild and since we like having pets and didn't want to do any new construction, we declined Lorraine's offer to keep any.

Lorraine has since gotten an incubator, a method I would employ if I wanted to hatch a lot of eggs simply because it leaves less to chance. She did, however, give us eleven fertilized hen eggs to try when she picked up the pheasant chicks. Thelma and Mumbles are at it again, partly because I feel guilty for taking their babies away. I drew a black line around the fertile eggs with a marker to differentiate them from our other eggs. Lorraine has agreed to take any chicks back that we don't want. Hatch date is May 21st. I'll keep you posted.

Pheasant Chicks

Sassy - Ten Years Later

2011-04-18T14:22:00.004-04:00

Ten years ago today, my first Maine Coon cat, Sassy, was born. Little did any of us know how things would progress from my beginning as a Maine Coon breeder acquiring her future breeding queen. I blogged last month about Sassy's buddy, our dog Chardonnay, on her tenth birthday. I figure it's only fair that I give Sassy the same treatment.

Back then, we had two domestic short haired cats, Creole and Remy. Since adulthood, I'd held to the ideal of having two cats, no more, no less. Hard to believe that now. Being about 6 years apart, Remy and Creole didn't get along very well. Remy is and was a very outgoing, loving cat, but I missed having two cats that were buddies. Creole was more opinionated and in her opinion, Remy was a brat (Creole died a few years ago from kidney disease, but Remy is still doing well). I thought it would be a good idea to get a kitten while Remy was still young enough to accept it. Once cats get to a certain age, change becomes more difficult for them. Remy was two-years-old then. Remembering my Maine Coon Wannabee, Felicity, from my college days, I decided that if I were going to get Remy a buddy, I wanted to get what I always wanted....a Maine Coon.

Remy and kittens observe the chickens through the glass

Most breeders didn't have websites back then and we had dial up access, so I called veterinarians to try to find a breeder to talk to. Then I found out the price....holy crap! And what nerve the breeders had to ask me to pay $500 and then sign an agreement to not breed the cat! Not that I necessarily wanted to breed, but still. I finally found a breeder who was easy to talk to, Patty in Litchfield, CT. Her kittens were also expensive, but by now I had done considerably more research and was playing with the idea of becoming a breeder. She initially told me that I would have to get a mentor, show, learn pedigrees, health issues, kitten deaths, pay more for a kitten with breeding rights, etc. I said I didn't want a male cat and she explained how difficult it would be to find another breeder willing to let me use their stud unless people knew me. Basically, Patty tried to discourage me from breeding, but she didn't say no. Most breeders refuse to sell kittens with breeding rights to someone they don't know (I would now), but there are others who are less strict and will frankly sell breeding rights to anyone willing to pay. By the way, yes, you can breed your cat without having the breeding rights, but the cat registries like CFA and TICA will not honor the resulting kittens with registration papers. You would be stuck with trying to place your kittens as purebred, but with no documentation to prove it.....another reason why I do early spay/neuter with the kittens I sell as pets.

Well, it's obvious what happened. I brought Sassy home in June, complete with breeding rights. My beautiful kitten and future of my cattery. As a cat, Sassy has not had the same opportunities her canine friend has had to travel with the family and have outdoor adventures. Given Sassy's general dislike for riding in motor vehicles, she's okay with that. When Sassy first came home to us, Chardonnay had already been there for about a month. When comparing a two-month-old puppy to a similar-aged kitten, the felines win paws down for maturity and intelligence. Sassy didn't whine when left alone, didn't take several months to housebreak, didn't destroy household objects with her teeth, didn't eat inedible things (with the exception of the ribbon incident)...Sassy was a perfect pet.

Baby Sassy - 4 months

Although Remy was the initial excuse to get Sassy (she needed a friend, remember?), it didn't work out that way. When Remy first saw little Sassy, she knocked things over trying to attack the intruding kitten (I didn't know back then about gradual introductions). Later they did become friends, but the friendship faded when Sassy changed her priorities to motherhood. Remy didn't understand or appreciate kittens who love to pretend her wagging tail is a snake, but she has come to accept the little brats over the years.

When Sassy was four-months-old, she and I went to our first cat show in nearby Groton. There I met the breeder of Sassy's sire, Merry Braun, who became a valuable resource with her experience. I learned to ask a lot of questions in my effort to become a knowledgeable, responsible Maine Coon breeder. I remembered what I had read somewhere years ago that one should only endeavor to breed animals if the goal is to improve the breed. Creating little creatures by accident or putting two animals together with known health issues is irresponsible and a disservice to the breed.

I knew so little but got so lucky with Sassy. Most new breeders get stuck with a poor example of the breed, learn from their mistakes, and have to reinvest to get the right combination of health, type and personality. I got all that with Sassy, but didn't realize it until later when we started showing in ernest and had seasoned breeders and judges telling me what a nice cat she was. Type-wise, Sassy's ear set is too wide and it took a while for her chin to square up, but her size, pattern, color and expression over rode her imperfections. Sassy did well showing in CFA and became a Grand Champion after only 3 shows. I didn't discover how exceptional that was for any cat, much less a female Maine Coon, until I met exhibitors who had been trying to Grand their cat for most of a year.

Sassy - 8-months-old

Sassy became fast friends with Chardonnay. This friendship came in handy as Sassy matured and I anxiously waited for her to come into heat for the first time. Sassy and her female descendants are not horrifically vocal when cycling, and they start pretty late, at around 11 months old. This is a real blessing since the general rule with cats is to wait until the queen is at least a year old and has cycled three times before breeding her. When a kitten starts cycling at 5 months (and it happens, especially with other breeds), it puts the kitten at risk of a getting a uterine infection if the breeder holds off on breeding her for seven months. On the other hand, no one wants their kitten to become a mother at only 7-months-old. I learned the best way to determine if Sassy was indeed in heat was to let Chardonnay test her. Our dog thought it was great fun if Sassy allowed her to chew on her neck, not understanding what Sassy really wanted. If Sassy went into lordosis position when Chardonnay made the moves on her, we knew...yep, she was in heat.

Sassy in heat with Chardonnay. They were both just over a year old here.

Looking back over my records, Sassy has had seven litters, 18 kittens total. Sassy is the reason I never had problems with kitten mortality the first three years I was breeding. She and her daughters, Ginger, Boom Boom and Crystal, started me out on the right foot. She usually had small litters of huge kittens and mostly girls. Sassy had ten kittens before she had her first boy and he was also her largest, weighing 6.1 oz at birth, reaching 15 pounds at 8 months. Murray went to become the 2nd Best Maine Coon in CFA in 2005-06. Murray's sire is Bugger whom I got from another breeder. Bugger's breeder loved to take credit for Murray's success, but I disagree. Bugger is incredibly handsome, but Murray got his good looks from Mom.

GC RW Dracoonfly Same Thing Murray at 5 years - Sassy's Number One Son

Sassy was my first queen to earn the title of Distinguished Merit for producing five Grand Champions in CFA. If you look back through the pictures on my website, you can see Sassy's exquisite expression in most of her descendants. Her look carries on in her granddaughters and great-granddaughters who continue to produce kittens.

Cassie- Sassy's great-granddaughter

Myra - Sassy's granddaughter

Sassy has not been perfect. She has had "pissues" for most of her life. I had hoped that when she was spayed and retired from breeding, this behavior would stop but it hasn't. I'm sure that if I had placed her in a different home, her pissues would cease. They always do in such cases when a cat leaves the place where the habit has formed. She also has mild Irritable Bowel Syndrome, a condition where she doesn't seem to know she has to poop until it happens. This does seem to have greatly improved on the Young Again Cat Food we're using now.

I made a mistake by keeping Sassy after she retired from breeding. I felt obligated to her as my first, almost like I would be betraying her trust in me if I sent her away. In retrospect, she would have been happier if she didn't have to live with so many other cats. She loves people and Chardonnay, just not some of my cats who irritate her. She's too old to try to place now, but I have since promised myself that all future retiring queens will be placed into other homes. Still beautiful, Sassy does seem to enjoy being a grandmother to the kittens that come and go. Her place is the island counter top in our kitchen. The other cats have learned that if they invade Sassy's space on the counter, they'd better be young and cute, otherwise they are quickly corrected by the Queen.

Happy tenth birthday Sassy!

Sassy at 10 years
Not looking too shabby for a great-great grandmother

Hanging with the Fashionistas

2011-04-10T22:20:00.008-04:00

Friday afternoon I listened to a message on my answering machine from Gloria, the animal agent in California who got Bugger his Tidycats ad. Gloria sounds like she's been smoking since she was twelve and bit loopy. She was bidding on a job in Manhattan that needed a Maine Coon for a designer's fashion shoot. The job requirement was for a brown or "orange" Maine Coon that could sit, stay and be held by a model at the very upscale Carlisle Hotel. Remembering my last fiasco with a $115 parking ticket, stuck in traffic for four hours on the way home, and having to bug Gloria for my $250 check, I hesitated. How much? $350 for a four-hour half-day, $500 if we went over four hours plus paid parking. The client pays the agent by credit card immediately so she could send me my check the next day. I was interested.

Not having a lot of details, I envisioned a photo shoot in the vast lobby of a grand hotel. I needed a cat that wouldn't get freaked out in the arms of a tall, skinny woman in heels and expensive clothes, clawing his way out of her arms. I also wanted to bring a cat of my own breeding, born in my house. My boys aren't good at being held. My girls are pretty amiable. Of the brown tabbies, should I take Olivia or Myra? Olivia has a better head type and is very feral looking, but I looked at Olivia's coat. Even with a bath, she would look scraggly. Olivia had to have a major trim with her last litter and she doesn't look too regal. Myra, on the other hand, has a warm brown, low maintenance coat that wouldn't even need to be bathed. I submitted professional pictures that Helmi Flick had taken of Myra years ago and at 10:30 that night finally got confirmation that we had the job. They wanted a cat whose color went with the earth tones of the background. Be there by 1 pm tomorrow. Good thing because I'd already packed up the large travel cage, litter box, food and grooming supplies in the van.

Myra's portfolio shot at 8 months old - photography by Helmi

Myra and I made the uneventful 2 1/2 hour trip with one stop to clean up poop and another at PetSmart to grab the black harness and retractable leash Gloria recommended just in case. Black doesn't show up on camera as much and all I had in the way of a harness was bright purple. Fortunately, I had remembered how much Myra drools in the car and had put two bibs on her prior to leaving.

We parked in the garage adjacent to the hotel on 76th Street and found our way to the 22nd floor. A man with a foreign accent named Mark who fit the stereotype of a male designer let me in the suite complete with kitchen, two bedrooms and a major sitting area where the photo shoot was to take place. Everyone else was in Central Park and should be back in an hour. I took Myra out and we made ourselves comfortable in the majesty of the room. The pictures I took with my cell phone don't do it justice. It had a 16-foot ceiling, fireplace, antique furniture, built in bookcases, grand piano, views on three sides, bouquets of flowers, book collections on art and photography. Mark got me a glass of sparkling water, invited me to share in the food they'd had brought in, showed me around then left me there alone while he went outside to smoke a cigarette. Me and my cat, my bags, cat hair already covering my navy pants, carrier that smells faintly of cat pee. Everytime after I combed Myra I had to dispose of the gob of hair that she was nervously shedding. I admit that a few times I just tucked the hairball under the skirt of the upholstered chair. I'm sure they have people to take care of a little cat hair. Yep, I belonged here.

Myra tries to relax in her luxurious surroundings

I sat in the room on a comfortable chair with Myra and as different people entered the room, each introduced him or herself as if I was important. A blond lady named Poppy told me she worked with Serge, like that meant something to me. I found out later that Serge is the designer of the Paule Ka brand that was paying for all this. When people noticed the cat, they lit up. I got lots of attention as they petted and admired my reason for being there. If you're visiting another country, trying to get around in Manhattan, something as real and down to earth as a cat brings out the best in you. I heard about every one's pets at home and growing up. A model from Japan who lives in New York told me about her puppy and asked my advice on how to handle him as she's pretty frustrated with his constant barking.

Several times, three or four people would join me in the sitting room; apparently not much to do but sit and wait in the fashion world. I had a very funny conversation with three gay men I can't go into details about. One woman played and sang at the piano for half an hour. She was good, but the piano was loud and Myra was scared.  I tried to discreetly keep her ears covered with my hands.

Although everyone spoke English, when together some spoke their native language which I recognized as French; I took Spanish in school, not French. Fortunately, none of them smelled like the French citizens I remember from my trip to Europe in 1987. I felt like a minority American in New York City. In the surroundings with the accents, I could easily have been in Europe. I only met two models, the rest were photographers, assistants, lighting, make-up and hair people. There were also extra people who just seemed to be there to hang out. All European, of course. And here I was...American, short, frumpy, not-so-slender, heterosexual, covered in cat hair, and probably sporting residual chicken poop on my shoes.

I was told that after the photo shoot in the park was over, they would then have to shoot in the hotel restaurant. Restaurant management was being really particular and granted them exactly one hour, starting at 3:30. Myra and I got pushed back. Fine. I knew if I was there past 5 pm, I was getting more money. I fed Myra turkey from the finger sandwiches so she was relatively happy.

Then Kelsey called to report that our 5-month-old black kitten, Lulu (formerly "Alice Walker" of the Poet Litter), couldn't walk without falling over and had her head tilted to the right.  It sounded serious and Kelsey was home alone. I called my husband Jay. He should be home in 10 minutes and would look at Lulu. Our vet's office closes at noon on Saturdays, but I knew that the answering service would page the vet-on-call for that weekend and have that person call back in an emergency. It's nice knowing that a vet who knows you will be there for advice so the only choice isn't an emergency vet clinic where the costs go up and the care is usually a shot in the dark.   I had Jay take Lulu's temperature so he'd have something to tell the doctor. It was normal. My vet called Jay and spoke to him, concluding it didn't sound like an emergency and if it were neurological he couldn't tell anything without an MRI anyway.  Jay said Lulu didn't seem to be in any pain when he moved her legs and she was eating. He confined the kitten to Kelsey's room so she wouldn't try to walk around.   I breathed a sigh of relief and tried to put Lulu out of my mind as it looked like Myra's moment was finally coming to pass.

Myra, who had looked so calm and relaxed in the chair for the past four hours, tried to hide under my arm as the room filled with equipment and lighting guys manipulating noisy reflectors around the lights on 8-foot stands.   Music was played on the stereo which further frightened the cat, but since Serge the designer himself had arrived and requested it, I didn't feel it was my place to ask them to turn it down. The human model, whose name I don't remember, was from Hungary. A beautiful girl, probably 6-feet tall. She looked like a model should look, but I took pleasure in noticing that she had an overbite. Not a lot of orthodontists in Hungary, I guess. The model talked to me and petted Myra while they fussed over her hair and make-up.

Myra's human model is prepped. Designer Serge Cajfinger is in the background by the window.

After the model was situated on the couch and the hair spray had settled, I finally got to do what I came there for. I was officially titled a "cat trainer". Some of them even asked me how many animals I train. Hey, I just breed and show Maine Coons. I don't know what their expectations were, but I placed Myra on the back of the couch, her tail hanging down luxuriously and told her to stay. Myra looked at me, eyes wide, but she stayed put. She would remain where I put her for about five minutes at a time until someone unintentionally frightened her. If a person came in through the door behind her, she darted under a chair. If the hairdresser rushed in to fix the model's hair, Myra bolted. The photographer finally realized the problem and ordered everyone away from the doorway so Myra wouldn't get spooked. She tried to get the hair dresser to slow down, but he never got it. After about an hour of posing Myra, getting her to face forward, fetching her out from under the chair and placing her back on the couch, lights flashing until they blew a fuse, we were done. Overall, Myra did very well and stayed put long enough for them to take well over a hundred shots. She looked great, although she kept her ears sideways for most of the shots so she appears angry.

I got home around 9 pm. My immediate diagnosis of the kitten Lulu is that she has an ear infection so I've started her on amoxicillin until she can see the vet.

Meanwhile, I'm SO proud of Myra. Taking her out three years after she's finished showing when all she's done since is stay home and have kittens is asking a lot of a cat. Myra is normally a very passive cat, somewhat on the shy side, but always very tolerant of what I've asked of her. She's in a children's book, but that was an easy photo shoot at a cat show when she was very young. I was told that the ad should be in Vogue, along with other fashion magazines, around September. I'll keep you posted.

A Secret Passion

2011-04-05T11:15:00.001-04:00

I apologize in advance....this is a very superficial blog about people who really don't matter.

Don't tell anyone, but I enjoy watching shows like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars. Whoopi Goldberg has joked that the show should be called "Dancing with the Star", singular, and I see her point. Of the eleven "celebrities" dancing this year, I only recognized four of the names, five if you count that I'd vaguely heard of Romeo, a has-been hip-hopist. Of course the show tries to appeal to a broad audience by hiring celebrities from all venues; sports, television, movies, music, reality shows, modeling. I don't watch sports or reality shows so that limits my familiarity. I do like to watch dancing; escaping from my own out-of-shape, uncoordinated body by watching others do what I can't.

The celebrities get paid; the longer they stay on the show, the more money they earn. I imagine most of them don't really need the money and do it to revitalize a sluggish career. Some have honestly said they're doing it to lose weight. DWTS certainly transformed the bodies of Kelly Osbourne and Marie Osmond; dancing 6-8 hours daily gave them a weight loss turbo boost.

In previous years, I was irritated when a celebrity with an obvious advantage was put on the show. I knew Kristi Yamaguchi would win and stopped watching that year. As much as a figure skater can try to claim that dancing is "so much different" than skating, you know it's still more closely related than say, playing football or acting. Same thing with Jennifer Grey, last year's shoe-in winner. She didn't get the lead in Dirty Dancing without having taken years of dance lessons. So they made her back injury and cancer survival a big deal in order for her to appear like she was at a disadvantage.

This year, there's no one with a major dance experience advantage. Watching the first show, I tried to come up with a percentage of celebrities who had been surgically enhanced. This year's obvious ones are the boob jobs. Of the women celebrity dancers, my best guess is three out of five have gone under the knife; the Playboy bunny, the model, and probably Wendy Williams. At least this year I don't see as much of the botox and nose jobs as in the past, i.e. Wayne Newton, Jennifer Grey, Buzz Aldrin (yes, the botox was obvious men).

As I don't care about/don't know the other "celebrities", I'll just focus on those I do. Some of them are pretty good dancers, but since the audience decides who wins, it really all comes down to popularity.

Wendy Williams has a daytime talk show. I've never watched more than 2 minutes of it, but I'm aware of who she is. However, I never realized until DWTS how much Wendy looks like a transgender. If she was born female, I feel sorry for her. Without the make-up, hair and very large, perky bosom, Wendy could easily be a Wendell. With all the accoutriments, she could be mistaken for any of the drag queens on Bourbon Street in New Orleans (don't ask me how I know that). The boob job I'm not sure about because Wendy is a large person; usually a boob job is more obvious when a very thin person has a lot up top for the size of her frame. Breasts are made of fat tissue so guess what goes first when you lose weight? Wendy probably will go home soon because she is clearly the worst dancer and tends to march through her dance steps with the grace of Kate Gosselin. If Wendy stays and wears out her welcome, it's because she's better known than some of the others and will solicite more votes from her fans.

Tony Dovoloni and Wendy/Wendell Williams

Even though I don't follow a lot of sports, I know who Sugar Ray Leonard is...mostly because I've always thought he was very cute. He's still cute, but not a very good dancer.

I know Kirstie Alley from the TV sitcom Cheers. She is probably the most overweight person I remember being on DWTS (no doubt one reason she wanted to do the show) and is a funny actress. She has been suprisingly well-coordinated in her dance moves. I'm curious to see how much weight she loses and expect her to last a while.

Ralph Macchio, best known from the Karate Kid movies. He still has that young baby-face, but looks like he's wearing too much make-up. When they did Ralph's introduction piece, he came across as a geek. Geeky hair style (but still all his), goofy jokes and an intellectual family man. He reminded me of a skinny version of my brother. When he danced, however, Ralph had a very graceful style (unlike my brother). I guess he still has some of that martial arts coordination. Ralph could end up winning, but I'd love to see big Kirstie take it.

My goofy brother Paul, aka "Howard" demonstrates his dance moves

Compared to American Idol, DWTS has more professional judges who give better critiques. Winning DWTS doesn't carry the same weight with a rich celebrity that it does with a singing amateur who's trying to break into the business so American Idol has less fabricated drama (especially now that Paula is gone). The dance show contestants have a drama or story each week to draw people in. The celebrities argue or sleep with their professional dancing partner, walk off in frustration, cry, get hurt, show off their families, have trouble connecting with the dance, etc. for their "story" each week.

My biggest pet peeve with Dancing with the Stars is the constant audience clapping. I don't know how anyone could think that having the background noise of applause the entire time the hosts are talking would be a good idea. If someone else is talking, it's rude to make noise so no one can hear the person with the microphone. I wish host Tom Bergeron would just once say, "Quiet people! May I have your attention please?"

I'll be watching tonight to see who gets booted. After last week's non-drama-after-all-the-buildup-to-get-ratings show with anger management drop-out Chris Brown, the DWTS will have to come up with another entertainment tension-builder. Maybe Charlie Sheen will show up in the audience to promote the loser "L" on his forehead too.

How Much is That Doggie in the Window?

2011-03-29T10:19:00.005-04:00

We were dog-less and I was looking for a Golden Retriever-type dog. A mix or a rescue would have been fine, but I wanted a guarantee of the Golden personality. Our last dog, Riesling, had to go after he bit 5-year-old Kelsey on the face. We needed a dog that had a gentle nature, trainable, and a large breed. Sorry, but small dogs just aren't "real dogs" to me. I called the shelters and rescue organizations with no luck. Finally, I found a Golden Retriever breeder who had two female puppies remaining, a blond and a red. My next task was to convince my husband Jay that we were ready to get a puppy when we had just recently put a deposit down on our first Maine Coon kitten.

Of course, Jay argued that it was too soon, too much money. I was planning on starting a Maine Coon breeding program with the kitten I would get in June and a dog would be a problem, he protested. I countered with how well socialized our kittens would be by growing up around a dog and children; it could be a selling point. Besides, you just got your bonus, right? I ended my phone conversation with my husband by asking, "So you want me to call the breeder and tell her we're coming tonight?" and Jay caved.

Knowing that I wanted the blond puppy, I made sure that we got to the breeder's house before her next scheduled appointment for a puppy buyer that evening so I could pick first. This was in 2001, before everyone had websites and Internet access. The two puppies were much larger than I expected for 7 weeks old, weighing in at 14 pounds each. While I signed papers and talked to the breeder, Jay and Kelsey (Tyler was at a baseball game, oblivious to what we were doing) held our choice, a darling blond Golden female puppy. When I came back outside, I found my formerly reluctant husband holding the puppy like a baby, tears running down his face. Jay realized then how much he already loved her, our precious new family member.

Chardonnay at 2 months, trying out the swing

The rest of the family agreed with my name suggestion of Chardonnay. I was into the wine theme and had had the name in my head for some time. We brought Chardonnay home and the real work began. Golden Retrievers are a mouthy breed, chewing anything and everything. Our wooden steps at the front of the house have been gnawed down. Our picnic table benches have rounded edges. Tyler's action figures were dismembered. Shoes, socks and anything left on the floor were destroyed. It's a minor miracle that with everything Chardonnay ate, she never had a problem with passing it. She pooped out pieces of plastic and the Spiderman doll's head in the yard. We had her crate in the kitchen and later put up a gate to keep her in the kitchen. She chewed through the gate twice. Now Goldens are supposed to be one of the more intelligent, trainable breeds, but our dog wasn't completely house-broken until 8 months. I don't want to hear from anyone whose puppy was housebroken at 8 weeks and never did anything wrong. I swear Chardonnay was mentally challenged up until her first birthday, when I finally began to see signs of intelligent life.

As a puppy, Chardonnay liked to play by nipping our heels with her sharp puppy teeth, leading to her being banned from outside family sports most of her first year. I often felt like I was chasing a toddler around, constantly cleaning up after her, sticking my hand into her mouth to pull out whatever non-edible item she was eating, yelling reprimands, buying rawhide by the bag to keep her occupied, chasing her down outside to put her back in her crate....she was exhausting and frustrating to live with. I often threatened to put her outside for a year until she grew up enough to listen. I promised myself then that I would never get another puppy. The only thing puppies have going for them is their undeniable cuteness.

Chardonnay has given us a couple of scares. One of the more memorable times was when we took her to the pond at the Westbrook Fishing Club where Jay frequents. It was winter and a great time to ice skate and ice fish. Chardonnay's favorite ice game is "grab the hockey puck and run". Jay had warned the kids to stay on the pond and not to try to walk across the frozen stream below the dam because that ice wasn't as safe. He forgot to tell Chardonnay that rule and sure enough, she fell through the ice, about 10 feet away from the bank. Since I'm married to Mr. Safety, we all knew better than to go out on the ice ourselves to pull Chardonnay out of the water. If the ice can't hold a 75-pound dog, it certainly won't hold an adult human. Most of her body was submerged, her head and shoulders held up by her front legs hanging on to the edge of the hole she'd created. Jay tried throwing a lasso around her several times with no luck. Goldens are bred for swimming in cold water, but after a while Chardonnay started to whine. I worried that with the extreme cold of the water even she could suffer from hypothermia, get tired and go under. Our dog would be swept under the ice by the current. I was haunted by images of my children watching their dog die right in front of them. Finally, someone remembered there was a row boat nearby. The kids and I carried it down to the stream where we were able to lay it across the ice and Jay could reach down from the boat safely to haul her up. Not knowing how cold she'd gotten, I ran Chardonnay up to the fishing hut where we had the wood stove going and she enjoyed an Oreo cookie snack while she warmed up. Within a few minutes, Chardonnay was ready to go out and chase the hockey puck again, her brush with death forgotten.

Racing Jay and Ben down the hill this past winter

The other time when we were afraid of losing our dog was two years ago when I found a large tumor under her tail. I blogged about that event in "Mother's Day". Cancer is prevalent in Golden Retrievers and although Chardonnay's tumor was benign, the fear of what might have been reminded us of how much she means to our family. I was made aware of this again just yesterday when Logan, a fellow Golden and service dog who I've blogged about before, lost her battle with cancer at only five years of age.

True to my persuasive argument with my husband, having a Golden Retriever has been a positive selling point to potential kitten buyers. I have had kitten buyers tell me they will wait for one of my kittens because they also have a dog and it's important to them to have cat-dog harmony. Chardonnay is an important part of their socialization, enabling my kittens to walk into a new home without a fear of dogs. She also considers it part of her job to clean, snuggle and occasionally play nursemaid to the kittens.

"You can try all you want, but I'm telling you guys I don't HAVE any milk!"

Our neighbor has a year-old Standard Poodle he's trying to train. The other day he was walking his dog and Jay was walking with Chardonnay. Chardonnay sat on command beside Jay while the other dog jumped excitedly at the end of her leash like Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh. Our neighbor chastised his dog, "Why can't you act like Chardonnay?" Jay replied, "I hate to break it to you, but it took ten years to get her like this." Actually, it didn't take that long. Other than Chardonnay's bad habit of jumping on new acquaintances and coprophagia obsession, she's pretty well-trained. I can point to a spot on the floor where I want her to be and she'll sit there. She will usually stay on command even if I go out of sight. Chardonnay will even stand still without any restraint or a collar on while I bathe her with the freezing cold water from our garden hose. She only chews on her own toys now, though she will occasionally still grab my shoe if she feels I'm ignoring her, smiling as I go after her to retrieve it from her mouth. Chardonnay doesn't chew on the shoes; she just relocates them for her amusement.

I've blogged before about how Chardonnay defies her breed's nature to hunt; she not only doesn't bother our chickens, but protects them from predators. I was talking to another chicken hobbyist and Golden Retriever owner the other day who lamented about how many chickens her dog had killed. I naturally bragged about Chardonnay and how good she is with our hens. Jay and I have often said that we'll never get a dog as wonderful as Chardonnay again. When the day comes to add another dog (and it'll be an adult), we'll have to lower our expectations.

Happy Tenth Birthday Chardonnay!

Spring Reminders

2011-03-26T11:06:00.004-04:00

Spring approaches the Northeast two steps forward, one step back. The daffodils are emerging, then it snows. A foal is born on a 65-degree day, but the temp still goes down to 28 at night. The days are longer, we're on Daylight Savings Time, my hens' egg production has gone from their winter average of four eggs daily to ten. Spring is coming I know, but I'd like for it to hurry up and get here.

March 24, 2011

Greyhound-style Comb

Relating to cats, I thought I would remind people of a few things to keep in mind with springtime and their furry, feline family members. Although cats, like most mammals, shed throughout the year, more shedding is done in the spring in response to the longer daylight hours. If your cat normally has a low-maintenance coat that needs little combing (lucky you), this is the time of year when that is more likely to change. As the fur becomes loose, it can get caught in the coat, leading to more mats if you don't help it out with a good comb. A Greyhound comb works best (don't ask me why it's named after a short-haired dog). The Greyhound comb is metal, about seven inches long, and available from places like Revival Animal Health online or various other retailers, with prices ranging from $4 up to $40 for the original Belgium-made comb. I buy the imitation "Greyhound-style" combs to use and give out to each of my kitten buyers. When kitten buyers take their new baby home, I advise them that although their little fluff ball may not need it now, come Spring, it will be necessary to get down to the roots of their growing cat's coat. Brushes going over the surface of the coat just don't do it.

Of course, prevention is key which is why I'm reminding people (and myself) to start combing their cats more often now. I've blogged before about how to handle mats with regular bathing, seam rippers and shaving so I won't repeat myself. Read Fat and Sassy No More for details.

LA, IW, SGCA Dracoonfly Finbar Conneff demonstrating how beautiful a well-groomed Maine Coon coat can look

Another consideration in the Spring is parasites. If you have a cat that's scratching itself bald or licking itself obsessively, it may have a flea allergy. You'll never find a flea on such a cat as one bite sends it into such an itching frenzy, the poor thing will ingest any fleas, but keep scratching. With a chronically itchy cat, try treating it for fleas to eliminate the possibility that parasites are the culprit. You know how a mosquito bite can drive you nuts? Imagine how that'd feel if you were not only covered in itchy bites, but the perpetrator lived on your skin, continuing to feast on you whenever it needed a snack. Don't dismiss your pet's suffering from parasites. Untreated, they can cause anemia and fleas can reproduce to give your animal tapeworms.

In the South, fleas are more of a problem, riding in on pants legs with the fire ants and Palmetto bugs. When I lived in Florence, South Carolina where Palmetto bugs thrive, I often joked that God had a sick sense of humor by making a giant cockroach and giving it the ability to fly. Ticks are in the South also, but here in Connecticut we invented Lyme disease (ever heard of Lyme, Connecticut?). The standard brown dog tick is the one we see easily, but it's the tiny deer tick the size of a freckle that makes one realize we are just at the mercy of Mother Nature. Even though our Golden Retriever, Chardonnay, is on Frontline Plus year-round, is carefully brushed everytime after a walk in the woods and vaccinated annually for Lyme disease prevention, she has tested positive for the disease twice. My vet says she sees this in about 40% of the dogs like Chardonnay. Since my kitten buyers are all required to keep their cats indoors, and most are located in the Northeast, parasites should be a minimal concern, but it does happen. Cats are naturally very clean and usually groom the wayward tick off their bodies before it has the chance to attach itself.

Chardonny in Doggy Heaven

Dogs, being not so fastidious about their personal grooming and having a need to go outside to do their business, tend to pick up parasites pretty easily. Added to that is a dog's love for covering itself with Bambi Essence by rolling in deer poop. Not only can your dog bring in a stench like no other, but it is more likely to pick up ticks by simply going where the deer have been. Most responsible dog owners keep their pets on a topical flea and tick protection like Frontline or Advantage which minimizes the parasites on the animal and in your house. With Chardonnay on Frontline year-round (I have seen ticks even with snow on the ground), it protects not only her but also the cats from the likelihood of her bringing parasites inside to them. Only our cats which have access to the outdoor run need a separate flea protection; the rest of them don't require anything.

I remember well my childhood days in the mountains of North Carolina when we wouldn't pet the dogs in the neighborhood because you could see the swollen ticks covering their bodies and faces. With our own dog, we'd periodically pull the ticks (often up to 20 at a time), have her wear a flea collar and apply flea powder or dip in an effort to keep the buggers at bay. Later I learned the Shake and Bake method of flea control for my cats in which I'd shake a generous amount of Sevin Dust (the same stuff you put on your flowers) in a pillow case. The cat would then be placed in the pillow case with its head protruding and the case gathered around the cat's neck. That made it easier to completely coat the cat with the insecticide. Of course, I found out that once you let the cat out of the bag, it was best to put it in the bathroom for while until it shook all the loose powder off. Otherwise, I ended up with white patches of powder all over the carpet and furniture.

Powder, flea baths, dips, flea combs, garlic pills, flea bombs.....luckily that's largely a thing of the past in regard to dog and cat ownership now. With the invention of products like Frontline, there is no excuse for fleas and little excuse for ticks. Back then, more dogs and cats lived outside simply because there wasn't a really good way to keep the parasites from infesting your home. Now we're able to enjoy our pets better as members of the family and they are a lot healthier and more comfortable. Is everyone feeling itchy now?

Myra and Kelsey - 2007

Birthing Creatures Great and Small

2011-03-21T11:43:00.001-04:00

I've now had the opportunity to witness the miracle of birth in at least four different species; humans, cats, chickens and now horses. Of course, most of my experience has been midwifing for my Maine Coons. I've delivered over sixty litters of kittens since I started breeding Maine Coons almost nine years ago. Doing so has given me the confidence to feel as though I could successfully assist with the birth of just about any domesticated land mammal (no whales or dolphins though).

Boom Boom with her litter of seven in 2006

When a cat is in labor, her entire body is affected by the contractions. She may push for an hour or more until the first kitten begins to present itself, usually looking like a white grape because the amniotic sac often protrudes initially. The queen may be silent or she may scream when the going gets tough, not too unlike us humans. I've often wished I could offer my cats an epidural to relieve the pain, remembering how much I enjoyed the benefits of the drug with the birth of my first child (after four days of dysfunctional labor, I was ready for major drugs).

With a hen, she sits in the nesting box for anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours to deliver her egg. My hens' eggs aren't fertile, but the hens still go through labor to lay an egg three to seven times weekly, depending upon the season and the individual hen. Right before the egg comes out, the hen will often stand up to push. The egg drops out, slightly damp. The hen may remain on the nest for a while, but often she jumps off and announces her achievement with a very raucous squawking for several minutes before running out to join the rest of the flock. No cord to sever, no baby to clean up and make sure is breathing; chickens have it easy except for the fact that they deliver their "babies" almost daily.

I volunteer a couple of days a week at a horse rescue farm, Beech Brook Farm, in Mystic, Connecticut. One of the rescued mares, Mia, arrived scrawny and with rain rot, a fungal infection of the skin. Within a few weeks of being well fed, it became apparent that Mia was with foal. Not knowing when she was bred or by whom (what if the sire was a donkey?), the farm has been on foal watch for the past month. The foal predictor test which uses the mother's milk, indicated that the foal was due last week. Unlike cats which have a very narrow window for premature or late delivery around their 65 days of gestation, horses can deliver a few weeks on either side of their average gestation of 340 days. The owner, Deborah, set up a foal cam in the designated birthing shelter in an effort to be prepared. She even camped outside overnight with Mia on the weekends.

Last Friday, March 18, was my regular day to volunteer. I had checked the farm's Facebook page that morning to see if there was a birth announcement, but Deborah had just posted that the foal predictor test had changed color so fast that morning that it was bound to happen that night. The owner was going by what people who were more experienced at birthing foals had told her, that the babies are usually born at night. Yeah, right. That's what they say about cats too. Babies come when the mother's body is ready to deliver. Anytime, day or night, full moon or half moon, good weather or bad.

I knew as soon as I saw Mia that she was going to have her baby that day. Normally very quiet and reserved, Mia was restless, milk was dripping from her udder. She lay down, she got back up. Nancy, the other woman who volunteers with me, said Mia had been behaving that way the day before also, but without the dripping milk. Not concerned, Nancy left to clean up the upper paddocks and stalls. I cleaned one stall and kept watch on Mia. Mia laid back down in her muddy paddock, ignoring her shelter with all the nice clean straw bedding. I walked across the pasture to take a look at her back end and sure enough, that foal was on its way. Deborah was at work and couldn't leave, the vet on call was in surgery. We were on our own for this. Luckily, it was uncharacteristically warm and sunny for March in Connecticut and about sixty degrees.

Like I said, I was pretty confident about midwifing, but foals have these long legs and necks which can cause problems if they are presented incorrectly. They are supposed to arrive in diving position; front feet first, head laying on top of the legs. I had read all the James Herriott books and horse books years ago about how to reach in and turn babies around if necessary, but I hoped I wouldn't have to do anything like that. Mia stretched out her front legs, half-sitting up at times to push. She grunted a little, but otherwise Mia was very stoic. Fortunately, the birth was textbook perfect. The foal emerged feet and head first. We had been instructed not to interfere at all, but I went ahead and broke the amniotic sac which contained the foal like a thin, translucent latex balloon so she could breathe and quickly wiped out her nostrils with a towel. Mia's delivery went rapidly. Although I'm sure she was in labor when I arrived at 9:45 am, she started really pushing at 10:30 and the foal was born at 10:45.

Born on the muddy ground, Mia's foal with her amniotic sac still on her back, hind legs not out yet

Unlike cats, horses can't reach around to watch what's happening back there, nor can they easily clean up their new baby without standing up. Mia didn't seem to want to stand while she felt something still hanging out of her so the baby stayed with her hind legs still submerged inside her mother for several minutes, wet and trying to maneuver her front legs under her body. Mia actually looked pleasantly surprised when she sat up enough to look behind her and saw a pretty little Mini-Mia. She nickered her excitement and tried to reach her baby from her lying down position. If this were a kitten, the mother cat would be feverishly cleaning it and herself, severing the cord, probably eating the placenta (unless I take it away first) and preparing for the next kitten to arrive while the recently born searches for the milk bar. Like all the hooved animals, foals have to be independently mobile quickly in order to keep up with the herd. Born with her eyes open, Mia's foal was standing within 30 minutes. The umbilical cord broke on its own and the amniotic sac remained hanging out of the mare until the placenta was delivered an hour later. The foal fell a few times, but somehow managed to get her incredibly long legs under her and working. In contrast, kittens are more needy at first, don't open their eyes and ears for about a week, standing and running at around 4 weeks.

Standing for the first time

With cats, the placenta follows the kitten within several minutes. With horses, it can take one or two hours. The vet arrived about an hour later to check out the new foal and shortly after, Mia lay back down to deliver the placenta. Of course, it's all in proportion and I later picked up the placenta mass with a pitchfork, its job of nourishing life in the womb over. Mia seemed relieved that she didn't have to worry about what to do with it. Eating a placenta must be really gross for a vegetarian, but in the wild, that's what the mothers often do to keep from attracting predators.

The vet gave mother and foal a shot of penicillin and did a quick exam of both, declaring the foal strong and healthy. He agreed with me that we had a girl and that sexing kittens is infinitely more difficult than foals or puppies. I'm still floating with the excitement of being able to watch a foal come into the world, happy that it all worked so well. The foal's back comes up to my hip, to give you an idea of her size. The farm is having a contest to name the baby and raise funds on their Facebook page if you'd like more information and to participate.

Mother and Daughter

Feline Frenzy or Cat Breeding 101

2011-03-15T09:30:00.002-04:00

Since I've blogged at length about animal excrement and being a cat sex therapist, I figured it was time to push the envelope to the next level and post a video.

Downy, the black silver mackerel male I purchased from the Luckypaws cattery in Florida, has finally come of age. His heart was echoed and declared healthy by veterinary cardiologist Dr. Mark Stamoulis a couple of weeks ago, he's over a year old, and he is now interested in girls. Whether or not he's fertile is yet to be proven (I had a stud cat a couple of years ago who was interested in girls at a very young age, but didn't manage to get any of them pregnant until he was almost two years old. Very frustrating for me, but he enjoyed trying).

Downy's girlfriend this week is Lucy, a brown tabby and white who was born here last year (she's Trifle and Bugger's daughter) and now lives with my friend and fellow Maine Coon breeder Jo-Ann Benedetti in upstate New York. Lucy is a year old and recently had her heart screened also. Both cats have super affectionate, outgoing personalities and nice physical attributes, but neither has the strong chin we'd like to see. However, since Lucy needs to be bred or risk getting pyometra (a uterine infection) and Downy is the non-related male easily available, we're going ahead with the idea that the kittens will probably be pet quality. By the time Lucy is ready to breed again, my 8-month-old male, Colonel Bates, should be ready to do the deed and Jo-Ann may get a keeper out of that.

When Lucy arrived at my house, I put her here in the computer/kitten room. She was happy to be out of her carrier, exploring her surroundings, chirping and rubbing up against my legs. Then I introduced her to her betrothed. Poor Lucy! Feeling defensive and scared at seeing a whole male for the first time in the same room with her, she did what any girl with raging hormones would do; she became a bitch. Downy was confused. He smelled "Yes, yes!", but he got "No, no!" If he looked at or tried to sweet-talk Lucy, he was met with growling, hissing, and swinging claws. So like any girl-whipped guy (you know what word I mean here), Downy waited. He waited safely under the desk where she couldn't get to him easily, making himself as small as possible and calling out to her once in a while to let her know how desirable she was and that he was sorry for whatever it was he'd done to make her hate him.

Before I went to bed that evening, I stroked Lucy's back to see if she was exhibiting any signs of being in heat. Nope. Oh well, the darkness of night brings out the beast in most cats so I went upstairs to bed. Sure enough, by morning Lucy was smiling like Scarlett O'Hara after Rhett Butler carried her up to the bedroom and it was obvious that they had worked out their differences. Downy is proving to be a sex-obsessed teenager, not even giving Lucy the opportunity to eat without jumping on her. After witnessing three breedings within about an hour, I took Downy out of the room so Lucy could get some rest. Since my web cam has mostly been used by daughter Kelsey, I decided to see what I could do with it while Downy and Lucy "did the nasty". Fortunately for the viewers, I did manage to edit out the first 3 minutes. Assuming Lucy is pregnant, she is expected to deliver mid-May.

Prove Your Love by Doing Something Meaningful to a Woman

2011-03-03T10:31:00.005-05:00

Since I have teenagers, I am somewhat hip to today's hits. Once they've both left home for good, I'm sure I'll be allowed to isolate myself with classic rock again. There's currently a popular song being played relentlessly by the radio stations called "Grenade" by Bruno Mars. The singer takes the macho approach to send his message of going to extremes to prove his love to his former girlfriend.

I’d catch a grenade for ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)

Throw my hand on a blade for ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)

I’d jump in front of a train for ya (yeah, yeah , yeah)

You know I'd do anything for ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)

Of course, whenever this song comes on the car radio, my fifteen-year-old daughter Kelsey turns up the volume and sings along. Being the mother, I attempt to make this a teaching moment by pointing out the ridiculousness of a guy making promises that he not only can't keep, but probably wouldn't have the opportunity to perform. Unless you live in a war-torn country, it isn't that often you are walking down the street and someone lobs a grenade toward your loved one. The man jumps forward, arms outstretched, "Honey, let me catch that for ya."

Likewise, what do the other masochistic proclamations do? "Honey, if you really love me, you'll stab yourself or jump in front of a train." Some may think it sounds romantic, but I'm thinking it's not a very healthy relationship.

While I'm on the subject of promises a man can't realistically keep, I thought of some other unrealistic demonstrations of devotion that would really get a woman's attention; promises that would make a woman's life easier without risking the life or limb of her man.

I'd have PMS for ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)

Go through pregnancy and childbirth for ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)

I'd stand in line at a public toilet for ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)

My last fantasy line addresses the only time I personally have "penis envy", when the bladder is full and finding a suitable bathroom is problematic. Men can go behind a building or a tree without exposing their rear ends. They never have to wait in line to use the public restroom. I invite my readers to think of other suggestions for men anxious to prove their love.

Cat Ladies

2011-02-11T19:52:00.005-05:00

Bugger at a cat show several years ago

One of my favorite TV shows is Modern Family. Several weeks ago there was an episode where the studious middle daughter, Alex Dunphy, lamented about how her older, more popular, yet not-so-studious sister seemed to attract all the boys. Alex asked her mother, "If the dumb girls get the smart boys AND the dumb boys, then what do the smart girls get?" "Cats," her mother answered.

There are cat ladies and then there are cat ladies. I was reminded of this last weekend when I exhibited my two young males, Downy and Bates, at the Cats On the Beach Cat Show in Providence, Rhode Island. When you picture a "stereotypical cat lady", what do you see? A grandmotherly type, fat and frumpy, bra less perhaps, softly curled gray hair and a bit daft in the head. Well, I'd love to dispute this stereotype by stating that cat ladies (and gentlemen) are well-dressed, athletic-looking, college-educated professionals who are interesting and delightful company (at least the Maine Coon breeders are). Actually, we run the gamut from the struggling fancier who lives alone to the families who bring their kids to the wealthy empty nesters. I happened to be benched next to a less desirable type, the "stereotypical cat lady".

Cathy Cat Lady (not her real name) wore a white t-shirt proclaiming "My Burmese is smarter than your honor student" on the front of her bodacious hanging bosom. Cathy seemed nice enough, but impressed me as a bit nuts from the beginning. When I pulled my Maine Coon out of his carrier to put him in his show tent, she declared to her cats, "Oh, look kids! A big fluffy!"

Now we all talk to our pets, but I personally find it irritating when one speaks to their pets (or children) using a loud, baby voice. It's almost as if the person is trying to get the attention of those around her by continually speaking to the cat as if she's having a full conversation. If Cathy's cats were speaking to her, I didn't hear it, but she sure seemed to. However, I don't think she heard them telling her to shut up, or maybe that was just the voice in my head.

Excerpts of what I heard from Cathy Cat Lady's conversations with her cats:
"Don't talk to me in that tone of voice. It's unladylike".

"Oh Dexter! Do you see the Maine Coons acting like that? No, you don't. I just brought you along so you could be company for Delilah. You don't need to complain so much."

"You're giving Mommy smurgles! What a good girl!"

Oh boy. The one-sided conversation was never-ending. As far as I could see, her two cats behaved just fine, but I purposely avoided engaging Cathy as I didn't want to egg her on. This was going to be a long weekend next to Cathy Cat Lady.

Kelsey with Bubba in 2006.

Chickens and Snow, Lots of Snow

2011-01-29T22:30:00.002-05:00

If you live anywhere in the northeast or have watched the Weather Channel lately, you know that Connecticut has broken all kinds of records for the most snowfall in January. While it's not much compared to what I used to deal with as a teenager in Ithaca, New York, in a Connecticut chicken's world, the snow is over-whelming. I figure it will all be melted by the end of May at this rate.

With each new snow deposit, we shovel a path going from the chicken coop to our deck, a safe haven for the chickens now that the resident Hawk with a capital H knows we have a drive-through for raw tenders. I put an extra supply of food and water under the deck daily to encourage the chickens to remain under the deck during the day. They have dirt to scratch and protection from the worst of the precipitation and the gusts of wind. More importantly, they aren't very accessible to a diving hawk or even the ground predators who are kept at bay by the fear of our Golden Retriever.

Mumbles, the Snow Queen

The hens who are laying take excursions to the coop to leave their eggs. With the shorter days, only about five of the thirteen girls are laying eggs. As night falls, the chickens go home to roost by following each other single file along the path from the deck to their coop. With any other places the hens used to like laying now inaccessible, the snow is a good training tool to teach the girls to use the nesting boxes provided.

Jay feeding old tortilla shells to the girls from the deck

I took some pictures of the chickens walking along their path to demonstrate how high the snow is for them. I would guess it's like walking through a maze. They have learned that if they flutter up and off the path, they will certainly sink in the snow and be stuck there until a human comes to the rescue. Not a safe situation if a human isn't home or doesn't notice before a predator does, although they do look pretty funny.

Chicken's Point of View

Waste Management Large and Small

2011-01-22T18:20:00.001-05:00

One may think that since I spend a good portion of my cat-care time cleaning up after them, I would be pretty sick of scooping poop. Excrement is a fact. "Everybody Poops" is a bumper sticker seen on a plumber's truck. Sung to the tune of Camp Town Ladies, "What's in the bottom of the chicken coop? Doo Doo! Doo doo!" No only do I clean multiple litter boxes, every morning I scoop the chicken caca out of their nesting boxes so their eggs have a clean place to land during the day. Jay has provided a bucket for dung disposal so he can easily transport the chicken waste to the garden for composting.

I blogged on April, 29, 2009 about my adventures with waste management and kittens. Lately, I've been challenging myself to take on even more crap. I started working as a volunteer a couple of days at week at Beech Brook Farm Equine Rescue, a farm that fosters and rehabilitates horses who would otherwise end up in a Mexican slaughterhouse. The farm has 10 rescue horses, 4 miniature donkeys, 1 mini-pony, 2 goats, a bunch of chickens and a barn cat named Shadow. The cause is noble, the work is daunting.

Main Barn with Shadow the Cat as the Resident Greeter

The horse rescue is a non-profit organization that relies on volunteers and monetary contributions. Most of the volunteers are middle-aged women like myself, looking for way to reconnect with their childhood love of horses. I suspect the bulk of it is financed personally by the owner, Debra, and her husband. She told me the other day that she spent $17,000 last year just on hay. I was attracted to the farm as a way to be around horses again without having to pay for lessons. As a young girl, I was fortunate enough to have a pony and graduated to a horse as I grew. Ever since I sold my horse before going to college, I've struggled for a way to stay connected to horses. Oddly enough, one of my favorite smells is that of a horse barn. I love the aroma of the hay, horse sweat and manure. Vegetarian caca doesn't carry nearly the same punch as that from a carnivore, so I don't find it offensive like I do cat and chicken dung. Well, chickens aren't exactly carnivores, more omnivorous actually, but they leave behind a lot of little stinkers.

Thus far, my job at the barn is to muck out the stalls and paddock areas of the three barn areas and work with the horses as time and weather allows. The owners have "real jobs" so although they feed and water, they need help during the week. Beech Brook doesn't have the best set up I've seen; the property is on a steep, wooded hill, with upper, main and lower barns and paddocks carved out in the trees. Two of the areas are just three-sided shelters with paddocks. The only area I'd call a pasture is probably about an acre. The owners' home is nested in the middle of the hill, between the upper and lower barns.

Upper Walk-in Barn

While I use a plastic pooper scooper to transport kitty waste to the garbage can outside in a plastic bag, at the barn I use a multi-tined pitchfork to rake and shovel horse manure into a wheelbarrow which I then push up the hill to the manure pile. I try to speed up as I reach the dumping pile to get enough momentum, flip the wheelbarrow up and hope that most of manure falls out. Then I have to twist the wheelbarrow back and forth on its wheels to shake the rest out. My asthma usually kicks in during the wheelbarrow part, especially with the cold weather. When it's wet outside, my jeans get splattered with horse excrement. When it's freezing, I have to kick the manure piles loose with my boot so I can get the rake under them. Sometimes the piles are so frozen, I can't break them up without fear of breaking a toe. Of course, there's always the horse supervision during the process which involves maneuvering through the snow with a wheelbarrow loaded to overflowing with crap, a pitchfork balanced on top and not allowing a pushy beast to escape for a romp through the woods. This is waste management at its best.

The Manure Pile

Bugger's Fame

2011-01-06T09:31:00.004-05:00

I was finally able to pick up the January issue of Cat Fancy Magazine a couple of weeks ago. I don't subscribe to it, but since my 7-year-old stud cat, Woolly Bugger, is pictured on the back cover promoting Arm & Hammer Cat Litter, I've been stalking the magazine racks, flipping through the collection at Borders and any pet supply store. Bugger's ad has also been reported to appear in other magazines as well; Health, Family Circle, Country Living and People. Of course, when I showed His Highness the ad, Bugger simply pushed it aside. I was blocking his food dish and the big boy has his priorities straight.

Bugger's intense glare earned him the name of "Spike" from Arm & Hammer

A couple of questions have come from those who have seen Bugger's portrayal of "Spike", a tough-looking cat who denies that his "stuff" stinks, presumably because Arm & Hammer is that powerful a litter. First, no we don't use that brand. I did buy a box after we did the photo shoot in June, just to see if I was missing out on a good product that costs less than World's Best Cat Litter. Well, guess what? My cats' stuff still stinks, and the odor of urine became more obvious with Arm & Hammer after a few days and overpowered the deodorizer in the litter. Not worth it in my multi-cat household. I went back to World's Best and Agways Pine Pellet Horse Bedding (similar to Feline Pine but less expensive at Agway).

Another question is whether I really put a collar on my cat. No, I don't do cat collars, nor do I recommend them for indoor cats. That was Photoshopped in with the overly full litter box. Collars aren't a bad thing if it has a quick-release closure, but it damages the fur around the neck of a long-haired cat. A collar mark would only raise eyebrows at a cat show.

Bugger at home, answering fan mail

The last question I get was how much money Bugger made. As I blogged about in Kitty Spotlight originally after we did the photo shoot, the $250 check I finally received was offset by the $115 parking ticket I found on my car that day. The net profit pays for about two week's worth of cat food and litter at my house.

I have enjoyed my cat's moment of relative fame, of course, but it seems the owners of his many offspring have also. Bugger has been breeding for over 6 years and has produced 129 kittens. He gets all the fun and glory, but doesn't have to pay child support. My kitten buyers have been the ones reporting back to me if Bugger's ad has been spotted in a new magazine. Nino is a year-and-a-half old daughter of Bugger owned by Lauren and Michael who sent me this response to their cat's famous sire.

I have no idea how long Arm & Hammer will keep "Spike" in print, but I hope it'll be quite a while because this is kind of fun. If you happen to see the ad, please let me know which magazine and issue it's in.

Pa in His Kerchief and I in My Cat

2010-12-28T20:19:00.000-05:00

Hey, to those of you who have told me privately how much you like my blogs, Thank You! I've been waiting for the next blog topic to come to me, but nothing other than the above title and a few other random thoughts are in my head lately. The title comes from our current situation with mother cats, kittens and our master bedroom. We have Trifle and her two kittens, Laverne and Shirley, and Cassie's Thanksgiving Litter of four. Trifle is a bit stand-offish, but an incredible mother. The kittens from her first litter with Bugger all turned out with very gregarious personalities, not at all like their mother's, so the breeding was repeated. I trust that Laverne and Shirley will also be fearless, affectionate kitties. I've blogged a few times before about Cassie, how she's my favorite and why. Well, when I am sharing a room with Cassie, I love her so much that she is allowed to get away with things the other cats don't.

Me with Cassie

Leaving the care of her kittens in the bathroom with Trifle, Cassie's nightly ritual is to curl herself around my head on my pillow. After my turn is over, she does the same for Jay. Jay is less enamored with this behavior than I am, even after I remind him that back in the olden days the bedrooms were so cold people had to wear night caps to bed for warmth, so perhaps Cassie thinks she's doing us a favor in keeping our heads warm. Jay's hair is much thinner than mine so I'd think he'd appreciate the kitty cap more.

Trifle and Cassie's Litters at 6 and 4 weeks old

Another habit Cassie has that is common in Maine Coons; curling up to sleep in the cool bathroom sink. The sink contains her perfectly and gives her a mommy break from her demanding kittens. Cassie seems to need a lot more breaks than Trifle does, but I've seen both mothers nursing all six kittens equally. I've had water-obsessed cats before and they are frankly a pain when I am trying to brush my teeth and the cat gets in the way by trying to get water coming out of the faucet. I usually lose patience with these cats and push them aside so I can brush and spit in peace. With Cassie, however, I can't bring myself to get her out of the sink when she looks so pretty and peaceful sleeping there so I brush less often. I should take charge, rouse her up and out of my way. Instead, I think I'll put a toothbrush in the downstairs bathroom.

My Holiday Newletter

2010-12-13T17:18:00.001-05:00

I emailed my annual newsletter to everyone who has a cat or kitten from me. If you were supposed to get this and did not, please let me know so I can correct your email address in my contacts lists.

Happy Holidays to the Dracoonfly Family!

As I resorted to last year, I’m emailing rather than snail mailing out my annual holiday card and newsletter to save on postage. I hope everyone and their cat family members have had another wonderful year. This is normally the time of year when I receive lots of photo updates from you all. It’s always a major feat if I get to post adult pictures of an entire litter. I try to be organized enough to get them up on the Pictures pages of the website under the names of your kitten’s mother, along with their baby picture so be sure to check there to see your cat. If you sent in a picture and I didn’t get your cat up, please remind me as I lose track of my emails more easily this time of year.

If you haven’t been reading my blog or stalking my site regularly, then you may not know how Dracoonfly has made the news this past year. I took Bugger and one of his son’s, Copper John (formerly known as “Boston”) to NECN this summer for an interview I did about Maine Coon cats. Here’s a link if you’d like to watch on your PC. Plus, Bugger’s modeling debut is finally out in print in the new Arm & Hammer Cat Litter ad as their new spokes cat “Spike”. So far, his ad has been sighted on the back cover of Cat Fancy, and in Health, Country Living and Family Circle magazines. Get your autographs now as Bugger will be retiring from breeding later in 2011 and become a regular pet, as soon as our new young studs, Downy and Bates, prove themselves. Bugger’s lion-like look will continue on with his many breeding offspring.

As a reminder, please be careful to cat and kitten-proof your house, especially during the holidays. One of our kitten buyers had a close call recently with her cat Ceilidh (pronounced “Kay-lay”, formerly Jennyanydots). Ceilidh swallowed a plastic fastener, like those used to attached price tags to clothing. The fastener cut through her intestinal wall, requiring major surgery and the removal of part of the intestine. Thank goodness her owners had pet insurance to help with the tremendous expense of Ceilidh’s surgery and she is recovering nicely. That being said, don’t be afraid to put up a tree if you celebrate Christmas. We cut our own every year and have only had it come down once (not the cats’ fault; it had a twisted trunk). Our breakable ornaments are hung at the top. Unlike in the attached Simon video, most Maine Coons aren’t really into climbing the tree, just knocking down ornaments and drinking the tree’s water.

Rather than my own photos, this year I’m attaching a couple of the Christmas pictures I’ve received recently from my kitten buyers.

Lady Antebellum

Killian

Have a wonderful holiday season and please give your kitties a hug from me.

Sharon

Thanksgiving Day Kittens

2010-12-05T13:11:00.003-05:00

I knew Cassie could have kittens any day last week, with Day 63 of gestation falling on November 24th, Thanksgiving Eve. Historically, Cassie has been my least reliable breeder so the fact that she was even pregnant was momentous for me. She is a cat that never seemed to cycle, but managed to go into heat when I sent her out to a friend's stud just to see if anything happened. In the beginning, I would room her with Bugger, in case she was having silent heats, figuring he would be able to detect what I couldn't see or hear from a normal cat in heat. Not all cats howl when in heat, but an experienced eye notices behaviors like increased vocalization, affection, and the tell-tale sign of her rear in the air, tail to the side (did you notice I used three different spellings of the same word in that sentence?). If unsure, normally stroking her near the base of the tail brings forth the posturing known as lordosis behavior in which her back becomes concave. This is kind of like the effect that high heels have on an upright mammal trying to look sexy. A woman wears her FMP's*, looks good, her rear sticks out, she can't walk very fast and her feet hurt, but the men come a running just like a tom cat.

But I digress. Normally I wouldn't keep a cat like Cassie in my breeding program, but her personality and type (meaning a good physical example of the Maine Coon standard) are something I'd like to reproduce, especially her personality. I've blogged before about Cassie and have declared from the time I got her that she would always stay with us, if not as a breeder, then as a pet. She has only had one viable litter and Cassie is three-years-old. In order to keep my numbers down, all other females who retire from breeding are placed in pet homes after being spayed. Cassie is so demonstrative with her affection that she will jump from the floor into the arms of strangers, she reaches up to be picked up like a small child, she is just....special. Her only fault is that she gets terribly carsick so her show career got cut short after I spent an hour cleaning poop out of her fur at a show. Her other fault is that she has had a hard time conceiving kittens.

This Thanksgiving, the kids were at their dad's house so Jay and I had invited friends over to celebrate. We couldn't go anywhere because of Cassie's expected delivery. I slept little the night before Thanksgiving, waking up every couple of hours to make sure Cassie wasn't in labor. That morning, she acted like she was content to stay pregnant forever, ate breakfast and tried to sneak out of our bedroom several times. Jay and I got busy cleaning and cooking. An hour or so later, I came into our room to find Cassie and her newly delivered kitten on the rug.

I yelled out the door to Jay, "We're having kittens!" so he'd know why I suddenly disappeared. Of course I should thank Cassie for getting me out of the bulk of the cleaning as Jay finished it. That's right ladies, my husband finished cleaning the house, changed the litter boxes and cooked the turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes while I sat on the floor and waited for kittens.

The first three kittens arrived quickly then labor seemed to stop. She had looked like she was carrying five so I expected more. I palpated Cassie's sides and felt at least one head. After an hour, I suspected we may have a stillborn as a dead kitten doesn't release the natural oxytocin to stimulate contractions. I gave Cassie a shot of oxytocin to help things along, something I'd never do unless a cat had already delivered a kitten so I knew her cervix was fully dilated. Some breeders think that when it takes a kitten a long time to deliver and the result is a dead kitten that it was killed by the delay in the birth canal. My vet explains it differently. The birth canal is very short, shorter than the length of the kitten. The delay in birth is more likely caused by the lack of enough oxytocin necessary to produce strong contractions. Obviously, all the kittens need to come out or the mother could develop an infection. Sure enough, the fourth kitten was stillborn, its cause of death was gastroschism, an unfortunately occasional birth defect we see when the abdominal wall doesn't completely close up before birth.

I still felt another hard head yet to be delivered and Cassie's contractions were sporadic and unproductive. Fearing the worst, I gave her another shot of oxytocin after waiting 30 minutes. Nothing. Contractions every 5 minutes or so, but that's not frequent enough to produce a kitten. Not wanting to push the man-made oxytocin, I decided to help Jay downstairs and revisit Cassie in another hour. I considered calling my vet, but hesitated because I didn't want to disrupt her Thanksgiving preparation. My guests were on their way and received regular play-by-play on the delivery. They were hoping to watch the birth and the way things were going, they may just get that opportunity. I should mention that my guests were also cat breeders and Cassie fans so they were naturally intrigued. Only cat breeders and midwives can talk placentas and amniotic fluid while eating and not lose their appetites.

After peeling the sweet potatoes and putting them into the Crockpot, I checked on Cassie. Bingo! She had just delivered another kitten on her own and she was a live squirmy little thing, born about 2 hours after the rest of her littermates. Further palpatation revealed that Cassie was finished with the hard part.

Now that I knew we had four live babies, I could critique them. Cassie is a ticked torbie, meaning she lacks the classic or mackeral stripes on her body like the traditional Maine Coon. I'm not crazy about the ticked pattern, but it does look pretty on a silver or a red as the cats resemble a fox's coloring. To me, most of the brown ticked tabbies look like mud. Well, the whole litter is ticked. With the exception of the blue ticked girl, their coloring is akin to watered down chocolate, like a Yoohoo chocolate drink. As their coats come in, these kittens should be beautiful warm brown ticked tabbies. See the Maine Coon Breeders and Fanciers site for examples of the ticked tabby Maine Coons in different colors. My current plan is keep a female, ticked or not, so I at least have a Cassie daughter to carry on that winning personality.

Thanksgiving Day Litter

Coming up with call names for a litter born on Thanksgiving Day, names like Pilgrim, Pocahontas, Chief Powhatan, John Smith, etc. were suggested. However, most of them sounded masculine and I had 3 girls to name. So I focused on the word "thanks" and my guests helped with the translation into various foreign languages; Spasibo (Russian) for the one male, Gracias (Spanish), Danke (German), and Merci (French) for the girls.

Cassie Cleans Up Her New Kittens

*FMP - initials for F... Me Pumps

Cooperation (or Who's Going to Raise the Kittens?)

2010-11-26T17:57:00.005-05:00

Many cat breeders will plan the birth of litters close together, just in case the mother of one litter needs help from the other mother. Other breeders find this difficult to do if two females don't get along or they don't have the space. When you read or watch news stories about how a mother dog or cat adopted a wild baby animal like a fox, skunk, squirrel, rabbit, etc, the reporters always express surprise that an animal would choose to nurse its natural enemy or prey. The maternal instinct is incredibly strong and shouldn't be underestimated. A crying baby calls to a new mother like no other, even to the point where my cats once came to the defense of one of my distraught baby chicks.

The first time I planned two litters together was for the simple reason of giving my stud male the confidence to breed. I wrote about this in my blog "Cat Sex Therapy 101" Bugger was intimidated by Sassy because she'd bullied him as a youngster, but he grew up with Ginger and felt very comfortable with her. I let Bugger build up his confidence with Ginger so that he felt "man enough" to breed a very willing Sassy two days later. Eleven kittens resulted between the two of them and after a few growls and hisses, the two moms agreed to combine litters for space reasons. Since Ginger had seven kittens and Sassy had four, I figured it would help Ginger's kittens to have a foster mom and even out the load.

Sassy and Ginger with Their Combined Litter of Eleven

The most likely time a kitten will need a foster mom will be when it is a singleton, an only child. It is not uncommon for the mother of one kitten to feel disconnected from her offspring. One theory is a single kitten does not trigger the same hormonal release a normal sized litter does so the new mom goes into heat again very quickly, her body telling her to move on and get pregnant. Also, since cats are designed to have multiple births, she instinctively feels like the kitten won't survive anyway. If no other lactating queen with similar aged kittens is available, the breeder is left with bottle feeding and filling in for the mother, often with a decreased survival rate.

My black tortie, Amy, started out with 3 singleton litters in a row. She went into heat by the time each kitten was two weeks old and Amy was ready to move on. Luckily, each time I had another litter arrive a week before or after Amy's so she had another queen to take on her mothering duties. The most memorable combination of litters was between Amy and Boom Boom. The two queens couldn't look more different physically; Amy a small, dark, busy cat and Boom Boom, the largest breeding female I've had, 16-pounds, long, beautiful coat, somewhat shy. Boom Boom delivered first as I recall and a pregnant Amy jumped right in to assist with the birth. Initially, I found Amy's interference a nuisance, but I noticed that Boom Boom really didn't mind the help. Amy cleaned up the kittens and Boom Boom. All Boom Boom had to do was push. They made a beautiful working team. Later the two were very happy to nurse each other's kittens.

Boom Boom and Amy - a Terrific Team

My cats have also fostered other breeders' litters, sometimes a singleton, sometimes an entire litter if the mother was sick. Most were from fellow Maine Coon breeders who needed a lactating queen. The funniest of these was when we took on a completely different breed, a sable Burmese from my friend Priscilla. He was a singleton, his mother had lost interest in him and he was failing. I warned Priscilla that I wasn't sure if I could save him since he had no suckle reflex anymore. Ginger had a litter of 3 red males at home who were two days older than the Burmese. The Burmese is one of the smaller breeds of cats, so you can imagine how a week-old kitten looks. I called him Mouse. When I first introduced Mouse to Ginger, I held him carefully, not sure how she'd react to a such a different-looking kitten. She sniffed him and looked confused. Then Mouse cried a little kitten meow. "Oh! It's a kitten!" Ginger immediately started licking the little guy. Mouse thrived with Ginger's care. She seemed to know he needed extra attention and kept his whiskers trimmed down to his muzzle, the way the Burmese do. If Mouse cried, Ginger came running. He was louder than his Maine Coon brothers and developed more slowly, but he played just as rough and developed into a very confident Burmese cat. Ginger and I were heralded as Mouse's saviors that year and I made lots of friends in the Burmese world as the word spread of Mouse and Maines.

Mouse the Burmese with His Maine Coon Brothers

Our current litter combo was one initiated by the mother cat. Olivia had her litter of five in the cat cage in our bedroom since that offers more space. I like to keep the cage door open so the moms can use the litter box in our bathroom, further away from my senses at night. Trifle's litter of two were in the basket in my bathroom, two weeks younger. Last week, I found Trifle in the cage, happily nursing Olivia's kittens while Olivia stood by looking perplexed. The two litters are combined now and the mothers tag-team most of the time, with Trifle happy to carrying most of the load and Olivia glad to let her.

Trifle and Olivia et al

Cat Peeves

2010-11-15T11:06:00.007-05:00

Recently, I've been reminded of those cat breeders who are less than desirable from a kitten buyer's perspective. A frequent complaint I hear from kitten seekers is outdated websites and failure to reply to kitten inquiries. However, few things get under my craw more than getting a phone call from a future or current Maine Coon owner who has had a negative encounter with a fellow breeder. While I can't name names, I often counsel prospective kitten buyers on what questions they should ask a breeder if I don't have a kitten for them.

On the top of my cat peeve list are Maine Coon breeders who don't screen their breeding cats' hearts by ultrasound (or sonogram or echo-cardiogram, same thing). Maine Coon cats are certainly not the only cat to be subject to heart disease, but since we were the first breed that became part of a research project studying the heritability of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) in cats, we are often associated with the disease. Read more about HCM here. HCM affects many cats, pedigreed and not. It does seem to hereditary, which is why responsible cat breeders (notice I didn't limit my statement to Maine Coon breeders) will have the hearts of their breeding cats echoed on a regular basis (one echo at a year of age isn't enough) to try to eliminate the disease from their lines. Copies of the echoes should be provided to the kitten buyer if requested.

A DNA test came out a few years ago which identifies one of the mutations (called cMyBP-C) responsible for HCM in the Maine Coon. A similar DNA test is also available specific to the Ragdoll breed. More such tests could become the norm if research funds were there. A cat who has been tested as homozygous negative will not develop HCM from that particular mutation, nor will its offspring if it has been bred to a homozygous negative cat. It's a nice predictor, however, a DNA negative cat can still get HCM from other genetic mutations which don't have a reliable test yet. If you keep in mind that humans have over 200 such mutation possibilities for heart disease, you see just how complex this can be.

Therefore, ultrasound performed by a board certified cardiologist familiar with Maine Coons is still the best screening device we have. Better yet is getting a kitten not only from recently echoed parents, but who also has several screened cats behind its pedigree. Still, it's no guarantee. This is why Tufts University is now conducting research on the effects of diet and HCM in the Maine Coon cat. Heart disease is complicated, but responsible breeders do the best they can with the information available and stand behind the kittens they sell. The worst phone call a breeder gets is the one from a buyer telling them the kitten they sold dropped dead at an early age. It's news we don't like to hear, but that we need to know for future generations. While HCM in an older cat isn't desirable, many factors play into the health of a geriatric so we focus on HCM in the young cats.

Excuses and claims I've heard from breeders regarding HCM:

Don't believe it's a valid test
Can't afford to test
It's not in my lines
All of our kittens have their hearts checked by our veterinarian (a vet listening to a kitten's heart does not qualify as HCM screening, it just detects heart murmurs)
All our cats are DNA negative, therefore they will never get HCM (see above explanations on DNA testing)
No matter what you've heard, none of our cats have ever died of HCM (and if you say otherwise we will sue you in court)
The cardiologist told me that my cats' hearts were so perfect that I shouldn't waste my money by continuing to test them. (Fact: an echo tells you the health of a cat's heart on that day so all cardiologists I've used recommend annual echoes to detect any changes)

Other areas in which potential kitten buyers may need to beware:

Cats and kittens should be registered in one or more of the major cat associations such as CFA, TICA, CFF or ACFA. Beware of non-legit cat registries that only require photos of the cat to determine its breed.
Breeders that seem to have a hard time selling their kittens while still actively breeding their cats. The Maine Coon is a very popular breed so there's little excuse for having a litter of 4-5 month-old kittens hanging around. Exception: breeders may keep a couple of kittens to see how they develop or show in order to decide which one stays with them.
The breeders who thrive on saying negative things about other breeders and their cats in order to try to make themselves seem above board.
Breeders who contractually require you feed a certain diet to your kitten, sometimes to their own personal benefit (i.e. ordering a cat food online from which they will receive a cut of the profit).
A breeder who doesn't know how to properly spell or pronounce the name of their cat's breed. It's Maine Coon, with an "e" on the end, as in the state of Maine, up there next to the Canadian border, not "Man Coon" or "Main Coon".
Not knowing enough about color genetics or the proper name for a certain color. An experienced breeder should know the color possibilities before a litter is born. Granted, most average cat owners don't know or care about how their cat inherited its color or pattern, but it still annoys me. Case in point, a Maine Coon pet owner told me he'd paid $100 more for his kitten because the breeder informed him it was a rare "buff" color. Um, do you mean it was a cream tabby, the dilute expression of a red tabby? I get cream tabby kittens all the time. Pretty cats, but not pretty rare.

Bonnie and Clyde, two cream classic tabbies (not buff)

Roller Coaster of Life

2010-11-04T21:37:00.002-04:00

The past week or so has been an emotional roller coaster for my family and me. In one day, I found out three bad things happened. Logan, the service dog I blogged about last year when she and her owners came to visit their future kitten, had surgery to remove her oral cancer. I had just been thinking about Logan the day before as I hiked through the woods with our Golden Retriever, Chardonnay. Logan is not only valuable because of the job she does for her person Suzan, but she is a beautiful, gentle animal who captured my heart when I met her. I will continue to think positive thoughts for Logan as she goes through treatment.

The same day, we got news that Kristen, my kids' cousin, was very sick and in the hospital. It turns out she apparently had toxic shock syndrome and her condition was very serious. I'm happy to report that Kristen is now home and doing better.

Then, Kelsey came home from school with the news that Mr. Conlon, a Ledyard High School math teacher was found dead in the woods after missing for two days. Mr. Conlon had hanged himself. Fortunately, Kelsey never knew Mr. Conlon, but Tyler considered him the best math teacher he ever had so he was pretty upset. We don't understand the full story behind Mr. Conlon's pain and don't expect to; he had a wife and 10-year-old daughter he left behind. The students and teachers who loved him are confused as to why a grown-up who apparently had everything going for him would take his own life.

Then, my mother called to report that she had an MRI done to look at the half of her liver which was subjected to chemoembolization treatment in September. The MRI shows that all signs of cancer on that half of her liver are gone! This is the same liver that was "covered in malignant lesions" originally. Modern medicine is incredibly hopeful sometimes. Mom had the other half of her liver zapped yesterday in Chapel Hill. The same positive results are expected by her doctors. I started a blog (what else?) for my mom soon after she was diagnosed called The Organ Within Me to keep her friends and family updated. My mother's news was certainly a welcome change from the way things seemed to be going early last week.

On Saturday afternoon, as I stepped out of the shower, Olivia greeted me with repeated meows. Hmmmm. She definitely wanted my attention. Olivia's kittens weren't due for another two days at least....but there was no mistaking her urgent behavior. Sure enough, within a couple of hours, we had a blue tabby boy. Next came a solid black girl. "Mine!" Kelsey immediately claimed. Kelsey has been wanting a solid black Maine Coon ever since we lost our black domestic short-hair, Creole, a few years ago to kidney disease.

Kelsey left the room and I called a friend to report the arrivals so far while Olivia rested and waited for the next round of contractions. I had predicted, based upon Olivia's size, that she was carrying 3 to 4 kittens. As I was happily chatting away, Jay came in and indicated with a finger drawn across his throat that I should cut the conversation short. After I got off the phone, he told me that while he was outside, he witnessed a hawk striking our red Silkie chicken, Frodo, killing her instantly. He was too far away at the time to prevent the attack, but Jay and Chardonnay did manage to keep the hawk from carrying Frodo's body away.

We only had Frodo for slightly more than 6 months, but during that time we came to care for her deeply because she was so obviously handicapped. I've blogged about Frodo a few times, in fact my last blog was about Frodo and her first egg. True to her nature, Frodo was out in the yard by herself, the rest of the flock was elsewhere. She had no idea the hawk was approaching. Of all the chickens to meet such an awful demise, we ask, "Why our favorite one?" all the while knowing that she was the most likely to be attacked as she was more vulnerable than the other chickens. Frodo is now buried beside Kelsey's favorite rock. We don't have to worry about her anymore, put her up to roost at night because she can't fly up there by herself, look around for her well after the rest of the flock has come in, provide her with a ground-level nesting box for her eggs....it's amazing how one little chicken stole our hearts with her neediness and cute little squawking face.

Frodo's Grave Marker

After the news of Frodo's death and consoling a very distraught teenage girl, I still had to deliver Olivia's kittens. She had 3 more - a black boy, another black girl, and a silver tabby boy (bonus!). All are big and healthy and growing like they're supposed to. We have a choice of 3 black kittens to choose from for our breeding program. It makes more sense to keep a girl, but then again, a solid black male who looks like his grandfather Bugger would be hard to pass up. Kelsey came up with a Poet theme so the kittens are named accordingly: Edgar Allen Poe, Shel Silverstein, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, and Langston Hughes.

And so we move forward, accepting that we can't change the past, just how we deal with it. Here's to the emotional roller coaster of life and all that it offers.

Olivia with Her Little Poets

Lost Chicken and Eggs

2010-10-27T10:16:00.001-04:00

We have two Silkie pullets, Frodo the red one and Mumble the blue. Frodo has gotten most of the attention since she was just a wee chick due to her apparent brain injury. I blogged before about how Silkies are designed to have holes in the tops of their skulls from which part of their little chicken protrudes. This head shape contributes to top notch of feathers sticking up. Without a hard skull to protect their heads, the breed is more susceptible to brain injuries. Mumble's brain seems to be normal although she is very shy. Frodo is our Special Needs Chicken. She seems to need to sleep more often and will often be napping while the rest of the flock is roaming around. Also, when she panics, like she did the other day when a hawk got too close, she starts doing somersaults and running into things. Yes, she is still the Flippin' Chicken, but only when under extreme stress. Not the best survival skills.

The chickens have free range of our yard during the day and are confined to their fenced-in space around the coop at dawn and dusk, prime predator times. The girls are normally very good about not wandering far from our yard. They are completely locked up in the coop after dark for safety. The other afternoon I got the chickens in their yard, a process which is pretty easy since every time they see a human, they come running for hand outs. I tossed chicken scratch on the ground and counted 13 out of 14 chickens. Where's Frodo? Whenever a chicken is missing, a feeling of dread slowly builds as I walk around the yard calling (yes, our chickens do come when called). If she isn't found, the whole family participates in a chicken search.

Frodo and Kelsey

We've only lost one chicken, a Jersey Giant chick last year who just never came back. In the grand scheme of things, I guess that's not bad considering we live in a rural area surrounded by acres of woods. Jay credits our dog Chardonnay for intimidating the predators from coming too close. Not that a Golden Retriever is a great guard dog by nature, but she is big and has a bark to go with it. She also clearly understands that her job is to protect our yard from outside critters and has chased a fox and a raccoon into the woods before with pit bull-like intent.

After 20 minutes of searching and calling for Frodo, I got worried. However, looking for a missing Frodo has happened numerous times before so I tried to keep it in perspective. I looked behind our garden shed several times as Jay found our first Silkie egg back there in the leaves the day before. Silkies are a bantam (miniature) variety of chicken so the eggs are tiny and cute. Frodo had recently started doing the Chicken Squat, a behavior where a hen will squat, flatten her back, wings slightly out, and stomp her feet when a human reaches to pet her on the back. I've found that when a young hen starts doing this, she is "coming of age" and will start laying eggs soon. So we knew Frodo had recently matured to the point of egg production. Since Mumble was not squatting yet, we surmised that the Silkie egg was Frodo's.

Frodo's egg with a medium brown egg

We have an old doghouse behind the garden shed among the bike, ladders, snow blower and other stuff. The doghouse is one of those large plastic ones that have top and bottom halves. I looked under the top half...nothing but a couple of buckets. I looked under the separate bottom half and found exactly 12 brown eggs. So that's why my brown egg production was so low! I look up to see if there was a container nearby I could put the eggs in and saw Frodo, casually strutting around the back yard. She had probably just woken up from a nap and come out of hiding, wherever that was.

Now that I'd solved two dilemmas, the next one was whether or not the dozen found eggs were still edible. Store-bought eggs have been washed to remove any chicken poop. However, washing them also removes the natural "bloom" or coating they have which enables eggs to safely remain unrefrigerated for weeks. So unless it's really hot outside and/or the eggs could be fertile, 2-week-old unrefrigerated eggs are still safe for consumption. I knew this but how to convince my husband who throws out anything once it hits the expiration date? I have explained and provided written proof to Jay that the Sell By date isn't the date an item suddenly develops salmonella. With proper refrigeration, many foods are perfectly fine a week after that time.

With the dozen eggs I'd found, how to determine just how long they had been there under the dog house? I turned to Backyard Chicken's Chicken Forum and found the answer. It's called the Float Test. If the egg sinks to the bottom of a bowl of water, it's good. If it floats to the top, it's over 4-weeks-old and should be tossed. If the egg stands vertically on its narrow end, fat side up, it's 3-weeks-old and stale. Many of your factory farmed grocery store eggs are a month old, however, they've been refrigerated from the beginning. This test applies to eggs kept at room temperature. I imagine that if there's a rooster around, you'd only want to keep the sinkers. We no longer have a rooster and all these eggs sank to the bottom, so I had some reassurance we wouldn't get food poisoning or find a partially developed chick inside. Knowing that a hen spends 1-2 hours a day in order to lay each egg would be a waste of nutrition and hen labor if they had to be thrown out.

Assortment of eggs, Frodo's mini-egg on the right

Paws and Claws Part Two

2010-10-20T11:08:00.001-04:00

I promised in the last blog to write some claw clipping tips.  There are many sites and videos you can Google on how to trim a cat's claws; Cat Scratching Solutions is really informative. Every expert has their own method, but I'll just mention what techniques work best for me and my cats.

In general, an adult cat needs its claws trimmed every 3-4 weeks. Kittens grow at such a rapid rate, it's better to trim their claws once a week until they pass their major growth spurts. When the claws are allowed to grow and hook around like scythes, they get caught on bedding, rugs and furniture.  The cat is at risk for injury if she jumps down from the bed and her claw is hung up, suspending the cat by one nail. Something has to give; either the fabric or the cat's claw. Also, a cat with long claws can't fully sheathe them and the sharp, pointy tips can hurt someone unintentionally. The goal with trimming the claws is simply to blunt the claw by eliminating the sharp point on the end.

Each of my kitten buyers receives claw clippers with their Kitten Kit so they don't have an excuse. Human fingernail clippers will work for smaller claws if they are turned sideways so you don't crush the claw. As cats age, their claws get thicker and tougher, so a good, sharp clipper is necessary.  The best claw clipper for my adult Maine Coons is one designed for dogs.

The best advice I can offer is to be firm in your approach. Too many people are intimidated when clipping their cat's claws and the cat will take advantage of your wimpy attitude. You are in charge. I usually tell the reluctant feline that we can do this the hard way or the easy way, but we will do it. Actually, those words are mainly for myself, but I say them out loud just to get my point across. You need to be in a patient, yet determined mood yourself if your cat is not the best at claw clipping. Also, if your cat is really difficult, you may have to resign yourself to doing one paw at a time, giving kitty time to calm down before the next pedi session.

My next advice is to handle your cat's paws frequently. If your cat likes to sit in your lap, play with his feet, extend his claws gently. Most cats don't seem to like the feeling of having someone manually extend their claws for them so the more you can get them to trust you with their feet, the better. I think this feeling is the main reason cats naturally don't like having a pedicure. That, and a fear you're going to hurt them.

The other tip is timing. Cats are most active in the early morning and evening hours. Trying to convince your cat that it's time for a mani/pedi when she'd rather be chasing imaginary creatures on the wall is not the way to go. She has to be in a relaxed mood. Cat nap time is ideal (theirs, not yours) as sleepy cats make the best patients. Since cats sleep an average of 16-20 hours a day, the opportunities are there.  I keep claw clippers in several easy-to-reach places in my house, especially where I sit, like by the television or the computer. Then if a cat lies in my lap and I determine that her claws are past due, the clippers are right there.  If I have a litter of kittens fast asleep, my first thought is, "Oh, how adorable! Where are my claw clippers?"

To me, kittens are the most difficult to give a pedicure because they are small and squirmy. I can usually get a head start if they are sleeping, but for the very wriggly ones, I resort to scruffing them. Most of the time, simply holding a cat or kitten by the scruff briefly gets her attention and causes her to submit. Remember, you're the boss here. I may have to scruff, clip, scruff, clip, but it'll get done. Keeping a long-haired kitten still while clipping her nails is important because unlike the short-haired cats, it is harder to find the claw with all the cute little hair tufts obstructing your view.

By far, the easiest and most efficient way for me to clip a kitten's or moody cat's claws is to have someone else hold it still by the scruff. It doesn't have to be a major inconvenience for your helper. I have often taken a cat or kitten that isn't cooperative, plopped him on the lap of whomever is watching TV, and said, "Here, hold this." My kids and husband are well-trained in reluctant cat holding. I treat the scruff of the neck like a handle on the cat, using my whole hand to gently but firmly grasp the loose skin while keeping the animal on a table or lap to support its weight. Suspending a fully grown cat by the scruff where all its weight is on the skin is NOT recommended except in emergencies. The goal is to teach the cat that clipping his claws is not painful and submitting is better than fighting. I don't like to scruff the cat automatically unless necessary in order to keep him still or from biting me. I see scruffing as cat language for "I'm in charge here. Give it up and cooperate."

For most of my cats, I clip claws by myself while she is in my lap or on a table. The cat's behind is against my stomach so she can't back away, my arms around her with one hand holding the paw and the other has the clippers. This approach is to keep the cat contained, giving no options for easy escape. Back claws don't grow as quickly as front ones, so I often just extend and look at those, clipping only the necessary ones.

Most of my Maine Coons are cooperative with having their claws clipped since they have had this done regularly since they were babies. All cats that are shown are required to have their claws clipped for the judges' safety and since my cats are shown during their first year, they get used to being handled a lot. Our European Burmese cat, Bubba, is another story as he would rather slice your head off than let you win. Bubba requires two people, scruffing, and determination greater than his. For cats such as Bubba, the less brave may find that wrapping the cat in a towel or blanket to contain him may be a safer solution.

Bubba, our moody European Burmese pet

Enticements such as kitty treats are helpful to distract the reluctant cat while you give it a pedicure. Also, stroking the ears or sides of the muzzle can do wonders for calming a scared cat. With my big boy, Bugger, I stroke his muzzle after each paw to keep him calm and relaxed. The feline cardiologist I use reinforced my theory when he told me that it actually slows their heart rate, something that was supported when Bugger had his heart ultrasounded. I stroked the sides of his lion-like muzzle while he was on the exam table and watched the results on the monitor as he relaxed. Make sure you speak softly and reassure a scared cat during the process. Praise your kitty and give him a treat after a pedicure. Human baby food like Gerber's chicken, turkey or beef (all meat, no veggies) is like crack to cats. Open a jar and let your cat chow down while you clip.

Bugger protects his pencil with his giant mitt

Another point to consider is that if you consistently keep your cat's claws cut, the quick (pink part of the claw) will naturally recede, enabling you to maintain shorter, more blunt nails. If you allow the claws to grow for months each time before cutting them, it not only doesn't train your cat to let you trim, but the quick will have grown longer also, so you can't clip it as short. Most people know to avoid cutting so short that the nail bleeds. It can be intimidating to think you might hurt the cat. Styptic powder is recommended to apply in that instance almost as if it's assumed that making your cat's claws bleed is normal. It isn't normal and shouldn't be a problem. I can count on one paw how many times I've caused a claw to bleed when trimming. Everytime was with a squirmy kitten and I couldn't see well enough due to the kitten's movement and cut too short.

Image from Cat Scratching Solutions

The more often you clip your cat's claws, the more comfortable you and your cat will be with it. My tips summarized and bulletized:

Handle your cat's feet often
Keep claw clippers handy where ever your cat sleeps
Timing is key - trim claws when the cat is sleeping or relaxed
If your cat is in a bad mood, get help or just wait until he calms down
Hold the cat in your lap or on a table with his back to you, your arms around him
If necessary, scruff the neck as a reminder to the cat who is in charge, then release
Distract your cat with treats while you clip
Get someone else to hold the cat if it's more stressful for you to do it by yourself
Try to make it a positive experience for your cat by following up with praise and a treat

Paws and Claws

2010-10-18T11:21:00.001-04:00

As a breeder of Maine Coon cats, I get a lot of kitten inquires through my website. I strive to respond to everyone consistently. Emailed kitten inquiries are met with a page-long reply summarized as "This is how I do it, what you get, what I require, how much it costs, and what I have available or expected. If you're still interested, please complete the attached Kitten Application and return it to me. If I approve of you as the potential owner of one of my kittens, I'll put you on the waiting list." My dad has referred to me as a Kitten Nazi (a Seinfeld's Soup Nazi reference).

My kitten application asks open-ended questions because I don't believe in telling the potential kitten buyer what I want to hear. My theory is I will get more honest answers that way. This is also why I don't state the expectations on my website that all responsible breeders contractually require. That's right, you sign a contract. Realistically, it's difficult and expensive to legally pursue a kitten buyer who doesn't adhere to the rules, so we try to prevent problems in advance by asking the right questions, such as:

12. Regarding any cats you have now or have had in the past, are/were they indoors only, indoor/outdoor, or outdoors only?

13. Was/is your previous/current cat declawed?

22. When this kitten is altered do you want it declawed, too?

Outdoor cats and intention to declaw will get a kitten buyer refused if I'm not convinced they can be reformed. I have to mention that most animal rescue organizations and shelters have the same requirements as it's not just the purebred breeders who realize that all cats are worth protecting. I do try to educate the naive rather than just refuse them. The hardest to convince are those who believe that cats SHOULD go outdoors. The easier ones are those who aren't sure about declawing. Some will honestly say that their previous cat was declawed but they have since learned that the procedure is inhumane and would never do it again. Some will ask if they should, thinking that perhaps I'm recommending their kitten be declawed because they've never had a Maine Coon before and such a large cat may be dangerous with its claws intact. They're not tigers People, just large, beautiful, domestic cats. I normally refer the declawing ignorant to a site which describes the procedure in which the cat's fingertips are amputated up to the first knuckle. Yep....ouch! Being that anyone who wants to invest in a Maine Coon is a cat lover, that description usually convinces them as they had no idea what was involved.

According to research, most veterinarians state that 95% of their declawing surgeries are performed in order to save the cat owner's furniture. The procedure is most common in North America and Asian countries, and outlawed in most of Europe, New Zealand and Australia as inhumane. My theory is that as the American public became more aware that indoor-only cats were the way to go, conflicts arose when the indoor cats started doing what was natural to them - clawing on whatever worked for them, usually furniture. In order to prevent cat owners from giving up their pets, veterinarians offered the solution of declawing.

In my twenties, I was similarly ignorant. As a child, all our cats were required to live outdoors by my parents. Once I moved out on my own, the cats I adopted were kept indoors. I didn't know about scratching posts and it wasn't a problem until we got Creole, a solid black domestic short hair. After we moved from Manassas, Virginia to Florence, South Carolina, Creole started clawing the couch. Once, after a weekend out of town, we came home to a couch with its arm gutted open down to the wooden frame. Now granted, it was a second-hand couch, but enough was enough.

I had never considered declawing a cat, but my sister had her cats declawed (thanks to her controlling now ex-husband) and loved the way it felt when her cats kneaded on her legs with their soft claw less paws. I didn't know what else to do and my veterinarian's advice was to have her declawed. Creole came home with her front legs bandaged all the way up and looked pathetic, but she eventually recovered from her surgery and seemed to be fine.

A few years later, I got a new kitten, Remy. My vet advised me to have her declawed when she was spayed, explaining that if she developed clawing issues later, it was easier to do it when she was young and already under anesthesia. Having young children and new furniture, I agreed. The thought now of what that poor cat had to endure with two surgeries makes me cringe. Remy never developed the behavior issues declawed cats are supposed to have (usually aggression and not using the litter box), but she did become slightly lame. One onychectomy study showed that 33% of declawed cats have behavior problems and are twice as likely as intact cats to be relinquished to animal shelters. Remy's paws still seem disproportionately small for her size, but she is a family favorite because of her outgoing, affectionate nature.

When I got my first Maine Coon, Sassy, from a breeder, I admitted to her that I had two declawed cats at the time (Creole has since passed away from kidney disease). Her advice was not to tell anyone so as to avoid harsh judgement from other breeders. I took Sassy to Companion Animal Hospital in Groton, CT for her check up and found he had kitten package plans which automatically included vaccinations, spay/neuter and declawing. I changed vets as I no longer wanted to be associated with one that recommends declawing as a standard practice.

I've chosen to blog about my past sins in order to educate and not condemn. Having been there, I understand the concerns of cat lovers who want to keep their furniture intact. Now I preach about the necessity of a good scratching post and a cat's physical need to claw something, equating the absence of a scratching post to not providing a litter box. Had I known (or been advised of alternatives by my vet at the time) to provide my cats with a good scratching post as kittens, Creole and Remy could have kept their claws and fingertips.

I can honestly claim that very few of my kitten buyers ever complain about their Maine Coon kitten clawing where it isn't supposed to. It helps tremendously that the kittens learn to use a scratching post almost as soon as they can walk. It's amazing to watch a 4-week-old kitten waddle up to the sisal post and claw it just like Mommy does. We have leather couches and the cats have never tried to claw them. There are scratches across the leather due to the furniture being used as take off and landing strips during playtime, but nothing deliberate. I have a cat tree or sisal post in most rooms so everyone has access.

I can't undo what I did to Creole and Remy years ago, but I can move forward by educating the unaware. My contract stipulates that if you get a kitten or cat from me, you agree to never have it declawed. Since I have my kittens spayed/neutered before they leave me, any kitten buyer's vet who may suggest declawing at the time of altering doesn't get that opportunity.

I was going to include tips for clipping your cat's claws, but as this blog is getting pretty long, that'll have be the sequel.

Remy, our Domestic Short Hair

The Mysterious Sandcastle

2010-10-05T10:11:00.000-04:00

Most Saturday nights the grand kids stay over at our house since their mother has to report to work early Sunday mornings. For those who don't know, Amanda and Ben are technically my step-grand kids as I am WAY too young to be a grandmother. They do call me Grandma Sharon since in their minds anybody over the age of 20 is old.

We like to try to plan things to do with them on Sunday. Two weeks ago, we took them apple picking, an annual event where they also get to select their own pumpkin. Last year, Ben was so attached to his pumpkin, he took it to bed with him, only relinquishing it when it started to smell a little too ripe.

This past Sunday, we had no real plans but since the weather in Connecticut is looking and feeling more autumnal, Jay wanted to prepare the wood stove for the winter. Few things make my husband happier than splitting, stacking and maintaining his woodpile. The anticipation of lighting the wood stove at the first hint of frost is so overwhelming to him that I've had to declare that the outside temperature must be no greater than 40 degrees before he jumps the gun. We've had a few occasions in the past where Jay gets excited because it feels "raw" out so he lights the stove in the basement. If it isn't really that raw, but actually 55 degrees, the prematurely lit wood stove has driven us to open windows in response to a house that is now heated up to a balmy 85.

Being a firefighter while in college has also made Jay a stickler for cleaning the chimney and the wood stove in order to rid them of any nasty hazardous creosote. Even though we have a Cape Cod style house with a steep roof, Jay walks it easily while it terrifies me. He doesn't quite dance and sing on the roof the way Dick Van Dyke did in Mary Poppins, but the soot-smudged image of Jay usually inspires me to sing songs from the musical the rest of the day. This Sunday morning, Ben had no interest in helping his grandfather, so he directed his 5-year-old energy to drawing facial hair on people in the newspaper. Eight-year-old Amanda was Jay's little helper, holding the ladder, carrying out wood stove pipes to be cleaned, and basically making her grandfather feel good about being able to share with her.

After fulfilling her chimney/wood stove cleaning duties, Amanda joined her brother at the kitchen counter to draw, but she also wrote a short story. It was so cute I'm sharing it here with the spelling corrected for readability.

The Mysterious Sandcastle

by Amanda

Once day I was walking on the beach and I saw a mysterious sandcastle. I dipped my finger in the moat and I shrunk. Suddenly the drawbridge fell down. There were two men guarding the sandcastle and I snuck past them. Once I got in I heard a rumble; it was a king and a queen and they said, "If you want to stay here, you have to haul firewood and clean the chimney." I said, "Okay!"

But then I heard my name and woke up. It was just a dream.

The End

Ben, Jay and Amanda at Holmberg Orchards

That's Some Egg

2010-09-25T10:10:00.000-04:00

The newer hens have started laying eggs now. Not all of them, but about half of the seven newbies so we're getting more brown eggs these days. Good thing, because some of the older hens (by older I mean they are about 18 months) are not laying at all. Since I pointed out in a previous blog about the uniqueness of each hen's egg, I have a good idea of who my non-producers are. Shout out to Flo, Foster and Righty, hey, it's been a couple of months....what the cluck? Probable reasons were the extreme summer heat, their current excuse is moulting. Righty has actually lost the feathers in her tail that tilted to the right like a rudder.

In background, a headless Buffy, Flo and Thelma. Chad, our beautiful Light Brahma and Frodo the Red Silkie

Of the younger set, Hybrid, the Red Sex Link pullet, has matured quickly into a large hen with a pronounced comb and wattle that would make the Corn Flakes rooster jealous. The Red Sex Link, also called the Red Comet or Red Star, is a breed created by mating a Rhode Island Red with a Plymouth Barred Rock. The resulting chicks which hatch with red on them are females, making the sexing of newborn chicks a lot easier. Hybrid lays brown eggs that are mottled with lighter colored spots. Then she layed this ginormous egg, so large I felt compelled to check her bottom for injury and ask her if she was okay. The egg earned the initials of BAE for "Big Ass Egg". After a day of photo ops and admiration by the rest of the family, I cracked it open to reveal the equivalent of two eggs inside. Fortunately for Hybrid, she lays normal-sized eggs most of the time.

Hybrid

Normal-sized egg with Hybrid's BAE

Turkey Bacon and the Big Egg Revealed

Allergic to Cats?

2010-09-14T11:13:00.004-04:00

Kelsey with Bubba and friend at a cat show in 2005

I recently wrote about my son Tyler going away to college at USC. When I spoke to him last week, he made me nervous after he mentioned that he had a major allergy attack soon after he opened the care package I sent. What if he has developed an allergy to cats? I knew the box I mailed had been used as a cat bed before I loaded it up with goodies. Just try keeping a cat out of an empty box; they assume you got it specifically for their use and mine will fight over whose turn it is to sleep in the new box.

I read an article years ago which referred to the allergy problem some college students face when they come home at Thanksgiving after being away from the family cat for a few months. This happened to my sister-in-law. I even experienced it myself after I left my pets with my mother in Weaverville, North Carolina at the age of 14 and went to live with my pet-deprived father all the way up in Ithaca, New York. When I came back to visit Mom, suddenly the long-haired black and white cat named Hal drove my allergies over a cliff every time he tried to get in my lap. I actually sympathized with all those people who declared they hated cats because they were allergic to them. The theory is that while one is living with cats or dogs, your body creates an immunity to their dander. Contrary to popular belief, it's the animal's dander and not their fur that causes an allergic reaction. Living in a pet household is similar to getting regular allergy shots, only a lot more cuddly. Once you leave a cat environment, your resistance gradually diminishes and you may find yourself a sneezing, snotty, miserable mess whenever a cat is nearby.

I've had allergies most of my life. They started when I was a young child and because no one in my immediate family had allergies, at first Mom couldn't understand why I always seemed to have a cold. Because my allergies seem to worsen at times of stress (i.e. Sunday morning when I was supposed to be getting ready for church), it was often insinuated that my allergy attacks were "all in my head". I can tell you the only thing in my head was snot. Many of my childhood memories are fogged by images of Triaminic Syrup, choosing clothing with large pockets to carry Kleenex, and my perpetually red, runny nose. I slept with a Kleenex box, littering my bedroom floor with used "snot wads" of tissue by morning. Why it took so long to move a trash can beside my bed I don't know. Add that image to a girl who already had enormous buck teeth and you have a little Sharon.

There was no Claritin back then and my mother didn't want to put me on the only medicine the family doctor offered to prescribe because it caused drowsiness. Lovebird the parakeet was moved out my bedroom, my feather pillow exchanged for a cotton one, but this wasn't enough. When I was finally taken to an allergist as a teenager, I tested positive for just about every known allergen, including cats and dogs. Still think it's all in my head Mom and Dad? The swollen reactions to the test stripes all over my back gave me the medical proof I needed to get my parents' attention. My major allergens were (and still are) grass pollen (especially ragweed), dust and mold. The mold allergy explained why Mom had always suggested that I was allergic to rain since that really sets me off. As a die hard animal lover, there was no conceivable way I was going to give up pets and since it's hard to avoid many environmental allergens, I got allergy shots for all five allergens through college. Pollen, dust, mold, dogs and cats. The arm that took the pollen, dust and mold shot always had the strongest reaction, becoming swollen, tender, hot and red for a day or so. The allergist also had more effective drugs to treat my symptoms than the country doctor in Weaverville so at last I found relief. Meanwhile, I convinced my father to let me adopt two kittens from the Ithaca animal shelter whom I named Simon and Garfunkel.

It is believed that growing up in a pet household gives children a natural resistance to allergens they might not otherwise have. There's a video on Web MD regarding this, so I'm not just pulling this out of the dander-laden air I breathe. I found an article on strategies for living with cats if you have allergies. I will also point out that my cat allergies were profoundly worse back in the day when our cats went outside. Think about it; if the cat lies in the grass and you're also allergic to grass, you've just doubled your exposure when Fluffy comes in and gets in your lap. Just one more reason for cat owners to keep their cats inside.

A few tips for dealing with allergies I've learned over the years rather than moving to Arizona and living a life of misery without animals:

Get your children a pet while they are toddlers to build their resistance to pet allergies. I recommend a Maine Coon cat. The choice of dog breed is up to you but I have a personal fondness for Golden Retrievers.
If you are just allergic to dander and not to cat saliva, try visiting the homes of breeders who have more allergy-friendly cats like the Sphynx, Devon Rex or Cornish Rex to see how your allergies react. The Siberian is also supposed to be a good choice, but I can't verify that. Breeders of these cats are experienced in working with allergy sufferers.
If you have asthma or chronic sinus infections, assume you have allergies and treat them first.
Don't be afraid to try allergy drugs. Drugs are my friend and could have saved me a lot of Kleenex and embarrassment if I'd had them as a child.
Lack of sleep and stress seem to worsen allergy attacks. Take a Benedryl and a nap if possible.
Keep your cat inside and if necessary, out of your bedroom. An occasional bath is helpful. If you start them as kittens, it makes a big difference to your cat's acceptance and your success.
Central air conditioning is a must, especially during the heavy pollen seasons in spring (trees) and fall (ragweed). Opening the windows to let in the cool autumn air can really backfire when the grass pollen settles on your pillow.
Consider allergy shots to build up your immunity to your allergens. A couple of years of regular shots may make a big difference in your comfort.
Don't drink beer or wine if your allergies are acting up. The hops and tannins will just exasperate your symptoms. Instead, try a mixed drink.

I am obviously biased, but unless someone has severe health concerns, there is hope for committed animal lovers who suffer from allergies. I know I couldn't live without the hairy little rascals.

The C Word

2010-09-08T09:01:00.000-04:00

Hearing that a loved one has cancer can be emotional, heart-wrenching news. When it happens to the person who brought you into this world and and has loved you unconditionally from the time you were conceived, it can be terrifying. My mother has lived her life the right way; never smoked, in good physical shape (still mowing the lawn at 71) and doesn't drink except for the occasional glass of cheap sweet wine. She always took care of her teeth, got regular physicals and had any available preventive health screening done. She's tall for a woman of her generation, 5'10", slender, and still has her original hair color without the assistance of Loreal. She's easy to envy with her natural beauty.

So what's the point, many may ask, of doing all the right things when you can still get cancer? I don't know, but I guess one could project that since our family is predisposed to cancer, bad habits like smoking would bring about problems a lot earlier in life. My mom's mother died from stomach cancer in 1982, soon after I started college. Grandmama also did all the right things, but back then we didn't have colonoscopies and CT scans. Her cancer was found with exploratory surgery, but by then it was too late and she passed a few months later. There seems to be a genetic component, obviously, but my wish has been that by the time I get to be around that age, we will have a cure.

We're getting there. A good friend who works on research for cancer drugs at Pfizer reassured me that with all the progress we're making, the day will come when we manage cancer the same way diabetes and high blood pressure are managed now.

Fortunately, even though my mom's cancer has metastasized from her small intestine to her liver which is covered in malignant lesions, there now exists a treatment which should enable her to live another 20-30 years without a lot of negative side-effects. The fine doctors at the UNC Cancer Hospital in Chapel Hill will do a localized chemo treatment called chemoembolization on half of my mother's liver tomorrow. They will do the same thing to the other half of her liver in a couple of months as it's important for the liver to function while its other half is being blasted with chemo. It reminds me of the "one to wash, one to wear" philosophy for the liver. All without surgery, utilizing the major artery in her leg to access the liver, the meds will be injected and sealed within her liver. Being ever positive, Mom reserved tickets for a Caribbean cruise in October and expects to have a great time.

When visiting a few days ago, I set up a blog for my mother so she could keep all interested parties informed of her progress. Her blog is titled "The Organ Within Me"; a play on words since in addition to being a high school choral director, mom was also a church organist for most of her life.

Sharon, Ruth (Mom), Paul and Diana

Breeding Decisions

2010-08-25T08:29:00.003-04:00

Gargoyle is an outcrossed female I brought in as a kitten. Her registered name is Grey Ghost (a fishing fly of course), but Kelsey came up with the call name of Gargoyle. Although she's not exceptional as far as the Maine Coon standard is considered, she has the qualities of extreme affection toward humans, smoke tortie coloring masking a mackeral pattern (a new pattern in my house, my other cats are classic tabbies), and a great chin. Since she was also a trade from another breeder, she was more or less free.

The problem with Gargoyle is that from an early age, she asserted herself by peeing in the wrong place. I've mentioned before that intact females can be worse than males; this cat is what we in the field refer to as a Hoser with a capital H. If I asked her, "Hey Gargoyle! Did you do this on the wall?", she'd respond with, "Not only that, but I can demonstrate my hosing skills right now against this wall." I think she was a firefighter in her previous life. Having multiple females sometimes leads to pissing contests (major pun intended) between a couple of them. Most females are not hosers. Some will only spray when they are in heat. All my females stop the unwanted behavior while nursing kittens. Sometimes the hormonal effect of giving birth straightens them out enough that they change behaviors post-partum and behave themselves even after their kittens are weaned. This is what I've been hoping for with Gargoyle. If she goes back to her hosing behavior, then Gargoyle will be spayed and re-homed, hopefully with one of her kittens. Don't worry, I've placed many horrible hosers who are completely reformed after losing their hormonal influences and changing environments. Retired breeders make great pets, even if they weren't the easiest to live with while breeding.

Fortunately, I have a built-in cage in our basement with access via catdoor to an enclosed outdoor run to confine any cats with bad aim. This is where Miss Piss has been living until recently. Gargoyle had been bred to Bugger and was due. I brought her into our bedroom and put her up in the 2-level birthing cage on Day 62 of her gestation. Although she meowed a lot, she never peed anywhere inappropriate. On Saturday morning, Day 64, she showed no signs of an impending labor. I had to take Kelsey to an appointment an hour away and had plans to leave at 8:30 am. At 8:20, I was ironing Kelsey's shirt on my bed when I glanced up at Gargoyle. Crap. She was panting heavily. Not feeling comfortable being gone potentially for the next 4 hours while Gargoyle was in early labor, I rescheduled Kelsey's appointment, citing a "family emergency". We waited. And waited. And Gargoyle panted. And we waited some more. By that afternoon, the husband and the grandkids were around. I took Kelsey and Amanda to run some errands, leaving "the boys" in charge.

Finally, at 8:30 pm, a full 12 hours after my watch began, I saw a red tail and a two hind legs appear. I knew just by the color that this was a male kitten. Approximately 1/3 of all kitten births are breech, but I always hope for the cat's sake that it won't be the first kitten out. It's a lot harder when the kitten isn't as aerodynamic as it would be head first and the mother isn't stretched out "down there" yet. Sure enough, this kitten was not only breech, but the sac was broken already so the natural lubrication was gone. I grabbed a clean washcloth so I could get a grip and gently pulled on the legs and tail (NEVER pull on a tail by itself unless you want to risk detaching it from the kitten) with her contractions. We got the hips out but then the belly was stuck. Next push. Just the head was left. It didn't want to come out. Gargoyle cried in distress and pain, I held my breath and hoped that he would survive the ordeal and pulled again, certain that this kitten was going to have a giraffe neck. Out the kitten came, 4.5 ounces, a good size for such a small mom and none the worse for his ordeal. Amanda was excited that she was getting to watch the birth. Kelsey pretended it was old hat for her, but there is always something intriguing about what the next kitten is going to look like.

Gargoyle relaxed, cleaned up her new prize and I started calling my friends to let them know we finally had one. An hour and a half later, she delivered a stillborn kitten with gastroschism. Gastroschism is the medical term for the reality we breeders call "guts out". The stomach area is the last to close up in the development of mammals and sometimes it doesn't always work. I've seen it occasionally and it's not pretty. At least this one wasn't alive. When they're born alive with gastroschism, it breaks your heart as in most cases, it's so bad there's nothing you can do for them. My vet advised me long ago that in the event a kitten was born that was obviously not "meant to be" and a vet wasn't readily available to euthanize (cats are notorious for delivering at 2 am), to humanely suffocate the kitten by putting it in a zip-lock baggie in the freezer. Nauseating I know, but it essentially puts the kitten to sleep. Fortunately, Jay has been around the few times this has happened to take care of the deed, something I'm for which I'm grateful. So the second kitten was disappointing and created more anxiety about the next arrival, which fortunately came almost immediately.

This one looked black. After all these years, did Bugger carry the gene for solid colors (no tabby stripes)? Nope, I saw the tell-tale white eye-liner which gives away the tabby pattern. It was a boy, probably a silver, maybe a brown tabby, but very dark and apparently healthy. After he dried, I could discern a mackeral tabby pattern on his sides, the first I've ever had born in my house. The silver boy was 3.5 ounces, smaller than his brother, but still within the normal range for a newborn Maine Coon.

Worth mentioning is the discovery that Gargoyle has eleven nipples. The standard number for a cat is eight, but in-between the normally spaced nipples, I found three "mini-nips". I've had one cat before who had nine and heard about a Persian with 18 once, so it's not that rare. Good thing cats don't have to be fitted for bras.

After all this, we have two new kittens in the house. Right now I'm thinking I'll let both go as pets instead of keeping one. It may be a different decision had one been a girl. I had guessed that Gargoyle would have 3-4 kittens; she delivered three so I was pretty accurate. Kelsey and Amanda couldn't come up with call names so I researched suggestions for this small litter. On the internet I rediscovered an animated TV show "Gargoyles" shown in the 90's based upon a comic book. My son Tyler used to watch it. I chose names of two of the characters, but since the names are French, I had to go with two I could pronounce easily. The red classic boy is Behemoth and the silver/brown mackeral boy is Cyrano (and no, he doesn't have a big nose for those of you familiar with Cyrano de Bergerac).

Gargoyle's First (and last?) Litter

Gargoyle and her boys are doing extremely well. I've opened the cage door at the top so she can get out for a mommy break if she wants. She is using the litterbox like she never had a problem. True to the nature of a good mom, Gargoyle doesn't want to leave her kittens for more than a minute, if at all. Nothing would make me happier than for Gargoyle to change her hosing ways so I can keep her in the breeding program as she is unrelated to any of my other cats.

Meanwhile, after a kitten hiatus during the summer, we finally have new babies to watch grow from little rodent-type things to adorable fuzzy kittens. The Circle of Life and all that. Kind of neat when it all works out right.

Gone Away to College

2010-08-15T08:01:00.001-04:00

My son Tyler has finally gone off to college. He transferred to USC (that's U of South Carolina, not Southern California) as a sophomore. Last year, Tyler commuted to UCONN's Avery Point campus in nearby Groton, CT, a big disappointment for all of us. UCONN is in such demand that unless you are in the very top echelon academically, you have to go to one of their smaller campuses for two years before qualifying to transfer to the main campus in Storrs, CT. We all wanted Tyler's college experience to be one of living on campus; commuting from home took all the fun out of it. I have to mention that had Tyler applied to schools during his senior year withOUT consideration of where his girlfriend wanted to go, he probably could have avoided the whole Avery Point thing. But try to explain to a 17-year-old that the likelihood of a high school sweetheart truly being "the one" and lasting through the changes of young adulthood are rare. I only wish that Tyler and his girlfriend had broken up 6 months prior instead of right after the Senior Prom. Oh well, it gives me a teaching moment for his younger sister of what not to do.

We had a marathon run from Connecticut to South Carolina, leaving on a Wednesday and returning on Friday. 16 hours of total drive time, most of which was pretty smooth since we took the west side up I-81 and avoided the nemessis of the East Coast, I-95.

Tyler couldn't get on-campus housing and is renting a 3-bedroom apartment about 2 blocks from campus. He has his own room and bathroom, a far cry from my college days of going down the dorm hall to use the bathroom with 20 other girls. He didn't want any help from his parents to set his room up, but did accept help from Kelsey.

The latest Toy Story movie came out this summer in which Andy, the boy who owns the characters of Woody, Buzz Lightyear and company, goes off to college. True to my nature, I cried during the last half of the movie. I relate to the scene where Andy's mother comes into his empty room after her son has packed up all his belongings and realizes that this is it, her first-born child is actually leaving her.

Kelsey had the hardest time saying good-bye to her brother. The closeness between the two who are four years apart in age is one of my proudest as a mother. The normal animosity, jealousy, and meaness that is natural between most siblings was never an issue between Tyler and Kelsey. They are not just bonded by DNA, but by a close friendship.

Tyler in his USC apartment

The nostalgia, his empty room, the void left by his absence, the tremendous loss his sister feels....all are off-set by our happiness for him. As I tried to console Kelsey a couple of days ago, I told her we were successful in raising a person who wants to grow up and leave home. Now we get to decide what to do with his bedroom.

Finn the Bonus Boy

2010-08-10T12:46:00.001-04:00

On August 8, 2005, almost exactly five years ago, my largest Maine Coon female whom we called Boom Boom gave birth to her first litter. The previous week we'd had her X-rayed at the vet to determine how many kittens to expect. Yes, it is safe to X-ray a pregnant cat, something about their lifespan not being long enough to be affected by X-rays. My vet showed me the X-ray with a clear 3 kittens evident, with an uncertain shadow in the background....so 3, maybe 4. Given that Boom Boom had gotten up to 18 pounds, about a 5-pound gain, I was slightly disappointed, but have learned that just because a cat has lots of room for babies doesn't mean she'll fill up that space.

Boom Boom delivered 4 kittens during the day, one more than confirmed, so I was happy. She had two red tabby boys, a blue tabby and white boy, and a brown tabby and white female. This was terrific as I had a potential client who was anxious to get a red male to show in the Alter Class (for neutered/spayed cats). Mother and babies settled contently in the birthing tent in our bedroom.

The next morning I was still in bed as Jay was getting ready for work. He woke me up, alarmed that he saw a placenta in the birthing tent. I am always careful to count a placenta for each kitten born as retained placentas can lead to a nasty infection in the mother. So there I was, checking Boom Boom, actually smelling her bottom for any indication of odor, worrying about whether or not she had a dead fetus inside and the placenta had separated, would I have to take her to the vet, etc. It was too early for the vet to be open, so I did what I could do. I changed the bedding as it now had fresh blood stains on it. As I moved the kittens to the clean blanket, it occured to me that I had three red kittens, not two anymore. A bonus kitten! Relieved to find a happy answer to what was a problem five minutes before, I congratulated Boom Boom on delivering Kitten Number Five by herself so quietly. Kitten Number Five was slightly damp, but just as robust as his littermates. He became known as Bonus Boy, then Ben, later registered as Dracoonfly Finbar Conneff "Finn" by his new owner. Having kittens over a span of a couple of days is not uncommon with cats, but worrysome for the owner. The cat registries stipulate that the day the first kitten arrives is the birth date for the registration rather than have multiple birthdays for one litter.

Finn and his littermates explore the uses of toilet paper

As the kittens grew, two of the red boys stood out but for different reasons. Baron was the largest of the reds, with huge boning and a gregarious personality. We still compare his legs to those of a Golden Retriever, making comments about how he must be related to our dog. He was the lap kitten, always climbing into our laps to be held. His head type wasn't great, but good. The late arrival, Finn, had a better head type, but wasn't quite as large and very hyperactive. Finn wouldn't sit still for anyone. I vascillated between the two to try to decide which one would make a better show cat. I normally don't choose the kittens for my clients, but since the potential owners had never shown a cat before, they trusted my judgement. I took pictures of the kittens in profile shots facing each other, head on side by side, weighing them, trying to decide. It was six of one, half a dozen of the other. I finally decided that Baron would be the chosen one as his owners also wanted him use him as a therapy cat, figuring he had the right personality.

Baron was sold to Marge and Phil Berger in the NYC area so that Marge could fulfill her dream of becoming part of the cat show world. Finn was neutered along with his other littermates and sold as a pet to Tereasa Brainerd, a professor in Astrophysics at Boston University (yes, she is a Rocket Scientist). When Tereasa came to pick Finn up, I told her how hard my decision had been because her kitten was really nice. I mentioned that if she ever wanted to try showing him, to let me know. Tereasa replied, "Okay!", but I didn't believe her. Most kitten buyers don't make the leap into the show world once they find out what it entails.

Well, Tereasa not only tried showing her kitten, she became a cat show addict. Likewise, so did Marge and Phil Berger who have since become Maine Coon breeders under the cattery name of MaineVu. Both parties have become good friends and have shown all over the country with Finn, Baron and the cats that followed them.

Baron and Finn after a kitten final

As Baron matured, he changed personalities. He tired of showing, especially riding in the car after dark and never grew into a lap cat. Although he achieved success in the show hall, his ear set became a challenge. Ideally, the Maine Coon's ears should be set up on their heads, at about 11 and 1 o'clock. Baron's spread out too much. Still, he earned the title of Grand Premier in CFA and Supreme Grand Champion Alter and Regional Winner in TICA. Finn achieved the same titles in CFA and TICA as well as in CFF, a third, smaller cat association. As he matured, his personality also flip-flopped from his youth. He became eternally patient and tolerant. A good thing because Finn also grew an enormous, deep red coat that required a lot of care to keep it in show condition. Finn's mane demanded that Tereasa keep a bib on him at shows except while being judged as it always got caught in his mouth when he felt compelled to groom over what his owner had just done. The bib protected his mane from becoming a wet mass. As adults, Baron and Finn could not have looked more different, their breed and color being their only commonality. Baron looked more like his mother and Finn looked more his father, Bugger, but with shorter ears and more coat. We often remarked on how a Persian must have snuck into the house.

Finn and his fur coat

Since Tereasa wanted to continue showing, she showed Finn again the following year in TICA, this time to an International Win, meaning that he was among the 25 highest-scoring altered cats internationally for the 2008-2009 show year. Over the years, she also acquired and showed a Bengal and a Ragdoll with some success. But Finn was the show cat and he got better with age. Male Maine Coons continue to mature until around 4 or 5 years old, so they really get into their prime long after most are retired to breed. A spayed or neutered Maine Coon is an awesome creature as it doesn't fall victim to the negative affects of hormones, breeding and heat cycles which keep them from growing beautiful bodies and coats. Very often a show cat makes it clear that they've had enough of the baths, blow-drying, travel and noisy show halls with strangers handling them. Showing a cat with a bad attitude is not for the faint of heart and can border on stupidity if the owner doesn't get the message. It can be dangerous as a frightened, angry or upset cat can send a person to the hospital if they manage to bite someone.

Not Finn

For the 2009-2010 show year (a show year runs from May to April), Tereasa went for the only title Finn had left to conquer, that of Lifetime Achievement. A Lifetime Achievement Award (LA) is awarded to the cat who earns an International Win and two International or Regional wins over the period of at least two years. Finn was a Northeast Regional Winner again this past year, qualifying him as an LA. I'm forever grateful to Tereasa for her commitment to Finn and showing him competitively for most of his life. Finn is now officially retired from showing and his fur has been mercifully shaved for the summer and to relieve him of the encumbrance of his mane. His day-late birth really was a bonus. To see more photos on my website, click here and here. To see Finn along with the other winning Maine Coons in TICA, click here.

Tereasa at the Regional Awards Banquet this past weekend

A Day at the Races

2010-07-31T10:23:00.002-04:00

Last weekend, Jay and I visited friends Jo-Ann and her husband Chris in upstate New York. The stated purpose behind our visit was to retrieve my cat Olivia, who has been there for the past several weeks to be bred. Jo-Ann and Chris proposed that we spend Saturday in Saratoga, about an hour away from them. Game to an adventure that involved horses, we agreed. I had not been to a horse race in 25 years.

Jo-Ann put together a lovely spread involving cheeses, figs, Italian bread, mimosas, etc. and we got there around 7 am to sit in someone else's box seat. This is allowed before the races start in the afternoon. As we dined, a commentator told us about the horses passing by to warm up on the track, muddy from the previous day's downpour. Later, Jay and I took a tour of the stable area behind the scenes while Chris and Jo-Ann secured seats in the grandstand so we could have shelter from the sun. While waiting for post time, we walked into downtown Saratoga to window shop and get lunch.

Morning Warm Up

By post time at 1 pm, it was a sweltering summer day, unusually hot for upstate New York. The weather was around 95 degrees with a humidity that required the wiping of perspiration from one's face every five minutes. We were sweating from places that shouldn't be sweating. Jo-Ann and I sat in the two seats behind our husbands, me in my big hat I'd purchased in a Saratoga shop. One thing I noticed once the crowds came in was that even in this era of casual dress, the women were dressed beautifully. I now had the styling race-track hat, but I certainly wasn't wearing the designer dress and 5-inch heels.

Jo-Ann and I

The men were off somewhere trying to locate the paper that told about each horse so Jo-Ann and I decided to place a bet blindly. She bet on the horse in the green silks and I on Number 7, both to show. Not very scientific, but we did win something like $2.80. Jay and Chris had more of an idea of how to place bets, so we encouraged them to take on the task later. It was all very fun, albeit hot, watching the horses, the people, the races and just enjoying each other's company. It was especially fun when our chosen horses started winning money for us.

Then a young couple climbed the stairs, settling in their seats directly behind us. The man was non-descript, dressed practically for a hot day at the races. The woman was very attractive, blond hair, tan slim body, wearing a sculptured black dress and bright red stillettos. Her diamond jewelry was in the shape of two horseshoes hooked together, a matching necklace and earrings. She appeared to ooze class and money.

Since the men had to turn around to talk to us, it was probably them who noticed it first.

"Look at the woman seated behind you."

I turned casually, facing her knees at almost eye-level. Except I didn't see her knees. She was sitting with her knees spread wide apart, her red bejeweled panties staring right back at me. Yes, I clearly saw the rhinestones on her panties. Apparently she was so hot she didn't care about the stir she was causing in the rows in front of her as she aired her pretty panties. Even if she got up to walk around between races, Miss Red Panties always sat back down in the same not-so-lady-like position.

Now giggling like adolescents, Jo-Ann and I had plenty of comments:

"At least they match her shoes."

"At least she's wearing panties."

"Jay, put your eyes back in your head."

"That reminds me, I need to make an appointment to see my gynecologist."

Trying not to be too obvious, we got a picture......

Jo-Ann Seated in Front of Miss Red Panties

Camping 101 - Stay In The House

2010-07-08T08:37:00.000-04:00

My husband Jay's three grandchildren, ages 5, 8 and 10 spent last weekend with us. Normally, Stephen, the 10-year-old, lives with his father and we don't see him that often. However, when we do, the combination of all three of them is exasperating. Stephen, a fine lad all by himself, inspires bad behavior in his siblings, especially in 5-year-old Ben. The two boys together gang up on on sister Amanda, requiring constant policing, patience, threats, time-out, etc.

When I heard that we had all three for the weekend, I came up with an idea, practically genius in retrospect. I suggested that Jay and the kids set up our 8-person tent and camp in our yard. I opted out, stating a need for indoor plumbing.

The kids loved the tent and Ben threw himself on top of everyone in excitement after it was finally set up. He'd never slept in a tent before and couldn't contain himself. Ben and Chardonnay are alike in many ways, including the need to jump on others when they are excited. As I was saying goodnight, the kids were screaming and wrestling, jumping on Jay and basically behaving like wild animals. Jay looked at me and actually asked if I was sure I didn't want to stay with them. I had never been more certain that sleeping in my own bed was a great idea.

Apparently Jay got the kids to sleep by pretending to be asleep himself. They eventually gave up on trying to rouse him and conked out. Chardonnay, however, was out of her element. She often sits on our back deck at night, listening to the sounds in the woods surrounding our house. She seems so serene when she's doing this. After 9 pm, Chardonnay is normally down for the night, snoring and oblivious to the rest of the household that stays up later. With her people camping outside she was a different dog. Chardonnay felt like she had to protect them all night. This meant that any sound in the woods required her to chase it into the woods, barking loudly. This chasing, barking behavior occurred numerous times throughout the night, but at least the evil forest creatures stayed away. Bringing Chardonnay in the house didn't help as she just clawed at the door to go back out. Chardonnay's guard dog persona kept her and Jay awake most of the night while the children slept. Poor Jay. Lucky, brilliant me.

Fat and Sassy No More

2010-07-04T08:51:00.002-04:00

Like many owners of long-haired cats, I have been follicly challenged by the spring shedding and somewhat greasy nature of the Maine Coon coat. Some of my cats have perfect, low-maintenance coats, but others are either too oily or too cottony thick. The latter tends to form mats more easily. In the past, I've gradually worked through the mats with a rake-style comb and a seam ripper. Some cats tolerate this very well and others need two people for the process, one to comb and the other to distract the cat's head with treats, ready to scruff a ticked-off animal if necessary. For some reason, cats don't like having their hair pulled. Of course, the best prevention is regular combing and bathing or powdering.

Seam rippers (available in the sewing section of stores that carry that kind of thing) are invaluable for safely getting under a difficult mat, breaking it up with minimal damage to the appearance of the animal. If a mat is close to the skin, using scissors is dangerous as a cat's skin can tear very easily. The smallest cut can quickly widen into a horrible open wound. I keep two seam rippers in my house and have a small one with my grooming supplies at cat shows. There are some coats which seem to spontaneously sprout mats in-between judging rings so having a way to quickly take care of it without ruining the coat is important.

One of my coat challenges has been from my 9-year-old retired female, Sassy. After she was spayed, Sassy continued to eat like she did as a breeding female and put on weight, much like the college athletes who stop playing and no longer need a high calorie diet. We gave her the title of "Fat and Sassy". She has the beautiful color combination of a brown patched tabby (torbie) with white paws and bib. However, her coat texture is very cottony, almost woolly. With her weight gain, she hasn't been able to to clean herself as well as she could when she was more svelt. Sassy has always been a big girl, something valued by Maine Coon breeders and cat show judges. She produced extraordinarily large kittens. Now she weighs 18 pounds and looks fat with her poofy, cottony coat. With the summer heat, she also looked really hot. She had a few mats, but nothing I couldn't comb out. However, I decided to take the plunge and invest in electric clippers, thinking I would shave a couple of cats completely or just their bellies instead of taking them to the vet.

Now I know what you're thinking....I tried to shave Sassy and she tore my face off. Nope. Not at all. Sassy was very cooperative and actually seemed to enjoy the feel of the clippers. Kelsey held her for me to get Sassy's belly, but the hardest part was how long it took. I hope I get better at this with practice. After at least an hour of clipping, I had a full bag of hair, a general fuzzy appearance to my own clothing and a very different-looking, slightly ridiculous, but happy cat. Sassy doesn't even look like a Maine Coon now, but the surprising discovery was that under all that fur, there wasn't a fat cat. Sure, she looks beefy, but not nearly as obese as I thought she would.

As I marveled to Kelsey about how much better Sassy's body looked than I'd envisioned, my smart-alec teenager made a parting comment as she disappeared upstairs to her bedroom: "Maybe if you shave yourself Mom, you won't look as fat either."

Broody and Moody

2010-06-26T22:23:00.001-04:00

The chickens haven't been idle since I introduced the seven newbies, so I thought I'd update on what they've been doing. Turns out that after all my research into the best breeds of chickens to keep in the cold climates as pets, a key piece of information was omitted by the chicken experts. Silkie chickens have a common defect of a hole in their skulls. This is what contributes to their cute little topnotch as part of their brains bulge out of the hole to create that look. The hole doesn't close up apparently. The problem with this is that it makes the Silkie susceptable to brain injury. I discovered this after finding Frodo, our red Silkie, in apparent seizures at about 2 weeks of age. She/he (we don't really know the gender yet but Kelsey insists it's a she) was uncontrollably dropping her head between her legs and doing somersaults. At times, she seemed so out of it, I was certain she'd die or I'd have to have her euthanized. I asked some questions on Backyardchicken.com and found out about the skull defect in the breed. We jokingly referred to her as the Flippin' Chicken. Luckily, Frodo's brain gradually healed and after a couple of weeks the somersaults stopped. However, she remains a special needs chick as we'll find her with her head in a corner, not aware of how to back up or turn around. Or she'll be under a bush by herself while the rest of the flock is in another part of the yard. Kelsey has taken Frodo under her wing, making the question of "Where's Frodo?" her summer project.

Thelma, our Jersey Giant hen, the big girl who never misses a day when it comes to egg production, went broody. Going broody is a term used when a hen decides it's time to hatch chicks. She will sit on the nest, with or without eggs under her, and rarely come off to eat, drink or do regular chicken activities. Simon and Garfunkel's song, "Feeling Broody" wouldn't leave my head. Broodiness is a behavior that's been bred out of most of the egg production breeds. It's even something that certain breeds are ranked on, along with egg production, cold and heat tolerance, personality, etc. Chickens are graded on several factors, except of course, the above-mentioned tendency toward brain injury.

Over the past few weeks, I noticed that Thelma had been spending more time in the nesting box, sitting for hours after she'd laid her daily egg. We had to be careful reaching under her to collect eggs as she started pecking, something none of the other hens do. Then the day came when she didn't lay. I returned to Backyardchicken.com. One suggested method of curing a broody hen is to allow her to hatch a clutch of eggs and raise chicks as that's what her hormones are telling her to do. With no rooster, therefore no fertile eggs and no desire by me to add more chicks, I went to Option Two....how to break a hen of her broody behavior. There I found the following colorful suggestions posted by Rancher Hicks of Syracuse, NY:

if yu have someplace else ot move her for the night then do that. a change of venue may help. if not get a couple of good eggs and put them under her.

try the ice cube method put those under her.

take her out of the nest and slap her around a little.

put a picture of Phyliss Diller in the nest box.

if you got a teenager put her in their room, nothing cures the urge to have kids like time spent with teenagers.

ok some are better solutions than others but i'm not in a good mood. nothing serious did'nt sleep good.

bring her into the house for the night. if you've got a cat or dog that may upset her enough to throw her out of the mood. course she may not lay for awhile.

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I tried putting ice cubes under Thelma, but she just melted them. The suggestion to put the hen in a separate cage for a few days with nothing to nest on seemed the most common recommendation with no promises that anything was guaranteed. So I pulled the ferret cage I used for the baby chicks over to the chicken coop, set it up with food and water, and put Thelma in it. Not having a safe place to keep the cage outside at night, I moved Thelma into the coop with the others at bedtime. The next day, I did the same thing. It worked! Although she hasn't started laying again yet (apparently it may take weeks after breaking a broody hen for her to get completely back to normal), Thelma is off the nest and out in the yard acting like a chicken now.

The cage method worked so well with Thelma, I started playing with the idea that since I have a broody hen and a moody teenage daughter, perhaps the same method would work for breaking moody. It make take years for this to work on Kelsey, but it's worth a shot, right?