Tag Archives: pets

Blind as a bat.

I’ve written previously about my so-called cat gene. I am a cat magnet, although my super power seems to have lessened over the years. However, Stuart, my youngest son inherited the gene in full. He and his wife adopted two kittens last year; both had searched him out on work sites. Stuart now works at the agricultural center where I was working when I rescued Roxie three years ago. If you are sensing a pattern here, you may see where this post is going.

Last Tuesday, I got a call from Stuart; he had been trying to get in touch with Kenn who wasn’t answering his phone. Our son was on a tractor heading out to mow grass when something darted across the road and ran into the woods; he stopped the tractor and went to the woods to see what it was. Whatever it was moved further into the trees until my son started talking, then the mystery animal turned around and came to him. As you may have guessed, it was a kitten. And not just any kitten, this kitten is blind. Blind as in she doesn’t have eyes.👀 While we have no way of knowing what happened there are two primary possibilities: one, she was born without eyes, or two, she had an infection which left untreated, destroyed her eyes.

I, of course, loaded up a cat carrier and some canned food and headed out to the center. By the time I got to Stuart, Kenn had joined him. The kitten was roaming around the interior of the building we call the Farm Center, but she was staying close to both guys. (In the short period of time between me getting the call and and me getting to the Farm Center, Kenn named the kitten Bat. So far, the name has stuck.) I opened a small can of food and the kitten was obviously starving. While I was feeding and getting to know Bat (a girl), Kenn was on the phone with our vet and was able to get an appointment for me to take her in that afternoon.

Bat and Stuart

Bat’s vet appointment went well. She is around three months old. We left with an antibiotic for an upper respiratory infection, drops for a yeast infection in her ears, ointment for her eyes, and a follow-up appointment this week.

Meet Bat.

We’ve had a deaf cat before, but never a blind one so we’re learning one day at a time. Now that she’s feeling better, Bat is very playful and loves to play with a fuzzy ball; most of the time when she does you can’t even tell that she can’t see.

We are gradually introducing Bat to other cats, primarily Bob, our overweight brown tabby. Of course, meeting other cats is stressful when you can’t see them, so we are always with them when they are together. We have ordered a catio that we are going to set up for Bat so she can have a “safe space” to sleep and explore when we can’t be with her. It will also give her and the other cats a chance to get acquainted through the mesh.

Have you ever had a special needs pet? If you’ve had a blind pet, give me your best tips!

Meowy Catmas?

Y’all know I’m a cat lady and that we have several cats. I’m an old pro at introducing cats to Christmas trees and dealing with the occasional ornament on the floor. All of our ornaments are shatter-proof so, no big deal. Then, Roxie joined our clowder.

The reason we can’t have nice things.

Roxie may look like a Calico, but she’s actually a kleptomaniac. Nothing is safe since she joined the family. I have yet to find half of my fridge magnets. Among the things I have caught her carrying around: a 9mm shell casing, a screwdriver, and a roll of film. I didn’t even know we had any undeveloped film rolls!

Last year, I almost didn’t put up a tree because I didn’t want my ornaments getting lost and/or destroyed. I finally put the tree up a week before Christmas but didn’t put any ornaments on it. That worked okay, but I didn’t want to go that basic again this year.

This year, I decided to start introducing Roxie to the concept of ornaments. To keep from stressing, I’m only using “filler” ornaments – the ones that I won’t be upset about if something happens to them.

So far, things are going about as I expected. Roxie has spent a lot of time in the tree and on the floor swatting at ornaments. At least three ornaments are no longer on the tree, and I have no idea where they are.🤣 As a matter of fact, our tree looks a lot like the ones when our sons were young – most of the ornaments are on the upper half of the tree.

This is my life now.

Those of you with cats – or other pets – do they interact with your tree?

Friday Funnies

We recently stopped at a newer Love’s truck stop where they had a Pet Wash. I thought it was hysterical – and the fire hydrant in the front made it even funnier. (Side note: they also had a special gated area where RVers could park over night. We’ll be looking into this as an option on our travels.)

Would you use a Pet Wash for your pet?

Friday Funnies

Guess who?

Yes, I know – another Friday Funnies featuring one of our cats. What can I say? We’ve been on the road so much from Georgia to South Carolina and back that I have plenty of pictures from the pet sitter to choose from. This is either Bob, one of the two cats I “inherited” when my Daddy died, or Bear. Neither of them have any concept of personal space.

Businesses with Heart: Chewy.com

This isn’t the post I originally had scheduled for this week but, that’s one of the great things about blogging (and retirement!) – I get to make my own schedule!😊 We are a multi-cat household and we’ve been purchasing all of our pet supplies online from Chewy.com for several years now. (We made the change shortly after moving into The Cabin four years ago.) I was tired of schlepping forty-pound boxes of cat litter around. Now, instead of a trip to PetSmart every two weeks, I place an online order with Chewy at the beginning of the month and a couple of days later our amazing FedEx delivery people arrive with a stack of boxes. I’d like to pause here and give a shout out to delivery drivers everywhere. Our Chewy order is easily 200 pounds each month. Even though it comes in multiple boxes, handling it can’t be fun. So, dear delivery drivers, I appreciate you!😘

What makes Chewy.com a business with heart? In short, their customer support. It’s easy to find examples of poor customer support on social media so I think when someone does an exceptional job, we should be willing to post that as well. (Side note: if you’ve never done customer support, it can be hard y’all. I spent most of my adult life in IT customer support. As much as I enjoyed what I did, there were also days where just tossing it all and moving to a shack in the mountains and living off the grid sounded like a wonderful idea.) Chewy’s prices are easily in line with any other places from which I have purchased pet supplies – and shipping is free with orders over $49. But, if there is a problem with your order, say you receive the wrong item or no longer need an item you purchased, Chewy will not only refund your money but they ask you to donate the item to a local animal shelter rather than return it.👍

I have a couple of examples of Chewy going over and above on their customer support. We have used Sentry brand calming collars for Delilah, our fourteen year old deaf cat, for many years. Delilah was, understandably, easily startled by pretty much everything. The calming collars release a pheromone that helps the cat relax and worked wonders for Delilah; she was always more relaxed (and stylish) when sporting her purple calming collar. However, Sentry has recently re-designed the clasp on their collars rendering them somewhat useless. (A calming collar that won’t stay on doesn’t work well.) I went on Chewy.com and wrote a review. In my review I stated that, up until the past few months, I would have given the collar five stars but that, due to the change in the clasp, I could only give it three. I wrote the review just to let others considering purchase know that yes, the product works, but that getting it to stay on is now problematic. I was greatly surprised to get an email from Chewy a couple of days later apologizing for my experience and refunding the cost of the collar. I was gobsmacked. Chewy is in no way responsible for the change to the Sentry collar, customer satisfaction is just that important to them.

Delilah napping in my lap

Delilah had pancreatitis in January of this year, spent four days in the hospital, and came home on special food. I created a profile for her on Chewy so I could order more of the prescription food for her. Sadly, Delilah’s health took another turn for the worse a couple of weeks ago and we made the difficult decision to have her euthanized. I contacted Chewy and let them know so they could remove any information regarding her from their system. (They’re good about sending out birthday cards, etc. to your pets.) I’ve seen various posts on social media about people receiving flowers from Chewy upon the death of their pets and…

The beautiful roses and vase pictured above arrived yesterday afternoon along with a sweet card from Lauren, the Chewy representative who responded to my email about Delilah. (Chewy sent a friend paintings of her pets based on the pictures she had used for them in their profiles.) Chewy is an amazing example of how to run a business. If you need pet supplies, in my opinion, there’s no better place to purchase them.