All Things Great and Small….

Sleeping, Peaceable Kingdom

There are three cats in there….Ali, Baba and Kiki.

Charlie on the mend

I know, I know…we have too many animals.  12 cats and 5 dogs. But we have them because people throw them out.  They are all….rescues.

I hate that term because it sounds like they are charity cases. Well,  they are in the beginning, but they begin soon to worm their way into our lives and hearts.

Charlie is a 15 year old Husky.  We found him in our neighbor’s front yard.  He was about 6 months old and you could lift him up with one hand.  I packed him and our then 7 year old son in the back of the car to take Charlie to the Humane Society and our son very emphatically said that he would adopt Charlie.  Well, he did.

Charlie has survived two cancer operations (on the foreleg) and is a very sweet and intelligent dog. Wily, actually.  He got restless and bored a few years ago, and our vet, who is now 82 years old and still working hard on animals….said “Charlie needs a job”.  Apparently working dogs get depressed if they don’t have a job. So…we made a harness for Charlie and he pulled a Radio Flyer up and down the street with either a neighborhood kid or a load of wood.  He was very happy.  He had a job.

This week our youngest, Gally (Galahad) jumped on Charlie and almost killed him.  Charlie had surgery yesterday, and had three teeth, two canines, and another front tooth, removed.  He’s doing very well.  At 15, we know that we don’t have a lot of time with Charlie left, but he has enriched our lives immeasurably.

He has the laundry room all to himself and is happy for a dog who is, in human terms….105 years old.  And, except for some weakness in the back legs, Charlie is full of life.  When it snowed last week, Charlie was the only dog of five that played in the snow, trying to get the ninnies off the porch and come join him.  He was in his natural environment.

The three kittens are about 4 and 6 months old.  Kiki, the black one, I stole this summer off a porch.  This man has bred many cats by neglect.  That’s usual for the South. Cats have no value to many people, in fact are issues of superstition. Pure ignorance.  We have been warned for years around Halloween to put any black cat up so he is not hurt or abused by the little bastards who come trick or treating.

Your valuables are safe from me, but your neglected cats aren’t.  Kiki was terribly thin, snot coming out of his nose, eyes almost closed with gunk and covered with fleas.  He wouldn’t have survived long.  I circled the block a couple of times…and sent my son in to do the snatch.  He is faster than I am with stolen cats.

Within a week, Kiki was well (loads of meds here…I have my own animal pharmacy and surgery) and Kiki is the holy terror of the household.  An extremely sweet and intelligent cat.  He will do fine in life but we tell him he is going to soon be neutered.  He is fine with that because he heard the word: ‘tutored’.  Kiki is up for all sorts of new adventures.

Ali and Baba (we were running out of names) were found in the street at the top of the hill four months ago.  Our son was going to the store and saw them run under a car.  They would have been road kill fast if he didn’t stop, grab and bring them home.  Tiny pecan sandies, Baba fluffy and Ali serene.

They also are getting tutored but I wait until they all are 6 months old.  I don’t hold with this neutering at 2 months.  Something wrong with that.

In the mist of all the economic strife and downfall of our general economy and the stuttering recovery, these dear animals deserve life and love.  I keep a large stock pot on the back burner for broths to put on kibble.  Everyone seems to be healthy and happy.

They enrich our lives in ways we can’t begin to count.  They also deplete our bank accounts by the same measure, but there is a balance here.

It’s called unconditional love.  That….is priceless.

Lady Nyo

Tags: abandoned animals, Ali, animal care, Baba, Kiki and Charlie (they like to read their names in print), mostly, Peaceable Kingdom