Bellevue

We’re kitty krazy around here! Feeding 15 cats daily kinda gets to you after awhile…

Chester is a tripod!

Well, our sweet orange boy is back in our care and he’s as sweet as ever, just minus a leg. He’s faring very well; it’s almost as though he always had three legs!!! But poor boy has to wear an E-collar (cone) so he doesn’t mess with his staples. So thank you VERY much to all of you who made donations and spread the word to family and friends to help pay for his surgery. He’s doing incredibly well and I think he’ll be an even better tripod than quadpod!!!

Going Public and Chester Update

I’ve been blogging for a couple years now. Once Olive joined our lives, I took it up to religiously blog. Daily. There are a few reasons behind that decision, but the main one being that the blog serves as a sort of scrapbook of Olive’s life. Yes, I’m a crafty gal, but I’m not good with the scrapbooking… too many steps, too much paper and toxic adhesive, blah, blah, blah. So this way, I blog my thoughts and what happens in our lives each day, accompanying photos, hit “post” and I’m done. Memory book made! Ahhhh…

But here’s the thing: ever since our adoption became final, I’ve been tempted to make a little $$ on this gig. I don’t worry less about the government deciding to nab our baby back at this point, since she’s legally 100% ours, and now I only have to be concerned with creepy people looking at my sweet girl. But with the kickboxing and all, I can totally take anyone down if need be.

I digress.

The point is, I’m hoping to move my blog back to blogger.com again so that I can make a little moolah from ad space. Blogging takes a significant portion of my free time, and though I love doing it for us and Olive, I’d like to be a productive, money-grubbing member of this family, you know?

I’m still hammering out the details of how to make the transfer. WordPress and Blogger don’t really get along with each other and I’m having a little trouble. Read: anyone who’s a computer geek or married to one, please let me know as I need help transferring the files!!! For the time being, please make sure your bookmark to my blog is set at www.saintlouisfricks.com. You won’t need to change that at all – I’ll just move the site it points to.

In other news, Chester is out of surgery, doing well though groggy, and will spend the night at the vet for observation. Poor guy… But the leg is off, he’s sleeping and getting as many snuggles and loves as he can, and he’ll be back with us tomorrow! (Funny side story: had to go to PetsMart to buy an obscene amount of cat supplies for the millions of cats I’m in charge of now and ran into one of the vet techs at the vet I use for Tenth Life. We gabbed awhile and she’s in love with our tripod orange man too and wants him for her mom! So if the initial adopter doesn’t work out, maybe she will!)

Today marks 10 months of being a family of three. We’re well past the point of having Olive as much time as she spent with foster mom. Our little family is exactly what I want it to be. We take great comfort in spending time together and loving each other as much as we can. I get little hugs and kisses throughout the day (though never enough!) and Olive has even taken to squealing “ooo!” when she gives me a little squeeze. Love it. But the funniest thing of late is that she is starting to do the Toddler Limit Testing. And though it can be frustrating, it cracks us up. The one thing we have NO TOLERANCE for is violence, especially towards the kitties. And today she was on some kind of rampage and was scolded a couple times   But it was SOOO hard to keep a straight face when I would say “OLIVE” in a stern voice b/c she’d turn to look at me with this crinkled, worried brow as though she were on the verge of tears. It took every ounce of strength to not giggle at this. But I didn’t!!!

Hoo-boy! This girls simultaneously wears me out and makes me swell with pride, love, and every yummy emotion under the sun. Love her.

Chester needs you!

UPDATE: we’ve raised $450 of the $650 needed for Chester’s surgery! Almost there!!!

Meet Chester.

Chester is a remarkable kitty who has been through so much in his short little life. A stray on the streets of University City, MO, this affectionate 1.5-year-old orange tabby was lovingly fed by his admitter until her own health failed her and she had to seek help from Tenth Life. She was concerned about a persistent limp in his rear left leg and how it might affect his ability to survive life on the streets. So Chester came to us!

Chester immediately stole our hearts, with his insatiable hunger for loving pets, warm and cozy laps, and gentle human kindness. But after a visit to the veterinarian today, he is tugging at our heartstrings for a different reason: his limp is due to a very severe fracture in his leg. His femur (thighbone) split in half many months ago. The bone attempted to heal itself, but did a poor job given no medical assistance. Instead of re-fusing end-to-end, the halves of bone ended up side-by-side, thus shortening his leg. Because of the lack of medical attention to this break, Chester’s leg muscles contracted in an attempt to compensate for the broken bone and have rendered it inoperable. Therefore, it must be amputated.

Kitties with three legs fare unbelievably well and often show no real signs of having a disability. We at Tenth Life believe with all our hearts that this surgery will not only save Chester’s life but make it much more comfortable. However, this surgery will come at a great cost to our budget. The estimate we received today was $650, an amount beyond our young organization’s means. That cost covers surgery, pain medications and antibiotics, and after-care for Chester to make sure he’s healing well.

We know that everyone is struggling with finances at this time, but please consider what you can reasonably give to help this poor, loving kitty have a better life. Be it $5 or $500, we will gratefully accept anything you can offer! Chester is exactly the type of cat for which Tenth Life was created… a kitty with special needs who would, in many other circumstances, be euthanized instead of saved.

Donate via Paypal by visiting our website, or if you would prefer to pay by check, please contact me at elizabeth(at)tenthlifecats(dot)org or call 314-808-2454.

***Please share this blog post with as many people as you can. It would be SUPER, if you’re a fellow blogger, to link to this post!!! Thanks so much.

Tenth Life Cat Rescue is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. All donations are 100% tax-deductible.

Yippeeeeee!!!

Sage is home! Oh, I can’t even begin to explain our relief! After nearly two weeks of being outside, doing who knows what, she came home tonight, and in the funniest way. (side note: We went to the park yesterday and took some really amazing pictures of us and Olive, but I will share those tomorrow. This is far too momentous of an occasion to not write about!)

So the past two weeks, we’ve been setting humane traps at all hours of the day and night. Seriously. Adam spent one night getting up nearly every hour, all night long, setting and checking traps. I did the same the next night, but spaced my wakings 1.5 hours apart. At some point, we realized that we could not keep a schedule like that up for any number of days. So the past few days, we altered our plan of attack to just stay up as late at night as we possibly could and then pull in the traps and sleep for the night. I saw Sage in our alley two nights ago. She ran from me and disappeared into the night. This, of course, recharged our desire to catch her, but to no avail. Last night, we saw her again. She seemed to be running a circuit between houses two doors west from us and six doors east. Through the alley to the east, down the sidewalk to the west. But still refusing to come home or take our bait.

Today, we set traps at 1pm. Checked them at 3pm, 5pm, 7pm and 9pm. At 9pm, we were walking down the sidewalk towards our house and we saw her. She sauntered up the sidewalk, at least 50 feet away from us, and laid down in the middle of the sidewalk. Ugh! If we walked towards her, she’d take off. But we wanted her home! So I went around to our backyard with the plan to go through the house and coax her in through the front door. Yeah, right, huh? Our neighbors Brent and Mary saw her too and joined us to help search. To no avail. Then we realized that one of our neighbors was setting food out for strays, so we asked her to bring that food in and could we set traps in her yard? We set the trap and chatted with her for 10 minutes or so. Came home, where Adam was finishing up baking his bread, were chatting in the kitchen with the windows and doors open wide to the world. Adam looked up from his bread and saw Gus standing at the front screen door, looking at a dark little kitty on the other side of the screen on our front porch. The outside kitty was meowing loudly.

“Um… there she is. It’s Sage. At the front door,” he said. “WHAT?!” says I. Sure enough, there was Sage. I slowly and quietly slunk toward the front door, trying desperately to not scare her away. I called her quietly and told her “it’s OK!” She started to turn, as if to run, so I backed off and asked Adam to crack open a can of food. Meanwhile, Auggie makes his way to the screen door and proceeds to hiss and growl. “OMIGOD, NOOOOO!!!” So I snatched Auggie away from the door, handed him off to Adam, who gave me a can of food. I crawled towards the front door, stinky food in hand and called to Sage. I slowly started to crack open the door again: the plan was to prop it open and let her come in on her own.

I got it propped open, but not far enough, and Sage was stuck on the outside: she didn’t understand that she needed to come around the corner to come in. But I was so relieved that she didn’t run away!!! So she sniffed the stinky fish through the screen and I sat with bated breath, hoping against all hope that she would go for it. And all of a sudden, she bolted in the door and vanished into the house.

“She’s IN!!!!” I shouted to Adam. “Where’d she go?”

Adam didn’t know. All I knew was that she was in. I heard her, meowing from the third floor, and went upstairs to find her cowering behind a mattress propped against the wall. Whew. She really, really was inside. THANK GOODNESS!!!!!!

Now, we’re off to get some sleep. Finally!