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.

Breathing again

Now that Sage is home, life has settled down considerably. It’s so great to have her home; not only because she’s safe and we love having her around, but because I don’t have to stay up til 2am or get up at 3, 4, and 5am to check traps. I’m not searching for her every time I go outside. I don’t have nagging guilt about her getting out in the first place. I don’t cringe with fear every time the idiot dogs in our neighborhood bark like lunatics. And I have actual time to do things other than set and check traps. Whew!

I had two events for Tenth Life this past week that also sucked up a lot of my time. Last Tuesday, we had a Catstravaganzaa at Cranky Yellow, complete with a cat circus, kitty artwork and cat related snacks (Goldfish, animal crackers, milk, etc.).

Chester made an appearance and seemed really stressed and uncomfortable the whole time. But we made a good amount in cash donations and we’ll get proceeds from tickets sales as well!

Yesterday, Tenth Life had a booth at St. Louis’ Earth Day Festival. It was a loooooong and gale-force windy day, but we made some good contacts, made a couple bucks in donations, and got the organization’s name out, which was my main goal. Seriously, the wind… I had to hold onto my tent for about 50% of the day. It seriously would have blown down the hill and into the lake. Whew! But we got really great feedback from attendees and most people expressed their excitement over a cageless, no-kill cat-only (no dogs!) shelter in St. Louis. It seems like there’s a great need for both the organization and the education I intend to make a top priority. St. Louisans have a looong way to go before catching up to the degree of progressiveness in Chicago!