new recruits

In the war against the mice, we must be strong. We must hold together. We must show no weakness. We are looking for a few good kitties. Do you have what it takes?

Meet the new recruits. The happy little nursing kitten in the photo will be battling the Enemy at the neighbors house, while the other two will remain on the Jordan Premises to fight the good fight.

Salma, a sweet stray kitty who adopted us, had kittens last month. Unfortunately we didn't know where she had them. As the days went by with the turkey vultures circling low over head looking for tasty bites and Salma-kitty spending more and more time back in our yard instead of disappearing for most of the day to nurse her kittens, we started to think the kittens had all died.

Last week a man moved into the house next door to us which had been vacant since we moved in. Salma had been going around the side of his house and jumping in the window to care for her kittens which she was keeping in his bathroom. My neighbor wanted to keep one of the kittens and we are blessed with the other two. We named them Nausica (My husband's kitten, she is the one with her head over the little box.) and Chihiro ( she is the little fuzz-ball nuzzled up with Salma's face.) The kittens are about 4 weeks old.

The father kitty is Zeus, he is also an orange tabby. I have never seen a whole litter of orange tabbies before, but I guess with two orange tabby parents they didn't have much of a choice. When we moved in we would see Salma and Zeus in our yard every now and then. We ended up getting some other cats to try to help with our mouse problem, but displaced city cats just can't survive out here. It is a tough neighborhood for a cat. While we were putting food out for our adopted cats Salma and Zeus would also come to eat the food. Slowly we started trying to befriend them. At first Oak (my husband) could only slowly and quietly go up and pet Salma while she was eating, now we can pet her anytime and pick her up and carry her around. Zeus on the other hand, well... he has barely hissed at me in a couple weeks :) So I think he is starting to warm up, hehe

We are very excited to have these new kittens to raise to be good family housecats. Big fat mice are starting to think they run the place and hopefully little Chihiro and Nausica can learn from their mother to be good mousers and become sweet lap kitties too. I am keeping a lot of grain in the house for my goats right now, and anything I can do to protect it from the mice I am all for.

On another dietary note, when we first got to see Salma and Zeus upclose we were quite taken with their soft and shiny coats. After they have been eating Purina Cat Chow at our door for about 6 months now, their fur is course and curling up on the ends. I know with goats this means a high parasite load and a copper deficiency. This meat flavored cereal is obviously taking the vigor and health out of these cats and I am about to embark on a raw cat food diet journey. I found this great website http://catnutrition.org that has some recipes on it for raw cat food. Unfortunately financial restraints are preventing me from acquiring a lot of the the items I would love to buy, but I am going to do the best with what I can get from Safeway for now. It has got to be an improvement over what they are currently eating. I finally got to put the ancient cast iron meat grinder my mother gave me to work for this project. It made short work of the beef heart, but turned the liver into an unappetizing pudding looking substance. Salma was not a kitty to turn up her nose at liver pudding however, so I think we are headed down the right track.

Well that is it from the homestead for now. Soon I plan to post about how I sprout the grain for my goats to give them some fresh food to eat despite my current lack of pasture.