Ohiofarmgirl'sAdventuresinTheGoodLand-where ya been? whatcha been doin

[big brown horse]

ALL UNWANTED CATS. PLEASE COME HERE. BUT ONLY SHOW UP IF YOU HAVE SOME KIND OF MENTAL DEFECT OR VERY EXPENSIVE VETERINARY PROBLEM.

That looks like my bed when I was a child. My parents are like y'all, I think they even have that same sign over their front door too.

Love the names too! How many do you have? Care to say?

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

i'm not even sure how many there are.. they keep running around and its hard to get them to stand still
;-)

hee hee i think we are at 10. not including the barn cats.

you'll note that one of the original 100 questions for the blog was about future childs name and i said "Moby Obediah." we came up with that name for my brother's first child after a long hot day of working outside, a huge mexican meal, a lot of tequila, and a long drive home. we thought it was hilarious but my brother wasnt buying it at all. so we named our newest Little Mo instead. we think its a nice blend of The Big Man's english major background and my old testament trivia knowledge
;-)

as for expensive... Teddi Grumpkins turned out to be a $500 "free" cat....and most of them are just kinda nutty in one way or another. i used to wake up every morning with the bottle raised baby (Peeper) biting my nose.

that self-same vet convinced us to keep Nicholas (we did try and get the vet to place him with another family) saying that he 'wasnt going to be a very big cat' based on his size at 3 months and bone structure... Nicholas turned out to be part Maine Coon and weighs in at 17 pounds. every time we go to the vet we laugh about that....

i'm telling you there is never a dull moment. right now the little grey cats are lined up watching the turkeys on the deck. which is my queue to go and get my gear on to shovel everyone into their coops and such

 

[dragonlaurel]

I love that pic. Beautiful quilt and the kitties are being so sweet to make sure that heater on it is working right. That's how they show their love. And by being generous with their fur.

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

And by being generous with their fur.

yeah i just picked someone's fur out of my turkey broth! dang! everything does NOT taste better with cat hair in it!!!

 

[freemotion]

We call it "fiber art" here....

 

[Farmfresh]

Your cat stories have got me giggling!

My sister is a crazy cat lady as well. She must have the same sign that you do because she too has acquired a great number of dumped kitties. I think her total is something like 18 now - ALL spayed or neutered and with proper vet care I might add.

She must be doing something right with her horde, one of her kitties is Grandmother to my daughter's 11 year old kitty!

Amongst her "Posse" she has a cat that thinks she is a dog. She does chores twice every day with my sister and even fetches a ball! A cat called Noodleman, because you can pick him up under his belly and stretch him out to incredible lengths! He even helps you by stretching out his front and back legs as well. She has a showering cat, a faucet drinking cat and a cat that races in to open the kitchen cabinet and hides under the sink when company comes. She even used to have a Main Coon cat that would race across the whole house to cram himself into an open bread sack! (He finally died of old age.)

My D1 has a fine collection of the unwanted as well. Her barn cat Dragon is a weirdly colored calico that was abandoned at the vets due to her habit of spraying things that smell "interesting", but she is a great little mouser.
Her other barn cat Jackson, is about 15 pounds of red tabby mountain lion. He often catches full size rabbits and then "hangs" them in his tree!
Gabby is a beautiful long haired calico that must stay inside. She does not know how to get out of the rain and will sit in a rainstorm and cry till you "save her" three feet from a covered porch!
Mommaseta was a mean feral cat that was found with a litter of kittens and turned into the vets office. The kittens were tamed and found homes and Momma (an all black Siamese) was doomed to be destroyed. She was still fierce and very wild. At the eleventh hour an orphaned litter of registered kittens came into the vets office. They gave it a try and Momma adopted and raised them like her own. This "adoption" process happened with MORE three litters and a couple of undersized kittens as well that summer. Momma just kept raising babies in a kennel at the vets. Meanwhile she got tamer and tamer. That fall my D1 took her home forever.
Her latest unwanted kitty is Bumper. A fellow vet tech found Bumper on Craigslist. He was being kept in a rabbit hutch and was disabled. The ad said neurological problems. The aid picked him up and was going to euthanize him if he was in bad shape. After a thorough physical it was discovered that Bumper is in great 17 pounds of FAT black and white tuxedo health - he is just blind. And what a blind cat he is. Bumper gets all over the house just fine. Always finds his litter box and can even jump up on a couch or into an open window! He is simply too cool! And a VERY loving cat as well.

 

[lorihadams]

I LOVE it!!! I have 2 right now, had 3 but my poor little Houdini passed several years ago. She was a sneezer. Big fat gobs of cat snot all over everything. Did you know that nothing but a paint scraper will get cat snot off your walls once it has dried???

She was so sweet though. All my cats were indoor cats until I got pregnant and my husband refused to deal with the litter box and they all became outside cats (all spayed, thank you)

Houdini had a severe allergic reaction to a flea and tick medication and had bald spots permanently and then developed the sneezing affliction. We had to have a constant supply of amoxocillin in the house just in case it got bad enough she couldn't breathe.

Shadow is a complete spaz. She sprays everything.....grrrrrrr. She is not very athletic and will fall off of stuff any chance she gets, thankfully she has claws

Our other sweetie is Lil Bit. She is my favorite now and loves to be rubbed. She walks in between my feet whenever I hang laundry and insists on laying across them whenever I stand still long enough. She is an excellent mouser and will fight the neighbors cat to defend her turf any chance she gets. My father, who hates cats, looks for her every time he visits and declares that she is "his baby". She also likes to bite my fingernails. Yes, we have weird at our house too!

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

So now that youve met The Insane Cat Posse please allow me to introduce you to the dogs. I was never really a dog person until I moved to The Good Land. One look at how remote we were and instantly calculating that a 911 call was going to be a good 20 minutes away convinced me that just maybe some big ol dogs is just what I needed.

It should be said that The Big Man has always had big dogs and hes a pretty alpha guy so I didnt have any qualms about getting too much dog. We were also of the same mind on how to raise them. For a full overview of our training regiment just pick up a copy of The Monks of New Sketes book on shepherd raising. We like dogs. Not accessories that you put little sweaters on or carry around in a purse. Dogs. Big, working, dogs.

I planned on getting two mostly black, female German Shepherds with unusual names like Zaynebut what I ended up with were two MALE German Shepherds who are all white and have the most common names ever. For heavens sakesit never works out like you expect.

We knew that Titan (Ti) would be big. The story was that his grand-pappy (grand-puppy??) was an original junkyard dog weighing in at 180lbs. Massive! Then Tis father was about 120lbs so we figured Ti would come in over a 100lbs and he has not disappointed.

I got, and still get, a lot of flak from some people who dont understand why I wanted a BIG dog. I tell them its just like firearms sure you can get the job done with a .22 but why not use the 9mm? Sometimes shockin yall in a damn fine strategy. Nothing stops neerdowellers like a hundred pounds of mouth and teeth that dont back down. Can I get a h*ll yeah?

Anyway

Ti has a huge mane and wolf-like eyes and oh when he hits that shepherds trot a vision. One time grown men dropped their tools and raced across a construction site to see him. And hes an extra good dog. One of those that reads your mind and does just what you want you know the kind. Too smart for just spoken commands we had to move to hand signals (mostly because I cant whistle) and now Im teaching him to follow my eyes. I. Love. That. Dog. His main job is to guard me. No one gets out of the car if they drive up unexpectedly with Ti on patrol.

For the first year it was just Ti and Iand Shady, The Big Mans century old heeler mix. She has one eye and a bad attitude. A good hunter in her day she mostly just gives me the stink eye and sits on her bed quietly in her dotage.

Then one day we got a call that one of Tis littermates wasnt doing well with the family who adopted him. They said he was a bad dog and ill behaved. A sucker for lost causes, and needing a friend for Ti, we agreed to take him. We couldnt believe Lucky was from the same litter. Thin and waifish, long legged, with one ear that doesnt stand up straight Lucky is the polar opposite of our monster dog. While Ti, like a tank, storms across the yard Lucky high steps on feather light paws, almost always chasing a butterfly.

And hes wily like a coyote. Lucky looks like a coyote. The Big Man and I just shrugged and said wed do our best. We waived as the family drove out of sight.

then immediately turned and wrestled poor Lucky to the ground. And we did the same thing every day for two weeks. Lucky was, in fact, a problem child food aggressive, he counter surfed, didnt know any commands, jumped up on methe whole obnoxious dog thing.

But he soon learned that if he peed in the house the other dogs and ALL the cats would make fun of him; if he snarled over food it was taken away; if he jumped up on me he would be wrestled to the ground, and if he set foot outside the dog zone he would be snatched up and told to lay on that bed with The Big Man standing over him. He learned who was top dog and that he was part of a pack. Within a month we had that dog turned around. After another year we had a workable working dog.

The two dogs help me with the farm and there is no way I could get my work done without them its like having a couple extra hands. In the morning I head out with the dogs on my six. Well technically at my five and at my seven. Ti, my right hand man, and Lucky is my leftenant.

I send them after stray hens that are late coming in for the nite, order them to get that rooster if I get flogged, watch the gate so the goats dont get out, and together we have battled that demon gander I dont know how many times. And as I may have said before, I never get near those hated pigs without my stock cane and the dogs with me.

They saved me a couple times from last years pigs. Once when the pigs got out I sent the dogs out to get those pigs and bring them to me. With military precision the dogs raced side by side up the hill in hot pursuit of the runaway pig, they passed that pig on either side, and crossed exactly in front turning him, and then herding him back to me. The problem was, however, now I had almost 300lbs of pork charging right at me!

Guard momma! I cried.. well, at this point I shrieked and whirled my stock cane like a Betleth and figured that today was a good day to die but Ti grabbed the out of control pig by the ear and got him rerouted to where The Big Man could herd him back into the pen.

Folks from my old life still cant believe that Im such a dog person having spent most of my life preparing to be the crazy cat lady but we three musketeers are a good team. And heaven knows that I couldnt get these cats to do any of the farm work! Im pretty sure the rooster wouldnt be scared of the cats even if they did viciously treat him with casual disregard. No, what you need for a well run barnyard is a couple of good dogs.

Like these:

Titan..

Lucky..

 

[Farmfresh]

Nothing stops neerdowellers like a hundred pounds of mouth and teeth that dont back down. Can I get a h*ll yeah?

You better believe it! H*LL YEAH!

Beautiful dogs! I have a B&T German Shepherd and a Shepherd / Husky myself.

 

[justusnak]

WOW! What a great read....I actually got goosebumps...when you said.."Guard Momma!" I can envision to beautifull dogs...doing just that! They are beautifull!!! Lucky you!