Sunday, September 26, 2010

Dingo and his minions

Well, it's been a while . . . about six months. I took a novel writing course a while back and have been focusing on writing when I'm not walking pups. But still, a sorry excuse for my blog's abandonment. I'll try to be more regular in my posts incase anyone's been extremely faithful in checking. If so, kudos.

In an earlier post I mentioned our cat Dingo and how he got his name. Well in January poor, unsuspecting Dingo made the trip to Oz. He did great and is happily enjoying the warm weather and the ability to chase lizards on our deck. He had previously been staying with my awesome sister-in-law and had two feline friends at her place. Noticing (or at least thinking) he missed having some cat company, we fostered two feral kittens in April. They were staying in a foster carer's apartment where their mom had the stress of living with 17 other cats. Needless to say she wasn't the most attentive mother. We took two of her extremely thin kittens and with special diets and weekly vet checks got them to the appropriate weight.

Dingo hissed at them the first day, then became increasingly curious, often leaning over the divider to watch them play. We called the black kitten Pip, because of the white tip on his tail. And the gray kitten we named . . . Gray.We weren't sure which kitten to keep and which to adopt out, so the first week we had them Gray tried to help us decide. We have a loft house and the kittens finally found out how to go upstairs. Gray was so pleased with his accomplishment, he tried to jump on top of the banister. Unfortunately the banister is varnished and fifteen feet from the floor. So Gray fell . . . a long way. He couldn't put weight on his front paw so we rushed him to the emergency vet, because of course it was after hours. $250 later the vet concluded that he was bruised, but fine. So we decided we'd keep his brother Pip.The following week it was 11p.m. and I went to go to bed. A small blob of fur bumped down ten stairs, hit the lamp, the table, then hit the ground. It was Gray. Once again he was ok, but confirmed the suspicion that he was vertically challenged. So I decided, we should definitely keep Pip. Bob on the other hand, wanted to keep Gray. I did tell him the kitten would be his to pick and name. So Pip was adopted by a lovely family, and we kept Gray who is now named Darwin. I don't know how well he'd fair in the undomesticated world of natural selection, but so far he's surviving well in ours.