Posted by Sharon Mikell on June 22, 2001 at 12:05:50:
Traci - I have just been too busy to write much -but I do pop in and read very ofen - find so much good info here. Dan and I are just about 2/3 finished building. We have made a long room - like a breezeway - which will be the cats room. It has a screened porch on one side and a long window all the way across the other. I love the perch in the photo Ann posted below - we were thinking of putting a hammock all the way across - but I like this better. Dan will like it too I am sure. Please tell her great idea! Lessie is doing well. The vet removed one eye to prevent future probems - which took some getting used to for me - but I think she has more vision in the other one that we originally thought. She likes the other cats - but does stress more easily than they do when it is noisy or hectic. I put her in the cat playpen for an hour or two and that seems to calm her down - she feels secure there I think. Bella is doing well too - she is fat and sassy, still just looks sort of cockeyed. Dan gets very offended if you say she is fat. He says it is just her body type. I bet the vet puts her on a diet the next time she goes. She as gone from a straggly little stringbean to being shaped kind of like a big gourd. Pyewackit -his other cat is a very, very lean Siamese mix -so they look like Mutt and Jeff together. But he loves them more than I ever thought he would a cat. Snoop's asthma is doing ok. We have a spell every once in awhile - but he has not had to go on full-time medication yet. All of my others are healthy (knock wood). One of the ferals we moved was starting to roam - so we enclosed a big yard around the barn. That was a trip. At first Dan decided they needed a tree for shade so he was going to move(!) the barn near an oak tree - then he decided they could escape that way. So then he decided we had to build an "environment" Sent me to where a highway road crew was clearing and told me to go flirt and get a bunch of stumps - I told him I was too old for flirting to do any good - so I would try and look pitiful. Anyway - got 8 big tree stumps that we have set around for perches - and planted hedgey type bushes and even a little deck on the side of the barn. Looked very rustic and cool - until he decided they didn't have enough shade -so put this big beach umberella between two of the stumps. An orange, pink and white umberalla sort of spoils the natural look. We are just not meant to be in Home and Gardens I don't believe. We put in a small pond last summer and I think he is trying to figure out how to put a little waterfall in this enclosure. I just go along with whatever. Most of the cats like it ok - but still the one old tomcat wants out to wander. I hope he adjusts after a bit. We got two more burros, Bo and Diddley this year. I think Dan likes them more than me. One of them is missing an eye too. Dan was looking one day at Bella with her problem, Lessie, Smokey(with brain damage), Bo and Diddley, the tomcat with one ear and he said - "This is one motley bunch of animals, and I don't feel so good myself." I said yea we are - the "Motley Crew". So that has stuck and is what we all are now referred to by ourselves and everyone else. So think of us that way and smile. Sharon :o)