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22 srpna A Bird in the MouthWell, it looks like we officially have a "birder" in thehouse. Purrsia caught another bird yesterday, and she'd already killed when she showed up at the front door with it. Nathan doesn't know about it though - he was at daycare when the cat brought it in and Ron, wisely, decided against telling him about the event. It won't last though - I'm sure she's going to keep doing it unless we bell her (and there isn't anything more annoying than a cat wandering around the house with a bell on!)
Currently my theory about why the Swainson's Thrush wasn't dead when she brought it home the other day is that the only reason she didn't kill it outright was that it was such a chubby little bird she couldn't get it into her mouth far enough to really bite down on it. This bird had a much thinner body. I think it might have been a Starling, but I'm not positive - it was definitely dark and had "flecks" of colour on its breast, but it seemed too brown for a starling. However, I couldn't find anything else that was a close enough match on the various bird-identification web sites I tried out.
Personally, I wish she'd find some more of those moles and do them in instead of the birds. I know it's all a part of nature's cycles, regardless of what she kills, but the moles are digging up the garden while the birds are small, pretty things. 18 srpna Wildlife Rescue RangersLast night, Purrsia[*] caught her first bird.
[*] Yes, the cat's official name is still Pandora, but Purrsia, the name Nathan prefers, has unexpectedly become the second default for her (the first default is "Cat" as in "Hullo Cat. Why're you lookin' at me?"). {shrug} Why fight it? In point of fact, my very first cat was officially Snow White but we regularly called her Meowser.
She's been basically an outdoor cat for the last eight months or so, and her agility and independence has only increased over that time. She caught her very first animal - a mole - three weeks ago - we were all quite impressed and praised her (Mom doesn't like moles - they destroy the garden). Last night, just before I got home, she walked into the kitchen with a small bird held, head first, in her mouth. Dad shooed her outside and then she dropped the poor thing on the ground and sat back to watch it. After a moment it twiched slightly and Purrsia growled, pounced, grabbed it in her mouth, shook it around a bit, and then dropped it again. Dad expected it was very close to dead already (a cat we had in childhood was capable of jumping straight up, catching a bird on the wing and almost instantly killing it) so he just watched as she repeated this several times. After about 15 or 20 minutes of this, the bird wasn't moving at all, even when Purrsia went up and poked it with a paw a few times. Bored with this toy that had stopped moving, she left it where it was and wandered back into the kitchen just as I got home.
As it turned out, the bird was NOT dead - it blinked at me when I went outside to look at it. I think it was basically shell shocked (wouldn't you be shell shocked if you'd just spent half an hour having your head repetatively stuck in the mouth of a predatory animal who was biting and shaking you at the same time?). I picked up the poor thing and it didn't even try to fly away or anything although it was obviously frightened since it immediately pooped all over my hand. :-P
The bird had a "chubby" body, smaller than an adult robin (a bit too big to hold securely in just one of my hands). It had a white breast with brown speckles, brown and white feathers and a mid length thin beak. We thought it might be a juvenile robin, since juveniles of both genders often have quite dull colouring which is different from both male and female adults.
I went online to find out what to do for a hurt bird and found out that we should put it in a small box, with the lid on, and keep it warm with a water bottle wrapped in a towel or a heating pad on its lowest setting. Hold it overnight to see if it recovers from its trauma - if it was okay, take it out and let it go, if it wasn't, take it to the nearest Wildlife Rehabiliation center. So we got a shoe box (luckily I had some as I just bought two pairs of new shoes) and put the bird inside, then I warmed a hot/cold jell pack up in the microwave, wrapped it in a cloth napkin and put it in with the bird. I put the lid on, leaving it slightly ajar so it would have some light and put it outside in the backyard somewhere up high where the cat couldn't reach it. I reheated the jell pack once just before going to bed.
This morning, the bird had recovered from the "shell shock" and was trying to jump up and push the lid off the shoe box (later, I found out that I should have closed the lid, as this would have stopped it from possibly hurting itself more by trying to get out). I took the box down, opened the lid to see how it was doing, reached in to pick it up when it used the leverage of my open hand to leap away. It flopped down onto the ground - it's left wing wasn't working and it couldn't fly. I tried to recapture it, thinking it probably needed more help, but it was quite quick now (unlike the night before where it just sat in my hand without moving) and hopped away and under the fence into the neighbour's yard. I figured that if it was able to get away from me it was probably okay as it was so I'd done as much as I could.
Two hours later, Purrsia returned from her first outdoor foray of the day with the bird firmly in mouth again!
I managed to recapture it this time, though it still put up more of a struggle than the night before. Nathan got the box so I could put it back in and we put the lid on tight. Another Google search turned up the Wildlife Rescue Association of BC, located just south of Burnaby Lake, and Nathan and I decided to take the poor thing there just after lunch. In the meantime, Nathan decided to call it "Chirp."
After lunch, we drove to the WRA center, Nathan carefully holding the box still in the back seat. The veterinarian who was on duty said that it was actually a Swainson's Thrush, it was obviously missing one tail feather and almost certainly had a broken wing. They would give it some time to settle down and then do a full examination to see if they could help it or not - if they could help it they would do so, if they couldn't they would help end it's suffering through humane euthanasia. Either way, Nathan an I are both happy to know that we'd done the best we could for the bird - it would either have a chance to get better or it would stop suffering as quickly as possible.
They gave us a case number so we can call back later to find out whether they were able to treat it or not. I'll probably update this post when we know the result.
[EDIT, 2007-08-19: Well, sad news. The poor little thing had a broken shoulder and a crushed lung in addition to the other items mentioned above, so they had to euthanase it. Nathan is not taking it very well - he was really really hoping that "Chirp" would be able to get better. Ah well. Such is the nature of life, and at least it didn't have to suffer any more than necessary.] 30 června More PandoraPandora continues to provide us with loads of new kitty joy along with the occasional trials and tribulations. The morning after we brought her home, Pandora inexplicably "disappeared" - that is, we couldn't find her in any of the places she'd consistently run off to during the previous evening. I woke up at 7:30 that morning and did a cursory search of the main floor. By 8:15, I decided to do a quick, but quiet, scan of the upper floor (so that I wouldn't wake Nathan or Ron) by 9am she still hadn't surfaced so I woke Ron and we started an intense search for her. Ron eventually found her in the back of the closet where he keeps his spare electronics supplies (computer cable, unused power converters, extra hard drives, &c.). Although I kept up a positive front, telling Ron that she had to be somewhere in the house as there was no way she could get out, we were both quite relieved to have finally found her! The next morning the kitty managed to elude us again for a while, only this time, when we finally found her, she was in behind the refrigerator instead of in the electronics cupboard. Since then, she's regularly "disappeared" to this same location for lengthy periods, so we think she's chosen "behind the fridge" as her "private quiet place" (versus the other "public comfy spots" she has such as her kitty bed (which we've placed in the corner at the back of our deep mantel) and under the wing-back chair. Pandora is starting to see that Nathan isn't such a bad guy - mainly because he's the one who really likes to play when she's feeling frisky. Last night she even followed Nathan and me upstairs and into Nathan's room at bedtime. She promptly amused us to no end while I was reading Nathan his bedtime story by having a "no holds barred" fight with a pair of his pants that he'd left on the floor (I don't have any pictures of that, but she did the same thing with some of Nathan's underwear today that I caught "on memory card" that I'll upload). And although I don't know how long she stayed, she was lying beside Nathan, snuggled down into a fold of his quilt, when I left after saying our final goodnights. Despite the kitty's progress on the "tolerating an almost 7-year old" front, Nathan does still get on her nerves occasionally - especially when he wants to pick her up and put her on his lap while she just wants to "do her own thing". He's picked up a few minor scratches in the last few days as a result, but not nearly as many as I ever picked up with the cat I had has a child. She really has a rather sweet disposition - reminds me much more of my brother's cat, Kitty Boo, than my, unfortunately, rather nasty cat, Snow White (who was, for some inexplicable reason, more commonly called Meowser As before, several photos should appear below. I've also put two short movie clips online for your viewing pleasure (they are both in AVI format). 27 června Meet Pandora, our new Kitty!Well, we finally did it - we bought a cat. Because of my alergies I started looking at the Devon Rex breed about four years or so ago because of their reputation for being "hypoalergenic". This reputation comes from the fact that Devon Rexes are are "wired haired" cats - of the three kinds of hair that most cats have - soft down hair, coarse but slightly longer awn hair and longer guard gaurd hair - Devon Rexes do not have guard hair and, as a result, shed at a much, much, lower rate than other cats. When I first started investigating the breed, I did a search for breeders in the Pacific Northwest, fom the greater Vancouver BC Canad region down to the greater Seattle WA USA region. After sending out email to the places I found that had email addresses, I narrowed it down to the RexAreCats Devon Rex Cattery, located in Vancouver. In the interests of convincing Ron and Nathan that the Devon Rex was a cute and cuddly breed we made arrangments to visit that cattery at that time. Things went well and we agreed that, when we finally felt the family was ready for a cat and we could aford to buy one of the RexAreCats "pet quality" kittens that we would do so. Well that time finally came, so we went down to look at some available kittens about a month ago and picked out a cuddly little girl who is a beautiful little blue mac tabby with white - our very own Lady in Blue. We paid for her about a week later and finally picked her up and brought her home to Mill Creek yesterday The RexAreCats cattery always names their kittens and registers them as pure-breeds under those names, although you can always change the name. RexAreCats had named her "Andora" - after the blue skinned Andorians from the original Star Trek series. Nathan announced he wanted to call her "Purrsia" a few days before we were going to pick her up. Shortly after that, Ron said, "Purrsia Andora, eh? Okay. And then, when she's being tricky we can call her Pandora, as in 'Pandora's box'". Well of course, with my background in Classics, that was just too perfect for me, and when Nathan said he thought it was pretty cool too, that nailed it. As a result:
You should see a few pictures from yesterday and this morning attached to this post |
Please welcome Pandora to the Merrifield household! |
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