Muses

Wick better known as Wiccas

Wiccas was another one of Asia’s beautiful kittens. We were so lucky to not only get cats loaded with personality, super smart, chatty talkers but they were all stunning too! Well, they are cats, so hard for them to not be beautiful, I suppose. We named her Wick because of the little orange flame on her nose, but since clearly we like to pluralize everyone’s name and another syllable was more fun, we called her Wiccas. We used to say she was a little junior witch and attended “witchcraft scouts” instead of girl scouts! Wicca witchcraft scout! We are pretty insane with the morphing of nicknames. In fact, some of you know that I also end a lot of their names with “pants,” well, Wiccas was the originator of the pants! Lefty took it and ran with it, but she started the trend. If you look closely, you will see that she has “tortie-pants” as most of her tortoiseshell markings are on the back half of her body. “Little Miss Tortie-pants” was born and tragically spread to others! Haha!

One of my favorite photos of her from our professional photo pet shoot!

Loved this silhouette, she often offered this pose.

An excellent mother & she made gorgeous babies.

Here she is again!

Wiccas was an opinionated little lately and was never afraid to speak up. The whole family was super vocal, and I loved every minute of it. She was the first cat I ever taught to “hi-five”. When training, it is ideal to start with behaviors that the cats naturally offer, and she was grabby during meds time, so it quickly morphed into an asked behavior of hi-five! This cat could not get enough Hill’s a/d and she is the star of some of my medicating videos. She was such a cooperative girl and her help has allowed me to teach others! I am grateful for what each of them have offered, they have been great teachers.

Same window! Creature of habit!

Me, holding Wiccas and Simon!

This lady knew how to relax!

Always with her family-keep related cats together for a harmonious household!

Simon, Mammas and Wiccas.

Freyja is the only one missing here!

Wiccas and Simon

Sisters! Freyja and Wiccas. How cute are they?

As you will see in the photos, even though she adored us and was super affectionate, she was a cat’s cat. She was often curled up with one of her blood relatives but could just as easily be seen cuddling up with the one of our many other cats as well. It would be so sad for a cat like her to not have a house full of friends! Adopt family members, it’s the best, for you, for them, for everyone!

One funny little trait she had was her fantastic mane. Every spring, it was as if she would molt, not just shed, and she lost it all. We called her "little pea head" because she still had her fluffy pants but lost her plume of a mane and looked so different! It was so much more dramatic than any other long- haired cats we have had.

It was awesome how super outgoing she was, and the kitchen counter is definitely empty without her up there screaming at us as we walk by and greeting our guests. That girl made herself known, that is for sure!

The vultures on the counter WAITING for meds!

Keep related cats together! Mother in the middle.

Baby sitting the rugrats, Willow and Soren!

Wiccas lived to be about 17 years old, she was the second of the five of them to leave us. Her passing was one of the more traumatic loses I have experienced so I will spare you the details. Hold them close, you just never quite know when it will be their time. We love you Schnicklefritz Wiccas! Yup, another nickname, or just Schnickles, that worked too!

Clearly she loved Simon the best!

Beauty Queen

Asia (a.k.a Mammas)

Her classic disgruntled look, but this is just her cute muzzle regular style!

(a.k.a. Mammas, Mother, Mother Gers, Gers, Codger (because she looked old and wise long before she ever was senior)

What do I say about this cat? These stories are getting harder to share as they stir up so much emotion. Asia was just amazing. She was pulled from animal control by a rescue and brought to the practice where I had just been hired to be a tech, same place that introduced me to Peaches home one month prior. She had been shot with a pellet gun, had a dead tail and was dragging her bloody back foot behind her. She was 4.25# and nursing four kittens that were barely four weeks old. She was to be euthanized as soon as they were weaned. To think of someone not getting to experience how awesome she was, to think she was set to be killed because of her injuries, injuries that were incurred by nasty humans, struggling to survive despite horrible circumstances and people were ready to throw her away like trash. Unfathomable.

Emaciated, 4.25#, first day home.

An excellent mother & she made gorgeous babies.

Simon was a Mammas boy for life!

I wanted so badly to show her to Jake. I desperately wanted him to meet her kittens. I fell in love at first site with the whole lot of them. Fostering was the solution, or so I thought! Remember from earlier posts, we have never successfully fostered anyone! Ever! Once they cross the threshold…

I tried hard to commit to this fostering thing, then Jake said to me, “So what do you want to name them?” I said, “We can’t name them! Then we’ll keep them!” Well, we named them, ALL. Boom, the end. And so it began, we went from 6 cats to 11 in the blink of an eye.

Simon and Mother. I just love this photo.

Asia was an excellent mother and Simon attempted to nurse her until he was 9 months old! He was a mamma’s boy till the very end. She was one of the first cats that I tried to clicker trained, she was always first in line at meds time and LOVED a/d! She was my office assistant and our “bathroom attendant”. She raced into the bathroom to assist all guests, ensuring they had an overall lovely experience here at Meow Manor. She was quite put out if a non-cat person would not allow her to accompany them, all of our usuals were used to Mother’s assistance! She was so googly!

Oh, at one point her limpy-droopy tail decided to fossilize and die (thank you pellet gun). Literally turned into stone around age 15 and we had to amputate the dead portion of her tail. One day she is walking through the house, “click, click, click” tail was like wood! We may or may not have kept that like a lucky rabbit’s foot.

On the set of the Cats 101 shoot!

The big C got her in the end. This story is a lesson about the SUBTLEY of a cat’s illnesses and how incredibly imperative it is to notate even the most minor changes in your cat. Just a literal hair out of place can prove to be, well, life changing.

It all started with a squinty eye. Both Jake, and a friend that was staying with us at the time thought I was nuts! From the moment I saw that half-closed eye I was on high alert. There was no reason for the squinty eye, no one had popped her, there was no discharge, no scratch, no swollen mucosa, nothing. I put some drops in it for giggles, but I knew my Gers. I couldn’t shake the ever so slight asymmetry, things were changing. It probably took TWO MONTHS before anyone else could appreciate what I was seeing. Slowly, she developed a bump on the side of the bridge of her nose, then her eye got more and more affected. She saw our favorite surgeon, but there was nothing to do. She was 18 years old so invasive surgeries, biopsies and radiation were not really an option. Her beautiful little face became quite distorted towards the end.

"Mothering" baby Willow.

Willow became her protégé'!

She STILL FORAGED, clicker trained with Willow, came for meds time, she was so in there but when she would get food from a puzzle it was getting hard to swallow. She was starting to starve as the mass grew and invaded her throat. She was otherwise so happy and, in her routine, so I made a rather extreme call, I had a feeding tube placed. I was told by her surgeon, “No one knows her quality of life better than you, Ingrid. If you think she is still happy then this is ok to do.” So, we did it. She even foraged with the tube in and then I would feed her! Her son, Simon got to cuddle with her just a little bit longer, Willow had her mentor just a little bit longer, I had my Mammas just a little bit longer. That was all we got, about 5 weeks. I awoke one morning to her sleeping on my pillow, which was not a typical spot for her (changes in behavior are often the first sign that something is wrong!), she was wheezing, now the goddamn cancer was affecting her breathing and I didn’t have a tube for that. We said good-bye that day, here at home with her remaining children by her side.

Foraging despite a feeding tube!!

"Yes, humans are simple, Mother."

Clicker training despite the cancer distorting her face.

She would stay on my lap for hours while at the computer, even at the clinic!

She raised Willow for me. Taught her the ropes, taught her how to be my office assistant as Mother spent most days on my lap at the computer. Willow loved her like a mom, and Mammas was so good to her. Now they are both gone. But they live on. Fundamentally Feline has offered many outlets for me to honor these precious relationships. She is in my talks, my videos, photos, all of these cats will continue to teach all of you for years to come. I am grateful for all they have taught me. I am who I am because of them. We are the lucky ones.

Our beautiful Mother, adopting her and the whole litter fulfilled a lifelong dream and is literally one of the best things I have ever done.

Maple

Hi-five everybody!

Oh, Miss Maple D!

Maple was our very first rescued dog. I found her in Buckhead on Maple St (this became the name theme for the first three dogs) on my way to class when I was in college. She was living in a construction site and the workers were feeding her their lunch leftovers. Each day when I would park my car on the street, she would approach the fence and walk with me along the sidewalk inside her side of the fence. I could not stop thinking about her. She never left this chain link fenced area, though she was free to leave. She had clearly had puppies and was socialized to people. Within a few days I found a rescue group that would take her so I went to scoop her up. First, a trip to Petsmart for supplies and when I pulled up she easily got in my car but then rode frozen on the floor in the backseat the rest of the way to our apartment.

Jake and I took her to the rescue group together. There must’ve been 40 or 50 dogs in pens and runs on the property. I swear a 1/3 of them were black and tan mutts. We did not feel good about it and obviously we did not leave her there. We thought she would be doomed to a kennel or run for months or years. Instead, Jake took her to work with him each day and one of the staff expressed interest in adopting her. She was going to name her Sunny (you’ll see the irony after about 10 more animals are featured). Jake called me one night and told me this, we were not a fan of the name choice. He then said to me, “So, what do you want to name her?” That was it, we were not going back. So, Maple became her name along with a bazillion nicknames, but mostly we called her, Maple D pronounced “Mop Lay D”, The D was just for dog, Maple dog!

Taken the very first week she was ours!

Our house! Her new fenced in yard!

Playing tug with Bo, one of her besties!

Friends holiday party, Maple was always welcome!

Professional photo shoot! Superstar!

Maple was the perfect dog, literally. We never crate trained her, she learned quickly at obedience class and soon earned off leash privileges, she never destroyed anything in the home, and we easily trusted her to be loose in the house with the cats probably too soon, but it turned out just fine. She was like Lassie in a little hound dog mix. We even agility trained her and our other dogs and they did all kinds of cool stuff.

Maple D came with us everywhere, friend’s houses, family vacations, she was always welcome because she was just so well behaved. She accepted all our new dogs as they joined the family and was always the matriarch. She could walk up to one of our big boys and take their bones right out of their mouth and start chewing on them! They would just be dumbfounded by this and let it happen.

L to R: Grant, Yukon, Maple all three could JUMP onto this historic Grant Park bridge.

I was so proud of their agility training, plus a great workout!

Adopting a dog was part of the impetus for buying this house. We already had five cats when Maple came along so we were growing out of our apartment quickly and wanted a yard and screen porch. I’ll never forget that moving day was also her advanced obedience exam. She passed with flying colors and to celebrate we walked down to the park and back completely off leash. I was so proud. I had always wanted a well-trained dog and our efforts paid off.

Around age 15 she woke one morning and could only use one of her four legs. After a trip to the surgeon, we discovered she had a herniated disc. The choice was surgery or euthanasia. We chose surgery and she survived almost another 2 years! She went everywhere with me towards the end. She was my little egg and came to work with me most days for round the clock nursing care.

Perfect little puppers.

I had wanted a big dog; Maple was not big. Sometimes good things do come in small packages. Maple was with us through thick and thin and was nearly 17 years old when she passed. Two more dogs came and passed, and she outlived them both. She knew so many of our cats, our friends and family loved her, she was a celebrity in our circles. Sometimes some of them are just so special that they are hard to talk about. I never did some of the same memorial things that I have done for so many of the others. I just found it difficult to memorialize her life in a way that felt acceptable, so I have kept her to myself.

Such a cute and happy girl, look at that smile.

All three would heel on my left on walks.

An "up" and "hi-five" during our photo shoot!

Maple, thank you so much. For teaching me so much about life, love, and friendship. Thank you for teaching me that sometimes what you think you “want” is not always what you end up with and that is just fine, often better. I do not think I appreciated your perfection as I should have while you were young and healthy and still here with us and for that I am sorry. I hope you had fun with us. We certainly loved you to pieces.

Maple, Grant and Yukon, all named after the the streets they were found on. Pretty good lookin' pack if you ask me! Don't shop, adopt!!

Peaches

For the month of August, we feature Peaches! I really cannot say enough good things about this cat. She was absolutely fantastic! For all of you who had the pleasure of knowing her, you know!

I met Miss Peachy Keen Cobblers (LOTS of nicknames with this one) on my observation day at my very first vet tech job. There was a couple looking to adopt her that day and I was crushed. At the time, she was a small, orange, tail-less fluff ball leaking diarrhea everywhere she went. Needless to say, the couple declined. Their loss! In all seriousness however, the Manx is a malformation of the spine that someone thought was cool and turned into a “breed”. Many Manx cats have elimination issues, mostly the inability to control what comes out and when.

From that day forward Peaches brought nothing but smiles. She was just so scrumptious that she made you smile every single time you looked her. She never met a stranger, purred on contact and lived life belly up and actually LOVED to have her belly rubbed. She did blow up like a balloon after being spayed as many females do and these were the “early years” before foraging. She did become a master forager however and lived well enough into her senior years and benefitted from the added enrichment I brought to the home after pursuing an interest in cat behavior. In fact, post house fire, everyone had gained weight due to downsizing while our home was being restored and if you have ever seen my foraging lecture you know that Peaches was my inspiration to lose the bowls and transition to using food puzzles exclusively for dry food. She did lose some weight, but we never stopped referring to her as our little orange footstool! Being that round with no tail did lend itself to some teasing. She was a literal ball.

Due to her size and inability to reach all of her parts to groom, she received sanitary shaves once a month, daily tushy cleanings, a bath a few times a year and LOTS of brushing (she loved it) and she also loved to be vacuumed and blown dry!

I took the job and brought her home my first week! I did everything wrong, I didn’t even tell Jake, and I just plopped her down and abruptly introduced her just like you are not supposed to do! When Jake got home, I just told him, “Somethings different, see if you notice.”

Getting her cute little tushy shaved!

Living life belly up!

Her favorite position!

Foraging during our Cat Fancy magazine photo shoot!

Auditioning to be a plus size Revolution model. She had the figure of a footstool!

Our guests fold out sofa, not much room for the humans!

Peaches made it to 15 years old and like so many of our cats she had multiple disease processes all being treated simultaneously. We micromanage the heck out of chronic disease, when something breaks, we just keep fixing it for as long as they feel well and are thriving. One bath day well into her senior years she was hoping and jumping to get out of the tub far more that usual. When we finished the bath and blow dry, I realized that she could not walk! She had “blown out her hocks” or so her orthopedic surgeon explained. Hence, 6 weeks of splint changes every few days, a sidewalk of non-slip mats throughout the house and her recovery room all set up with her needs easily accessible. Did I mentioned she had diarrhea during this time too? This was quite a lot to manage but we did it!

In the end she went blind, but STILL FORAGED! Don’t underestimate your cats people! They are more resilient than you know.

The pleasure was all ours, Peachy Cobbs!

Peachy Cobbler Doyles, Doyles, Cobbs, My little bowl of Sherbet.

The double hind leg splint saga

Sporting her Barbie splints, she was a trendsetter!

Foraging in-between splint changes!!! Amazing.

Her recovery room complete with non-slip mats.

Blepping before blepping was cool!

Scratchng is a "feel good" behavior, so nice to see in-between splint changes.

How we remember her sweet face.

Love

Zinnia

The very first Fundamentally Feline profile pic was this beautiful girl!

Professional photo shoot was a challenge because she was shy.

She freaked out in the trap! Hardcore. Again, not knowing then what I do now, Jake and I were freaked out too. She thrashed around in the trap, bloodied her nose, we were afraid to open it because she was like a wild animal. But we couldn’t possible leave her in that trap all night, or could we? No. So we let her out in a bathroom, instinctually I have always been super paranoid about disease and fleas, etc. (perhaps a precursor sign that I was born to work in feline medicine!) She bolted around in there, but calmed down considerably quickly. Insanely, I gave her a bath, because that seemed like a swell idea at the time! We made an appointment at what was soon to be my future employer and brought her up to be tested for the communicable feline disease, treated for fleas, spayed etc.

Zinnia is the reason I am here, or Z, as we have affectionately called her for years. She started it all. Sure, I had cats before Zinnia came along, but she is what gave me my start. She presented challenges that forced me to learn more about cats and their behavior; she provided circumstances I had never dealt with before, she got me my job at my first feline veterinary practice, she was the first face of Fundamentally Feline and here is her story.

We were still living in our apartment at the time we started seeing her outside our window. All too commonly people move and just leave their cats behind. It was always dark when we would see her and we were novices, so we though she was huge, likely male and maybe even a long hair. I called the vet practice where we already took our 4 cats and they allowed us to borrow a humane trap. They taught us how to use it, suggested what to bait it with, and emphasized patience, that apparently some cats are “trap smart” and it could take weeks to catch her. Well, turns out she was pretty hungry because we laid a trail of canned food and had her in 15minutes!

I got the call that she was all done, got through surgery fine and was ready for pick up. When I go to pick up I was informed that she was pregnant but not too far along, so they spayed her anyway. Given my beliefs and the homeless pet population, I was fine with this. I was surprised at how very routine it was to do so, and how nonchalant everyone was about it though. I later learned how commonplace pregnant spays were and how necessary.

As I was returning the trap, discussing post op protocols and her follow up vaccines visit, the office manager turns to me and says, “you want a job?” I said, “are you kidding I have wanted to work here for years!” I had no experience and was about to graduate from art school, and here I am considering a job as a vet tech. So, we set up an observation day so I could see what I was getting myself into and I guess the rest is history! (I met cat #6 on my observation day, but that is another story!)

Kitchen and dining area was her headquarters.

Supervised outside time towards the end of life.

So then it was integration time. We had 4 male cats already, two pairs of brothers. So Zinnia was the “odd man out”. She was pretty “pissy” but all and all the intro went ok. Knowing what I know now I feel certain that Zinnia was likely someone’s only kitten, and was what we call poorly socialized. She likely grew up isolated from her our species and did not understand all of the social cues that most kittens learn from their litter mates in the first few formative weeks of life. I have always been a believer in adopting in pairs, just because it seemed like the right thing to do, but Z confirmed this! So she coped.

Then we moved. Shortly after Zinnia settled in we bought our first house, our only house thus far, and the house that has landed us on Animal Planet and in magazines for the feline accommodations we have made for it. It was good at first, more space for successful avoidance with the boys. When #6 came along that wasn’t so bad either, that was Peaches and she loved everyone. But by now I had started my job at the clinic; in fact, I started there the day after we moved into the house. The influx of stray and down on their luck cats in need of homes, blew me away. I set out to save the world, and well, adopted way too many cats too quickly.

So, within two months we went from 4 cats to 5, to 6 to eleven! In came Mamma and her babies. Our first foster failures and Zinnia was pissed. I do not know if there was any psychological impact on her having recently aborted her kittens, or if I just had a few too many bitchy females. Regardless, I had two females that hated each other (Mammas and Z) and some males that were happy to join in the fun, and some kittens who were about to grow up to be little hoodlums! Well, actually, they were amazing, but Zinnia never did take too kindly to them. The trouble shooting began.

As time passed by I somehow thought it was a good idea to have even more cats. And, well, it was! In fact, it was the best experience of our lives, except for poor Zinnia. You see, she was really the only one that wasn’t having a good time. It became imperative that food, water, litter, vertical space was provided in every room of the house, but most especially in Z’s favorite places. Everyone would come to use everything, but it had to be right for her. You see, successful avoidance became the goal. I didn’t need her to be cuddled up on an armchair grooming one of the kittens, but I needed her to be able to get to all of her basic needs without being attacked in the litter box, kicked off the top of a cat condo, etc. I think that is the big take home message. When you have cats that do not love each other, why do we make it so hard for them? They should not have to share a food dish in the kitchen or one hooded litter box in the laundry room, through a cat flap! It is ridiculous the obstacles we humans make these cats cope with and then we get upset when they don’t comply!

Zinnia, taught me about what I now call Tarzan syndrome or only child syndrome. Cats learn the majority of their social skills with other cats by 9-12 weeks of age and if not around other cats during that formative time, they tend to be aggressive with their own species. Zinnia was defensively aggressive towards the other cats and often provoked the fights she was in due to her lack of confidence around them. She taught me that sometimes you have to adopt cats for your cats and not cats just because YOU want them. She taught me about providing an environment of plenty so we make successful avoidance feasible. Z is extremely senior now and my number one priority. No other animals will come into this house to stress her out. I am rooting for her to outlive just as many as she can so she can enjoy herself. She is a happy cat, but I think she could have been happier had I known then what I know now. Hindsight is always 20/20 isn’t it? I am better for it now and better equipped to help others with cats just like Zinnia who have found themselves in this situation. Thank you Z.

I quickly had to take a much deeper interest into how to properly meet the needs of a multi-cat household. This wasn’t about filling the food bowls and scooping boxes anymore. Thanks to Zinnia’s poor feline socialization skills and my overzealous need to save every cat on earth I developed a profound interest in environmental enrichment. This wasn’t really what I was hearing it be called at the time. Life became all about increasing the vertical space in our home to increase square footage and giving the cats lots of cool stuff to do. I later learned that was all called EE or Environmental enrichment!

A very senior lady, about 17, enjoying the fire.

Lynx

Lynx was Shadow's brother and my first experience with a "lynx point siamese" (mix). He was one crazy looking little kitten. I couldn't tell what he was going to turn into, he was kinda buff, kinda organgy, a black tail, I thought he was a little mess! Boy, was I wrong! He turned out to be such a handsome cat and now, I must say, that the lynx point color pattern has now become one of my absolute favorite coat patterns in cats.

Quite quickly our household of two boys became four boys. It was so easy! Now as a cat behaviorist I can appreciate why. Once we got some opinionated ladies in the mix that is when the trouble started.

When they were wee

Smaller than the shoe!

Would you look at him? SQUEE!

They slept this way their whole lives.

I just cannot get enough of these baby pics.

One of my favorite things that Lynx used to do was come up and "rabbit kick" our feet using his hind feet but in a standing position. He did this so very gently, like he was kicking the air, it was so freaking cute. I wish we had smart phones back then or I would absolutely have video of this behavior. I have yet to have another cat who does this behavior which is a reminder to capture all of the memories while you can.

Lynx was only 12 when he left us and as I shared when I told Shadow's story they were both diabetic, hyperthyroid and later developed liver disease, IBD and pancreatitis, triaditis. They acquired these diseases in a different order but they had all the same genetic issues. The benefit of adopting related cats is they are instant friends for life and have a playmate in each other, the downside is the host of medical issues and losing them close together.

This cat loved our hammock swing! Got "stuck" but not really, just playing.

All four of our 1st boys in "loaf" position.

Foraging, the early years.

My first food puzzles were old water bottles.

He too, had so many nicknames, Lynxy dinxy do's was one. I know, we are crazy. It should be noted that when I first implemented foraging toys we had 16 cats, Shadow and Lynx were the ONLY TWO cats that would use the toys, at first. They were my little super stars. They taught the rest of the crew how it is done, and my foraging crusade began. Lynx, thank you for the memories and for foraging. Your interest in food puzzles changed my whole world and I am so grateful to you boys for teaching me.

An old man long before his time.

Shortly before we said goodbye for the last time.

So handsome.