Amber's kittens

I deliberately didn't post an update, but I'm madder now than then,
and that's saying something. Amber and 4 out of five of her kittens
ended up in the local no-kill. The tortie was kept. She's finally
getting spayed tomorrow. A guy at work would have taken the tortie
and the orange boy, but NOOOoooo. The tortie had to be kept. For
the children.

Well, the tortie, Patches, 4.5 months now, has been getting out of
the house for the last month, month and a half. She's a baby! At
least she'll be spayed tomorrow, so that's something.

Just had a conversation with my sister who told me "how hard it is
to keep a kitten inside that is too fast when she wants out" and
I'm just fuming and upset. I have had cats and kittens that came
from the outdoors and I can keep them in, how hard is it to keep in
a kitten that never even experienced the outdoors ever?

More upsetting than the fact that the tortie and the orange kitten
could have had a home together except that my sister wanted to keep
the tortie but get rid of the mom and the other kittens, is that
she never gave me the opportunity to take them all and find homes
before she carted them all off to the shelter. And now, she calls
me (we haven't talked since that happened) and the subject goes to
the kitten getting out and I tell her how I can keep in my cats who
HAVE been outdoor cats and she yells at me to stop judging her,
asks me if I'd like to take her and see if I can keep her in, I say
"Yes, I will take her" and she says no way, and hangs up on me.

--
Cheryl

Cheryl wrote:
I deliberately didn't post an update, but I'm madder now than then,
and that's saying something. Amber and 4 out of five of her kittens
ended up in the local no-kill. The tortie was kept. She's finally
getting spayed tomorrow. A guy at work would have taken the tortie
and the orange boy, but NOOOoooo. The tortie had to be kept. For
the children.

Well, the tortie, Patches, 4.5 months now, has been getting out of
the house for the last month, month and a half. She's a baby! At
least she'll be spayed tomorrow, so that's something.

Just had a conversation with my sister who told me "how hard it is
to keep a kitten inside that is too fast when she wants out" and
I'm just fuming and upset. I have had cats and kittens that came
from the outdoors and I can keep them in, how hard is it to keep in
a kitten that never even experienced the outdoors ever?

More upsetting than the fact that the tortie and the orange kitten
could have had a home together except that my sister wanted to keep
the tortie but get rid of the mom and the other kittens, is that
she never gave me the opportunity to take them all and find homes
before she carted them all off to the shelter. And now, she calls
me (we haven't talked since that happened) and the subject goes to
the kitten getting out and I tell her how I can keep in my cats who
HAVE been outdoor cats and she yells at me to stop judging her,
asks me if I'd like to take her and see if I can keep her in, I say
"Yes, I will take her" and she says no way, and hangs up on me.

--
Cheryl

Aww, Cheryl, I'm so sorry. Believe me, I know how frustrated you are.
My SIL is practically a collector. Her cats are always in dire need of
vetting because she has too many and can't take care of them all. She
bad-mouths the Humane Society too and tells people that "they'll just
kill them." Well, sometimes cats need to be killed. Sometimes they are
diseased and suffering and keeping them and letting them roam is not
only abusive it is irresponsible. /She is infecting the whole
neighborhood with FIP, FeLV, but she doesn't see it that way. Just
because you can feed a cat and let it roam all over is NOT "rescue."
Ooo. I didn't mean to get on a soapbox.
Anyhoo. Cheryl, some people you can't change and it will only make you
crazy to try. You do what you can. That's all you can do. Hope the
kitties all make out okay.

Sherry

On Sun 17 Sep 2006 06:49:16p, wrote in rec.pets.cats.anecdotes
roups.com):

Anyhoo. Cheryl, some people you can't change and it will only
make you crazy to try. You do what you can. That's all you can
do. Hope the kitties all make out okay.


For years and years I tell myself I can't change her. That doesn't
help the innocent lives she endangers. She's already had one hit by
a car in front of her house and her two current boys have
disappeared for weeks at a time. The last one in the dead of
winter, and he's old. She blowed it off saying he ran off to die.
Well, he's still alive and kicking after he came home skinny. Will
not go anywhere near the door now, so something scared him. Amber
got pregnant from an escape so there's apparently free-roaming
toms.

You know what bugs me Sherry? That she knows how I feel about
animals and she calls me out of the blue to tell me these things.
She's sadistic. I fear for her young twins to grow up with that
attitude as a role model.

--
Cheryl

On Sun, 17 Sep 2006 22:12:38 +0000, Cheryl wrote:

I deliberately didn't post an update, but I'm madder now than then,
and that's saying something. Amber and 4 out of five of her kittens
ended up in the local no-kill. The tortie was kept. She's finally
getting spayed tomorrow. A guy at work would have taken the tortie
and the orange boy, but NOOOoooo. The tortie had to be kept. For
the children.

Well, the tortie, Patches, 4.5 months now, has been getting out of
the house for the last month, month and a half. She's a baby! At
least she'll be spayed tomorrow, so that's something.

Just had a conversation with my sister who told me "how hard it is
to keep a kitten inside that is too fast when she wants out" and
I'm just fuming and upset. I have had cats and kittens that came
from the outdoors and I can keep them in, how hard is it to keep in
a kitten that never even experienced the outdoors ever?

More upsetting than the fact that the tortie and the orange kitten
could have had a home together except that my sister wanted to keep
the tortie but get rid of the mom and the other kittens, is that
she never gave me the opportunity to take them all and find homes
before she carted them all off to the shelter. And now, she calls
me (we haven't talked since that happened) and the subject goes to
the kitten getting out and I tell her how I can keep in my cats who
HAVE been outdoor cats and she yells at me to stop judging her,
asks me if I'd like to take her and see if I can keep her in, I say
"Yes, I will take her" and she says no way, and hangs up on me.


You can choose your friends, but you are stuck with your relatives.

Cheryl wrote:


Just had a conversation with my sister who told me "how hard it is
to keep a kitten inside that is too fast when she wants out" and
I'm just fuming and upset. I have had cats and kittens that came
from the outdoors and I can keep them in, how hard is it to keep in
a kitten that never even experienced the outdoors ever?

You'd be surprised! They can be VERY fast, VERY clever, and
VERY determined! (Also for a kitten, often the "unknown"
holds no fears, so it will not proceed on an initial foray
as cautiously as an adult cat might.) Fortunately I live in
a building with a hallway, rather than direct access to the
outdoors, but despite carrying a squirt-bottle back and
forth to my door, and opening the door with one hand while
holding the bottle at the ready in the other, I have more
than once had to chase Melisande up four flights of stairs
to the roof door! (Once to find that door actually open,
although she was cautious enough about that so I caught her
before she ventured out onto the roof.) If my apartment
door opened directly to the outside, once past me and the
squirt bottle, she'd have often been out of sight long
before I got myself turned around!

Cheryl wrote:
I deliberately didn't post an update, but I'm madder now than then,
and that's saying something.

I don't blame you for being mad but it sounds like you have done the
best you could for those kittens. Purrs that they find nice homes.

--
Marina, Miranda and Caliban. In loving memory of Frank and Nikki.
Stories and pics at http://koti.welho.com/mkurten/
Pics at http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/frankiennikki/
and http://community.webshots.com/user/frankiennikki

mlbriggs wrote:

On Sun, 17 Sep 2006 22:12:38 +0000, Cheryl wrote:
I deliberately didn't post an update, but I'm madder now than then,
and that's saying something. Amber and 4 out of five of her kittens
ended up in the local no-kill. The tortie was kept. She's finally
getting spayed tomorrow. A guy at work would have taken the tortie
and the orange boy, but NOOOoooo. The tortie had to be kept. For
the children.
snip
More upsetting than the fact that the tortie and the orange kitten
could have had a home together except that my sister wanted to keep
the tortie but get rid of the mom and the other kittens, is that
she never gave me the opportunity to take them all and find homes
before she carted them all off to the shelter. And now, she calls
me (we haven't talked since that happened) and the subject goes to
the kitten getting out and I tell her how I can keep in my cats who
HAVE been outdoor cats and she yells at me to stop judging her,
asks me if I'd like to take her and see if I can keep her in, I say
"Yes, I will take her" and she says no way, and hangs up on me.


You can choose your friends, but you are stuck with your relatives.


No you're not. You can pick and choose how much or how little you will
have to do with your relatives just as well as you can with friends, as
long as you are willing to put up with the consequences.
The main problem is that we feel constrained to maintain a blood
relationship because society kind of looks down on us if we don't. But
the plain fact of the matter is that our kin can cause more tears and
bloodshed than any strangers we might meet in a dark alley, and if they
are worse than usual, there is no reason not to remove yourself and
your family from harm (be it physical, mental or emotional), even if
only by refusing to pick up the phone. Now the ideal is if you can
live three thousand miles away from them, or put an ocean between you,
and it isn't the absurd suggestion that it sounds. I know of whole
families through three generations that do that to keep sane. Mine
included. If it works, I don't knock it. When you are that far away,
the occasional phone call is harmless, and not much more is really
expected of you, or at least long times between visits are somewhat
understood.

Not phoning works for me. Only answering e-mails and letters (which
are few enough to begin with) rather than initiating contact also
helps. So does the three thousand miles. I won't have my blood and
kin destroy, by influence, the hard work we are doing to raise a
strong, value-respecting, emotionally secure family. Sound
cold-blooded, perhaps? Try living through what I have lived through.
I won't go into it, this is a pet group, not a trauma support group,
but you can tell I have strong feelings on the topic. I sympathise
with Cheryl 100% because I know just how difficult it is to describe
the pathologic way in which our family members can and do push our
buttons, sometimes on account of grudges and resentments built up over
years from things which, in hindsight, were extremely juvenile.

Cheryl, try haunting the house and grab the kitten next time she
wanders! Maybe it's time you pushed *her* buttons. On the other hand,
if the cold war is on, then she will never even find out where the
kitten disappeared to, and start telling every one she ran off to die.

--tension

Sounds like this is something she can hold over you. She knows it upsets
you and she has the upper hand. Okay, that's just a pop-psychology guess.

That is very crummy, what she's doing and that she's got to tell you.
Any chance to write her a heart-felt letter about it?

I hope the cats found good homes.

Rhonda


Cheryl wrote:

You know what bugs me Sherry? That she knows how I feel about
animals and she calls me out of the blue to tell me these things.
She's sadistic. I fear for her young twins to grow up with that
attitude as a role model.

On Sun, 17 Sep 2006 23:47:20 -0700, tension_on_the_wire wrote:

mlbriggs wrote:

On Sun, 17 Sep 2006 22:12:38 +0000, Cheryl wrote:
I deliberately didn't post an update, but I'm madder now than then,
and that's saying something. Amber and 4 out of five of her kittens
ended up in the local no-kill. The tortie was kept. She's finally
getting spayed tomorrow. A guy at work would have taken the tortie
and the orange boy, but NOOOoooo. The tortie had to be kept. For
the children.
snip
More upsetting than the fact that the tortie and the orange kitten
could have had a home together except that my sister wanted to keep
the tortie but get rid of the mom and the other kittens, is that
she never gave me the opportunity to take them all and find homes
before she carted them all off to the shelter. And now, she calls
me (we haven't talked since that happened) and the subject goes to
the kitten getting out and I tell her how I can keep in my cats who
HAVE been outdoor cats and she yells at me to stop judging her,
asks me if I'd like to take her and see if I can keep her in, I say
"Yes, I will take her" and she says no way, and hangs up on me.


You can choose your friends, but you are stuck with your relatives.


No you're not. You can pick and choose how much or how little you will
have to do with your relatives just as well as you can with friends, as
long as you are willing to put up with the consequences.
The main problem is that we feel constrained to maintain a blood
relationship because society kind of looks down on us if we don't. But
the plain fact of the matter is that our kin can cause more tears and
bloodshed than any strangers we might meet in a dark alley, and if they
are worse than usual, there is no reason not to remove yourself and
your family from harm (be it physical, mental or emotional), even if
only by refusing to pick up the phone. Now the ideal is if you can
live three thousand miles away from them, or put an ocean between you,
and it isn't the absurd suggestion that it sounds. I know of whole
families through three generations that do that to keep sane. Mine
included. If it works, I don't knock it. When you are that far away,
the occasional phone call is harmless, and not much more is really
expected of you, or at least long times between visits are somewhat
understood.

Not phoning works for me. Only answering e-mails and letters (which
are few enough to begin with) rather than initiating contact also
helps. So does the three thousand miles. I won't have my blood and
kin destroy, by influence, the hard work we are doing to raise a
strong, value-respecting, emotionally secure family. Sound
cold-blooded, perhaps? Try living through what I have lived through.
I won't go into it, this is a pet group, not a trauma support group,
but you can tell I have strong feelings on the topic. I sympathise
with Cheryl 100% because I know just how difficult it is to describe
the pathologic way in which our family members can and do push our
buttons, sometimes on account of grudges and resentments built up over
years from things which, in hindsight, were extremely juvenile.

Cheryl, try haunting the house and grab the kitten next time she
wanders! Maybe it's time you pushed *her* buttons. On the other hand,
if the cold war is on, then she will never even find out where the
kitten disappeared to, and start telling every one she ran off to die.

--tension


I like your style. MLB

mlbriggs wrote:
Cheryl, try haunting the house and grab the kitten next time she
wanders! Maybe it's time you pushed *her* buttons. On the other hand,
if the cold war is on, then she will never even find out where the
kitten disappeared to, and start telling every one she ran off to die.

--tension


I like your style. MLB

Heheh. Or rather, muaahahahaha. Most of the time I am Dr. Jekyll, but
certain topics tend to bring out my Mr. Hyde. (learned it from my
cats, you know)

--tension