Thus far, the ferals that I feed & neuter here at L’Hotel du Fucktards have been really healthy. When I had Smudge & Tommie (boy & girl kittens who were about 7 wks when I trapped them & had ’em fixed) here to recover overnight, Tommie did fine (and ripped me seven ways to hell and back with those talons & teeth), but Smudge didn’t come out of the anaesthesia very well, and despite the fact that I kept neosporin on his little scrotum (“too small” to suture, they tell me) wounds, he got a hellacious infection. Little bit of congestion, mostly just feeling like he’d been run over by a truck, lethargic, just pitiful. A good round of the pink amoxi for a week, lots of love & snuggles and frequent baths to keep his bo-bo’s clean, and his favorite nectar o’the gawds, condensed/sweetened milk — and he was up & about, like it had never happened. I still miss the little shit. He will let me pet him a little bit when I feed them, but never too much, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to be snuggled anymore. I cried like a baby when I turned him loose, ’cause he hauled ass and never looked back. It’s so weird, how they can go from sweet, affectionate (purring, grooming, kissing) little cuddle-babies one minute, to right back to their feral nature and gone like a shot. And yup, I’ve held onto that amoxi, just in case. If I’d been able to diagnose Boy’s bronchitis on my own, I’d have used it on him, but it took the doctor to make sure.

That shit is feeling SO much better today, he stowed-away in The Dick’s work car today (first day on a new job as a surveyor for the hwy dept) and managed to escape the car down at the parish courthouse, and then The Dick & his new co-worker had to play Kitty-Cat Rodeo Round-Up all over the courthouse lawn & down into a (9-foot drop!) holler behind the courthouse complex. It’s amazing how an arthritic, overweight, recently-at-death’s-door cat can suddenly turn into Steve McQueen when he wants to…

Annti, they’re great to eat, but my grandmother ran her berry patch as a commercial enterprise and my Dad put in 5 acres, so it wasn’t much fun. That river soil should grow almost everything as it’s bringing the topsoil down from the whole country.

Upper Respiratory Infection is the number one cause of death among kittens locally. I keep a supply of the pink liquid version on hand to give them if I can catch them when they get sick. Too often they just go off to be alone and it’s too late when I find them. I do what I can, but I don’t want to terrorize them.

We have dewberry vines, which is a type of blackberry, all over growing wild. It’s the advantage of having a brush pile in the back.

There’s just something in that deep, rich black delta soil in Tangipahoa parish that creates the best berries on the planet. Maybe it’s the Louisiana propensity for producing high-grade bullshit, maybe it’s the runoff from that contaminated river into the ground water, whatever it is, it WORKS!

Better than twice as many chocolate eggs, bunnies, even Heavenly Hash eggs.

But now that he’s beating it, he’s right back to being goofy, bouncy, and pouncing on my feet like the shoes are some deadly prey which MUST BE KILLED!!! Miss Biddy has a bit of a sinus problem, but no fevers or aches yet, aside from her usual arthritis (they’re 9.5 years old), but I’ve ordered cod-liver oil & glucosamine/chondroitin drops to start as soon as he finishes his amoxi round. These damned cats get better healthcare than I do!

Of course, since Boy is such the slut, all of the girls at the vet’s office just LOOOOVE him, the gigantic (big as a Maine Coon) furball sloth that he can be. Biddy, on the other hand, prefers to keep them at arm’s reach, and if they can’t understand that, well, then the hell with ’em, she’d rather get back into the carrier. Not a “people person,” that girl.

And yes, Bryan, I know all about picking strawberries as a child in Livingston Parish — not commercially, and certainly not with the same crop yields as Ponchatoula or Albany or Tickfaw, but for an old neighbor who planted two acres of berries a year, I did an assload of berry-pickin’ in my day. When you’re a kid, it’s so much easier to get down there on the knees and do that kind of back-breaking work. And since it wasn’t a “real” job, we got paid in however many strawberries we could eat before they got to the basket. Kinda like picking blackberries in July, fighting off wasps, rattlesnakes, and Florida lizards — if you made it home without purple fingers, purple lips, and a sugar-high sigh, you just weren’t paying attention or you had too much sunstroke to be hungry. I still crave blackberries every year, but up here, you gotta SEARCH for a still-living blackberry bramble — most of ’em around here have been landscaped to death by the invading hordes of yuppie scum. Wheeee!

I was wondering if Ringo had been playing around while she was out. Goes without saying, I guess. What is it about female cats and sports equipment, anyway?

I don’t want to know about anything that is supposed to be consumed – the rye grass that you grow for inside cats is good enough.

You have furballs to play with on Easter. Ringo is still putting off the inevitable and getting cranky because she can’t jump or get to some of her spots because of the football she swallowed.

Appreciate those strawberries, Annti, they are a real PIA to grow properly. Weeding and pinching off runners is a lot of backbreaking work. My Dad and his mother grew them, and I worked them as a child. It’s a lot of hand work to produce them.

We don’t have rabbits this close to the Gulf, Karen, but the pines, oaks, and pecans support a lot of “tree rats.” As people clear out the big trees for more grass, they get pushed to my block where there are still large trees.

The line-up is cute. Although the duck looks distinctly stoned. Lucky bastid.

The bunny looks nauseous from eating too many marshmallow eggs.

The local ether bunny here brought me 2 pints of Ponchatoula strawberries, so I’m happy.

Or should I say, “hoppy”?

Nope, too cheesy.