A to Z Challenge: Gorgeous Gracie Gets Gregarious

Gracie is one of only two, out of the six kittens and one mama kitty I rescued, that I was not able to tame before having her spayed. But as she recovered from the surgery, she became fairly tame within just a few days.

Gracie recovers from surgery

Before, she would run when she saw me. Now, she allows me to walk right up to her and pet her. The trick was simply to get my hand up to the side of her face. As she rested in the cushy covered bed I had created for her in the heated bathroom, I decided to just start scratching her behind the ear. All the kitties love that!

So, after over 24 hours of not eating or drinking anything, I just reached my hand up and began scratching her behind the ear. She loved it more than I ever could have imagined. In fact, she loved it more than any of the other kitties, actually leaning against my hand so hard that she fell over on her side.

Gracie looks like a pointer as she spots my dog

Soon after that, I was able to feed her. She would not eat out of her dish, however. She would only eat the food if I fed it to her directly out of my hand. I had to resist the urge to throw up in my mouth as she licked the wet food -- which looked a bit like poop as she slobbered it all over the place -- from my hand.

Luckily, the fact that she ate the food also meant that she was getting her pain medication. I had felt like such a bad kitty mom when I couldn't get her to eat the food that I had injected with the medication for a little more than a day. The poor baby must have been in so much pain! My only consolation was that she slept off most of those 24 hours.

Gracie tries to catch a birdie toy

I originally thought that Gracie was actually Grayson, because she seemed like she may grow a little larger. She is the largest of the female kittens, although she does not seem as heavy as Cheetah. I think Cheetah must have more muscle in her teeny, quick-moving body, while Gracie's small frame has a little more fat.

She had actually just gone into heat when I took her to be spayed. That really surprised me, because she was so young. As the largest female, I guess she just matured faster than the others.

Gracie looks camouflaged
in the pear tree

Unfortunately, the tom cats had just started hanging around about two days before I was going to try to catch little Gracie, so I had to get through the weekend by bringing all seven cats inside. That was a really tough weekend, but I got through it. I was able to catch Gracie in the trap on my first try on the Monday after.

Gracie plays with mama kitty by shoving her
in the face with her foot

It's too bad that she was feral at the time, because it means that they notch the ear, as you can see in her photos. There was just no way to know ahead of time that I would be able to tame her so easily. Now that she's tame, however, I'm considering taking her in to be micro-chipped.

She's really a darling, sweet cat. I'm just glad we never have to go through the spaying process again. She can just run around and play with her brothers and sisters and mama kitty in the backyard, free as a bird.

"Is that a doggy in my yard?!"

A to Z Challenge: Deliberately Dancing Ducks

Duck, duck, goose?
OK, I know that my photos are actually of geese, but there weren't actually any ducks at the "duck" pond. I do love watching both ducks and geese, swimming and waddling around. I think they are adorable. But this confusion between ducks and geese reminds me of a funny story from my teen years.

The true story
The parents of one of my best friends at the time, Nicole (who happens to be my only remaining friend from high school), decided it would be nice to take us, along with a third friend of ours (who shall remain nameless in this story), to a nearby park at the college. The park was very nice. There were a couple of ponds, plenty of grass, and -- of all the horrors -- DUCKS!!!

What Nicole and I didn't realize at the time was that our friend was deathly afraid of ducks. She completely freaked out when she saw them, and began throwing rocks at them. She told us how ducks were evil, and how they will eat human flesh.

What she was talking about actually sounded like a pig, but I wondered if she perhaps had them confused with geese. Geese can be much more violent. Geese will bite you. Still, they don't just go in and eat all the flesh off your bones, as she was describing. And usually it takes some sort of provocation: such as throwing rocks at them.

She would not listen to reason. I thought the whole thing was really bizarre, and I was actually a bit disturbed by it. I had no idea my friend had such an irrational fear, and I'd never seen someone react that way before.

Sidetrack
Later, it all came clear when she did something even more disturbing. When we were driving to a concert, we passed through a Chinese neighborhood where most of the signs were written in Chinese. She lost it. She freaked out again, saying that her parents had warned her about places like this. She hid her face, and begged and pleaded for my friend to get out of the neighborhood as quickly as possible. Who knows what other lies her parents filled her with?

The ironic part is that my friend Nicole is the member of a minority group, and our friend was racist. She must have been missing a few spark plugs to not be able to pick up on that one. She must be one of those highly suggestible people who will believe whatever she is told, even in the face of very strong evidence to the contrary.

Back to ducks
Anyway, back to ducks. That true story inspired a silly short children's story I wrote for Yahoo, in which three geese believe they are ducks. It contains a little of everything from the true story: the confusion between geese and ducks, "racism," and generally believing in things that don't make any sense.