tigertoy

Haleigh wasn't there today and Rebecca was busy with the vet and with office stuff for most of the day, so I was pretty busy. I did, lessee.. Jodi, Sumira, Hershey, Mira and Bhutan, Chip, Lilly, Witchita, Socks and Zera, Casey, the pack, Shenzi and Chinook, Frosty, Lilly and Jilly, Rodney, the Guardians, the Spice Girls, Junior, Pandora, Belle Fille, Sassy, Max and Mercury, and Tilly. 21 cages (not counting Chip, since I was feeding him while Isaiah was taking care of the rest of the hybrids. But nothing much noteworthy. Chip was trying to change his name to Karen, he had a decent looking freezer meat steak but he was very unimpressed with it, he seemed to be trying to send it back to the kitchen. Shenzi was only interested in being petted a little. Chinook was being very shy; I got her to take a couple of bites of food from my outstretched hand but she wouldn't come closer. Getting her treats didn't keep Frosty from being very rude when I let her into her small part for her food. Between how mad she gets and how wobbly the chain link fence of her ancient cage is, it's a good thing she doesn't have claws.

At the end of the day, Pandora was a very good girl and followed the script perfectly, which I hadn't expected since she'd just gotten a deer head not that long ago. Tempt her with a little treat, she takes it suspiciously, give her another treat, she's more eager, give her the meds, she thinks they're a little sus but swallows them, and gets another little treat as a chaser. Hershey was acting happy but with slightly ambiguous behavior, so I backed off to look at the Squinters, and when I came back she was happy to see me some more. The hybrids were very excited to see me, and directed their excitement into fighting each other. First it was gang-up-on-Mousse again, and then when I managed to separate Cookie and Chunk (the main Mousse-bullies) from the rest, Cookie decided to start beating up on Chunk. So I lifted the slide gate again, and everyone else wanted to beat Chunk up too. After a bit, they were back to picking on Mousse again, and I got her alone in the small part, and Calypso and Cookie got into beating Chunk up again. I know it's mostly a lot of noise when they're fighting -- nobody was getting hurt -- but they were getting worked up enough that I didn't want to try to go in with them until they calmed down, and they seemed to be calming down many times, only to get going again. Calypso was being very bold through the fence; she was sticking her nose through the fence to sniff, and actually let me touch her a couple of times. Unfortunately, she also tended to jump on whichever of her children I was trying to socialize with. When you're the smallest of your pack by a good margin, you have to make up for it by grabbing any opportunities to dominate the rest.

We still do not have final results for Eurydice's necropsy.

We lost Smudge; her necropsy said that she'd been in severe renal failure for a long time, but we didn't realize it. Ryggs seemed fine and then dropped dead on us, and her necropsy came back as hemorrhagic pericardial intrusion -- a big buildup of blood in the membrane around her heart that degraded her heart function. They'd seen labored breathing one day, and she was gone the next day. The vet says that it's a rare condition and you'd have to catch it right away when you could see symptoms. Which I doubt we would, we haven't seen it before and if an animal seemed to be having trouble breathing one day we'd be watching them closely but wouldn't expect to need to intervene immediately. Unfortunately, you can often see the symptoms in hindsight, but you also often see an animal looking down one day and back to normal the next day.

Somehow, our problem employee last week was out of jail and back at work today. I guess they have a huge problem with overcrowding in the Vigo County jail and have to let a lot of people out. I guess we just have to hope he doesn't get drunk and do worse.

Jerri's cat went to her vet last night. She was diagnosed with esophagitis, and they have a regimen of treatment that involves giving her medication half an hour before she gets food and keeping her vertical so that her esophagus points straight down for the duration. And it's unfortunately a bad prognosis, but we wish her the best. (The treatment could work. But it's likely it won't.)

Bubbles leopard was the last survivor of Operation Snowplow. an FBI operation that took down a ring of people who sold "canned hunts" and meat from endangered species. A bunch of cats were legally evidence in a complicated case and were kept somewhere until the trials were finished, and then the government didn't need them so they needed homes. Our records are that we got Bubbles in 2006. We don't know how old he was, beyond that he was an adult leopard. My memory is that Operation Snowplow went on for 7 years. In any case, he was extremely old, and two years ago he was in severe renal failure. He hung on somehow until Saturday. Rebecca thinks he'd had a seizure the day before he died. No one was there when he went, so we don't know if he had another one. We named him "Bubbles" ironically, because he had the nasty disposition that I've seen in most leopards, but at the end, they say he was happy to be in a warm, safe place in the clinic and tolerated some handling including being given fluids without sedation.

Today it was almost 40 -- which is like 30 degrees warmer than it was a couple of weeks ago. Why did it feel so frickin' cold? We did the normal cleaning for Tuesday, but we had no visitors and no extra tasks, so we finished early. Nobody had motivation to do anything more. I talked to Rebecca in the office for a while after, which would be a lot more sensible than standing around in the parking lot talking.

Kya sounds normal today, but still seems to have some infection. She's been very bad about taking her meds, today included. Pandora was a good girl for me. Cassius is still hanging on. George seems to have bitten off the very end of his tail.

Apparently it's been 4 years since I posted a picture to LJ and I can't remember how to do it. Hope this works.

Thursday before the con, Jennifer texted me that the vet thought it was time for Sasha. Sasha is a sweet tiger who almost always seems happy to see me, but he's not well. I didn't realize he was quite that not well. Since they're expecting to put him down tomorrow (well, today now, since it's past midnight as I write this), I decided to go over to the center to say goodbye. It was raining, so I left my camera in the car; I snapped a pic with my phone.

The 2015 calendar is out, and everyone should have one on their wall come New Year's! The best way to get one is of course to go visit the center, but if that's not workable for you, and you're going to be somewhere where I am in the next few months, I can sell you one. (I make no profit on these -- I buy them for $15, same as you'd pay in person, and I sell them for the same.) You should also be able to go to the EFRC website and have them mail you one, but you'd have to pay for shipping and stuff.

If you want one from me, give me a shout, and I'll do my best to remember to bring it along.