Oh! The guilt! - blatherings

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the shallow side

Oh! The guilt!

While many of the trip planning details are s-l-o-w-l-y coming together, one large problem we’ve faced is what to do with Bella Sook. The person responsible for bringing her into our lives offered to drop by to feed her, but that doesn’t feel right. We feed her small servings throughout the day because as a stray when she found food she would hork it all down. Now that she can eat regularly – and canned cat food is richer than scraps – she will inhale what we feed her and then puke it up a few minutes later. The vet said it was normal for former strays to have trouble adapting to a regular feeding pattern, but it does mean that someone stopping by once or twice a day to feed and water her won’t cut it. We thought about a couple of people who might take her in, but there were problems with each – other cats, open doors, windows with no screens and S doesn’t want to impose on anyone. So I called a place our vet recommended which is called a kitty ranch, although we’ve been calling it a kitty concentration camp.
It is VERY NICE. I can’t stress this enough, if you need to board a cat in the Edmonton area, go to Calico Hills Kitty Lodge. When I called today, she answered all of my questions and when I asked if we could come look around, she said it was a good idea because some places sound good on the phone but aren’t. This is. There are two outside areas for the cats, a fish tank, a fireplace (for watching, not roasting), a TV where she plays ‘kitty videos’ (I didn’t ask), a huge number of toys and perches and little walkways only large enough for a cat. We got there just as she was discharging two cats, so we roamed around and looked in the “rooms” and watched how calm the cats were and listened to the woman who was picking her cats up – she uses the place regularly and also booked another visit. Not all of the rooms have windows (which will be hard on Bella) but she takes all the cats out for individualized playtime, and if they are social and calm with other cats, she lets them play together. There were about four cats roaming around when we were there. The litter boxes were clean, except for those clearly freshly used, the cats were all brushed and happy and none of the cats looked agitated. She asked us a lot of questions about Bella and her habits and really, it helped a lot
We both feel pretty awful about leaving Bella behind, but short of one of us dropping out of the conference, this is the only way.

24.5.06 04:29

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