I have always loved animals but as a kid my parents were pretty strict about pets (boo, hoo). I had a dog when I was little (and that was only because my parents caught me trying to pet the goldfish when I was about three years old so they went out and got a dog) but her life was not happy. Huge psychic guilt, saved for another post.

She was a shelter rescue, which makes me happy, and she did have some happy times in her life but overall she did not live the sort of life I'd wish for a dog. At first, I was too young to know any better, and by the time I figured it out, I tried to make changes but my parents were not agreeable to my ideas and then my poor girl died. Sigh...

Anyway, I have always wanted a life with animals - lots of animals. Don't know why, it's just always been there in me. Now I have a place in the pseudo-country (only 45 minutes from San Francisco yet I have over two acres of land, lucky me!) where I live with dogs, cats, horses, chickens and goats. Yee Haw.

But I should back up and talk about how I came to have all of these animals. Other than the horses and chickens, they are all rescues. I have dogs who have endured truly horrifying things, from having at-home tail amputations to being hit by cars to starvation and neglect to attempted murder (by gasoline, ugh). My cats have not endured such trauma but they are all ex-ferals whom I trapped and tamed as kittens - they were lucky to avoid growing up in the circumstances they could have.

All are spayed and neutered, in case anybody's wondering.

Guess that's enough for now.

Camille has officially graduated from her PEG tubage!

Just realized I forgot to mention that, how could I. I pulled her tube nearly two weeks ago, happily! She's doing great, as I knew she would, and I'm slowly working on integrating into the household at large. Not the easiest task. She's a ballsy little one, pretty darn tough when she feels like she needs to be...but I have a houseful of tough cats and dogs too and she has no idea what she's in for. So for now, because she's still on meds and because I can't bear the thought of just turning her loose in the house and watching her get her little booty kicked, I take various cats/dogs on individual visits with her in her room. She does ok. I try to rotate among cats who will just ignore her, and cats who will put her in her place without hurting her. Hopefully she will get the drift that she doesn't just get to stalk/"kill" everything she sees. I can't blame her for it, she's basically grown up in solitary confinement -- but she wouldn't be alive at all otherwise, and I'm sure we'll all figure out a way to make this latest addition work. Long road ahead though, I think...

Just had a really fun few hours with my goats. Lucky (who is now Luca, sometimes), Trinket, Chloe (nee Brownie) and I just hung out in the front area. They had so much fun. I was worried about letting them out, thinking that they might just go feral on me (I'm all about worst-case scenarios) but the complete opposite was true. Actually I only put them back in their paddock because I wanted to come inside, but they followed me right to the door, and I didn't want them to look around and see the few plants I DO cultivate and eat them. I couldn't get far away from them, the minute Luca couldn't see me he'd start racing in the general direction where he last saw me. Which is GOOD - because Trinkie and Chloe follow him wherever he goes, so I now have much more faith in my ability to successfully move them from place to place without stress. He follows me, they follow him...easy!

We spent a lot of time wandering the yard, they ate a bunch of weeds. They haven't yet noticed the poison oak, I can't wait til they do and eat it all! Anyway, they climbed up on top of everything they could find to scale, most notably an overturned bathtub (ex-horse watering trough that's too heavy for me to move alone so there it sits!) and played king/queen of the mountain. And, they actually galloped around a bit, romping to and fro, and had some alpine ramming games (they don't even have horns but still they love to rear up and butt heads with each other, all in fun).

I think I'll go back out soon and let them out for round two!

I added three African Pygmy goats to my little farm yesterday! I still can't believe I did it but I've been wanting goats ever since I moved to the country and now I've finally taken the plunge. A black two-year old wether named Lucky Charm (goofy name, but apparently he nearly died at birth and then his mother rejected him and he had to be bottle raised, and nobody could believe he survived, hence the name...), a black two-year old doe named Trinket (L.C.'s sister) and a brown three-month old doeling who I need to name. She's just called "Brownie" for now, need to get to know her before I decide on a name (I just brought them home yesterday evening!!).

L.C. is super friendly and sweet and trusting -- the girls are a bit nervous but that's totally understandable, I'm sure they will settle in fine in a few days.

The good news is, Camille the Christmas Kitten is almost recovered! Finally! There's a lot of blank in between I need to fill in. But she's eating canned food and kibble now, I'm weaning her off her propulsid, if all goes well I should be able to pull her PEG tube and start integrating her into the household at large in the next few weeks!

Side note, she trotted out of her room this morning and nearly into the living room, suddenly froze and panicked when she saw all the cats looking at her. Heh. Good thing the dogs were outside!

Twas the night of Christmas, and I found a feral kitten staring at me from my hayshed. Not my first - at my old house, I spayed/neutered 22 feral cats and kittens, and early in the process bought my own humane trap...just seemed like a good idea...so when I went out to feed my horses on Xmas and saw little glowing eyes reflecting in my flashlight, I naturally ran to the garage and grabbed the trap.

In the morning, there was a frightened little black kitten safely in the trap, hissing at me for all she was worth. I set her up in my gigantor Vari-Kennel in my tackroom with a cozy bed, food, water and a litter box and waited to see what would happen. She didn't do very well.

What had recently been an angry wild kitten had rapidly -- within a few hours -- mushed into a sad little barely-responsive creature. Luckily I have a good friend who is a veterinarian and I rushed little kitten to his hospital...he thought I was crazy, me and my less-than-two-pound half-dead feral kitten, but he also knows me well enough not to ask questions when I'm sure about something. And I was sure that I had to save her.

So she got the works. IV catheter, fluids, antibiotics, many more meds than I will bore anyone with...but we went balls-out to get this kitten back on her feet, and what do you know, it worked. I honestly wasn't sure it would...she was really out of it. After about four hours she woke up, looked around with her big round scared tiny eyeballs, and started regurgitating pretty much right away.

What the hell, we thought. So we took an xray and saw what can only be described as a big fat gnarly mess of something in her esophagus.

By some stroke of luck, we found an internist willing to endoscopically remove whatever was obstructing this little girl's throat at 6 pm on Dec. 26 (and a Friday no less - I think his girlfriend is still holding a grudge ;)) The poor guy, the vet that is, agreed to do it thinking that it would be a quick and easy grab and pull - we all thought that -- six hours later, after he had patiently extracted bit after bit of amorphous crap from this kitten's esophagus, we found that wasn't the case.

Phew, we all thought. At least that's over. But in the back of our minds...why can't this kitten swallow?? There was no obvious obstruction. Why?

Dr. Patient With The Endoscope had the foresight to place a PEG (stomach feeding) tube, because he thought it would be a bad idea for her to try and swallow food right away after what she, and her sad throat, had been through.

And that's all for now...more of the Christmas Kitten serial soon...