Hello, all! I hope everyone had a great week and is looking forward to the weekend. This week, I wanted to share a little bit of a barn cat update. A few weeks ago, I shared how we acquired our first potential barn cat, Lola. I’m happy to say she is doing very well and I’ll get into more detail about her later in this post.
Since then, we have adopted two “working” cats from the Wisconsin Humane Society. At the time of adoption, they were known as Karl (tabby) and Garbage Disposal (Russian blue). Karl is still Karl, but Garbage Disposal has been changed to Meatball (you’ll see why in a bit).
With these initial updates out of the way, let’s get into the details!
Lola
After nearly a 4 week wait, we were able to get Lola into the vet for a check up and vaccinations. She was such a good girl! According to the vet techs, she didn’t fight or cry throughout the whole process. We had also scheduled a physical to see if she was fit for spay surgery.
However, we had mentioned to the vet that Lola looked like she was getting a little plump the last few weeks but we were unsure if this was due to her lounging and eating all day.
The vet recommended an ultrasound to check if she was pregnant, since if she was, spaying may have to be postponed. Well, we knew the news wasn’t in our favor when they rolled the ultrasound machine into the exam room.
Turns out, the vet estimated that Lola was around 5 weeks pregnant! Noooo! I mean, yay kittens (who doesn’t love little kittens), but nooooo. The vet let us know that, since she is so far along, it would be kindest to let her have her kittens and delay spaying. Her estimated due date is currently in less than a week.
Once she has them, we can either decide to keep them or our veterinary office will put them up for adoption for us. So far we are leaning towards keeping them (depending on how many she pops out), but we have at least 2 months to decide.
Since then, we have switched her to kitten food (both wet and dry), and most recently, we have removed her tower in place of a shallow bed. She doesn’t appreciate the tower removal one bit. But, our baby mama is getting plumper by the day and we are excited to see what colors she will come up with!
Karl
After perusing the WHS website for many months, we were finally in contact with a coordinator who connected us with two “working” cats. Karl and Meatball were picked up in Milwaukee and brought up to our local shelter by a volunteer.
We set up two 3-tier cat crates with a litter box, cat scratcher, and food/water bowls. Once we got the grumbly boys home, we transferred them to the crates and left them alone for the evening.
That was nearly 3 weeks ago and since then, we’ve made just a little progress with getting these boys to hate us a little less. It is recommended to keep working cats crated for at least a month so that they can associate you and your location with food and shelter.
Karl has let us know multiple times that he would prefer us to kindly “f” off and leave him be. Although we have been able to touch him and nearly pet him, he is still pretty sure we suck.
We are being extremely patient with him and just trying to assure him we mean no harm. At this point, however, I’m sure he’ll hold a grudge forever. 😉
Meatball
Meatball, formerly “Garbage Disposal”, is a 13.8 pound ball of fear. Unlike Karl, he is more likely to look at you wide-eyed and horrified. Although, since his aversion is fear based and not nearly as aggressive as his neighbor, he has been settling in a little better.
Just today I got him to lick up some liquid treat from the skeleton hand we use to pet him! Progress! As you can see from his photos, food was an easy motivator for him. I have higher hopes for Meatball getting a bit more comfortable with us than Karl, but only time will tell! That’s all for this barn cat update!
Thank you so much for reading our barn cat update! Let me know if anything in this post surprised you! Do you have any barn cats? I’d love to hear from you.
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