jesirose

Good thing, cause I’ve got 20 more in my freezer!

I ordered from Prey 4 Pets last week and my box got here today! As I laid everything out on the counter to sort it into baggies, the cats and Sadie went nuts! Bear of course thought the best thing to do would be to help. He and Felix got some beef liver added to their breakfast. Felix was not pleased. I think his had too much, I’ll have to work him up to it.

Sadie got to pick between having a rabbit, some chicks, or a turkey drumstick for lunch. She chose the rabbit.

I decided to feed it outside so I could easily watch her, and not make a mess. So then I thought, oh, don’t want it to get dirty, so I laid a towel under it. She quickly showed me that was silly. Rabbit obviously tastes better when it has dirt on it. Not to mention, is on my welcome mat. *sigh*

I took a video and got some photos.

I love this shot, doesn’t she look so evil?

Mom, it’s better over here.

She’s going to get to have more of it tonight, and I’ll have to try something else for the kitties. I got liver, heart, turkey thigh, chicken thigh (costco), to cut up and mix in with their food. Sadie also got tounge which I couldn’t quite open yet, too gross still, tripe, chicken necks, turkey necks, chicken back, chicks, rabbit organs, turkey wings, turkey drumsticks, and probably something else I am forgetting. Most of it I just put in the freezer but later this week Sadie is going to get to try the chicks!

I freaking love this game! Civilization Revolution is the  bomb. If anyone is on Xbox add me, my gamertag is jesirose.

So, on Thursday, this is what I thought I’d be doing this past weekend: Paint Den, Work.

What I ended up doing: Driving to Boling Texas with Cait, Lizzie and Sadie, picking up 30 rabbits, and storing them in my freezer. Sunday: recoup.

I got ahold of someone who has a meat rabbit farm, and she had many rabbits to give away, due to the rising cost of feed. She was actually happy to give them to us so they could be used for something good. So we set out with the dogs around 9am, and headed down to the southern edge of Texas. We had to stop for an hour to get a new tire for the car, which took way longer than Walmart said it would. We finally got there around 5pm, and loaded up the rabbits. We hadn’t brought enough crates so we used boxes until we hit a Petsmart, and I grabbed two small carriers, along with some cedar. The car smelled like rabbit alright.

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Success

Today Bear and Felix ate several peices of cutup raw chicken thigh. They didn’t eat it plain, so I took it back and mixed it in a bowl with canned tuna (in water, not oil) and some ground chicken. I cut some chunks very small so they wouldn’t notice, and left some chewing-needed size.

It worked! Bear ate his right up. Felix was slower so I had to move Bear to the laundry room. This is the first time since we stopped feeding canned cat food that Bear has eaten up all his food and wanted Felix’s. I see that as a GOOD thing - it sucks that I had to lock him up for a bit but it shows he enjoyed it and wanted more. And now I am less worried about him loosing too much weight too fast.

Click to watch this Video of the Feast. Oh, while I was typing that Felix finished all his raw and left several chunks of tuna on his plate, but no raw chicken was left! Naturally I let Bear out.

After I gave them their plates, I put the rest of the chicken in the mixing bowl and gave it to Sadie. I went to take a few pics of the cats and when I got back, I had missed my photo op for Sadie!

Failure

I bought this Octo-play toy for the rats a few weeks ago, it was on clearance. This is supposedly one of the best toys you can get for rats. Yeah. They ignored it mostly. The corners of the room and behind my chair - much better toys.

Oh, and the leftover rolled oats container.

Tuesday was our 2nd wedding anniversary! I was so excited about the pet’s new diet I forgot to blog it. We celebrated with a dinner of homemade sauce on spaghetti and garlic and herb potatoes, and watched the Olympics and played Halo. I got Civilization Revolution for XBOX 360 for myself last weekend so we played a lot of that this week.

Happy anniversary to me and Colin. Yay!

I got Sophie and Katie about a year ago. A few weeks before I got them, if you had told me I’d have rats as pets, I’d have thought it was nuts. Now I think they’re great fun, I love cuddling them and watching them play.

I didn’t think I would ever own a dog either, yet now Sadie dictates most of my world. I love my cats and rats, but there is something unexplainably unique about dogs.

A few months ago, I had difficulty handling plain ground hamburger meat to make meatloaf - and over the past few days I’ve fed chicken wings, feet, and turkey necks to Sadie. I’d been handling them with baggies, but when she grabbed her organ meat and ran into the living room, I didn’t hesitate to run after her and pick up each peice with bare hands and gather it up. Was it still gross? Yes. Did I do it anyway? Yes.

I even vacuumed up a spider today. While it wasn’t quite taking it outside on a magazine, it was a step up from throwing things at it and running away until Colin could save me from it.

Today Felix ate his first raw only meal, 1oz of NV medallion. (He had two but only ate 1) Bear didn’t really eat at all, which was sad. I gave him plenty of dry with his raw and he was not interested in either. I’m worried about them losing too much weight, so I am going to weigh them.

Sadie: 19.6 lbs
Bear: 12.2 (holy crap, Bear was 8 lbs last time we went to the vet. He’s all grown up. He does have too much belly though.)
Felix: 10.2 (good)

Sadie had two chicken feet and the cat’s leftovers for breakfast, about 4oz of food. She should be eating about 6.5 oz so she’ll get 2.5 of some muscle meat for dinner, plus whatever the cats don’t eat then.

Sadie really seems to love the new food! When I gave her a wing and a foot last night, Colin seemed pretty impressed. He’s like, aren’t you grossed out by that? And honestly after I saw the pig and cow heads in the store, I was kinda over the feet. I still couldn’t touch the wings or anything with my hands, I put my hand in a baggie to put the stuff in bags, then I just dump the food out in a bowl, but it’s actually kind of interesting to watch Sadie eat it.

I read some great tips on this site for transitioning cats, going to try these:

• You can use whatever favorite food you know your cat likes as a ‘bribe’ food to encourage him to eat the raw. The juice from a can of water packed tuna, a smear of canned catfood, a little bit of grated parmesan cheese, or a sprinkle of crushed kibble (or whatever else you know your cat loves) spread onto raw meat will often help encourage a reluctant kitty to take the raw plunge.
• If you’ve stopped free feeding your cat kibble, switched her to eating canned, tried disguising the raw with her favorite bribe foods, served it to her nice and warm, and she’s still refusing to eat any raw food at all, you may have a cat on your hands who will require some very small steps, and some real patience and perseverance on your part to transition. Start over by mixing the tiniest bit raw meat into her canned food which is cut into such little itty bitty pieces, that she doesn’t even know it’s there. Mix so few of these tiny bits of raw meat in with her other food so that she’s not even aware of them, and then over time, ever so slowly and imperceptibly, increase their size and amount. Another alternative is to place a tiny morsel or two of raw meat on a dish right next to her regular food every time she eats, in order for her to see and smell it, and so that she’ll begin to make the association between the sight and smell of raw and her mealtimes.
• Another little trick to try with especially stubborn cats is to “accidentally” drop a little morsel of raw meat on the floor, as if it were a precious and delectable treat that landed there by mistake instead of in your mouth. If your kitty’s crafty and thinks he’s getting away with stealing a bit of treasure, he might decide it’s worth eating even more so than if it was just part of his regular fare.

Today the cats and Sadie officially start their new diet. The cats are being transitioned to a prey-model diet, and Sadie will be getting “frankenprey” or as close to prey as I can get. The rats will stick on their HT and Suebees, but depending on how well the transition goes with the cats, they may be getting some Welness and Felidea as a treat.

As I type, Sadie is enjoying a turkey neck. She was apprehensive at first when I gave her one last night, but it was frozen still. After it’s thawed more and closer to room temp, she started chewing on it and now she’s eating it happily.

The cats are having a bit more trouble, which is to be expected. Last night they had no interest in the Nature’s Variety raw food I bought to try. I don’t know if they will get excited by the prey-model I will use more than the ground up stuff I started with. They didn’t eat it when I put it in their bowls, so I added a few pieces of dry in each chunk to get them to try it. They didn’t eat that either. So I mashed it up a lot, pour dry on top, and pushed the dry into the ground. They got about 1oz of raw, 1 oz of dry each. They started to eat the dry.

Felix apparently found the raw and liked it. When he jumped down from his breakfast, only dry food was left in the bowl. Bear on the other hand was much more picky and I think he got a few bits of raw, but still liked his dry better. I dumped what was left and cleaned the bowls really well. They still need to eat dinner so I’ll try 1oz raw each first, and if they still are not interested, add the dry. It won’t hurt Bear to lose a bit of weight but Felix is underweight still. Luckily Felix seems interested.

It’s funny because Bear will eat almost anything he isn’t supposed to, but gets picky about his “food”. What goes in the bowl apparently doesn’t have the anything-goes rule. Bear has eaten all kinds of paper and cardboard, he ate drywall, carpet, he’ll eat screws if you let him. Any human food of course he wants it. However, Felix’s favorite snack is one thing Bear will not eat - Jalapeno Cheddar Cheetos - Felix steals them from his dad.

Later today Lizzie’s mom is taking us to a grocer where we can get good meat for Sadie and maybe the cats. I will need to find a source for the cat’s food. I found some online sites but of course they are expensive plus shipping! So we’ll keep looking, and I’ll keep offering them new foods.

Last night, Colin yelled that Felix was using Sadie’s toy box as a bathroom. I went to clean it out, and tripped over the ruins of my favorite thong sandals, chewed apart by my darling dog who has never before chewed any shoe. She had always ignored shoes and most things that weren’t her toys, excepting water bottles and scraps of paper.

Plus, the baby ratlets seem to be EXUDING allergens.

Cause, so far today I’ve gotten 3 “open position for PHP Developer” emails on LinkedIn.