Kit-tehs and butter

I feel a rant coming on.

I get why people have barn cats. I totally, absolutely understand their purpose. I don't think it's cruel or mean to have barn cats.

WHY DON'T PEOPLE VACCINATE AND SPAY/NEUTER THEIR BARN CATS?!?!

Remember when Furry Husband and I went to get hay? Well, you go into this shop area that has this mailbox to leave your payment. In this shop were a gazillion kittens of various ages. All of them were sick, eyes half closed with matted goo and riddled with worms cuz they had those big round, tennis ball shaped bellies.

If I could have caught them all I would have.

No, I would not have kept them all. There are places that help like Ft. Collins Cat Rescue or Every Creature Counts if we couldn't place them on our own.

I caught one.

I think I caught her cuz she was sleeping and either in a deep R.E.M. sleep or too sick. She was one of two smallest kittens. The rest scattered and were wild. When we went back the next day for the rest of our hay, I tried to catch the other small kitten but it was too wild, fully awake and even with an open can o' tuna, I couldn't coax it out from it's hiding space under the floor.

Kit-teh in solitary confinement in our heated "bunk-house". Wanted to get her checked out by a vet before bringing her into the house. You never know what she might have and I'd like to keep our house animals healthy and free o' disease.

sigh.

Yeah, I know y'all think I'm a crazy ass cat lady. But doesn't it say something about society when domestic animals in OUR care are thought of as "throw aways"? There are low cost spay/neuter/vaccination clinics.

How much effort and money would it take to make sure you have the healthiest mouse killin' machine in your barn? $35.00. The low cost place we use when we trap feral cats charges $35 for spay/vaccination.

I don't have any research to support this but it makes sense that a healthy cat will kill a hellava lot more mice than a sick, scrawny, wormy, pregnant cat will. And aren't you just calling the coyotes and other predators in to your barn for some easy pickin's? I wouldn't think you'd want predators showing up spreading rabies or plague or god knows what else all over the place while they decrease your barn cat population.

So I "saved" one.

We put the word out we had a kitten if anyone was looking - she tamed down really well and really fast. Amazing what warmth, food and clean water will do for trust in a kit-teh. No one's called about her yet and so I guess we are keeping her.

The other cats in the house have accepted the itty bitty, she isn't bothered by our dogs and she's pretty cute. We are calling her Opal, after the woman who owned the house before us and was a fellow cat lover looking out for the kit-tehs.

Itty bitty Opal kitty now.

Please, please, please. Be a responsible animal owner. Spay/neuter your pets. Vaccinate them. Give them a fighting chance. Please?

Onto something more cheerful - butter! My home cheesemaking group on Yahoo has been posting about making butter. I'm gonna give it a whirl!

If you store your milk in quart canning jars and leave it alone for 3-4 days, the cream will rise to the top. Not as much as cow milk, but some will seperate in goat milk. I'll skim it off the top and freeze it until I have enough for butter. It'll be my first experience making butter. Sounds like it is going to take a while to amass enough cream for any sizable amount but I'm excited to try!

Oh - our does are going into heat so our buck is happy! I'm taking his daughter up to SouthFork Dairy Goats for breeding today. No 2 headed, Deliverance, cross-eyed babies for us!

She is supposed to come into heat tomorrow. Now we wait. Does come into heat every 3 weeks this time of year so we mark our calendars and we watch. If they come back into heat in 3 weeks they are bred again. If not, we assume they are brewing up little goat-lets and in 5 months we'll have kids.

Hope everyone has a great weekend! Time for me to load Rosie, the doe kid, into the back of my station wagon (oh yeah, we get some funny looks heading down the highway) and head up to Lyons, CO for some goatie love!