Animal care

I'm slowly crossing things off my list of things to do before Tetsu and I leave for the States on Sunday.

One of the biggies is getting things arranged for the animals while we are gone...

Choco has a reservation at our vet's. She will stay there for the 12 days that Tetsu is away. She has kenneled with our vet before and he is aware of her continual barking (I pity his poor neighbors) and her quirks. And truly Choco seems to behave better when visiting the vet so rather than try to break her in someplace else, she will stay at the vet's. Not a fantastic arrangement (no dog run etc.) but she probably wouldn't get much exercise during these hot, sweltering days with me home either.

The cats will all be staying at home. If I tried to kennel my whole menagerie the cost would set me back for two or three years!

My neighbors have two daughters around the age of 20 and 7 little dachshunds. They also seem to be feeding some feral cats (but I don't ask about that situation) and they are all animal lovers. Anyway, the daughters fed my cats for me last year when Tetsu and I were away overnight. But that was one night! The girls said they would be happy to oversee our complicated cat care while we are gone and last night I wrote out Watanabe Cat Care instructions. For example:

• Please keep the four indoor cats and the two "cat house" cats separate. (Toi and Patora live in the cat house.)
• Please feed indoor cats one type of food and "cat house" cats another type of food.
• Please be careful not to let Mi escape. (She tries to go out the front door between people's legs.)
• Please clean the cat toilets. There are two. (There are actually four but there is only so much you can ask of people).
• Please wipe up hair balls when found. It is unfortunately hair ball season and all six cats are urping up hair balls and worse. A terrible clean up job, but it can't be helped. So sorry about that. (I will pay them well.)

My sweet family of kitties.

Four are cuddlers and will miss having people in the house. I know the girls will pet and hold and talk to the kitties morning and night, but the cats won't have humans to sleep with nor to referee their squabbles. I am predicting stress issues at the end of the summer.

Two cats will live with little change out in the cat house. I have a feeling that the girls won't get over in the morning at the cats' regular breakfast time (6:00 am!) so my next door neighbors are not going to be happy about the early morning meowing. Sigh. Oh well, they don't have to listen to Choco for 12 days so it is give and take.

Say a prayer for my animal family?