no unicorns yet

& no elephants either!

But we like to hum cats, rats and elephants while we do our pet chores......


We have a fresh batch of ratties - a mama and her 14 babies plucked from a pretty sad and awfully smelly place.

Mama is convinced that newspaper is a good bedding material & has been ignoring the fleece scraps I gave her. I'm trying to dig out as much of the really smelly stuff as I can without making her too mad. Don't want mama to wig out and hurt her babies which can happen if you mess with their nests.

For the same reason, they're staying in this nasty icky smelly aquarium thingy until they're bigger and we can safely move them to a proper nursery.

Mama is a hooded rattie; she has dark eyes and her color is a kind of silvery beige. The babies are all blue, grey and black; 10 boys, 4 girls. They'll all be available for adoption through Little Mischief Rescue eventually.

And this little pirate I scooped up last night in our neighbourhood. No collar and a messy eye. I can't even tell if the eye is there & it's just infected, or if it out altogether (but then the lids need sewing shut). Either way, the street is no place for a kitty with an eye injury so it came to stay in Casa Crazy Zoo overnight & is going to the shelter today where good people will help it get whatever it needs.

A lovely cat, very friendly & enjoys petting though wasn't too keen on being picked up. I love the mustache & goatee markings!

Sunday Funnies

Two fun things.

First - HT to Will My Dog Hate Me.

Some controversy over whether men find it as funny as women. What do you think?



Second - HT to Doggie Stylish

Midnight Kitty Madness! And if you don't like cats, they'll give you an effin dog!

humane biology

Check out this site for alternatives to animal dissection for educational purposes.

The person behind Frogs are Cool lives in Vancouver and has been busy encouraging BC schools to develop written policies (& communicate them to the students) which permit opting out of dissection for biology courses.

The educational alternatives range from CD-Roms, to online dissections, to plastic models. Check out the site for lots of links - including many free resources such as Animal Learn .

Remembering our Stuart Little

Stuart Little arrived as an emergency foster, just after 4 pm on Thursday. He was sick, his fur all matted and damp. He was weakly bobbing around his cage. His cagemate, another boy, ignored him, didn't seem interested in grooming him at all. Stuart was to stay with us until Sunday night or Monday morning, and then move on to another home. He came with antibiotics, baby formula, baby food. We had nursed sick rats before so we knew the drill, but this was the sickest rat we've seen.

He looked so pathetic in the cage. I mixed up formula for him right away to fill up his belly. He perked up a bit after taking a few mls and I was too sorry for him to put him back in the cage so I tucked him into my old sling and Amelia carried him around all evening. He stayed tucked in there. In the photos, he's peeking out because she was walking around. When she was sitting, he snuggled in there with just his head out.

He liked being petted on the head and lay there calmly, being scritched behind the ears. If you stopped, he wiggled a bit to remind you to continue.

He died in Amelia's hands, about an hour after these photos. We had just given him his meds and were going to give him some more formula and rice & apple baby food, which he really liked. His breathing became very laboured and after a few gasps, he was still.

He had been a lab rat apparently and probably had led a sterile, scary life. But for the last 5 hours of his life, he'd been petted and groomed and held warmly surrounded with love. I wish you could have had longer, Stuart.