Here’s Chica and tony in Oct 2009.
They are so close, he follows her around even though he is now much larger than her.
I think she would try to defend him if she thought he was in danger.This has been a very interesting thing, watching the development of the relationship between these animals. When we got Tony six months ago he was a tiny dehydrated little kitten with eyes barely open, and sunken into his skull. We had to force-feed him with a dropper…. a drop at a time.
Chica surprised us by offering herself to them, she’d lay down and let the kittens snuggle to her warm belly. She licked them and kept them clean…. as they learned to walk they tottered around after her. Now they are larger than her…. it’ll be interesting to see what the next six months brings.
Chica is the Chihuahua who raised up the two tiny orphaned kitties we found. We bottle-fed them, but she slept with them, cuddled and comforted them. Even now that they are six months old and larger than her, they cuddle and play together. She licks them and searches their fur for fleas. It’s really a sweet sight to see them together… it makes me happy and reminds me that life is so very mysterious……
Chica and Tony
Everyone wants to change the world… to make it better.
but the world is like a person, you cannot enforce real inward change.
what a person believes you cannot change by force.
If you really want to change the world, all you can do is change yourself,
when your own harmony and tranquility is seen by your family,
you can slowly change them by serving as an example to them.
the stillness and tranquility of your family might cause your neighborhood to change ever so slightly,
,the harmony in your neighborhood might spread to neighboring areas.
your local areas might bring change to the state and then to the nation.
If you want to change the world… start with yourself
Here’s Tony the orphaned kittie and the Chihuahua who adopted and raised him.
He’s now almost five months old, and a bit bigger than his ‘mama’.
Looking at his feet, you can see he’s got a lot of growing to do yet.
I hope he always stays close to his mother.
Tony has grown bigger than his 'mom' in four months!
Rocky on top, Whitey and Chica, and Tony the Terrible
Here’s Tony siddling up to his ‘mama’.
Whitey doesn’t know what to make of this kitten who tries to sleep with dogs.
Back in May our son called us and told us of a litter of semi-feral kittens outside his apartment in Oceano.
The mother had gotten hit by a car, and he’d heard the little ones mewing in the bushes.
When he got them from the bushes, the majority were dead, and the two still alive were just barely hanging on.
We took them in and forced them to take ‘kitten milk replacer’.
We force-fed them as they were dehydrated and wanting to give up and die.
After a couple of days they were able to crawl around a bit, and their eyes had filled out again
(they were sunken into their skulls, they were so dehydrated).While feeding the striped one which the neighbors named ‘Tony’,
I would tell him of the great life he’d have if he lived,
of all the little creatures he could catch,
of the trees he could climb and the animals he could see
Gradually, they grew stronger,
and were adopted by our female Chihuahua Chica,
herself an orphan we rescued.
I hate to anthropomorphize animals, and ascribe human traits and compulsions to them,
but it seemed as though Chica received the ‘mothering’ she never got by giving it to the kittens
and the kittens had a nice warm tummy to snuggle to and knead with their paws.
I suppose in so many ways we give out what we never got but wanted
and it is in giving we receive what we need through substitution
Here’s photo of Tony and Chica a week or two after we introduced them
he’s her size now, just four months later.
And they are still close, it is touching to see the way they snuggle together.
Chica has some odd facial characteristics, she looks mean but is actually very sweet
That’s merely a cowlick on her face… not a scar
but I kid people that she got her head caught in a mechanical cactus-picker
but there is no such machine, we pick our cactus by hand
Alligator Lizard in the air
Tony seems to have learned a lot from our little ‘talks’
He’s been bringing lizards into the house now.
Here are two Alligator Lizards he has brought into the house in the last few weeks
We give the lizards a little talk, warning them to stay clear of the kittens
then we let them go back into the cactus garden from whence the kittens got them
I suspect lizards don’t taste good, our mature cats ignore them
the kittens play with them for the fun of it, but don’t eat them (as far as I know)
You can see that this lizard has already lost his tail.
It’s pretty rare to find a mature one with an original tail….
but when you do, they are impressive
Alligator Lizard in the air
The animals here like this place as much as we do.
Here’s a video of Chica and Tony together.
It’s cute, but has no audio….
If anyone owns the rights to some nice music you’d like us to put into the video,
let us know
We’re interested in making our videos more appealing by having nice music
Tony and Rocky have been getting out a bit more lately. One day last week, we found them climbing in the oak trees in front of the house.
It scared Vickie a bit… they got twenty feet and more up, and their inexperience shows… they were on little twigs as small as a pencil…. I wandered under the trees ready to catch them if they fell. We had a pretty good time. It made me laugh, because just three months ago, when we got them, we were concerned when they crawled out of their little box we kept them in. We were worried they might fall six inches… but they were little itty bittie things then. Now they are starting to toughen up a bit.
It’s a bit sad in a sense having animals…. we can’t take them to the vet like we’d like…. our animals will get torn up by some wild critter, and there’s not much we can do other than to doctor them ourselves the best we can. I try to assuage my guilt by rationalising that these are all animals that wandered in from feral parents, or were found orphaned somewhere and we rescued them… if we had not taken them in, they’d have died long ago. One thing I’ve noticed about our animals… they are all really tough and durable survivor-type creatures. If they were not, they’d have never made it as far as to our door.
Often I will watch our critters doing their thing in the wilds…. and I have to say, they really do have a good life. They have plenty of little things to stalk, deer and foxes and other animals to watch (and be aware of). Our animals for sure do not live in gilded cages.
Here’s some photos of these little kittens in the tree.
When I was a child,
I talked like a child,
I thought like a child,
I reasoned like a child.
When I became a man,
I put childish ways behind me.
Chica was a rescued little puppy when we got her almost two years ago. No information on her past was available… she was tiny, emaciated, nearly starving and full of worms. But she had more energy and life from the beginning than I have ever seen in my life.
Perhaps due to early separation from her mother, she had a tendency to want to suckle on anything she found…. blanket corners, towels etc.
Then we came by two little dehydrated kitties who’s mother had been killed. We had to work hard to save them… they had to be bottle fed for a week or two, then we switched them to lapping milk replacer, and then slowly to finely ground wet cat food.
Chica the orphaned Chihuahua took pity upon the poor little kitties, she would often nestle carefully with them in their little box…. she’d gather them to her and treat them as if they were her puppies. Now they are very close…. and the kittens are approaching her size. Within the next few months they will greatly outclass her in size and jumping ability.
A surprising side-effect…. Chica is no longer suckling on anything she sees….. she has advanced to the next stage of life thanks to the little orphaned kitties. And she has taken the trauma she went through at losing her mother too young, and given herself as a replacement mother…. hopefully the good she is doing will help the two kitties grow up with little trauma at having lost their mother so young.
Here’s a little video showing how close Chica and Tony are
Matthew 23:37
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
who kills the prophets and stones to death those who have been sent to her!
How often I wanted to gather your children together
as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings,
but you were unwilling!
Here’s some photos of the kittens…
these were taken about two days after we got them….
at this point they were starting to eat the milk replacer….
and now they started getting more active, less lethargic….
The one with the colors on his face was almost unresponsive initially….
the first day or so, he would not fully wake up when handled…
his eyes were shine-less and sunk deep into his dehydrated head….
but a day of forcing him to swallow the milk replacer every four hours or so,
and he started waking up more… moving a bit…
although he could not lift his belly off the floor….
his legs would be all splayed out all over… really cute.
We rescued two kittens whose mother disappeared. These kittens are from a semi-feral female who disappeared. We think they were a week or two old when we got them. They were severely dehydrated and malnourished.. just tiny little balls of skinny fur, and almost unable to move. We have to force feed them kitten milk replacer from bottles…. one took to it within a half day, and grew quickly…. the other one barely took any… but lived, although for the first few days he seemed dead every time we checked in on them.
Now, four days later they are growing quickly, and the reluctant eater has started to suckle the bottle, and is now walking about.. they both seem healthy.
The odd thing is the reaction we got from our rescued female Chihuahua Chica. She turns out to be ‘broody’,and is taking care of the two orphans as though they were her own. So with Chica taking care of the personal cleanliness of the kittens, and us feeding them, we expect they will live. We’re going to give them to our neighbors who don’t have cats and need some for rodent control. It’ll be interesting to see how Chica takes to the parting.
I got some really good photos…. in a week or two I’ll take the best ten pictures I’ve gotten to that time, and put them into a screensaver… similar to the other screensavers we offer from our screensaver page.
