Dead Dogs

Every day I normally see about 10 to 20 dead dogs on the side of the road in varying states of decomposition. Today I witnessed one getting killed. It made me sick to my stomach to see.  Dogs are not wild animals. They must be taken care of and controlled. It is inhumane how dogs are treated here. When we mention to people here that we spay and neuter our animals we get funny looks or comments like your emasculating the poor boy. How long is it going to take to get this attitude changed? We also hear story after story about how a dog was poisoned and killed. Please spay and neuter your pets.

Cats - The Original Ones (an update)

Left to right we have Chicken (came to us with the real chickens), Bepo (mother to the rest), Puff 1, Mars, Pollo Pequeno (looked like a little Chicken), Puff 2, Blanco, and Princess. Not shown is Dakota aka Little Boy our fat cat from Washington. Junior is missing also - he has taken off or disappeared and hopefully is looking for love even though we neutered him. We hope he isn't dead (he is a nice strong sexy cat). As you can see, there are too many cats and I don't understand why they all get along.

It has been a year almost since Princess appeared with a barbed wire cut down her side. We had her sewn up and spayed and she hangs out inside and out and looks friendly but I still can hardly touch her. But she follows me everywhere. She likes to lay on my stuff and dig in my shoes.

Bepo is the mother of everyone but Chicken we think. She is spayed (thank you Kris) and has turned out to be a really nice cat to us...kind of a bitch with the other cats though.

Chicken was a tot when he arrived following the rooster and chickens around. To this day he still enjoys the chickens more than cats. He sleeps on the bed and we can hold him and carry him around like a normal cat. He is neutered and has all his shots.

Junior has all his shots and is neutered and currently is missing.

Pollo Pequeno showed up pregnant and I don't think is one of Bepo's. We took her in and had her spayed (abortion as well - sad but there are too many cats). She is rolly-polly and always around. Nice but not real bright. We are trying not to get attached. We are spaying and neutering any we can catch. We will feed them if they get along with everyone else. They get regular worming. If they stick around and we can pick them up we will get all the shots and if they take off at least they won't be baby factories. A single cat can have 4000 kittens in its lifetime and it seems that in Puerto Rico pets are not pets, they are disposable animals. It is a real shame and one of the only disappointments we have had about living here so we do what we can. For the price of a nice dinner out you can neuter 3 cats or neuter one and spay one. A much more lasting bang for the buck!

Bepo's Pre-spaying Stuck -in -the -log Batch That Need Good Homes

Who can resist this adorable neutered semi- feral male kitty? He took off after being neutered on Friday but we think he will be back...his family is here. This is Puff 2 and he is really a sweety.

Puff 1 we think is his sister and the one who was stuck in the log. She was spayed last Wednesday and has been hanging around even more. You can see her shaved tummy. She will make someone a nice companion (hint hint hint). She has a lot of fur and is cuter than the photo shows. She has a collar of white. All of these kitties will be nice once they are away from the others. They act like meercats when they are together.

How cute is he? This is Stippedy 1 (yes, he already has a duplicate stunt double we see sometimes). He loves cereal milk and is the pushy, bold little hunter. He has the most personality! He loves his head rubbed. He is like a mini-Junior, he may even be Junior's replacement (Junior was either overwhelmed by kitties and the lead male job or something bad has happened to him - he has been missing for 3 weeks and I haven't found a body).

This is Mars. She is on antibiotics that I syringe down her throat twice a day( not easy) in preparation for spaying in the next couple weeks. I am really partial to her. She is like a little stick figure and I gave her milk replacement and special treats. She is very sweet and small and will socialize nicely (she is on the couch next to me right now).


Here's Blanco, the most beautiful of them all! Snow white with peach on the tail, feet, nose and a touch on the ears. He is slightly cross-eyed with blue eyes (hears just fine). This one would be a good stay-around-the-house cat. He looks like a Siamese cat in a lot of ways, kind of exotic. He isn't neutered yet but will be soon. If anyone knows of a good home for any of them PLEASE let us know. We would like someone who will take care of them (give them shots and keep them safe with lots of love).

More Faces in the Yard...a Long Story That Ends Well

Here is a long saga of trying to do the right thing by spaying and neutering stray cats. I'll try to make it short. As you know we have spayed/neutered 5 animals so far and thought that was the end of it! We had a cat, Bepo, whose daughter and son (Princess and Junior) hang out and have been taken care of. Well awhile back before we spayed her Bepo was pregnant and then she wasn't. We tried to find kittens and figured they were stillborn or something because she was in the yard always and was not lactating. We waited and waited. Then my sister visited and took special interest in her. Cats get pregnant immediately after giving birth and we didn't want her to go through that again (she is little). So we spayed her. She was in the shower for 5 nights and like all the others ran out and stayed away for a day when we released her. Then she was down here like always. A week later I hear something way up on the hill that doesn't sound right. Jeff doesn't hear it, but I go and investigate. I hear crying in a log pile and you guessed it...a little kitten face appears. This guy (only smaller at the time).


This isn't the source of the noise though - I can hear things but it sounds like it is underground. I get Jeff and he can't tell where it is coming from either. We go down to the house but I am still disturbed. I can still hear it. It is now dark. Jeff knows I can't sleep worrying about it so we go up one more time with a dental mirror and flashlight. We put the mirror in this really narrow hollow branch and stick it as far in as we can and look with a flashlight and we see this little white face!

We use pruners to prune the branch and wedge it open further and further and a white ear pops out! We keep doing it and then an arm pops out! Finally it is free and disappears into the tangle of brush. Meanwhile we see an orange flash squirt out of a brush pile. We can't catch any of them. Talk about guilt. Are these Bepo's babies? Yes - we follow her up there. The next day the orange one is stuck - you guessed it, same log. Turns out it had another entrance so we got this one out and then dismantled the death trap. It was an odd shaped log that made getting in possible but not out. The next day we bring food up and the babies have been moved! For more than a month she has moved them around and we have only seen one at a time, never all three at once. Finally we hear meows in the yard. The kitties have come down, but now there are 4. The original orange kitty is short haired and tiny like Princess. This one was with them. It appeared first and I thought it was Bepos until the other 3 showed up. All cats have stunt doubles! Then I am in the yard and there are 6 kittens and I know they are not all Bepo's. Bepo had the Junior look-alike (Strippedy), the Princess sort-of-look-alike (Angel), and the short haired orange one (Mars). Meanwhile, Bepo's look-alike/stunt double/sister? shows up in the yard with the hairy orange one (Puffball). Then we see all of them together with the addition of a black and white one and another striped one. We think Puffball is Bepo's sister's kitten. We think the sister nursed all of them while Bepo was in the shower or they were big enough already to find food. We know that they trade off babysitting all of them which is kind of cool - Bepo's sister isn't as good a mom and kind of abandoned Puffball who roams around crying. But now they are all in the yard and have friends to cuddle with. They eat avocados (and ample servings of cat food) together and the story ends well. Very traumatic though. We tried to be careful and do the right thing. We now feel responsible for her kittens and how can we ignore Puffball, the outsider? The other two have gone off somewhere else thankfully but now we have 4 little ones cuddling up together near the front door. We really aren't cat people.

When I took an evening stroll around the yard I saw 3 of the kitties mobbing this toad! They were fascinated and not much bigger than it. They would inch closer and just watch it.

The toads are weird because they don't move. You can lift them by the chin and they are stiff and then ooze a white ooze out of their back. Here's a view from up top. Weirder still...

So the story ends until the next round of spaying, neutering or finding homes for the new faces around the farm...