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Nov. 2, 2006
Poor Kitties!
Before I lived in this apartment, it was inhabited by a very spritely 85 year old woman. Unfortunately, it is a tiny 1-bedroom apartment and she had - no lie - 7 cats and two dogs in it. She had a single litterbox for all of them. The floor in the apartment, like so many in older buildings in Miami, is terrazzo, meaning it stains very easily. The apartment was so filthy that they had to fumigate three times and SAND THE FLOOR DOWN to be rid of the filth when she left. It wasn't because she was old and disabled, either. You would never guess this lady was 85. She was just really, really lazy, per her own admission. :( The apartment had to be DE-FLEA'ED!
Anyway, she had had 4 of the adult cats and the 2 dogs the longest, so when she left, she took the four of them and the 2 dogs and left the three half-grown kittens behind with a promise to send bags of cat food monthly for them (which she does, intermittently). My grandmother, who lives next door, and I were flabbergasted. Those poor kitties were essentially thrown out of the only home they have ever known. Would you believe it has been a year and they haven't left our yard the whole time. This has caused us some problems because they eat all the lizards, small rodents and birds in the front yard, meaning that we have a lot of small pests in the grass that lizards would've eaten and taken care of naturally. Meaning it's SUPER hard for me to have a container garden because it becomes overrun with teeny frogs, slugs and this species of small burrowing roaches.
I wish I weren't allergic to cats because these girls are just so gorgeous and sweet. They keep trying to get into the apartment - as far as they're concerned, this is still their home. They are now all flea-ridden and cannot be brought indoors; this was a problem during Hurricane Wilma last year. My grandma and I were more worried about them than our own safety - WE weren't forced to brave the whole thing outside, after all. We put a little barricade outside of 10-gallon paintbuckets which weighed at least 50 lbs each in this little hallway nook and two of the kitties hid there the whole time, poor babies.
The three kitties are sisters. Two of the kitties are black and white - Estrellita (so named because she has a black face with a white-colored star-shaped area on her nose) and Juliet - with big green eyes, and the other one, ChaCha also has big green eyes, but is solid medium-gray with little white paws.
I should post a picture. I have tried to place them in homes, as they are fixed and housebroken, but it never panned out. So I thought recently about trying to find a home for them or possibly posting their plight on Craigslist. The landlord has decided to make our building no-pets-allowed after the trauma of having to clean out this woman's apartment when she moved out, so I can't take them in here. But they are the sweetest little things ever and if I ever get a house with a yard or something, I would de-flea them and take them with me and, um, just vacuum a lot? I'm very allergic to cats but I love them. I love all animals. I'd have all kinds of animals if I could - dogs, birds (I love my quails!!!) I used to keep an aquarium when I lived up north and would love to again, I even like reptiles.
Speaking of the quails, they have been working out really well this time around in the same cage. Lilo the hen is BROODY and has made a nest and has four little eggies that she keeps fussing over and turning over. She put them in the darkest, most private corner of the cage, meaning she considers it a real nest. Ooooh, I wonder if they'll hatch! We'll see what comes of that!
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