Friday, June 29, 2012

6/18/2012 - 6/24/2012


Relocations and In Take
Barn Cat Bash
Vacation Pictures



Relocations and In Take:  5 out and 6 in – OOPS! 
            2          Barn in Justin
            3          Adoption Group

Next Monday starts temperatures over 100 and we will have to be VERY CAREFUL putting cats in cages in a hot barn. I will evaluate each situation separately and place only cats in a barn with good ventilation and/or a fan to keep them cooler.    

Barn Cat Bash:  Count is at 70 now – best ever!  Grotto has given us the entire restaurant. We can set up in the back room at noon on Sunday. The Silent Auction is massive and we have 3 great items for the Live Auction. I will report on results next week.       

Vacation Pictures:   We left Paris on a river boat and sailed north, stopping in several towns. One was Rouen, France. This is the city where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. There is now a fabulous contemporary church there with windows taken out of another church destroyed in the second world war. The spot of the burning is right outside the building and marked by a plaque. Her ashes were thrown into the Seine. 



      

Thanks for following the Barn Cat Blog.  See you next week!           Peg             

5/27/2012 - 6/17/2012


Relocations and In Take
Three Orange Tabbies
Barn Cat Bash
Blog Suspended until June 17th
(See Pictures Below)


Relocations and In Take:  2 out and 1 in – Trying to clear cages because I am leaving town on Sunday. The 1 that came in was the sister of “Sweets” who I have had over a month waiting for her to finish nursing kittens then to be spayed.    

1          Garage in Celeste
1          Plant nursery in Flower Mound

This was a week of equipment collection and cleaning…Prosper, Nevada, Forreston, Duncanville, Decatur, and Oak Point. OH BROTHER! This stuff was really dirty. But, barns are dirty places, for the most part.                               



Cole at his new barn home in Oak Point.


Three Orange Tabbies:  I had been saving these cats for a lady who called me from McKinney.  Sounded like a good place, so I made an appointment on a Thursday afternoon in early May. That morning, she called and needed to postpone the relocation because of a serious plumbing problem. I waited several days and called and called and called. She finally called me back last week on Friday and asked that I contact her again on Wednesday to set up a relocation day/time for the end of the week. On Wednesday night when I finally got her on the phone (after leaving several messages), she said she was “sick” and cancelled the whole thing. GOOD GRIEF! These are wonderful cats. I will just find them another location to call home.  BUMMER! 

Barn Cat Bash:  Sunday, 6/24/12 at 5:30 pm at Grotto in Highland Village, $40 per person, buffet dinner, wine, silent and live auctions.  We always have a great time and make lots of money to get us through August.  August is so hot we cannot place many cats. If no cats are placed, then no money comes in. 

Blog Suspended until June 17th:  I will be out of town for a couple of weeks on a river boat trip on the Seine in Northern France.  We will be in Normandy for D-Day!   

Thanks for following the Barn Cat Blog.  See you June 17th!            Peg





              

5/14/2012 - 5/20/2012


Relocations and In Take
Julie, The Tiny Torti
(See Pictures Below)


RELOCATIONS and In Take:  13 out and 8 in – numbers going the right way! 

3          Workshop in Cooper
3          Barn in Abilene
2          Adoption group
3          Workshop in Savoy
2          Shed in Pottsboro







Julie, The Tiny Torti:  Barn Cat “Julie” passed away overnight on Monday. She was such a tiny thing! She and Bentley (the Chunky Monkey) came from Pottsboro to Barn Cats on 8/22/09 passing through the Sherman Shelter.  

A Grayson County Court Clerk called me on a Monday morning on my cell while I was waiting for a flight from DFW going to a work assignment in another state. He said a judge had just awarded us nine cats from a hoarder in Pottsboro – Well thanks! A volunteer went Wednesday and picked them up in Sherman. She took them to All Care. All turned out to be friendly and were traded to adoption groups. They came from a mess – dark house with no litter boxes and a smell that could kill!  Julie and Chunky were too old to be adopted out…”older that dirt” they said at the clinic. SO – no adoption group would take them. Both became “permanent” barn cats living with my personal cats in the family room, sunroom, kitchen and dining room. Chunky always played with Jimmy from New Orleans. Julie kept to herself. She was so cute – tiny tortishell body with only a 2” tail. Chunky had absolutely NO TAIL – rounded butt. When she first arrived, All Care could not tell if she was spayed or not…so we agreed on the “wait and see” method. Two months later at 5 AM on a Monday morning, she went into heat in my bedroom. I was leaving town but needed to get that howling cat off to be spayed. Walter, the limo driver, dropped her off at All Care after leaving me at the airport. I picked her up that Thursday and she had lived here since then…almost 3 years.   

RIP, little Julie!     

Thanks for following the Barn Cat Blog.  See you next week!           Peg


“Oliver” at his new barn home in Decatur.     



 “Bomber” relaxing in Pottsboro.




“Mona” and “Bomber” in Pottboro.



              

5/7/2012 - 5/13/2012


Blog 05/07/12 to 05/13/12

Relocations and In Take
(See Pictures Below)



RELOCATIONS and In Take:  A GREAT WEEK!  24 lives saved! …with only 3 taken in.  I currently have 10 empty cages  but they will fill quickly when Feral Friends starts trapping this week in North Dallas. 

1                    Nevada
2                    Ellis County
9          Prosper
4          Forreston
2          Duncanville
4          Oak Point
2          Decatur

OK – remember the entry from last week about “waiting” for the additional 2 cats who were then placed in Nevada? Well – the ladies showed up this week with “one more cat”. We were lucky enough to get the Nevada relo site to take that cat as well. We originally asked for 3 – I talked him into 4 – AND THEN it became 5!       

Thanks for following the Barn Cat Blog.  See you next week!           Peg





Hay Barn Cages and Cats - Prosper



                         Barn Cat Mobile – Prosper



                      Cages at Small Barn - Prosper

4/30/2012 to 5/6/2012


Relocations and In Take
April Closeout
(See Pictures Below)


RELOCATIONS and In Take:  It was 12 placements for this week but we took in 15…oops! 

            1          Dallas car dealership and shop
            4          Weatherford
            2          Sadler
            4          Nevada
            1          Adoption

In last week’s blog, I mentioned that I had been waiting for 2 additional from a group of 4 where the mother of the two ladies is serious ill. Well – Got those cats out to Nevada this week. FINALLY!  I always hate it when some are sitting in cages waiting for additional cats to be rounded up  I have a big tabby now (“Sweets”) who is waiting for his sister who is nursing kittens. So – he sits and waits!    

April Closeout:  After a slow beginning in March, April was great – 69 placed!  Those 69 represented two LARGE relocations:
            13 to a dairy farm in East Texas
            14 to a horse farm in Flower Mound

The placements were in the following Texas counties:
            Collin               Ellis
Dallas              Grayson
            Denton            Hopkins
           
In our best year (2008) we placed 77 in April and had a yearly total of 622. I am getting tired just thinking about 77 placements in one month….and I was still working then!  GEEZ!

Thanks for following the Barn Cat Blog. See you next week!           Peg



“Thomas” in Cedar Hill – Garage Cat




Nevada Relo


Two Friendly Cats for Sadler



Daniel at the Car Dealership

4/23/2012 - 4/29/2012


Happy to report that the PC we use for things such as blogs is finally back in full operation - all software reloaded, etc. Sorry for the delay in the blogs....hopefully, we will be technical difficulty free for a while!!!
 
 
Relocations and In Take
AHHHH – Flat Tire in Ft. Worth
Spots



RELOCATIONS and In Take:  We were back in double digits this week but just barely!  We placed 10 with in-take at 8. I had an empty family room for 2 weeks – guess that is good. There are 5 cages set up in there again right now.. 

            7          Caging set up for a homeowner to move cats from another residence
            3          Well house in Abilene

Once again, I am having trouble reaching people who say they want our cats. I am holding two smaller, younger cats for a lady who requested two backyard cats and now will not return my phone calls. What’s up?

Another barn owner has been waiting for cats but the ladies trying to catch the cats have been unsuccessful. I just got a call TODAY (Sunday) that the last two have been wrangled soooooo, I can finally get all four out to their assigned barn. 

Flat Tire:  Sunday night I went to Northeast Ft. Worth to pick up a cat that had been sterilized that day at Ft. Worth Animal Services. She is a cute black/white and feral. Leaving the residence, the truck felt “funny” and SURE ENOUGH the back passengers-side tire was flat. AAA to the rescue and it was fixed in an hour. Having that AAA membership is one of the best things we ever did. Glad that didn’t happen at 70 miles an hour on Hwy 121!

Spots:  This is a white/black cat that we got from an Atmos location that is being torn down. He is such a mess – redecorating his cage every night. He turns his hidey-box upside down, flips over the feeder and waterer, and gets everything wet. I have moved him around in the cat rooms twice, finally settling on one of the biggest cages in the old cat room. I was sitting in my family room on Thursday evening watching TV about 9:30 pm when I heard a HOWL from the cat rooms. I got back there as quickly as possible expecting to find a serious cat fight in progress. However, Daniel (a large tabby) was on top of Spots cage, reaching down with those long legs, trying to “touch” Spots who was lying in the hammock that hangs across the cage. Daniel just wants to play but Spots was having none of that. Problem resolved with two large rugs placed on top of the cage to stop the “intrusion” into Spots’ territory!

Thanks for following the Barn Cat Blog.  See you next week!           Peg


Spots  April 2012  Check out the “wild” eyes. 


Daniel  April 2012  In every picture, he closed his eyes!


Rambo  April 2012 – Best Shot!