The little cat is getting old - she's still quite fit for her age, but you can see the tooth of time taking its toll. Not only on her own teeth, which are fewer now: she's had surgery recently, with the removal of three of her remaining (not so numerous) teeth. She also almost only white whiskers now, where they once used to be all black.

We don't know how old she really is; we got her from the shelter back in 2012, and she was grown then but of unknown age. She'd probably had kittens at least once before then, so that would mean at least 3 or so years of age, and the shelter vet estimated her to be about seven. Another vet, later on, said she's probably already much older, estimating her to be 10, more likely 12 years. Which means that she's now something between at least 11, or maybe even 21. We will never know, but hope she'll remain fit and happy for some more years to come.

More important than her actual age, though, she now has some days where she seems to have a hard time to jump up onto my desk or her cat bed in the office, which are about the same height. Sometimes she floats up there utterly gracefully, and sometimes... well. Not so graceful abortions of the jump. Since she loves to hang out on my desk or snooze on her office bed while I'm working, we installed a little cat ramp for her on the side of my desk:



This has been met with some suspicion. She's not very adventurous, the old lady, and was not sure about putting a single paw on the board, let alone explore it to stroll up it. So in the last week, there's been treats and gentle putting her onto the thing and nudging her to use it... and it seems she's now losing some of her mistrust and apprehension. We're still waiting for the penny to finish dropping - so bets will be taken on when she will use the ramp without promting!

Our little cat is growing older, and she's getting a bit more lazy every year. For her age (which is probably around 20, though it's not really known, as she was abandoned and brought to the shelter) she's still quite fit - but signs of feline aging are noticeable now. For instance, she's drooling more, the tips of her fangs are often slightly visible, and her claws are more audible when she walks, as they are not retracted fully all the time.

Also, her fur seems to be slightly lighter and more greyish. Most noticeable of all, though: her whiskers, which used to be all black once upon a time, have turned snow-white, with the exception of one or two last dark ones.



The "aaaawww"-factor when she's sleeping, though? Absolutely and utterly undiminished.

Germany has the day off today - so you're getting a cat pic instead of a proper blog post:



See you on Monday!

There was actually snow yesterday and today. Winter! At last! It did look beautiful outside:



The cat, however, was thoroughly unimpressed:



Or, to be more precise: Not amused. While she did go outside for a stroll, she refused to lower her furry bottom onto the cold snow and instead preferred to come inside and lower it into the litter box.

Oh, cat. You do know that you have fur on your ass for a reason, right?

Somehow this week has been really full, and really busy, so I'm really looking forward to the weekend. There was lots of organising and re-stocking and some planning and quite a bit of reading and workshop preparation. Proof of some of the re-stocking: Fibre sample package bags.



So now I'm looking forward to weekendy things, and you're getting a gratuitous cat picture, just because I have it, and Madam looks like she often looks:



The poor, long-suffering cat. She knows from her own hard life that good staff is just so hard to find...

The last part of the excursion was a visit to Hütscheroda - that's a small place in Thuringia which calls itself "the wild cat village".

Wild cats live in the forest next to the village - but these critters are so shy, and so well-disguised, and so quiet that to see one in the wild is an extremely rare thing. So in addition to a small path through the forest, and a longer route if you want to see more of the beautiful landscape, there are a few enclosures with male wild cats (who come from breeding programmes, they are not taken out of the wild). Chances to see one of the cats there are higher - and you are guaranteed to see them three times daily, when it's feeding time.

You also get some info about the cats during this feeding time... and if you are lucky, a photo or two with more or less of the fence visible.

[caption id="attachment_4746" align="alignnone" width="640"] One of my lucky shots - that is Carlo.


If you are interested in wild cats, this place is definitely worth a visit! In addition, they are now having a lynx pair, in hopes of breeding some more lynxes. We didn't get to see these, as they are freshly arrived, but they will soon go into their enclosure.

[caption id="attachment_4745" align="alignnone" width="640"] Wild cats make funny faces, too.

If you've been following this blog for a while, you know that we have the privilege to be door-openers and can-openers for a little (though really not so little) cat. Things that you might not know about said little cat:

She came to live with us in 2012, when we fetched her out of an animal shelter. She'd been found, as her previous owners had set her out in the midst of winter, so her history is unknown. The shelter gave her a name (Madonna), sterilised her, had her chipped and her ears tattooed (these are standard shelter procedures in Germany, to help identify an animal if it gets lost), and gave her a general health checkup. She never felt at home living with other cats, and from what we gleaned from her behaviour, she was probably all on her own, and she definitely had no possibility to go outside in her former home.

After she'd been with us a bit, we realised she had weird coughing fits. A bit like coughing up a hairball, but never with any hair coming out... so we did a bit of research, and then we went to the vet, and we were told that yes, she has feline asthma. So we did some more research, and we found out that there's several ways to treat the asthma: Depot cortisone injections, cortisone pills, or inhaling cortisone with a special inhaler. The two first methods are systemic treatment, and daily doses of cortisone are, unfortunately, not without side effects. Inhaling, in contrast, puts the drug only there where it's needed: into the lungs.

So we got an inhaler, and cortisone spray, and started the rather long and tedious process of getting the cat used to inhaling. (She got pills during that time. That was even less fun than the inhaling training.) It took about three months, and it is daily ritual since, morning and evening. Usually, it's a very quick procedure - she gets a "bribe" treat, lies down, inhales, gets some more treats, we wipe her nose, even more treats (they are small ones), and then she's getting her food, or we open the door so she can go out and do Important Cat Things.

This process has fascinated quite a few people in our acquaintance, so in case you are curious now as well, here's a video of me doing the inhalation stuff with Madonna. The colours are a bit flat, but everything should be visible enough...