That Overwhelming Feeling

Does anyone remember that stupid game based on the phrase "the straw that broke the camels back"? Well, I do, and it has been on my mind the last several weeks because the phrase has been rattling around in there too causing this annoying word association thing to happen. 

I mentioned in a recent post that I was feeling overwhelmed. I'm taking care of the kittens in my house and the kittens outside and worrying over their health and safety. I recently wormed all of the inside kittens - a five-day treatment of Panacur and one of Cestex. Cestex kills two types of tape worms and Panacur only kills one (plus every other type of parasite) so that's the reason for doubling up, I guess. I gave the Cestex first and then waited a week because two days later a couple of the kittens had no appetite and weren't as bouncy. Then I did five days of Panacur granules in their food. Two days after the last dose I had five lethargic kittens with no appetite and diarrhea; I say five because Lola wouldn't eat the last two doses, so she was only slightly sick. I asked the vet if these meds could give them a reaction and was told no. So I got a second opinion and heard the same thing. But I'm here to tell you that THEY WILL! Your kittens are ingesting a toxic cocktail intended to kill parasites in their intestines, so there is going to be some after-effects. What would I do without Google? I searched specifically for my problem and found what I was looking for and so I knew that they would be sick for about four days. By about the fourth or fifth day they should feel like eating again - and that is pretty much how it turned out, but it was nerve-wracking for me. They lost so much weight from the combination of not eating and diarrhea that I was losing sleep from worry. What I did was mix up some kitten milk replacer that I have stored in the freezer and forced them to drink from a dropper. It's an easy trick: hold the back of their neck and gently but firmly tilt and hold their head back and slowly drip the contents of the dropper in their mouth. This gave them a little nourishment and together with the water they were drinking kept them from dehydrating. I prayed every day for them and I was in happy tears the morning that they all began eating and playing. During the time they didn't want to play, all they wanted was to lie on me and snuggle, so now that we are all bonded, it is going to be very difficult to find them homes. But that has to happen because I just don't have the room for seven cats and three dogs.

Shortly after I could sleep and breathe easier, the kittens outside began to get sick, one by one, and disappear before I could figure out what was happening. We managed to get hold of one who was clearly so sick he didn't even think about trying to get away and took it to the vet. She said it looked like feline distemper and once they were sick, there was very little we could do. She gave it an antibiotic and we labored over it for three days, noticing some apparent improvement, but then the fourth morning he was gone, and hubby had to dig a small grave in the back. Since we had him separated from the rest of the kittens, no others have gotten sick, which is good. But now the new worry is that they keep climbing up into the vehicles and we have to do what we call "pre-flight" checks so that we don't accidentally take any for a ride or run over them. And every day or so I see new kittens for me to worry about. This is why I keep asking myself "will this be the last straw?" hence the whole straw-that-broke-the-camel's-back thing. At this point, calling me crazy is just a silly waste of energy...

Hubby and I have decided that we will get some humane traps and gather as many of the cats as we can to take them to people who told us they wanted barn cats and the rest will get spayed and neutered and released back to our neighborhood. My neighbor to the south and the one in back who is also feeding the cats (I've mentioned her before) said they would help us with the project. 

So I also mentioned in a recent post - the same one, actually -  that I was back in school. I just finished up my first class - Psychology. I learned all about how stress affects the body and the mind. I learned that everybody responds to stress differently and that everybody's stress-triggers are also different. We had to take a stress analysis and I did well, scoring as not very stressed. But I felt that they didn't ask the right questions. All they needed to do was ask me if I was responsible for the health and well-being of an outrageous number of kittens and my scores would have been off the charts. I also learned how to properly manage and relieve stress, so I am going to start applying my new knowledge and hopefully avoid completely wigging out.

When things were slow, I managed to harvest a bit of my herb garden and dry everything using the food dehydrator we have just sitting in the pantry taking up space. I'm so glad I discovered I could do this! It's super easy to do as well as rewarding. Plus, the dehydrator is getting some use since my hubby hasn't made any jerky in like, forever.

From this....

Pictured here in the before is oregano and spicy basil, and in the after there is also some sweet basil and some rosemary. Not pictured is some lemon thyme that I dried along with more oregano and both types of basil. I'm a little disappointed in my lavender this year. It really never took off like the varieties I had last year, so I haven't done anything with it yet. But maybe I need to do a bit of harvesting anyway and it will encourage it to grow?? 

...to this!

My chocolate mint is doing fabulously, but my orange mint has turned brown on the edges and is looking sparser than last year. This one is the only one from last year. Everything else is newly planted this season. I planted plain mint down by the edge of the deck and it did well until the snails and slugs discovered it. I thought they didn't like mint?? Apparently they love it. And apparently they also love cat food. I went out the other night to let the dogs out and noticed a couple of the cats sitting looking at the food dishes but not eating. I went and got the flash light and discovered big nasty slugs all over the food. Now, I'd read somewhere that they will drown themselves in beer and all you do is put out a pie pan with beer in it. Well I've got a bunch of kittens out there that will no doubt be all over that, so instead I grabbed an old ice cream bucket and a really old Sam Adams that was way in the back of the garage fridge and poured it in the the bucket. Then I grabbed an extra pair of hair coloring gloves (because I knew where they were, but didn't want to spend an hour trying to find the other ones) and went about drowning slugs and snails in beer. I put the bucket up on the deck railing to dispose of later and went to bed. The next morning I remembered the bucket, but when I looked into it there was about two inches of nasty-looking foam on the top, so I opted to do something with it later. Much later. Like have-the-hubby-take-care-of-it later. And that's what happened.