Winnie Tales

Welcome to today's Winnie press conference.  I'd like to begin with a prepared statement.  With grit and determination, I was able to overcome all obstacles between me and kittendom.  I'm proud to be the best cat birthing assistant in this house.  A new bar has been set that shall never be surpassed,  Questions? What does helping a cat give birth actually entail? How graphic do you want me to be? "What are the choices?" "You don't want to know" - or - "Oh, god that's awful" "Uhhhhhh, You don't want to know?" Okay, you asked. You can basically break it down into five easy steps.  I should know - after doing this five times, you become an expert.  I'm pretty sure I could do a human birth after this. First the kitten comes out in a sack.  Not burlap or anything like that, but more like a crappy plastic wrap.  The key is to break the sack so the kitten  can breathe.  Winnie was supposed to break the sac

We're getting close to the big day.  What is it like to have a pregnant cat?  Do we want a pregnant cat?  Are we ready? Marlee's take: Pregnant? All I could think to myself was, are we going to go from a zero-cat household to a nine-cat household in the matter of weeks; what if we can’t find homes for the kittens, would we have to keep them all? So, what is a lady to do -- what I always do, of course… rush to social media to ask for help! Thankfully, after posting in some local mom’s groups and on Nextdoor it seemed that there was quite a bit of interest out there for kittens.  This was the reassurance I needed; we can do this! This is going to be fun! What could go wrong!? Suddenly, I remembered the advice given to me by the vet. She had suggested that I read up a little on how to “assist” Winnie during her birth and after; hmm… this sounds like it could get messy. Turns out, as a first-time mama, Winnie may not know exactly what to do and might need a little nudge

Let's pretend for a second that you're not me.  Let's also pretend that you're very naive and you allow a cat off the street to just walk into your house.  Let's pretend you decide to keep this cat.  For the purposes of this exercise, you're welcome to pretend that this is a good idea if you want, but it's not required. Got it? So now you make the decision to send your wife out into the disease infected world to take a stray cat to the emergency vet for no real reason other than you never met this cat.  They're not you and they know better, so they basically laugh her out of the joint, so you tell her to get cat food.  You feel like you HAVE to do this because you're not sure what else to do.  Your initial plan was to feed the cat what the baby is eating.  The cat points out that even though it's starving, it's not eating that boiled cauliflower either, so you need a new plan.  Thankfully, your wife is smart enough to remember that "

Picture it:  Nashville 2020 at the start of the great pandemic... An intrepid explorer steeled his eyes against the setting sun.  He was braving the wilderness for that most precious of items, Amazon packages.  Having heard the siren song of "ding dong", he knew they must be near.  Suddenly, he spied the packages and his heart fluttered; toilet paper at last!  He carefully retrieved the packages from their resting place, lest he disturb the natural surroundings and unknowingly unleash some terrible doom.  As the last package crossed the threshold, his eyes caught movement, subtle but unmistakable.  As he turned, the beast approached.  It was the slow, unconcerned swagger of an animal so ferocious that it could surely defend itself.  He froze.  The lithe body of the beast brushed against him almost imperceptibly, almost as if it was testing his resolve.  He waited; his breath locked in his chest, but he knew he couldn't have moved if he wanted.  The creature turned it