CEA's update #21

Item #31. Cook from a "found" recipe once a week.
I've been better about cooking new dishes than I have been about posting a report on them!  During this past week I baked two recipes from Rebecca Rather's Pastry Queen cookbook:  Texas Pecan Pie Bars and Emergency Fruit Crostata.  The pecan pie bars were rich and gooey.  It's a recipe I'll make again for party occasions.  The crostata lives up to its promise:  a quick, easy-to-make free-form tart.  I've been trying to find the perfect rustic tart, and this may be it.  You can make the tart with just about any fruit except for bananas and strawberries.  I used blackberries and blueberries, but since these are not always available in our local grocery store, I'm planning on keeping frozen fruits on hand.  The tart warm from the oven with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream was delicious and perfect for a dinner party finish.  The tart cold from the refrigerator the next morning with a pot of hot tea was sublime. 

JR’s List Item #21 – (done) Neuter/spay 14 abandoned kittens and find homes for all of them.

For as long as I have lived in this neighborhood there have been feral cats. I started putting food out for them to keep the dogs from going wild every time they saw one them.  It just made our walks more enjoyable.

Most of the cats are around for one or two years before they disappear. There have always been kittens to replace the ones lost.  Even a  couple of these cats have adopted me, inviting themselves into the house.  One of these cats was a Siamese-looking cat, Alley.  This past winter she delivered five kittens in my cup towel draw (long story); not the prepared space I had provided her.  When the kittens were about five or six weeks old, Alley came up missing.  She was found on a neighbor's porch dead with a sever head wound.  Because a large number of cats had started disappearing from the neighborhood, I assume that Alley became a victim of whoever was eliminating them.

Alley's Kittens

 

Luckily, the kittens were old enough to start eating solid food.  They did fine, but I was now feeding kittens several times a day.  About two weeks later, I came home from a errand to find a box on my porch with two kittens inside.  Later that evening, two more kittens were in the road.  I figured out that their mother was a calico that visited regularly especially around feeding time.  She had been pregnant, but I knew she had delivered her litter.  I hadn't seen her for a couple of days, so I assumed she was also a victim of the cat elimination the was going on in the neighborhood.

The Calico Cat's Kittens

Again, I lucked out.  I was able to start feeding them with the others and they thrived.  So now there were nine kittens.  On May first, I came home from a meeting only to be greeted by a neighbor who had five kittens in a box.  He insisted I had to take them so his two dachshunds wouldn't kill them.  He couldn't find the mother, so I was their only hope.  They had some kind of bacterial infection which they passed to the other kittens.  The vet treated the sickest kitten from the litter, and sent antibiotics with me for the other thirteen.  The kitten at the vet's died, but the others survived and thrived.

I did discover the mother for these last kittens, so I reconnected them.  She was a cat I called Silver, who had been around for several years.  She took care of them until she was ready to wean them.  By then they were eating with the other orphans.  Sadly, she came up missing shortly after her kittens were completely weaned.

 Silver's Kittens

Number fourteen joined the group when the boy next door brought her to me one evening.  He was sure his dog would kill the kitten, if I didn't take her.  I took her.


So now there were officially fourteen kittens alive, well, and growing fast.  I was able to have them spayed/neutered and vaccinated for rabies free through the SA Animal Control Services Capture and Release Program.

I know my item task also says find them homes, but I am having a hard time letting them go.  I just can't give them to anybody.  Timmy and Tiny have been the first to leave having found a new home with friends from the trail ride.  Terry wants a couple, but beyond that they may just end up joining the feral population who hang out at my house.  That's not a bad thing.  It means no mice, no snakes, no bugs, and I can keep watching them grow and evolve.  And if a friend needs a cat, well we'll see.  What a sucker!

(I consider this item done because even if they stay with me, they have a home.)