14 Pills X BID = 7 Days

Dosing animals at the shelter is getting more complicated. This is because they set out to simplify it.

Many of the people who volunteer are professionals. Miss W, who is in charge of the cats when they are in the shelter, is an attorney. Yet somehow the medication seems to stymie them. We often have one med listed on the chart, and something else on the box of medicine, or can't find the medicine, or the instructions are unclear.

Plus the fact that nothing is locked up, so meds get moved, or taken for use on fosters, and sometimes we think something is there and it isn't.

Bob, our Executive Director, plans to take care of this, it is in line with all the other problems, though, and has to take a number.

Meanwhile, Angel and Rosie both needed Clavamox. Dustie doesn't need any right now, thank goodness. To keep them from spitting out half the liquid and not knowing how much of a dose they really got, it was changed to pills. Sounds easy, right?

Well, they were given 14 pills each. They are supposed to take two per day. That is supposed to add up to 7 days.

Miss W had them marked for 14 days on each med, and a check mark box for dosing. So at first i thought i was supposed to give them each a pill, but they were out of pills. The last one had been given that morning.

As i investigated, i realized what she had done, scratched out the 14 day notation and marked 7, and told Bob. He promised to tell Miss W, and talk to her about what the difference is.

Cats have been shifted in and out of the adoption center at the pet store, so Sofia, Candy, Ginny, Grady, Clint, Gidget, and Zoe are sharing the big room. Grady must be getting mellow, he didn't even try to escape.

The Grady Gloves came in handy anyway for Alex, one of the six from that one lady's house. He got upset with his eye drops again, and had to be wrestled into submission just to get them in. He tried to bite and everything. Once he was back in his cage he was fine, very gentle. The others from that house, Sadie, Bootsie, Jimmy, Jerry, and Johnny, are gentle, but don't like meds much either. None of them fought and bit, though.

Frieda was in a good mood until Alex's great escape -- of course he had to run into her room -- but order was restored pretty quickly. She allowed petting this time.

Lucky has staked out one particular spot, so i gave him his medicine there, and his canned food. He is getting spoiled and doesn't want to eat anything but the canned, which is not good. He just can't afford to lose weight, and two cans a day isn't going to keep weight on him.

Perry's eye is much better, and he was let out of his cage to roam while it was cleaned.

Rocky's diaphragm is healed, and he is in a room with Portia and Gulliver. All are about 8 months old, and playful and enjoying each other's company.

Baby is getting a bit more mellow, too. She's now in a room with Roxanne, and not growling as much.

Bowie has recovered his usual equanimity, and JuJu still doesn't want attention.

Iggy, Conan, Francie, Teddy, Mamie, Tyler, Bobby, and Tigerlily round out the names in the place right now, and all are doing well.

That's 34 cats, plus a feral female temporarily in a carrier in the bathroom. As with all ferals, she will be released back into the area from which she was taken now that she is no longer fertile. This will not be done, i insisted, until the temperatures come up around here, at least 3 days. Her carrier is big, so i put a small litter box and a food and water bowl in with her. My attempt to slip a towel in there for her to sleep on was of mixed result -- she growled when i got too close, and a later look at her showed her with only her head on it, the rest of her body still on the cold carrier floor. That's okay, it's still warmer than outdoors, and with better food than she would get, either.

Considering that we had cleaned the church earlier that day, and were somewhat tired, and had a lot of cats, we got it all done in just over an hours.

Because there are so many cats, Lee is thinking of assigning two people to each shift, with one responsible for the colony rooms only, and another person doing all the other cats. We've told her that's fine if she wants to for the other shifts, but not to bother for us, we split everything anyway and still have time to pet them all.


Today is:

Bon Soo Winter Festival -- Northern Ontario, through the 13th

Constitution Day -- Mexico

Cordova Ice Worm Festival -- Cordova, Alaska (through the 6th)

Igbi -- Shaitli and Kituri among the Avar ethnic group, Dagestan, Russia (midwinter celebration)

Kashmir Day -- Pakistan

Liberation from the Alberoni Occupation -- San Marino

Move Hollywood & Broadway to Lebanon, PA Day (Why would they want it?)

National Chocolate Fondue Day

National Weatherperson's Day

Nones of February -- Ancient Roman Calendar

Runeberg's Birthday -- Finland

Sapporo Snow Festival (Sapporo Yuki Matsuri), Japan, through the 11th

St. Agatha's Day (patron of Malta, nurses, jewelers, bell makers, bell ringers, wet nurses; against fire, breast cancer)

Unity Day -- Burundi

Winterlude -- Ottawa (winter festival, weekends through the 21st)

World Nutella Day

Yuki no Carnival -- Unazaki Onsen, Toyama Prefecture, Japan (snow and ice sculpture winter festival)


Birthdays Today:

Jeremy Sumpter, 1989
Michael Sheen, 1969
Jennifer Jason Leigh, 1962
Christopher Guest, 1948
Barbara Hershey, 1948
Roger Stauback, 1942
H.R. Giger, 1940
Alex Harvey, 1935
Henry "Hank" Aaron, 1934
Andrew Greeley, 1928
Red Buttons, 1919
William Burroughs, 1914
Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr., 1900
Andre' Citroen, 1878
Belle Starr, 1848
Dwight Lyman Moody, 1837
Ole Bull, 1810
Sanjo, Emperor of Japan, 976


Today in History:

Earthquake in Pompeii, Italy, 62
King Alfonso V orders Sicily's Jews to attend conversion sermons, 1428
A group of early Japanese Christians are killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society, 1597
The first US livestock branding law is passed, in Connecticut, 1644
Georgia becomes the first state to abolish both entail and primogeniture, 1777
Sweden recognizes US independence, 1783
Hannah Lord Montague of New York creates the first detachable shirt collar, 1825
The "Oregon Spectator" is the first newspaper published on the American West Coast, 1846
An adding machine employing depressible keys is patented in New Paltz, NY, 1850
Two innovations which helped pave the way for motion pictures are pateneted, a hand turned stereoscope by Samuel Goodale of Cincinnati, and the Kinematoscope by Coleman Sellers of Philadelphia, 1861
Four inches of snow falls in San Francisco, 1887
The loop-the-loop centrifugal railroad (a/k/a the roller coaster) is patented by Ed Prescot, 1901
Greek military aviators, Michael Moutoussis and Aristeidis Moraitinis performed the first naval air mission in history, with a Farman MF.7 hydroplane, 1913
Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith launch United Artists, 1919
Reader's Digest magazine is first published, 1922
The Royal Greenwich Observatory begins broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal, 1924
A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered, 1958
The so-called Big Three banks in Switzerland announce the creation of a $71 million fund to aid Holocaust survivors and their families, 1997