Critter Crossing

Meet the Blogger

Meet the Animals

This is my pet blog, where I share photos, updates, and stories about the critters I share my life with. Currently, I have one dog, four cats (two indoor, two semi-feral indoor/outdoor), and three chickens. I also may sometimes share photos of other people's pets, wild birds, and various other animals.

This blog is run almost entirely on queue, but I do try and pop in a few times a week to check messages. :)

After all the events earlier this year, I just haven't had the time or energy to really work on taking and uploading photos. Losing Katy and Holly two days apart has taken a massive toll on me, and the year has continued to be extremely hectic in both good and bad ways. There have been massive personal changes in my life, and things just got out of hand, as they often do. But I plan to return to posting photos.

Here are some updates on all of the pets:

Chevelle is, for the most part, doing okay. I mentioned in a previous post that she was diagnosed with Cushing's disease earlier this year. She started a very low dosage of trilostane when she was diagnosed, and the dosage was out of extreme caution—if the dose is too high, it can push the dog's cortisol levels too far in the opposite direction and give them Addison's disease. At first, her blood work showed that it was a good level, so she took the low 10mg dose for several months. Her symptoms didn't really improve, but they didn't worsen. I have never had an animal with Cushing's before, so I wasn't entirely sure what to look for. I also figured she was depressed after losing her dog companions. After a few months, though, her thirst drive and urination both increased again, and her potbelly kept growing. After another vet visit, the doctor said that Chevelle's dose needed to be increased to 30mg. We did so, and thankfully, she has responded really well to that so far. At the first dose, she had much more energy and even started to initiate play with people again, which she hasn't done in a long time. Her thirst and frequent urination have improved some. Chevelle will need periodic ACTH stim testing for the rest of her life, and her medication may need to be adjusted in the future, but for now, she's in a good spot. Because of all of this, it's hard to tell what amount of her slowing down is from her disease, from depression, or from age. But she turned ten this October, and she's in good shape overall. I hope to get at least a few more years with her.

Katy and Holly have been gone for six months. Chevelle misses them terribly, and I still feel completely broken. I miss both of them horrifically—especially Katy. I could talk about her and the love and the grief for hours, so I will not get too much into it here, as this is already a very long post. I will say that Chevelle still looks for them, perks up when she hears their names, and has not been the same since they passed. Some of her slowing down has been due to her Cushing's disease, as discussed above, and some of her feeling better has been due to the medication change, but she is still not back to the level of activity and energy that she was before they passed--nor is she back to that personality she had before. She changed the very same day Katy passed, got worse two days later when Holly passed, and has not been the same. I don't blame her—I'm not the same, either.

Dorothea and Ivy are the same as ever. It became apparent a couple of months ago that Ivy does definitely also have feline herpesvirus. I suspected she did, as Dorothea has had it since I adopted her years ago, and Ivy has lived with her for all this time. But Ivy had a really dramatic flare-up in her eye not too long ago, and I got medication and a supplement to give both cats whenever it flares up. No serious harm done to either cat. They still don't really like each other, but they're becoming even friendlier with people, which is such a relief—especially for Ivy. They are indoor-only, and as soon as I am able to move to a place where I can have animals with me, they'll be coming with me. They may be the only two who I can bring with me.

The two indoor/outdoor semi-feral cats, Tree and Leo, continue to do well. Leo is much more comfortable being indoors than Tree is, and so, he spends more time indoors. Tree has a really nice setup in my dad's workshop, though, with his own bed, bowls, and litter box, so he does sleep technically indoors each night. Leo, thankfully, has not had any more urinary troubles, and he continues to be on a prescription diet to hopefully prevent any blockages in the future. Tree and Leo are also doing much better together. They are still not friends, and they still get in fight pretty regularly, but they're now closer to irritated spats for dominance or something than the genuinely concerning battles they used to get into. They've also swapped in the sense that Leo used to be the aggressor, chasing down Tree and beating him up when Tree tried to run and wanted nothing to do with it. At some point, quite suddenly, Leo lost interest in starting fights, but now Tree tracks Leo down and beats him up, even when Leo wants to get away. They're nowhere near serious enough or long enough or frequent enough fights to be of extreme concern, and we do break them up when we catch them. I just wish they weren't both complete idiots. They're both neutered, have plenty of space to get away from each other, and I think it's time they learn to be civil around each other. Even weirder, they do sometimes just chill in the same place. I have watched them settle down and eat their meals just feet apart from each other. Strange cats.

As for the chickens: to first tackle the sad news, Chance passed away in July. She was approximately seven months old—a very common age for meat breed chickens to die at, as their bodies just can't take the extreme growth. It was very sudden, presumably a heart attack. She was happily free-ranging in the yard, and then when checked on an hour or so later, she had passed. I will say that she was in good shape for a Cornish cross up until the very end. She didn't grow as absurdly massive as some Cornish crosses do, and she never had any real mobility limitations or lethargy, even in the heat of summer. She was very special, and Jakob in particular misses her.

The three remaining chickens are doing well. Willow turned nine years old in May, and brothers Jakob and Dominic turned two. Willow didn't lay any eggs this spring or summer, so I assume she's finally done—and that is well-earned! Dominic and Jakob have overall been excellent to each other and to Willow. When Jamie and Mykerion passed, and then JD, I was really worried about having two young roosters together with just one hen. I wasn't in a great position to get more hens, and I was worried the boys would try and kill each other and/or harass Willow constantly, especially without JD to keep them in line. JD was a good leader, and he kept the younger boys in their place while he was here. But since JD's passing, Jakob has stepped up as the flock leader, and he and Dominic never seemed to fight it out. If they did, I didn't see it. Dominic is very laid-back and chill, and it seems he may even be at the bottom of the pecking order, beneath Willow. Jakob is very chill, and so far has never tried to attack any people or other pets. He does his good roosterly duties of keeping an eye out for Willow and guiding her to food, and I have yet to see him pick a fight with his brother. Neither rooster is overly annoying to Willow, either—they will sometimes jump on her, but to a much lesser extent than I've witnessed with any of my other roosters over the years. Definitely can't complain about how any of them are acting in this situation, and I hope that they continue to do well together.

Going forward, I would like to continue to share photos and updates about my pets here. I can't guarantee it will be with extreme regularity, but I like to try and set up the queue for a month or so at a time when I can. I haven't had time to do that lately, as this past August, I started college—again!

This is my first time going back to school since my first attempt at college ten years ago. I'm very excited to be learning and making progress, and hopeful that this time next year, I will be in my school's veterinary technology program. If all goes well this semester and next, as I finish core classes, I'll apply for the vet tech program in May and could potentially be accepted in August of next year.

That being said, between school and work, I have had next to no free time to take many new photos, and even less time to gather them up and get them into the queue. Fall semester ends in about a week, so I hope to have time to work on the queue over the rest of December.

It brings me a lot of joy to share the incredible animals I get to share my life with with the world, even if the world is a fairly small community. In years past, my blog was probably a slightly more exciting pet blog—I had 20-something pets at once at one point, so there were always lots of happenings and new stories to tell, new friends to meet, and many, many photos to share. For a while, I would get new pets fairly regularly as my time, space, and energy would allow me to care for them. These past couple of years have been the first time that my overall number of pets has been decreasing. I may not have quite as many new updates to share as frequently going forward, but I still want to do so for the animals I have now. And for the foreseeable future, there will probably not be any new critters joining my family.

This has been an incredibly difficult year as a pet owner—I think the most difficult year so far. At this point, I've had over 100 pets of my own (number gets high very quickly, as I've been able to keep large numbers of chickens and small, short-lived pets like rodents at once). I have lost the vast majority of them. Every single loss has broken my heart, and yet, every single time in the past, even in the deepest parts of grief, I was able to know that I would recover to some degree—and through it all, I never once felt discouraged from getting more pets in the future. The relationships with the animals have always been worth the pain of losing them.

Something feels different this time. As soon as I lost Katy, I knew immediately that it was different. This is the first time in my life where I feel no desire to get any more pets. She has been gone for six months now, and the feeling is just as strong today as it was on day one. I know this may very well change after a few years, but for now, I feel like there is no point. I had my time with my best friend. And my relationship with her was absolutely worth the pain—I would do it all over again a million times, even if I always knew the ending was the same and would hurt so badly. She was so worth it. So, I don't know what exactly changed this time, but it did. I think I need a break from the heartbreak.

And it's tricky, because taking care of animals gives me purpose. I have always felt like this is one of the primary things I was meant to do. Having those 20-plus pets at once and having a daily routine structured around them was one of the most personally fulfilling times of my life, even though I was often tired and stressed and definitely broke. It's really weird now to not even be living with my pets at all, and to have so few. But in addition to what I said in the last paragraph about losing Katy, there are a lot of circumstances in my life right now that don't allow for me to get any new pets for a while.

I am really excited to be pursuing a career in veterinary medicine, though, because my brief work experience in the field was very fulfilling, and I am hopeful that it will be a good way for me to help animals and do something that means the world to me while not being able to have more pets.

To fill in the gaps while I take and upload more new photos, I will continue sharing older pet photos, going back as far as the early 2000s! I have hundreds to share, including plenty of photos that I took during the active years of this blog—they're just photos that never made it here.

(November 2004)

July 2006

Kitty Boy! All photos are from late 2004. (Pardon the water damage.)

Taking a nap.

Chilling very kindly after I tried to stage a photoshoot for him. I don't remember why, but I thought the umbrella on the living room floor was a nice touch.

In his "cat cage," a fine contraption that my grandpa built so that our cats could safely spend some time outdoors. Like a catio, before catios were cool.

In the window, dreaming of the outdoors.

(September 2011)

I remember being really proud of this photo at the time, thinking it was really artsy.

(May 2005)

(2023)

(October 2009)