See this lady?

I GOT TO PET HER!!!!

I don’t mean a sneak pet on the back while she’s eating, either, though I did start with that. She moved away while the boys came in and dove under my hands, demanding attention. While I was petting them, I reached over and started petting her, too. She got a bit startled, but I was already giving her shoulder rubs and neck rubs, and she leaned right up into my hand instead of leaving. I even got ear skritches, which she really liked. I stopped after a little while – didn’t want to push her too far – and pet the boys a bit more, which gave her more time to eat. I did reach out again and pet her, but she didn’t like being pet on the back, compared to getting the shoulder and neck rubs.

Her neck fur is just full of hidden mats! There’s still lots of burrs stuck in her fur, too. You can see some on her side near her hip. The tip of her tail is just a matted ball of fluff stuck to a burr.

While I’ve managed to touch her before, this is the first time I’ve been able to give her a real pet! This is HUGE progress!

Now, if we can just keep it up and get her socialized enough, we can finally get her spayed!

Speaking of which…

The large animal rescue that moved just a mile away from us last summer made a post on FB. They’ve got quite a few projects in mind in the near future and were looking for everything from material donations to volunteers. One of the things they were looking for was tractor tires. We have a few, though they’re not accessible until the snow is gone, so I contacted her about it. Finding regular sized tires is no problem for her – her brother is our mechanic, so he’s always got lots – but the large tractor tires are a bit harder to come by.

As we were chatting, she asked if we expected to have kittens this year, and offered to take some. !! I told her that we probably will, and explained about not being able to socialize any of the females enough to get them spayed. She said they were planning to do fundraising for things like pet food, spays and neuters that she plans to use to help other rescues like us! We’re not officially a rescue, but with what we’re doing, we’re sort of a defacto one. They’ve had cats and kittens in their rescue, even though they mostly do large animals, and have been able to get them adopted out, so she offered to help with that, too. Of course, I happily expressed my appreciation for the offer of help!

So, between the two rescues, we might finally be able to get more cats adopted out, as well as spayed and neutered.

We’ll still probably need to get a trap for the females outside, though.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to socialize Adam well enough and not need to use a trap on her! What I really want is for her to get to the point where we can use the mat cutting combs we have on her, and get those off. I’m sure her equally long haired brother, Driver, has them, too.

Right now, I’m just happy with today’s progress.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer