#AfricanGrey – Pet Momma

Foster Return & Cali Update

Sadly, I had to return the foster bird on Monday. When I was home alone, he was lovely. He was sweet and fun. We danced together, he loved his toys and his treats. He called to me in his sweet little voice when I was out of sight, “hey, hi, hey baby.”

Sadly, Monster bird showed up whenever anyone else dared to come in the house. The screaming was horrific whenever my husband or niece were around. He even flew at my niece and landed on her, scary! Having my husband feed him treats didn’t seem to help at all. He would take the treats, some times he would try to bite the hand that fed him, and he still screamed.

I miss the morning dance parties, and that sweet little voice, but the screaming was making our house a very stressful place to be!

Hector D. Byrd was not the least bit interested in her foster friend. They barely looked at each other in the weeks K was here. Hector is very happy to once again rule the roost!

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Cali is doing OK. I tried to wean her off the pain meds, but it was clear that she still needs them. Another laser treatment today, hopefully it continues to help.

It has been a real challenge to find a kidney-friendly food that Cali will eat. I’ve probably gone through half a dozen of them. She eats for a couple of days, I order more of the expensive prescription food, and then she stops eating it.

Thankfully, she has been eating Dr. Harvey’s food pretty well for a couple of weeks now. I’m working with them to customize some kidney friendly food for her. They make an easy to use dry mix that just requires fresh protein, water and oil. Dr. Harvey’s even offers an amazing, free service to help customize their diets. They have a nutritionist on staff who called me to help me work out the healthiest diet for Cali. She even had me send in a copy of Cali’s blood test results so she could see everything that was going on with her.

Cali is eating the Canine Health formula and they are sending me a trial of their Paradigm food as well. The plan is to very slowly add some of the Paradigm to the Canine Health formula to see if we can get my picky eater to accept it. The food is super easy to use. Cali’s recipe is 2.5 oz of protein per day. I froze a bunch of different types of protein, chicken, ground turkey, ground pork, in 2.5 oz portions so I can just grab a protein from the freezer, steam it while the dry mix sits with warm water in it, add the protein and feed half to Cali for each of her meals.

Dr. Harvey’s also makes a Kidney supplement that I’m adding to Cali’s meals on the recommendation of their dietician.

From Cali’s blood work the dietician also noticed her blood sugar was a bit high, so she suggested I stop feeding Cali carrots as treats, and adding the vegetable-heavy Paradigm food to the Canine Health formula should help as well. I thought with her kidney issues I was doing a good thing with carrots, but they are too starchy. I even got advice on the best ways to give Cali her pills since commercial pill pockets I had been using also have a bunch of protein. Now I’m trying little bread balls to hide her pills, and baby food green beans and broccoli that don’t have protein or high starch. With a little luck all this healthy food will help, and it may even help the allergies Cali has always had!

Settling In

Our son and his cat were home for the weekend. I love the way he sits on the stairs!

Bean absolutely can’t resist a box!

Foster bird is settling in. He is so different than Hector! Interesting to get used to! K is a toothpick making machine! He had a short wood perch on his door that he literally destroyed down to nothing in about 10 minutes. Hector loves to destroy cardboard, this guy is a wood destroyer.

Hector has had a rope perch in her cage for years. I take it out and wash it every so often, but she doesn’t bite or chew it. Today K decided to “work” on his rope perch, and managed to completely chew through it so that it doesn’t attach to the side of the cage anymore. I got two new perches for his door today. He’s already working his way through the first one. Thankfully they are pretty thick, so it is taking him a little time.

If you look at K’s foot, you’ll see he is holding one of his wood chips. He likes to shred wood and then use the bits to scratch himself, so cute!

Thankfully we only got woken up at 5AM to a screaming parrot the first morning that we had him. Since then I’ve been covering him at night, and he doesn’t scream or even talk until I uncover him the next day.

I’d been told he doesn’t prefer men, and that is so true. He seems petrified. He doesn’t want my husband or son anywhere near him and often darts back into his cage if they come over to say Hello. I’ve got my husband feeding him his favorite Nutriberi treats, and that seems to be helping. He’s trying new foods, and enjoying all his toys!

He and Hector still don’t seem all that interested in each other. I did watch Hector climb to the end of her cage today and check out K, but there still wasn’t much interest. I picked Hector up so she could get a better view, but she was more curious about what treats I might have for her, than she was about the other bird.

K likes to dance! I turned on some music the other day and he started flapping his wings and bobbing his head. Dance Party! So far Levitating by Dua Lipa seems to be his favorite, major head bobs!

“Hi Baby” is his favorite phrase. He has also started Meowing, and I’m pretty sure I heard him say “Pucky” over the weekend. He says “Hi” and “Hey.” He’s a super busy guy. Can’t wait to see what games he comes up with next!

Happy Hatch Day Hector D. Byrd!

Busy day today! Picked up Skye the foster dog to bring her to an adoption event this morning. She was such a good girl! Lots of people really seemed to like her. Hoping she met her forever family today!

Hector D. Byrd is celebrating her 31st birthday today! She’s happily whistling away. She enjoyed making lots of fire alarm noises earlier today when my husband was checking batteries in the fire detectors! Tonight she will celebrate with a nice, fresh, birdie omelette!

http://Www.TreatPlanet.com sent me a lovely sample bag of treats to check out. Looking forward to sharing more info on their products soon! Cali is already going crazy just smelling the bag. I wonder what her favorite will be! Does anyone have a favorite Treat Planet treat, let me know!

Happy New Year!

Lots of updates coming in later this week!

Cali got a new treat. It’s from Treat Planet. I hadn’t heard of this brand before, and the treat was literally an impulse purchase at my local pet store yesterday. I had no idea it would be such a huge hit! I got the Etta Says Crunchy Chicken and Chia chew bar. I’ll write up more about it later this week.

Today is a big day for Logan the cat. I start navigating her diabetes journey. She was diagnosed a couple of weeks ago and we’ve been waiting for test results to confirm and then making a treatment plan. We’ve decided to try a new Medicine called Bexacat. It’s an insulin-free treatment option. I picked up the medicine yesterday and will start the first dose today. Logan will need to have blood work done on Tuesday to make sure things are going OK. I’m finding it’s an interesting an involved path dealing with a diabetic cat. I’ll be sharing it all here and would love comments, questions and feedback from anyone else dealing with a diabetic cat. More on that later this week as well.

Bean and Puck

Bean and Puck enjoyed the holidays, and now they have been taste-testing a new creamy cat treat for me from Catit. This is another treat that seems to be a big hit in our house right now. More on that soon!

Wena the bearded dragon LOVES our new kitchen sink. Not sure if it is the color, size, material, whatever, but she is so happy bathing in it. She’s been pretty picky about her food lately, but I found a trick online that suggested baby food veggies for picky dragons, and it is working well. She had some purple carrot baby food with her breakfast today.

Cali isn’t a big fan of the cold. She’s spending as much time as she can snuggled up in blankets.

She also really likes the new candy cane pajamas she got for Christmas! Because I seem to have more than my share of pet issues these days, have I shared about Cali’s bump? She has a growth on her neck that the vet says is benign and nothing more than an annoyance, but it’s growing. It’s about the size of a dime and raised off her skin. She tends to scratch at it at times, and there is concern that eventually she will end up with an infection. We have tried to freeze it off twice, but it didn’t help. Surgery is the only removal option now, and I’m not sure I want to put my 14 year old dog with a heart murmur and kidney issues through surgery even if it is minor. For now, I’m keeping an eye on the lump and hoping it doesn’t get worse.

Thankfully Hector D. Byrd is thriving. She’s really my buddy. Someone would think I’m crazy listening to my house all day. Working at home, I find myself constantly chatting with her. She’s such great company!

Check back for all kinds of updates soon, and have a great weekend!

Hector Love

I know, Hector “Love?” Not sure what is going on with this bird in her older age, she’s 30 now, but she has really been seeking out attention lately. It’s so nice! Hector is definitely most comfortable on her cage. Ideally she likes her door open so she can climb around on top and watch the world from up high. She gets nervous away from her cage. A couple of times a week, I’ll pick her up and bring her upstairs with me while I fold some laundry, or I’ll bring her on a walk to get something in another part of the house. I’ve been trying to acclimate her to other areas for years, but for the most part she’s happiest on her cage.

I should say that her cage is in our office which opens to the kitchen, so she keeps me company while I work from home during the day, and she also has the benefit of seeing the kitchen, and all that goes on in there. She likes to observe everything going on.

This morning, Hector was looking for attention, I was trying to work. I went over to her cage to give her a treat, and she put up her foot like she wanted to step up, so I let her. I brought her over to my desk chair, and she happily climbed up on the back. She spent a good half hour on the back of my chair making cute little burping noises in my ear! She doesn’t usually last away from her cage that long without getting upset, so I brought her back and gave her a treat before she had the chance to get upset. Maybe the old girl is mellowing out a bit?

Other than all the bird poop that needed cleaning up after her visit, it was really nice having a Hector on my chair!

If you want another Hector story, you can check out my latest Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=petmomma.co to read about the watermelon incident.

Logan and Hector

Poor Logan is back in quarantine. If you read the post from a couple of weeks ago, you already know we thought she had some kind of urinary/bladder infection and treated it, but apparently there is something else going on.

After the “Sh*t Show” I’ve been cleaning up the aftermath, and making sure the Catlink boxes are working properly, but two days ago I found fresh urine by the fireplace. With three cats in the house (Marty moved with my son), I had to do a little detective work to make sure I had the right cat. Since Logan had recently been ill, I guessed it was her, and moved her to a nice big bathroom on her own. No more accidents in the house, so it was time to call the vet again.

Last time they told me bladder stones were very unlikely for whatever reason, but since the antibiotics didn’t completely clear up whatever Logan has going on, they think that might be the problem. Monday morning she’ll go back to the vet for an abdominal X-ray to see if we can figure this out. I’m hoping it isn’t anything too serious. Logan isn’t super old, but she is almost 1`5. For now, she is enjoying a break from the boy cats, eating and drinking well, and she seems to be acting fine. I’ll update after the vet on Monday.

Puck loves his heating pad in the colder weather, actually all year round!

I wish I could share the info on this pad because I love it, but I can’t find it on Amazon anymore. This particular pad stays safely plugged in all the time. It turns itself on with pressure, so when a pet climbs on, it heats up, and when it isn’t being used, it shuts down. It’s auto controlled not to overheat, it gets warm, but not hot. I’ll keep looking for something like it and post if/when I find one.

In Hector news, she took a bath this morning! I’ve posted about Hector hating baths before, so just wanted to update. I think I mentioned the green litter box that Hector has decided is OK for bathing in. She has a great bath routine now. About once a week, I fill her box with warm water and put it on top of her cage.

She doesn’t always touch it right away, and she didn’t use it at all yesterday, but this morning she decided it was bath time. She climbs in her box and splashes around, then chirps happily and I know it is time to go spray her. I have a fine mist spray bottle that I fill with warm water, then I stand there and spray her while she plays in the water, until my hands get sore, then I spray her some more!

She flaps her wings, dips her belly, and dunks her head in the water. It makes me so happy to see her enjoy a bath! It has been a very long road with lots of trial and error to find a bath system she likes!

Have a great weekend!

Hector Turns 30! And Quick Updates

Hector D. Byrd hatched 30 years ago today! I feel so lucky to have her in my life. Her cage is in the center of our living space, halfway between the kitchen and my desk space, so I spend a lot of time with her every day. She’s sort of become my therapist. She’s always there for me to talk to, and she’s a great listener. She’s not a cuddly bird, but she loves to whistle, destroy anything made out of cardboard, and eat nuts! Her happy chirps and whistles have become part of our home. Love my red tailed Jungle Chicken!

My Logan girl has had a rough couple of weeks. About two weeks ago, she jumped on the back of the couch and peed a couple of drops, yikes! The boy cats had been chasing her, so I thought maybe they had just made her really nervous and I didn’t worry too much about it. Then I found a cat bed covered in pee. Hmmmm something wasn’t right. That night, Logan went over to scratching toy, climbed up on it, and peed a couple of drops again. The next morning I took her to the vet. Poor baby has some kind of urinary infection. The good news is that we caught it. A simple antibiotic shot seems to be clearing it right up, and she is back to her old grumpy self.

Since I got the CatLink boxes, I haven’t been using Pretty Litter, but I do have a couple of bags of it. When I had to confine Logan for a couple of days, I used the Pretty Litter in the extra litter box for her. I have to say, the crystals were turning red, a sign of infection. This morning, a couple of days after her antibiotic shot, the crystals are back to normal yellow. I guess they do work!

Speaking of the CatLink boxes. I still love them. It is truly life changing to not worry about cleaning cat boxes all the time! About once every five days, I open up the bottom, take out the waste litter in its easy little bag, throw it out, and put in a new bag, so easy! When I change out the bottom, I usually add some more clumping litter, and that’s it. Worth every single penny we spent on those boxes! With the optional step in front of the box, there is even very little litter tracking. Truly cat owner heaven!

Time to bring Hector more nuts and some new cardboard boxes, a perfect birthday for my feathered friend!

A Quick Update and a Lesson in Patience

My view this morning, as I’m trying to get some work done, my friends are relaxing and basking in the sunshine, from the bottom, Cali, Marty, and Bean.

I can’t really review the CatLink Automatic box yet. My cats are definitely taking their time getting used to it. I’m trying to be patient, but worrying it might be a failure. I can say it works really well. I’m still using it in manual mode to make sure I don’t accidentally scare the cats, but it cleans itself well. The app is a little quirky, mostly because the English isn’t great, but it works. It notifies me whenever a cat has visited the box, it tracks the weight of each cat, and lets me know if there is enough litter left in the box.

Knowing the weight of the cat that visited the box has been helpful in figuring out usage. I’m pretty sure that Puck and Martin are using the box, not all the time, but visiting it at least. I don’t think Bean or Logan has given it a try yet.

I’m doing what was recommended and spraying the litter in the box with catnip spray, and letting the old box get dirty. Hopefully with patience they will all start using it.

In other news, I’m super proud of Hector today! We have had her for about 9 years now, and bathing her has always been a challenge. I’ve tried all different kinds of containers for her to bathe herself including the shower (with a special bird perch) and the kitchen sink. The only bath she will tolerate is a fine mist spray bottle, and no matter how long I stand there and spray her, it just doesn’t really soak her.

A couple of weeks ago I was cleaning out some pet supplies and came across a small litter box. I honestly don’t remember when I bought it, or what it was for, but it was new with the stickers on it. For some reason I thought it might be an interesting bath tray for Hector.

Two weeks ago I filled the tray with warm water and put it on top of her cage. She tried to spill it, but thankfully it was too heavy. She chewed the edge, then…. she got in! I was shocked. She splashed around a little bit and got out, very proud of herself.

The tray has been offered every few days for the last couple of weeks, and nothing, no interest. She’s chewed the edges, but not taken another bath. I tried again today, and she took a nice, long bath! She flapped around in the box, and spent enough time that her feathers actually look wet. The grey dusty looking coating on the box is feather dust from Hector. Greys make a lot of dust, and it is important for them to bathe and clean it off on a regular basis.

As I’m typing, she is standing on the edge of the tray again! When people say that African Grey parrots are slow to adjust, they aren’t kidding, new toys, new people, new food, everything takes so long for her to accept. Maybe, just maybe she’ll accept more pats and snuggles some day. I can hope, can’t I? I just need to remember to NEVER lose patience with a parrot. They are smart and they learn, but always at their own pace.

All Around the World

May has been a super busy month around here. I’ve traveled to the other side of the country, and hit several different countries as well. Traveling always reminds me how small the world really is, and how similar people are. We all want the same things, happiness, comfort, and peace. We all love our families (and pets!)

I was away from my pets quite a bit in May. Thankfully I have great pet sitters for everyone, so even though I get very nervous leaving them, they are all happy and content. Everyone needs extra attention now that we are back home, especially the cats!

Hector gave me a scare this trip. I got a text from my sitter that she had tried to fly and landed badly. She was favoring one foot, and the sitter wasn’t sure what to do. I told him to leave her in her cage and keep an eye on her. I’d seen this happen before and she was fine after a short time and thankfully the same thing happened this time, but I was very happy to get home a couple of days later to check on her.

Going through my full mailbox when I got home, I found an email about a free 30 day perfect pet class. It’s by Zak George, a trainer I had watched before. I dug into it a little bit and it does seem to be totally free. It is affiliated with Pupford so there is some advertising to wade through, but it hasn’t been bad so far. Cali is 9 years old, definitely to a puppy, but she does have some annoying habits. I thought it might be fun to give it a try and share my results here. My goals would be simply to get Cali listening better. For example, she knows to come when call, but sometimes just ignores me, not a safe habit. She also barks, a lot, and if I could lessen that, it would make her a much nicer resident. If nothing else, a month of training will be a good refresher for both of us.

Always Be Prepared

Bean and Puck have been super busy lately. Not sure if they are sensing a change in the weather or what, but there is lots of running, climbing, pouncing, and wrestling. Bean has become obsessed with watching hockey. We worry he is going to take down the TV one of these days!

The other pets are doing well. Cali had her spring Cytopoint injection last week, and is feeling so much better! The Dragon is eating everything in sight!

Hector is doing great. She’s been very vocal lately and often whistles back and forth with me in the afternoon. Sometimes it is distracting trying to get work done, but I wouldn’t change a thing!

Clipping Hector’s nails shouldn’t be that big of a deal. She’s really good about being held in a towel. I don’t have to trim her nails all that often as she does wear them down on her different perch surfaces, but it has been time to cut them for a couple of weeks. I’ve been putting it off because I need help. I can towel her, but I need a second person to actually clip her nails. We had some time this weekend, so I convinced the husband to help me.

Everything was going well. We got the first foot done in no time. Hector was calm, even making her cute little psss, psss, psss sound, like she is whispering a secret. We got to the second foot and Hector was curling it up tight, so we had to separate out her toes. Second to last nail accidentally got cut too short, ugh. It wasn’t too bad, so we clipped the last nail, and I got some cornstarch.

It seemed like the bleeding was stopping, so I kept holding her and talking to her, I started rubbing her head. Well, silly me, she had a bunch of new pin feathers coming in, and I guess I rubbed one the wrong way, now her head was bleeding!

Thankfully, I’ve read that the best way to stop a pin feather from bleeding is simply to pull it out, and this was a super tiny feather on her head. I was able to grab it with tweezers and pull it out and the bleeding stopped immediately. One problem solved!

Of course during all that, her short nail started bleeding again. Every time I thought I had it stopped, Hector would decide she was done being held, she’d try to get away, and the nail would start bleeding again.

My husband went to look for a Styptic pencil, but we couldn’t find it anywhere so he headed to the drugstore. I’m busy trying to keep poor Hector calm. I brought her outside because she loves to hear the outdoor birds, and that worked for a few minutes. As long as she was still, the nail was fine, but as soon as she struggled it started bleeding again.

Drugstore number one didn’t seem to know what a Styptic pencil was! Off to store number two!

I had the idea of making a cornstarch paste with some water and kind of encasing her nail in the paste. It seemed to be working. By the time Dave headed towards the second store, the bleeding had been stopped for awhile and I was feeling better about not having to rush to the emergency vet. I didn’t want to take a chance on putting her back in her cage and messing with her toe until the Styptic pencil was in sight. I continued to hold her, offered her some water, took her outside again as a distraction.

She seemed to be doing well, so I finally put a towel in the kitchen sink and let her stand on her foot. Success! No more bleeding. I offered some of her favorite snacks while she was hanging out in the sink, but she wasn’t interested in any of them.

Hector was NOT happy about being in the sink. After a few minutes, I didn’t want to stress her out anymore, so I put her back on her cage. She was pissed at me, and made some of her nasty loud coach-whistle sounds, but she seemed OK. I checked on her constantly over the course of the afternoon, and by dinner time she seemed totally over it. She was holding up that one foot at first, I’m sure that nail was a little sore, so she got lots of extra nuts and even two banana chunks to distract her. Today she is acting totally normally, other than not wanting me to pick her up, I can’t say I blame her.

Although I can trim Hector’s nails at home, next time I’ll leave it to her vet. Birds are so delicate, and we were very lucky yesterday. I’m thankful that I’m not a panicky kind of person so I was able to stay calm and take care of her, but next time I’m going to trust in the professionals so if anything does happen, she is already in the right place to get help. It’s also a good idea to take her to the vet for regular check ups, so I can just do both at once.

We also have a brand new Styptic pencil in the medicine cabinet that will hopefully be handy and easy to find nice time we need it!