@Shirley Martin, it will heal fine. He was convinced that the best thing to do was to continue forward, which could have been disastrous. Mostly though, he was in full panic and probably wasn't giving a whole lot of thought to anything other than it hurt when I pushed his ears in the wrong direction, trying to free him. My cats have mostly been able to keep themselves clean but Cutie got into something nasty once, I forget what it was, but I didn't want her to have to use her tongue to clean herself off so I decided to give her a bath. That didn't go well at all. Although Cutie was the most gentle, loving cat I have ever had, she became possessed by a demon when I put her in the water. She was way worse than when I had to give Bird a medicated bath when she had ringworm, and Bird was feral.
Bubba learns to climb a tree. I tried to teach him a few days ago, but he was afraid. However, he had more incentive when he treed a squirrel this morning. Ella, who is much older and bigger, has learned to come to a truce with the squirrels because they are not without their own defensive means. So, Ella sometimes chases the squirrels, and the squirrels sometimes chase her, but most often they get along just fine. So, the squirrel was toying with Bubba. When Bubba went up the tree, the squirrel came back down to taunt him, or to coax him into climbing higher into the tree, no doubt confident that, as a squirrel, s/he would be the master of the trees. As it was, this being Bubba's first time in a tree, he was forced to beg me to get him down. Immediately after that, he began climbing nearly every tree in the yard and learned to back down, the biggest mistake that cats make is that they want to be able to see where they're going and their claws don't accommodate going down headfirst. Anyhow, Bubba has had quite a morning. The last picture shows Bubba and the squirrel, although it's hard to see the squirrel in the picture because it's partly behind some leaves. Bubba is staring directly at it in the picture, though. The squirrel is in the adjacent branch. When I tried to get closer, the squirrel went up too far for me to get both of them in the same picture. This one shows Bubba's first venture into a tree.
You probably should have left well enough alone. Now you'll be calling the fire department when he gets stuck up there out of your reach!!
Ken, maybe I missed something in an earlier post, but why do you say Ella was the sole reason you got another cat?
Ella was used to having two other cats around, and since both of the older ones died, she had become less playful. That was actually why we got Ella, for that matter. When it was just Cutie and Lydia, both of whom were pretty old, they were just lying around doing nothing. So we got Ella as a kitten, and she had a great effect on them. They spent the first couple of months trying to make sure that Ella knew that she wasn't wanted there, chasing her off of whatever cat bed she might have decided to inhabit, although we had, I think, eighteen of them. Then one day, Cutie chased Ella into my office and I realized they were playing. She put some life back into the old girls, who lived for another six years. I think that something similar will happen with Ella and Bubba, but Ella is still in the stage where she is making sure Bubba knows that she hates him.
I watch a site called Hope For Paws and I am amazed when I see them bathing cats. In the past I have never been able to give any of my females baths. They simply went crazy. I must be missing some trick or other.
I've been trying to train Bubba to be a responsible kitty outdoors. He's a bit slow picking up on it, but he's still a baby. He loves being outdoors so much that his cause and effect thinking doesn't go beyond the obvious fact that if I can't catch him, he doesn't have to go back in. In reality, that simply means that he doesn't get out as often, and he'll figure that out eventually. He bit me today when I finally trapped him and, while his bites aren't particularly dangerous today, that is a response that he needs to learn not to do. So, Ella will be going out tomorrow, but not Bubba. Yesterday, he did well. He not only came when I called to him but he went in on his own.
So far, Ella still hates Bubba and she's not too happy with me, either. She attacked me this morning, scratching my face in two places. She has threatened to do this before but this is the first time she's done it.
This is the third snake this year, but the first one that didn't survive the trip. This was a larger snake. Actually, I suspect the first two may have been the same snake, who apparently didn't learn from past mistakes. I don't know how long she had been standing there with the snake. She always wants to be sure she's credited. Once I opened the door, she walked back out, then came back when I returned with the camera.
When he's not eating or sleeping, Bubba always wants to play. Ella can be furious with him, hissing, growling, and even bashing him repeatedly, and he seems to think she's playing.
Over the years, we had removed all of the doors in our house other than to the bathroom, our bedroom, and the walk-in closet, but we're going to have to put one up, separating the upstairs from the downstairs, I think. Ella still hates Bubba and the situation is exacerbated by the fact that he won't give her any breathing room. He's in her face all the time, and she's walking around the house angry. I think we'll go with a barn-type, sliding door so that we can leave Bubba downstairs when we go to bed since he has never gotten into the habit of sleeping with us anyhow, and Ella has been in that habit until we got Bubba. As it is, Bubba only comes up on the bed when Ella does, and the result is that they both leave. There's no need to separate the two completely, but I think it would help to be able to give Ella some time in which she doesn't have to deal with Bubba.