Sorry to inform everyone that the robin died sometime last night. Yesterday morning I got up late and could not find the robin. I went around the neighborhood and then heard it across the street where some contractors doing work had fed it when it went up to them. I bought it back and decided to bring it inside since we are in the middle of a heatwave and it seemed weaker. It did not mind being in the container and it still ate everything I gave it. This morning I woke to find that it had died. The parents must have known it was sick and abondoned it. So sad, but it had another 9 days of life I guess. I have other videos but I'm not sure about posting them.

It is very common for a new cat in an animal-occupied household to be very defensive-aggressive. This is likely to be even more amplified when the newbie has suffered amputation of his primary defensive weapons, as in Stanley's case. Not only is Stanley fully aware that he has been thrust into unfamiliar animals' territory, which is enough to put most cats on the defensive, but he's also aware of his disability in terms of his own physical defense. He's in a "first-strike" mentality right now, trying to scare off the enemies who he sees as potentially mortal threats. I've been down this road many times with many adult cat integrations into my household, so I will share my two most successful integration strategies with you. First, I set the newbie up in my bedroom/master bath and fill the doorway between the bedroom and livingroom with baby gates from bottom to top (the door could also be temporarily replaced with a sturdy screen door). This allows the newbie to view all of the household goings-on from the safety of his side of the gates, and allows safe interactions between newbie and resident animals without any direct physical contact. This provides the newbie with time to observe interactions between the resident animals, to see that resident dogs don't chase resident cats, and to learn the residents' body language and general demeanor. Depending on the newbie's reactions from his side of the gates, it may take days, weeks, or months before I feel comfortable bringing the newbie out for brief visits into the rest of the house. Regardless of how long I have given the newbie to decompress and acclimate in the bedroom, there is almost always fear aggression as soon as I take the newbie out of the safety of his own room. For this reason, I almost always put a kitty harness (NOT a collar) and light leash on the newbie when first bringing him into the rest of the house. With the leash, I can immediately curb and control any aggressive actions on the part of the newbie so that he won't make immediate enemies of the resident animals. I may hold the newbie on my lap for a couple of minutes while the resident animals go about their usual activities, or I may allow the newbie to explore a bit while I follow passively behind, ready to immediately curb aggressive behavior with the leash. Depending on the stress exhibited by the newbie, these first outings may only last a couple of minutes. I let the newbie set the pace. If he wants to stay out of the bedroom and explore longer, that's fine as long as he doesn't try to go after the other cats. The longer he passively observes the other animals, the more quickly he learns that they pose no significant threat to him, and the sooner he will release his aggression. But again, it's all on his time table. My job is to hold the leash and keep the peace while the newbie is figuring out that he's actually safe in this new environment with these new animals and people. One the newbie has started to relax around the other animals and his aggression has largely diminished (could take hours, days, or weeks), I'll drop the leash and allow him to drag it around behind him while he's out of the bedroom. This gives him greater freedom while still making it easy for me to quickly grab the leash if trouble breaks out. If all goes well and peacefully during the leash-dragging phase, I'll remove the leash but keep the harness on. If all remains peaceful, I'll eventually remove the harness, too. I strongly advise you to get a harness and leash for Stanley right away before there is any more aggressive degradation of his relationship with EJ. Unfortunately, when mutual aggression occurs early in a feline relationship, it sometimes never improves. You need to prevent any further aggression between those two if you hope to restore peace to your household. Using my baby gate and harness/leash strategies, I've had cats who were fully integrated into the household within a few days, and others who took as long as 4 1/2 months. Oh, one important note - never EVER leave a harness and/or leash on a cat unattended. Use them only when you are available to keep a close eye on the cat wearing them. Best of luck with Stanley man. Laurie

Let's divide and conquer, Ianbeatty. In order to save these plants you will first need to ensure that you can improve the current growing conditions, and sometimes even the most experienced of growers have problems providing the best of all the combination for healthy plants: 1) Light - How much light can you give your plants? I'm assuming they were kept indoors by a window without much sunlight, as you can see most of the plants are extremely etiolated. The last guy seem to be a Echeveria Black Prince, which will change its coloration into a deep maroon when exposed to prolonged long. Right now, yours is green, which means it very under nourished from proper light. Word of caution, I'm also not telling you throw your plants and bake them in the hot sun immediately, you would need to slowly introduce them to full sun in a couple of hours increment each day. Else they will get sunburnt, and it is permanent! 2) Soil/Water - I don't think I can explain much here. Refer to this diagram on why pots without drainage will eventually rot your plant's roots. Succulents are similar to cacti, they prefer dry soil for most of the time, but they also need the soil to be porous and arid. Mixing in lava stones will help, but I'll suggest you to start a new batch of sterile soil and perlite, and toss the existing soil. Judging from your last pic, you do not ever want is algae or moss mixed into your soil. 3) Once you figured out your new pot and soil, and ensure you can provide sufficient light, you remove all of the plant from the pot and clean the roots. Lay them out on a piece of paper towel and snap more pictures of the roots once its cleaned. We can give you better advise from there. Something more advance is that you should behead your Echeveria and re-root it like how Andy does his here, you will have a much healthier plant in the long term. Bernard

This is the second baby robin dead in our backyard . the first one was back a few years ago . There was a nest built on our patio chair which was very close to our window so we could watch clearly from inside. We almost didn't go outside to the backyard all summer cos we were scared to disturb the babies and parents robin ( except one time we dug some wombs and put them on the ground near the nest .. mummy robin picked all up and fed the babies . ) Luckily I didn't have many plants at all so it's ok not to water that summer one of the babies was born late so he's the smallest and weakest . He always couldn't get his food as the mummy fed most wombs to other stronger babies (that's why we decided to dig some wombs so every single one of them could get something ) . But still .. it didn't help much . We were right , all babies left the nest but this poor little guy died in there :(