August 22

Will had another good day today! He's eating more than his required amount most feedings, and nippling the complete feed every other time. We're starting to offer additional feedings by bottle when he's awake and seems interested but not pushing it yet. He did well again on nursing, was active and doing a decent job for 20 minutes today after which he seemed to be getting tired so I offered him a bottle instead - bottle feeding is still more productive than tube feeding but takes less physical work for him to get the milk out than nursing. He took his complete volume by bottle in addition to whatever he got nursing, what a little piggy! He's growing very well too, up to 5 lb 4 oz today! I also gave him a bath this afternoon, he was getting pretty ripe. Often the nurses get to it before I do, so that's only the 3rd time I've given him a bath but it was completely independent. The nurse brought me the supplies and left me alone which was great I need the practice. So he was a good smelling kid for our afternoon session :)

I talked to my neighbors again last night. They're still trying to get the cougar. It's been spotted a couple more times, and more neighborhood cats and dogs are missing, plus a couple sheep and some rabbits. Nobody has seen it when they happened to have a gun though. The neighbors put up a hunting blind in the field right near my kitchen window, I can see the blind and the tree they've been watching when I'm washing bottles. That tree has the most evidence of cougar occupation of anywhere signs have been spotted, so if I went out my back door (which I do almost every day, taking out the trash), if it really wanted to it could cover that distance in about 1-2 minutes and I'd probably never see it coming the grass is so tall in that field, until it was 20 feet away from me in my yard. Makes me really nervous! My car is parked even closer to cover, it could be in the bushes right on the other side of my car and I wouldn't know it.

The part making me really nervous is that the cougar is acting unusually. Hunting cats and dogs is strange, and tells us it may be sick or injured. It is taking down big dogs and sheep though, so I don't know! Apparently a couple days ago it also attacked a FULL GROWN HORSE! Not an old or lame horse either, a healthy full grown horse in a fenced pasture with several other horses, and those people have dogs too. It didn't kill the horse, just tore it up pretty badly. The vet had to come stitch it back up, it looks like the cougar jumped on its backside and left gashes and bite marks. The neighbors also said that the times they've seen it are always when their kids are playing outside, making lots of noise and that scares me even more. Most wild animals go AWAY from human noises, for it to be attracted to the sound of children playing is very scary, especially with that park where kids play every day so close by. This cougar really needs to not be here anymore, it's freaking me out!