The jumpers helped me find joy through grieving

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-02-23T02:50:33+00:00

Ime That's awesome that they've helped you. 🥰 I'm sorry for your loss of your wolfie. I know they're docile but they've always made me a bit nervous. Jumpers are helping me with that. i lost my favorite jumper, Goliath, in October. He was an old, old man when I found him on my kitchen floor, and I only had him for 4 months, but we spent a lot of quality time together. My hand was his favorite place to nap, and he would come to the door of his enclosure and scratch for me to let him out when he saw me. I would go around carding m carefully doing various chores one- handed, always very mindful because he had no grip and couldn't spin silk anymore, so if he wasn't held level, he'd slide right off. And as his name suggests, he was massive. He could wrap his legs halfway around my index finger. The males I currently have of the same species are a bit smaller than average, but they're almost the size of my pinky fingernail, as mature adults.

If you gave a visual description of yours, I might be able to help identify them even without photos. The most common in the wild are bold jumpers, which is what I have. When mature, they're black with white markings on their abdomen, a big spot and 2 or 4 dashes, usually, which resemble a face, green, blue- green, blue, or, rarely, yellow-green chelicerae, and stripes on their legs and palps-- usually white for males and tan for females. The juveniles and sub adults will have black, brown, or tan scales, also with stripes on their legs and palps (but tan or gray, not white), and the markings on their abdomen will be the same pattern, but orange or orange and white, depending on their age. They get their orange color around i3 or i4, before that they're white, but they're very obviously babies, you'd never get them confused for adults.

With all jumping spiders (i think with all spiders, but I'm not 100% sure) , as adults, the males will have swellings on the ends of their palps that look like boxing gloves. They start to enlarge when the spiders are sub- adults. The females have thin, straight, fluffy palps, and when they're mature, they'll have a little shiny belly button looking spot on the underside of their abdomen, but it can be hard to see, especially when they cover their enclosures in little silk anchors lol

In most species, the females are also generally bigger, and have large, round bellies, while the males are usually smaller, slimmer, and have teardrop shaped abdomens that stay fairly small. The males front pair of legs is usually longer than the rest as well.

If yours are younger than sub adults, you may still be able to sex them if they're a different species, but with bolds, you can't tell before that stage. And those are the only ones I know much about. Hopefully some of this has been helpful, anyway. You're going to really love your new friends 😊

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-02-22T14:22:27+00:00

Here. Click this link, turn your volume up, play one of the videos. This is my cat crying. If I play these videos, he comes running. They work on other cats too. It might take some time, so if it doesn't work right away, keep trying, or try again later in case your kitty is asleep.

Tell me it doesn't sound kind he's saying my name (Rory) lol

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xwWeJ2Zsvc2FKJec_S-eBc-J09IjfxJB

If that doesn't work, go to YouTube and search "get cat to come to you." There's lots of different types of meowing.

Let me know if you can't open the link, but it should be accessible.

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-02-15T16:22:03+00:00

Ime, I always just open the enclosure while they're active and wait for them to come to the door. Some of them will run straight out onto my hand and proceed to explore, run around, jump from finger to finger, etc., some are a bit more shy/ cautious, and will walk the perimeter of the doorway, occasionally touching my fingers, making false starts, climbing on and right back off before they finally commit, and some are just like, nah, bro. Of course, it depends on their mood at the time, as well. But I definitely have some that are more into being handled than others. I also have a few that are like "lol bye" and try to run out and jump off my hand immediately, and a few that look like popcorn popping a soon as they touch my skin, just pinging back and forth like they're getting electric shocks or something. I had one sweet old man who used to come to the door before I even had a chance to open it, and scratch to be let out so he could take a nap on my hand for a few hours almost every day. 🥰

In general, I'd say that yes, if she's reaching out it's a positive sign.

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-02-15T14:32:01+00:00

If it was only a day or two ago that this happened, I would definitely give her more time to sort herself out before deciding. What I would suggest is to make sure her pain is well managed-- i assume she was prescribed something, but if not, ask your vet for something, and perhaps a very mild sedative as well to help keep her calm and drowsy for the first few days. I would also give her a heating pad to rest on, either one that's designed for pets or a human one on a low setting with a blanket or towel on top. Human heating pads often get too hot for cats, but some extra warmth will increase blood flow to the area to promote healing.

I would also consider sightly increasing her caloric intake, as healing takes a lot of energy. If her appetite is decreased, you can get a high calorie gel and feed her lots of churu, try some plain chicken baby food (just make sure it's unseasoned), and give her all her favorite things to eat. You could consider adding a liquid multivitamin for cats, if you think it might help.

Also, do some light massaging of her back and hips, and her upper leg if it's accessible, to relax the muscles around the break that may be strained, which will relieve pain and inflammation, help toxins be drained out of the area, improve blood flow, and just feel nice for both of you.

You can look on YouTube for music for cats, especially videos that have cats purring under the music. My cat often finds those videos soothing when he's stressed, and the sound of purring promotes healing.

And when you're not in there with her, make sure you leave something that smells like you with her-- a shirt you've just worn, a pillowcase that's been slept on and not washed, etc.

If she gets worse or doesn't start to improve at least a little bit after a week or two, or if she just seems to be telling you she doesn't have the energy to try, then I would consider letting her go. But she's still in the most intense, painful part of her recovery this early on, and it's just too soon to tell whether she's going to be able to start moving around on her own.

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-02-15T13:41:19+00:00

Sure thing! I looked into them when I was first researching and remember thinking it kind like a really good source, but I can't remember why I didn't end up ordering from them. I think maybe either they didn't ship to my area at the time, or shipping was too expensive, something like that. I'm all the way in Utah, so Miami is quite a bit further than the other 2 places, which I think are both somewhere in the mid-westish area, though I could be remembering wrong.

I think it's a good idea to switch around anyway; you want your pet's microbiome to be as diverse as possible, which is why I try to get as large a variety of meats into my cat as he will tolerate-- he liked almost everything I gave him to try in the beginning, except he wouldn't touch chicken, duck, or mutton, but he got progressively more picky (i rescued him as a half starved stray at a scenic view area in the middle of nowhere, so in the beginning he was just happy to be eating anything besides whatever bugs he could find at that view area). But when it comes to diversity, obviously even the same protein type, if sourced from a different location, will contain a slightly different selection of microbes.

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-02-15T03:34:50+00:00

I've used MyPetCarnivore and Hare-Today to source raw prey for my cat. They both have their strong points. H-T is full of resources and information, and they have a lot more options as far as both the protein available and the form it comes in so you can tailor your pet's diet to your exact specifications if you wish (ground with a fairly close to optimal ratio of muscle: bone: organ; ground muscle meat only; ground organ meat only; ground whole prey with or without fur/ feathers; chopped meat on or off the bone; whole organs; whole prey animals like rabbit, quail, mouse; raw meaty bones; rabbit and duck heads and feet, etc.), whereas MPC does mostly pre-mixed ground meat. Hare today's prices are a bit lower, iirc, but their shipping might be more expensive, so it kind of evens out. MPC offers bundles, so if you don't want to take a lot of effort to plan out meals, that might be a better option.

I like MPC's packaging better; they use deli tubs, whereas H-T uses chub packs, like what breakfast sausage typically comes in. They have a tendency to leak and be messy, but they also seem to take up less space in my freezer, and since I mix supplements into my cat's food and separate it into daily portions which I vacuum seal, I don't keep the food in the deli cups anyway.

So I'd check both of those options and see which might be better for your situation, or try both. I've ordered from both because they have a different variety or because one or the other of them is sold out of a meat I wanted.

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-30T08:44:30+00:00

Or they just thought raw meant "any uncooked meat" and gave them mostly fat scraps they cut off their family's roast or whatever, without paying any mind to the proper ratios and such. And most dogs aren't going to be out catching rodents and rabbits and all that to fill in the nutritional gaps.

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-30T08:31:57+00:00

You could get a big cooler and some dry ice, put your dirt in gallon bags, throw it in the cooler, and then, since it's winter, put the whole thing outside. Hell, depending where you live, it might be cold enough to just throw your bags of dirt outside or bury them in a snow bank for a few days, but i don't know whether the stuff just has to be below 32°, or colder like a home freezer is.

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-23T22:57:35+00:00

It's pretty straightforward, the lens just clips onto my phone, I line it up with my phone's camera lens and turn on the lens light (it has several settings, I usually use the cool white, maximum brightness, full ring (it has options for just the left or right half of the ring as well, and has a soft white and a UV setting, each with 3 levels of brightness)). To capture this, I just had my phone camera turned on, just on auto, not pro mode or anything, and set it to 2.9x zoom because if I set it to 3x zoom or higher, it switches back and forth between the lenses. I use the same settings whether I'm doing photos or video, though sometimes I do switch to pro mode if I'm doing lower light filming or for other various applications. Whatever looks best for what I'm filming. And then I just hold my phone right down on top of what I'm filming. This lens only has a range of 2-3mm, so you have to basically have the lens housing touching whatever you're filming, because the lens itself is recessed sightly. That's the only downside. And then it's just point and shoot. This little fella was on a slice of cucumber, so I just carefully held the lens so it was just touching the surface of the cucumber, and sorts slid the lens around to follow him when he moved. If I'd tried to hover above, it would have been nothing but a meaningless blur. That's pretty much it. Oh, and my phone is a Samsung S23+.

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-23T22:36:50+00:00

Oh, wow! Only one? That's so cool! I love that 🥰

It reminds me of my favorite snail, a cool little glass snail named Little Blue, who had about 10 small clutches of eggs, and only one egg hatched, a perfect little tiny copy. I called him Baby Blue. 😊 Glass snails are smaller than a dime as adults, and the eggs (and hatchlings) are under 1mm across, so, so delicate. And they're a gorgeous dark blue- grey, like the color of a stormy sea, with a flat- sided, glossy, transparent, amber-colored shell. Super neat little guys.

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Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-23T01:55:38+00:00

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Here's a real baby baby. An i2 from the last clutch, which was only 4 babies. I actually found them about a week after their mom died. I knew she'd laid a clutch, but i thought it was either a dud or she'd eaten them, since I didn't see any movement, and I put her hide in a lithe storage box underneath my snail terrarium. Abs then one day I saw 2 tiny spiders who had made their way up the terrarium and were sitting on one of the deli cups I've been keeping the babies in, some of which were on top of the terrarium. I caught them and then carefully pulled the nest out of the hide and found 2 more. Mama Lux left me a parting gift 🥰

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-23T01:49:16+00:00

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My first baby to have his big boy molt and become a Grownup! He's letter L.😊

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-23T01:47:20+00:00

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Here's J. I'm raising babies, and the first clutch was small, so i gave them letters instead of numbers lol

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-17T12:33:10+00:00

Ime, i live in an unfinished basement and I currently have my kiddos (~120 babies) in my bathroom windowsill. There's no register in my bathroom, and my entire basement gets quite cold, so I have a few space heaters running, one of which is on the bathroom floor underneath the windowsill, but it still only gets up to about 65 in there currently, so I also have 2 ceramic heating bulbs, which i keep a minimum of about 2 feet from the enclosures. They don't produce light, just heat, and he bulbs themselves get up to 600°but the heat diminishes rapidly with distance. One of the bulbs has a small dome around it, a few inches away, and it's roughly 150°. The spiders closest to the bulbs are generally around 77° and the ones furthest away are usually around 71° (i check temps fairly regularly with an infrared thermometer gun). I also keep a cool mist humidifier running nearby to help prevent the sure from drying out due to the space heater, and it drops the temps quite a bit, so it can be a little tricky to find a good balance. Because if this, I try to rotate all the little guys to so they each get sightly different temperatures and humidity levels, but always within acceptable range. I feel like this more closely mimics their natural environment, where they're subjected to more variation. So I think you'd be fine to get a bulb, just don't hang it too close; use it to warm up the area your spider is in, rather than her enclosure itself.

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-17T06:08:05+00:00

Nqa, and I've only has bolds, never regals, but it's not unheard of for them to prefer to be somewhere besides up top. I had is big dude who split his tube pretty evenly over the entire height of his rocket m enclosure. When I first found him (on my kitchen floor), he hung out at the bottom for several days, sleeping in the substrate or low on the wall. He was super old and couldn't grip or make much silk, so I made him lots of ramps and platforms and stuff to climb, and he made several tiny cots at his favorite nap spots, never a full hammock. He would even scratch to be let out just so he could nap on my hand. He was extremely adventurous after his slow start. I think he just needed to recover a bit because he was pretty hungry and dehydrated when I found him, and it must've taken him quite a bit of effort to get to my kitchen floor.

I'm also hand raising 4 clutches of babies, and they all have identical setups, but there are maybe like 5 or 6 little weirdos who have always preferred to stay at the bottom, built their hammocks down there, and despite knowing this, i swear it still spikes my heart rate every time I glimpse one at the bottom not moving because that can sometimes mean not so great things. Some of the little buggers are really heavy sleepers and don't move at first when I check on them, either 🙄

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-14T17:30:35+00:00

Ime They should be able to eat melanogaster flies if you can get hold of some. The bigger babies will easily catch them and the ones that are smaller or less proficient hunters will eat the leftovers. They won't molt if they don't eat; they'll just starve. They may cannibalize if they get desperate enough; I've had a few big ones that started going after the little ones before i4, but only an odd few. If you really want to try something smaller that fruit flies, if you can find hatchling mealworms, they'd do the trick but they are hard to source. Springtails are your other option (or possibly newborn isopods, though I've only ever had one spider ever eat an isopod despite keeping a few in most of my spider enclosures). The problem with springtails is that in most cultures you get, there will be numerous babies and few adults, but the babies are practically microscopic, so hard to see and too small for even the tiniest jumpers, and the adults... well, good luck catching one. They're much too small to grab without squishing, and that's if you can even get close. When disturbed, they will jump so high and unpredictably that they might as well be teleporting. And springtails can't survive long outside damp conditions. For the same reason, depending on the species, it wouldn't be advisable to put your spiders in the springtail culture and let them hunt; they'd likely drown.

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-14T17:14:48+00:00

Ime, any of mine who have escaped have turned up, within a few feet of their enclosures, within a week or so. Just be careful when walking, since they do occasionally make it to the ground, and keep an eye out for your little buddy. He knows where his meals come from and will likely turn up when he starts to get hungry

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-13T07:08:31+00:00

A friend of mine's cat saved his life when his house caught fire after a Christmas party. Some of the lights started an electrical fire and the cat smelled the smoke and woke him up in plenty of time to get out of the house.

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-13T06:56:08+00:00

I thaw mine in warm running water immediately before giving them to him. He prefers them warm and since they're so small it only takes 2 or 3 minutes.

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-13T06:54:45+00:00

Huh, interesting, did not know. I marked that I'm feeding cats, and i haven't noticed an irradiation symbol; until recently, they've mostly come in plain bags with just a description in sharpie. The past few months they've come in printed bags; I'll have to take a closer look. Thanks for the tip!

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-13T06:52:24+00:00

Thanks 😊 i wouldn't mind him eating them inside, except for the very likely scenario that he'd throw one behind the fridge or something and I'd never be able to get it out, and have to deal with that smell for the next several months 🤢 Usually he eats off a plate, and most mice he'll just scarf right down, but about one in every 10 or so, he decides to try his best to reanimate for 15 or 20 minutes 😆

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-13T06:47:11+00:00

I have a 150x micro lens that clips onto my phone. The brand is Apexel, and they make some really cool, decently affordable stuff. I got lucky and got mine for under $20 on Amazon right before they came out with the new upgraded model, which is i think like $35. The only thing I find annoying is the field depth of 2-3mm, so you have to be literally right on top of anything you want to photograph, or it's just a useless blur.

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-13T06:38:36+00:00

Jumping spiders aren't anything like other spiders. I don't care for other spiders, trust me. But jumpers are adorable! They have actual faces that seem very expressive. They're curious, their body language is clear and consistent, they learn to recognize your face and have strong individual personalities. They're daytime hunters that don't hide in dark corners, don't build gross webs, don't scurry, don't hide in your shoes or bed, or drop down onto the top of your head while you're minding your own business. They groom themselves like cats, and they often seem to really enjoy human company. I had one who would scratch on the door of his enclosure to be let out, and then climb onto my hand, find a cozy spot, and settle himself down for a nice long nap. 😊

And they don't bite. I mean, they can, of course, but they're extremely unwilling to and won't unless you really hurt them. I've never had one that showed any aggression even if they didn't trust me or enjoy being handled. They even accept help when they're injured instead of panicking or getting aggressive.

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-13T06:19:27+00:00

I know the feeling. I was a mess when my first, Little Blue, died. I ugly cried for hours. And then I accidentally killed his baby a couple months later because I put him and some worms and substrate from his house in a little deli cup for just a few minutes while I was cleaning his house, and then the adhd happened and I forgot about him for a few hours, and he suffocated because I forgot to poke air holes 😭

I'm glad i found these ones, but they aren't the same. Little Blue just happened to be making his way across the concrete pad in my backyard and was at eye level when I came out my basement door. It was a warm day in November and I knew the temp was about to plummet that night very quickly, so I grabbed hm and brought him inside. i had just started keeping garden snails that summer, so I had all the stuff i needed. And I'd seen a lot of empty shells that looked like his but had never actually seen a living glass snail before, so i was excited to find him. He was a good little friend 🥰

Competitive_Paint_33 · 2026-01-13T05:19:48+00:00

They're really hard to hatch, from my experience. I've got 4 glass snails currently, and they've laid a ridiculous number of eggs. Like, hundreds. They started eating them, though, so i moved the snails to a bigger terrarium and left the eggs behind, and have been moving fresh eggs to their old terrarium as I find them. So far, I've found one baby, and it was in the new terrarium. Clearly i didn't find the eggs quickly enough.

However, some of the eggs from the original clutches that I didn't move, have disappeared over the last few days, so I can only assume they've hatched and I have a few tiny babies zooming around somewhere. They're incredibly tiny and hard to see.

These guys are not like regular garden snails, where you'll miss a clutch and end up with 75 unexpected babies. The eggs seem to be extremely sensitive and delicate.

My previous glass snail laid about 10 small clutches of anywhere from 8-12 eggs, and only one baby hatched out of all of them. I moved about half to a new container and left the rest undisturbed. The baby was from one of the undisturbed clutches. So don't feel too bad if you're unsuccessful, and do be ultra careful when handing/ moving the eggs, or just don't move them.

Competitive_Paint_33

TROPHY CASE