Me-ouch
Charlotte had her annual checkup and vaccinations today (got to keep current if we’re going to get her into the UK. Damien? You got one more week, bud). They poked many holes in her. She cried all the way there and sulked all the way home.
She doesn’t know the half of it. She goes back in two weeks to have all her teeth pulled.
She’s got a bad case of the Feline Odontoclastic Resorptive Lesions, which is a dreadful disease to try to write a blues song about. It’s when the cells that are designed to resorb calcium into the bloodstream work faster than the ones that lay down new calcium. Basically, her teeth are eating themselves.
As many as a third of our domestic moggies have got some dental resorption going on — often below the gumline, so you have no idea until it’s too late. They’ve only been aware that this happens since, like, the ’70s.
I was kind of hoping to hold off until we got her over the pond (I don’t like my vet much), but I looked it up and discovered that the condition is impossibly painful. This guy says it’s so painful, a cat under general anesthesia will still react if you poke a lesion. So, ow.
I hope they leave her fangs. She’ll look stupid without. Other than that, cats don’t look funny without their teeth, on account of they don’t really have lips.
My old ginger tom Roughly had all his teeth pulled in old age. I took the day off work to look after him. As luck would have it, it was the day Hurricane Gloria landed in Rhode Island. It was wild. My apartment was in an old, drafty former boarding house and, when the wind really got going, it lifted up the carpets and made them ripple like the sea.
Old Roughly was bombed out of his tiny hairy skull and he weaved his way across a rolling, heaving floor like, “dude! I am so wasted! The floor is moving!”
June 24, 2008 — 2:24 pm
Comments: 67
Government kills kittens
I wasn’t going to say anything — who wants to be a harsher of mellows? — but Weasel finds herself with surplus spleen this afternoon. Stand back!
Remember these guys? There’s not much left of this happy family. Last Thursday, I found one of the kittens dead. As she seems to be a good and attentive mother, the Kitteh Man (whose name is Ed, I think) decided it was just one of those things.
Then another died on Friday. And another over the weekend. And another one this morning. They seemed strong and healthy…right up until they didn’t.
It must’ve crossed Ed’s mind that I might be the mad cat poisoner: I’ve been the one to discover all but one of the poor little blighters. (Oh, and let me tell you: if there’s any sight sadder than a dead kitteh, it’s a mama kitteh trying to lick one back to life). But it’s just that I show up first in the morning. I’m a first-shift Crazy Cat Lady.
Mama kitteh became more and more subdued and withdrawn, which I took for grief. But yesterday it was clear that she is ill herself. Kitteh Ed tells me she’s still alive, but very sick “in the back room.” He may be lying.
No clue what’s the matter. I’ve gone from cage to cage, handling every damn cat in the place, so if it’s something infectious…oh, that could be real ugly. But it hasn’t jumped cages yet. Ed, who has surely seen a zillion sick cats in his time, has no idea.
So! One left. The little dark dude on the top of the pile there. He was strong and loud this morning, but Ed said he wasn’t sure the fosterer would get there in time to save him.
So I’m, like, “okay…I’ll foster him.”
And he says, “you can’t. We can’t either. It has to be someone registered to foster.”
And I say, “well, what do I have to do to get registered?”
He shakes his head, “ohhh…you have to put in an application with the DEM and go in for an interview, and then they come out and inspect your place…” he trailed off and flapped his hands. It’s why they’re chronically short of people who can foster.
Oh, I know why the rules are there. Even with the best intentions, mishandling baby animals can be the functional equivalent of torturing them to death. But Ed could’ve worked out in five minutes if I’ve ever hand reared kittens (I have) and whether turning a kitteh over to me was better than the alternative (duh).
This is what happens when people believe that rules work better than judgement. If we trust people to behave professionally, sometimes they’re going to let us down. But pre-empting people with rules will let us down MUCH more often, because crisis is fluid but rules are blind and inflexible.
It’s nuts to think that more rigid rules mean fewer bad things happen. Hey, you know what? Government kills kittens.
June 17, 2008 — 2:58 pm
Comments: 23
Gaze into the face of pure evil
Not kidding; this is a thoroughly rotten little fucker, this one. One of three feral siblings brought in (and probably spared on account of exceptional — but superficial — cuteness).
The other two are extremely shy and mayhap will hiss when you pet them. Not Beelzebub here. Attempting to pet him is like sticking your hand in a meat grinder.
After several days and small treats (he punched his sister, killed the spoon and dragged it behind the litterbox), I finally coaxed him into playing. Or, more precisely, “playing.”
I drag a puffball/jinglebell thing back and forth across the bars until, siezed with rage, he leaps forward, sinks his teeth into it and, growling and screaming, pulls it into the back of the cage with a series of sharp jerks.
Hates the jinglebell. Fucking hates the fucking jinglebell, lady. Got it?
One of his siblings is already homed. The other will probably be okay, too. This guy? If he ever makes it out of here, he’ll be back in a week. Doing twenty to life for assault with intent to murder.
June 13, 2008 — 4:52 pm
Comments: 30
If I’d known you were coming, I’d’ve made kittens. Oh, wait!
Damien look-alike pops out five perfect tiny micro-Damiens Friday evening.
June 9, 2008 — 12:30 pm
Comments: 13
Bollocks!
I’ve looked at cats from both sides now
From front and back and still somehow
It’s tomcat googlies I recall,
I’m really stuck on fuzzy balls.
Yep. That’s right. I’m going to leave a big ol’ fuzzy testicular cat’s ass hanging off my front page all weekend long. That ought to drive my numbers right into the wastebasket.
Go on. Shoo! Go outside. Tan something.
It’s going to top ninety degrees all weekend, for the first time this season. I’m not sure what I’ll do. Probably cower in the basement and whimper. (For all I grew up in the South, I do my best Aunt Pittypat imitation when it gets above eighty-five).
June 6, 2008 — 12:55 pm
Comments: 39
Peensch!
What little weasel is the numero uno Google images hit for “cat testicles”? Uh-huh.
I was looking for a picture for Gibby, who isn’t sure what cat baubles look like. I’ll try to take a picture of that big orange bastard next time I’m at Animal Control (dude has a pair, which is undoubtedly how he ended up in animal control).
I owned a big orange bastard just like him once. Wonderful cat. Name of Norbert. He deserved a better name than that, but he was three when I got him and I didn’t feel entitled. First time I took him to the vet, the receptionist asked his name and I said, “Norbert…well, roughly.”
Oh, you guessed! Ever after, I got annual checkup notices addressed to Roughly Weasel.
Roughly was a wonderful people cat, but hell on other animals. Fought constantly. I inherited him because his last family went broke having him stitched up all the time. I made him an inside cat, and he still managed to get loose and get bust up fighting with a cat in the building.
So I take him to have this latest boo-boo sutured and it occurs to me…maybe — I wasn’t all that clear on the ordinary appearance of cat baubles myself — maybe he wasn’t thoroughly neutered. Maybe what they do is, like, little kitty vasectomies and they missed a snip. Or something.
So I say to the vet, “you know, he’s awfully aggressive. Are you sure he’s…ummm…completely neutered?”
And the vet snorts, crosses his arms and says, “pinch his scrotum!”
And I go, “WHAT?!”
And he says, “go on! Pinch it!”
And I go, “no, that’s okay, I trust your…”
“PINCH IT!”
Poor old Roughly is stretched out on the steel table with a big supperating owie on his back, and I reach out and honk his ballsack. He whips around and gives me a look like, “holy FUCK, lady! WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?!”
Honestly, though, if I didn’t know what cat testicles should look like, how the hell did the vet expect me to know what they should feel like?
Not long after, my mother’s vet invited her to be present at her own cat’s neutering (men flirted with my mother in the strangest ways). It’s a process the involves much pulling and twisting. Mother could describe the experience in a way that made grown men go white and shake like leaves on a palsy tree.
In conclusion: cat testicles!
June 5, 2008 — 2:30 pm
Comments: 50
Cheer up, minions! Kittens!
Kittens! Tender, delicious kittens! The Providence pound is full of ’em.
Eleven, at the moment. All too young to play with. They just bumble around and scream and shit.
More on the way. Two of the girls in the front room are with kitten, alas. (One of them looks so much like my photo of Damien that the Kitteh Wrangler called me in to have a look, on the off-chance that I don’t know a testicle when I see one).
So it looks like my PR campaign — Have Your Pets Spayed Or I Will Personally Come to Your Home and Break Your Nose with a Tire Iron — hasn’t been 100% successful yet.
Dang.
June 4, 2008 — 1:46 pm
Comments: 42
Comfort from an unexpected quarter
No, this is not Damien. He’s still AWOL. I’ve been putting off one particular chore — visiting the pound in person — because I expected to be slapped in the face with a yowling slice of pussycat hell. Kitty Auschwitz. Okay, mostly I was bracing to fall in love with every cat in sight and be inconsolable when I couldn’t take them all home.
Instead, it was strangely comforting.
I signed in — name, address and phone number — and they pointed me to the Cat Room. It’s a small room with about 20 cages. Yesterday, there were five cats and one kitten. I was by myself in there. Yeah. It was smoochie time.
For a second, I thought I spotted Damien, but it was a little stripey female with a bit of brown on her coat and a rough, cigarette-y meow. Probably meowed herself hoarse, poor thing. She’d only been there a few days and she had a clear mark where a collar had been. It took me a while to locate the kitten. He was across from the others and coal black. I found him via his progressively angry mew, as in, “hey lady! Kitten being cute over here!”
I’m a hard-core cat watcher. I do my best not to anthropomorphize them or overestimate their intelligence, but I’d love to know exactly what goes on in those little hairy brain pans. There’s no doubt in my mind those cats knew the score. They were auditioning for me, and giving it their best shot (except the kitten, who doesn’t have to try). Not screaming and flailing, but displaying behaviors ten thousand generations of their kind employ to dissolve cat-loving slop-bags such as this writer into puddles of goo.
I know my guess is right, because they behaved very differently today. They recognized me. They were grateful for the ear skritches, but each one waited quietly and patiently for his or her turn.
Oh, yes. I went back today. The manager is a likeable, upbeat guy and very grateful when visitors spend time with the cats. Keeps them sociable and adoptable. And he’s moving them out, too; four got adopted Saturday. The Damien-like little girl was adopted while I was there. The kitten got snapped up later. New cats appeared in their places, of course. There are always more.
Okay. Yes. It’s sad that I have to leave them there. But I know I made those nice moggies feel better and, on balance, that made me happier than it made me sad.
I can’t go every day. They’re only open while I’m at work, it’s fifteen minutes each way and I only theoretically get a half-hour lunch. But I’m going back.
And next time, I’m bringing string.
UPDATE: okay, this is just weird. I was chatting with my neighbors in back, and one of them asked if that was my cat in the flyer, and when I said yes, she said, “but he’s been here all along. I know for sure I saw him Sunday, standing right there.”
From what I understand, there’s a litter of new kittens (or maybe just a gang of young cats) about, and another of my neighbors is feeding them. If he’s warm, fed and amongst friends…yeah, I guess I could see that. He always liked being around other cats, and Charlotte hates him with a flamey hate (and deservedly. He’s always trying to suckle her or steal her food).
If he’s fallen in with a mama cat who will let him nurse, he’s a very dirty boy. A very dirty boy I might not see again for a while.
May 20, 2008 — 2:40 pm
Comments: 25
Possible Damien sighting
Okay, this is really bizarre.
Damien’s been missing about two weeks now. To get him ready for England, I had him chipped when he was a baby. So, without much hope, I go to his chip-maker’s website to see if they have any advice. They do; they have a little slideshow called Pet Detective.
According to this guy, cats are highly territorial and seldom go far. He must actually hunt pets for a living, because he says, “Around 90 percent of injured/deceased cats that I have found were within a 1-house radius of their own home! Of those, 80 percent were hidden.” He recommends concentrating on the neighbors first. Talking to people. Making up flyers and stuff.
Well, that sounded like bullshit advice to me — if Damien were that close by, why wouldn’t he come home? — but I’ll bounce back quicker if I do my bestestes, so I made up some flyers at work today.
I am neither happy nor optimistic about this approach. When I see a lost pet flyer tacked to a telephone pole, I always think, “ho HO! You poor deluded fool — you’ll never see Mister Whiskers again!” But when you absolutely must eat the shit sandwich, there’s nothing for it.
I was walking to the corner to staple up the first one, and I met a girl two doors down who was vacuuming her car. “What the heck” thinks a weasel and waves a flyer at her.
“Oh my god!” she says, “that’s the cat. THAT’S THE CAT!” Apparently he — or one just like him — showed up at her door some days ago. Skinny, extremely friendly, wouldn’t go away. She said it followed her to the store and she bought it some food. She let it in and out of the house. It hung around for a while. Last sighting, maybe two days ago.
Now, whether that was Damien or not, I don’t know. But I’m as sure as I can be this girl wasn’t lying to me. She was real excited. She called her mother on her cell to gabble about it. Apparently said cat had been an object of some family curiosity. At that moment, of course, it began to rain heavily and I couldn’t fan out through the neighborhood.
Okay. I’m lying, of course. I walked ALL around the neighborhood calling his name and getting soaked, but there were no more humans for me to talk to.
So…how could he possibly be a hundred feet from his own kitty door and still beg for a meal? I ask you! Has anybody else experienced this brand of soap-opera-quality pet amnesia? And if cats really are that scary crazy, will I ever let one outside again?
May 16, 2008 — 5:52 pm
Comments: 82
Lost: adorable fluffy psychopath
What the heck. Might as well give the little knucklehead his own thread. I’m not panicked yet; it’s been about five days. It’s a record for him, but not for tomcats. Stupid testosterone.
I spent some time yesterday calling around various vets and rescue leagues. In fact, I screwed up my list-making activity and accidentally called Providence Animal Control twice in the space of about ten minutes. I didn’t realize it until the guy on the other end said, “call once a day, please.”
He must’ve thought I was the queen of all crazy cat ladies.
Anyhow, here’s the next great website idea: a lost and found pets registry. I know there’s Craig’s List, but that’s where civilians go to trade information about lost and found pets. Vets and rescue organizations don’t have any reporting mechanism. I know, because I asked them. I had to track down all the likely organizations in Damien’s territory and call them individually.
This could be big. I’m serial. You could entice vets and city organizations to participate by describing it as free advertising, and support it with paid advertising from, like, Petco. Write the occasional goopy cover article about people reunited with beloved mutts or the latest in chipping technology, and there you have it.
I’d do it myself, but I’m moving away. Also, I’m butt lazy.
May 6, 2008 — 8:30 am
Comments: 36