LifePundit

Trying Out Cats

We're low on cats -- down to just Izzie, who likes me best. This makes Lily crazy because she saved up her money and jumped through hoops to get Izzie as a kitten from the pound three or four years ago. If we're watching TV, Izzie will only get in my lap. If I hand her to Lily and settle her in Lily's lap, Izzie hops right down and hops back into my lap. Once I get past thinking this is funny, I feel sort of bad about it. Having a cat in your lap is a most pleasant thing and I'd like it to be a memory from her childhood. Unfortunately, her memory will be that her cat liked her mother better. 

Izzie sleeps under my side of the bed. She sits on the back of my office chair while I work, or on the floor nearby. I have an advantage in Cat Charming because I work at home and am here more than anyone. The cat hangs out with me. Plus, there's that little business where I take care of the cat, feed her, pick catnip for her, clean out her box, etc. 

"That cat is biased," Lily says. "She likes you best." I used to deny it but it is true. 

So, since we've always been a two-cat family, when Tiger died Lily figured it was  inevitable that she'd get another cat. One that liked her. (Note: Tiger liked everybody so that wasn't an issue with him.)

Unfortunately, Tiger's medical expenses (diabetes care and various infections) made Paul wary of getting another pet. If you are a responsible pet owner, pets can be expensive. And besides, Paul says that Lily doesn't play with Clover, her rabbit, so why should she get yet another pet?

I'll talk about the bunny later. I do believe that Paul has a point but I also believe that having a cat in your lap is good preparation for life. No, I believe that having a cat in your life is a necessity, up there with food and water.

So, Lily and I go to the pound a couple of times a week to see what's in. And almost every visit we fall in love. The pound seems to specialize in the exotic, if that's a possibility in stray cats. White blue-eyed cats with grey-striped legs. Cats with six toes. Cats with no tails. Very sweet cats. Very fat cats. A calico that was split down the middle, one side of her face grey tabby and the other side -- clearly marked by a straight line right down the middle of her face -- was orange tabby. Her tail was tortoiseshell with an orange tabby tip, like God had dipped her the end of her tail in orange tabby dye. She was sweet, too. She's gone, quickly adopted out.

The fancy ones and the plain but loveable ones don't last. The lady who works there said that they all eventually get adopted. I guess if you make it into the adoption room you get to live, I don't know. 

Lily is working on Paul to get him to go along with another cat. She's not nearly as good at getting things out of her father as the average daughter. She's too nice or something. Anyway, we visit, knowing that we won't be taking a cat home....yet.

In the meantime, Lily has devised a test to see if a cat is right for us or not. We sit down on the bench in the cat room, side by side. Lily holds the cat. If the cat leaves her lap to get in mine, the cat fails the test. She's looking for a cat that will like her best. (I suggested that she feed it and take care of it....)

It's not really a fair test, because the cat is out of its cage and wanting to move around. If it starts in Lily's lap, the next place to go is mine. 

A few days ago we found a cat biased in her favor. A 9-month-old long-haired male that just wanted her to hold him. His family lost their jobs and had to move. They gave up this sweet cat. We stayed and stayed, the cat never wanted to get down. Lily put him down, and he was playful and followed her around. 

"What shall we do, keep this cat or dad?" I asked. "Never mind, don't answer."

"I've never had a cat act like this," Lily said, holding him like a baby. He was so content, just limp and purring. "I need this cat."

"Call your father."

"That never works. He just gets mad," she said.

Maybe I should have overridden Paul and brought home the cat. This cat was special. But Lily was leaving town for the beach on a confirmation retreat with church, and this might sound silly, but I thought if I brought home this cat and was the one to tend to it while she is gone and they never have a chance to bond alone, I'd end up with two cats in my lap and she'd have none. 

That cat is probably already adopted. In the meantime, Lily came home and tended to all the animals. The dog got a bath. The rabbit got a rejuvenated hutch and some play time. The horses got massages. She even picked catnip for Izzie, though Izzie let her know that she wanted something else that Lily will never, ever discover. 

I'm sure there's another cat or kitten in our future. And even if it is against my nature, I'm going to be mean to it (or at least ignore it) so that Lily can do all the cat charming.

And Izzie and I will just go off somewhere in a huff.

We Are Low on Cats, or, How I Couldn't Manage Tiger's Diabetes

Can there be a worse blog post than how sad I am that my cat died? Well, my cat died, and the only crying on the Internet's shoulder I need to do needs to be the helpful sort.

1. First off, a diabetic cat is hard to manage. Especially if they are the indoor-outdoor type. Try as I might, I couldn't manage Tiger's diabetes. I gave him insulin shots twice a day as directed. I increased the dosage as directed. But I'm not a vet. I don't think we ever got it right, and Tiger's blood sugar fluctuated wildly. I rubbed Karo syrup on his gums when I thought he was in an insulin crash (turns out his blood sugar was sky high, so I only made it worse). I gave him insulin when I thought his blood sugar was high, and it turns out it wasn't.

A few days ago he went into some kind of crisis, and we had to put him to sleep. We miss him. That's good, because that means he was a character whose personality we enjoyed immensely (most of the time). And the other thing that's good is that he had a life where he did whatever he wanted (until he was put outside for stealing food off the table or the baby bird was snatched from his mouth), he had no notion of his own death or sickness, and he got to boss the dog around. Even the neighbor's dog. He had a good life. Go out. Get a cat. They'll make you happy.

2. If you have a cat, don't let it get fat. Tiger carried a lot of extra weight around for several years of his life to the point where people would see him and say, "Now that's a fat cat," and that predisposed him to diabetes. Sure, he looked like a street-fighting man, all swagger and beer belly, but it wasn't good for him. Maybe if he'd been a healthy weight most of his life he'd still be here. I've had lots of fat cats, and I'm going to love the ones I have in the future (and the remaining cat, Izzie) enough to not feed them when they don't need feeding. I don't get to eat everything I want. Why should a cat just because they're cute and know how to ask for it?

 Finally, one last Tiger story. A few weeks ago it was very cold and he looked like he wasn't feeling that great, so I kept him inside until the weather got kinder. Then I gently laid him out in the sunshine, like he was an old person pushed out of the nursing home in a wheelchair to soak up the sunshine and fresh air. I ran to the grocery store. When I got back, there was Tiger, enjoying the sunshine -- and what little was left of a very fresh Blue Jay.

Spring is coming, and this will be the first year in nine years that we won't be chasing Tiger across the yard with a baby bunny in his mouth. I'm not sad about that. Did you know baby bunnies could scream? (And they did. It's a sound that will make your hair stand up.)

Tiger, Mighty Hunter, Incorrigible Trash Can Turner-Overer, Attacker of Grocery Bags Before I Could Unload Them, Vet-Slasher and King of the Neighborhood, RIP. Or, don't eat all the bluebirds in heaven before I get there.

I think this just turned into one of those "my cat died" posts. Sorry.

The Fat Cat Diet

Our vet has an obese white office cat (long-haired and maybe a few pounds less than the cat pictured). I see him every time I go in to get Tiger's blood sugar checked or to pick up more insulin or needles.

When I was recently there, I saw a great big fat white cat -- shaved and sitting in a cage. The cat looked pissed.

"Is that your office cat?" I asked.

"Yes. We shaved him so he could see how fat he was," the receptionist said.

"So the cat could see how fat he was?" I asked.

"Yes. So he'd be ashamed and lose weight," she said.

This is crazy. Does a cat care if its fat? Maybe excess poundage is a turn-on for cats. Who knows how a cat thinks? Does this cat have a mirror? Is he vain?

He sure was shaved. He looked like a cat army recruit. I asked, "Did it work?"

"No."

I stared at him. They had a big sign on his cage that said, "Do not feed, no matter what he tells you." And then instructions to feed him one spoonful of a special food in the morning and one spoonful at night. And he looked mad.

"Why's he in the cage?" I asked.

"Because he's so mad he's on a diet that he's been swatting us."

I've been thinking about this a lot. Instead of going to a spa-resort to lose weight while getting massaged and fed slices of cucumber down by the pool, what about going to a local place where they lock you naked in a room with mirrors and stick a spoonful of food through the window twice a day?

Nom de Plume

more animals

Is it Procrastination or Preparation?

It's good to be missed. Thank you, Nancy. What am I doing? Procrastinating! And I've found a better way to procrastinate than blogging: cleaning up and making plans for 2009.

Sort of like planning your New Year's resolutions early, only without actually having to start them for a month.

I've also been driving. Soon I'll be a Teamster, just from hauling Lily around where she needs to go. Minimum of 60 miles per day. More than that if she actually goes anywhere other than school.

So what's going to be different in 2009?

I'm going to be walking while working. I've got a new treadmill and Paul is going to build me a desk (right Paul?) as soon as he's finished renovating his new office and moving in (scheduled for this weekend. The toilet is out of our den!). Right now I'm using a piece of pink Styrofoam for my treadmill desk but it's not very stable. Walking while working is supposed to improve your health, your sleep, burn calories and annoy the cat. A Mayo Clinic researcher says that you can lose 67 pounds a year simply by slowly walking while you work. I don't want to lose 67 pounds (but I might after Christmas candy). To see a video about the concept, click here.

I'm going to do JaNoWriMo. I didn't "win" NaNoWriMo, but was very pleased with how much more I wrote so I've signed up for a similar but less technically spectacular (the web site, I mean) event where you do the same thing: write 50,000 words in a month, only the month is January. I'm going to write a romance that you will never, ever see with my name on it. Frissons everywhere!

Then there are other goals that I'd like to keep to myself. Such as not seeing my MiL at all in 2009.

How about you?

Playing God

I knew it was bad when I saw Dipstick, my mother's cat that I took when she went into Alzheimer's care, dragging his leg and refusing to eat. His breathing was rapid and labored and his feet were cold. I made him as comfortable as I could until I could take him to the vet.

The diagnosis: saddle thrombosis. Dipstick threw a blood clot (he no doubt had heart disease but we didn't know that) that lodged in the branch of his arteries that fed his hind legs. Without blood flow, one leg was paralyzed and both were cold to the touch. The vet couldn't pick up a pulse in either hind leg. Dipstick purred while I petted him, but he was clearly a hurting kitty.

I've already been through this with another cat. That cat, Woody, suddenly started screaming in the early morning hours. His legs were paralyzed and he dragged himself around in excrutiating pain. I thought he had fallen from the hay loft and broken his back, or that a horse had kicked him. I took him to the vet and they opened their office early for me. I was shocked at the diagnosis of saddle thrombosis, and with Woody, I told them to try to dissolve the clot.

I should have listened more closely. Even if they did dissolve the clot, Woody would never regain the use of his legs. After a day of Woody being hooked up to IVs transporting every clot dissolver known to man, I got a phone call that they couldn't save him. He was getting much worse. I went to the vet's office to see my beautiful Woody panting, eyes glazed with medication and seeming to suffer. The vet euthanized him immediately, which was probably several hours after it should have happened. 

Dipstick didn't scream with pain like Woody did, but he was clearly hurting. The options were the same as with Woody, but this time, I decided not to try to save a cat that was suffering and would continue to suffer. I hate playing God.

The vet said it was possible that the clot-dissolving drugs would work, but that he had only been able to save one cat with them in his whole career. And that cat had developed the same problem two months later and had to be euthanized.

I said goodbye to Dipstick and petted him while they tried to sedate him before euthanasia. His blood flow was so poor that the sedation didn't work. Though I am usually with my pets when I have them euthanized, I couldn't do it this morning. Something about Dipstick being my mother's cat made it extra hard.

Dipstick got his name from Lily when she was quite young and had just seen 102 Dalmations. There was a puppy with that name who also had a black tail and a mainly white body in the movie, just like my mother's cat, Dipstick. Dipstick was a good companion for my mother when she was in the early stages of Alzheimer's. He went where she went and kept her company. She loved him. Now she doesn't remember either of us.

I wish I could have done more for him than provide a merciful death.

Tree Cat Adopted by Neighbors

I left a voicemail yesterday for my good friend and neighbor that we'd gotten the cat down out of the tree and now she needed to come get it.

This was a joke.

Last night she came, with her son, and got the cat. I must be better at voicemails than I thought.

While Paul and I were watching a movie last night I saw headlights come up the driveway. "Uh oh," I said. "They're bringing the cat back."

But it was just a car turning around.

Hallelujah!

Cat Rescued after Eight Days in Tree!

She's down! After one week living in a squirrel's nest 30 feet above the good, safe earth, the cat is down.

The Humane Society said not to worry, cats were survivors and would come down. Animal Control doesn't rescue cats from trees. The fire department didn't answer either phone number (I didn't dare call 911). I couldn't find any macho bubbas to help out, either. You could hear the cat crying from our bedroom. It was enough to tempt us to shoot her down, just so we wouldn't feel so bad for her.

After calling anyone I could think of, my hairdresser made two very good suggestions. One was to get a piece of PVC and run a loop of rope through it. Use the PVC to reach up to where the cat is and loop the rope around its body. Tighten the rope and lower the cat down. (This idea was after she called her husband because she was worried about the cat.)

The other suggestion was to call our local TV station that has a program about solving local people's problems and tell them I have a very photogenic problem they can solve. So I did and left a voicemail.

Next I told Paul that I had called WIS-TV, which horrified him because he didn’t want them out here filming (they never called me back) so he sprung into action. Not that he had been inactive before, but he liked the idea of the rope and the PVC and arranged that very thing. Trouble is, he could only get the cat's foot or a neck hooked. It was like fishing for a cat in a tree. The cat was over 30 feet up.

Then Paul did something I couldn’t believe. He shimmied up the tree like Mowgli in “The Jungle Book.” He went up like a squirrel. No grasping of tree limbs (since the tree was bald in the middle section), just arms and legs around the trunk. I thought he was probably going to find out whether or not he could fly, but he made it. Then he caught the cat and climbed down by setting her on different branches as he went down, then would go down a little, grab the cat and put the cat on a lower branch, etc. Of course at one point the cat hung onto the tree and wouldn’t let go.

The cat is FAT! Not obese, but robust in figure. One week in the tree and no food. I don’t believe this cat ever came down. The cat food I left out and the tuna were untouched until Tiger found them. I think it was a 300 lb. cat that is now a 200 lb. cat. She’s got a beautiful coat, lovely green eyes and is so friendly you can’t take her picture. (I’m trying to do a flyer to stick in mailboxes – this cat has to be somebody’s pet.) The first thing she wanted to do was come inside. And she rubs on you and rubs on you and rubs on you and purrs and talks. I could get used to this cat. Of course, that would make 4.

I took the cat to a nearby vet clinic and they scanned for a microchip. No microchip but they confirmed that it’s a female cat. I asked the attendant to check and he pulled up her tail. She squirted poo on him – I didn’t know cats did that. They had a word for it and said that cats do it in the wild when they’re scared. If I even mention this to my husband, I’m sure he won’t even like the idea of a poo-squiring cat sleeping on our porch while we look for a home.

It's so nice to have her out of the tree. She was up there one night when it was only 20 degrees! Now, to find her owner or a home. (Or talk Paul into letting us have four cats, two horses, a dog and a rabbit.)

How Long Can a Cat Live in a Tree?

Last Thursday morning while out picking dandelions for the rabbit that I swore I wouldn't end up taking care of, I heard a mewing. I thought it was coming from the woodpile. Nope. It was coming from 40-feet up a not very accessible pine tree.

A stray cat with a loud opinion. "I want down!" it's been screaming. I'm about to start screaming, too.

This looks like a nice, friendly, sweet, cautious, stupid cat. She (I have no idea what gender this cat is but it appears to have possibly nursed at some point, hopefully not last week) talks to you and writhes around the tree limbs and trunk. She rubs her head on the branches while she talks to you and looks like somebody I would love to pet. If I had 40-foot arms. I've called a few neighbors and nobody knows whose cat she is.

Every day we try to coax her down. Every day she winds around the tree trunk way up high, sometimes going higher but never going lower. She sleeps in a squirrel's nest.

On Saturday Paul stood a 20-foot-ladder at the bottom of the tree, climbed it, and put up another long ladder. Surprisingly, he had enough sense not to climb beyond the top of the ladder on the ground. The cat will put her paws on the top rung, cry pitifully, and wind back around the tree.

We've rattled food. We've called sweetly. We have considered throwing things but haven't done so. The cat's been up there for over five days. It's been cold, rainy and windy. I'm glad to report that the cat's voice remains strong.

Yesterday I climbed partway up the lower ladder and put out an opened can of tuna. I thought that the smell would travel up the tree and lure the cat down. It didn't work.

I told Paul that I'd put the can there. So, it wasn't my fault, was it, when he climbed the ladder this morning for his daily conversation with this cat and the can of tuna cat food fell off the ladder, tuna-side down, and whomped him in the head. He had just had his shower, freshly washed hair and was dressed for work.

I told him that maybe he would be more successful with the cat since he was fragrant with tuna. He didn't find this funny but perhaps he will one day.

The cat was eager to come down. We must have coaxed and cooed for 30 minutes in the cold. Paul lifted the top ladder right to where the cat sat on a limb. The cat would touch the ladder with her paw, then make another trip around the tree trunk, crying.

I think we were all about to cry.

Then Paul got stuck, and realized that the tree limbs he had used to climb up higher than the bottom ladder were dead..... I thought I was going to have to call the fire department to rescue him, but he got down.

Paul had to take another shower to wash off the tuna. The laundry smells of tuna and I have a load of clothes going. The cat's still in the tree.

The tuna-splattered ladders are still in place. Maybe I'll have good news tomorrow.

Lion Cubs on Display at Our Zoo

Our zoo just put "our" lion cubs, born last June, on display this week. Four frolicking cubs! Too cute for reality. I can't wait to see them. To see more photos, go here.

We might have more than our share of rednecks, heart disease (#1 in the country -- I'm so proud) and alligators, but we have an extremely wonderful zoo and botanical garden -- Riverbanks.

We also have some wonderful fiction writers. And this is really a great place to live, especially this time of year. Sunny and low 70s right now. How hard it is to work when I could go out in this weather and see those lion cubs.

Maybe that will be my reward for after NaNoWriMo.