LifePundit

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.

Righting a Book

moar funny pictures

Overheard at the Vet's

Tiger isn't eating. This is very bad news and quite uncharacteristic. So we took him to the vet.

Not sure what's wrong with him, but his white blood cell count is up. Now he's on antibiotics and appetite stimulants and we're hoping it will all get better.

In the room next door was a cat who was an even worse patient than Tiger. This cat was screaming from his carrier. Lily and I got a great laugh when we heard the cat's owner say to the vet tech:

Don't take his temperature. This cat is 17 years old. He doesn't need to have anything stuck up his (rear end).

Amen.

I'm Going to be the Old Lady with 60 Cats

Do you know how you end up with sixty cats? Like a journey that begins with one step, it begins with one cat. Next thing you know, you have sixty and you're reading about yourself in the paper. It also helps if you're an old lady who likes cats and just can't turn them away.

I like cats and they like me. They make me sneeze but I still like them. One day, I suspect I will be that old lady in the paper who's been busted for having sixty cats. Cats are not a banned substance, so far as I know, so I'm not sure how this gets you in the paper, but it does. My fifteen minutes of fame will come with fur.

There are probably reasons why it's not considered a healthy thing to have 60 cats but I'll leave that to the professionals. I can have sixty horses, so long as I feed them. Why can't I have sixty cats? I've got a good start on my Old Cat Lady phase. I've got three cats. I'd probably have five if I weren't married.

And I can't leave them (or dogs or anything else) alone so I should go ahead and get a rabies shot. You heard it here first. I expect my cause of death to be rabies. If so, I hope I have plenty of warning. There are a lot of people out there I'd like to bite before I die.

But here's where the difficulty comes. I like cats, so if one shows up and looks hungry, it gets fed. If it hangs around, it gets shots and gets neutered. I think word has gotten out about this last little item because I've had some Toms show up for one or two meals and then leave.

Kindness with cats can lead you to an unmanageable situation. I fed the horses and cats for a neighbor when she went out of town on vacation. She has three locations in her large yard where she feeds feral cats. It started off with her feeding the barn cats from her next-door-neighbor, and suddenly, she has more cats than the shelter. One is her pet. The rest are feral.

She knows all the reasons why this is a bad idea, so don't tell me about them as she and I have already discussed it. It starts with kindness -- and ends with a difficult decision. Unless you're an old lady with 60 cats, it is possible to have too many cats.

Especially when they haven't had their shots, they're feral and one very cute kitten is obviously very, very sick. During the week that I was feeding her animals I tried to lure that kitten closer and closer, hoping and yet not hoping that I could catch him. If I caught him, I'd have to take care of him. If I couldn't catch him, well, I can't tend to what I can't catch, can I? No vet bills, no heartbreak, no dosing with medicines that make him foam at the mouth, no fights with my husband over What Are You Doing With Another Cat? No kitten funerals, either.

When my neighbor got back we discussed capturing the cats with traps that you can borrow from the Humane Society. They have a program where you can take the feral cats in for neutering and shots at a discount. Great plan. I think she and her husband did it. They don't mind feeding all those feral cats. They just want to end reproduction and not catch rabies. (And they feed the feral cats name-brand canned food! My cats may start to go over there. They get Meow Mix dry food here. Crunch crunch.)

The feral cats show up here and I have good intentions, but because I don't have a trap, I don't get around to doing what needs to be done (shots, neutering, release into my barn). I'm thinking of getting my very own live traps from Havahart. That way, I'll be ready and can do the right thing, not just think about it. There's more to safely catching a feral cat or other wild animal, so to find out how to do it with less wear and tear on you and the animal, check out their web site.

You Can Get Your Pets Insured -- Even Your Hamster and Rabbit!

We've had about six hamsters over the last few years and it never, ever occurred to me that I could get hamster insurance. The hamster(s) was replaced by a rabbit, and it never, ever occurred to me that I could get rabbit insurance. Hamster insurance would have possibly saved me from having to figure out euthanasia options when one of them developed cancer. Very disturbing business that I've already blogged about so no need to talk about putting sick hamster in a double-ziplock bag and running over it in the car. (I didn't do this -- a vet suggested it to me. Want to be clear on that.)

And what about cat insurance? I've run over two of our cats in the driveway (both fully recovered). I wonder if that's covered? (When you have a Prius, things can't hear you coming. Even if they're asleep under the car.)

In the people insurance marketplace, Europe tends to set the trends for specialty insurance products. That appears to also be the case in the pet insurance market. The more I read, the more I realize that for some people it could really be a good choice. By clicking on this pet insurance link, you can visit a U.K. site that allows you to compare insurance companies, learn about the different kinds of pet insurance and even get online quotes. I didn't know you can get insurance that covers advertising in case your pet is lost or stolen, or covers boarding expenses if you get sick and can't care for your pet, or covers cremation expenses. They seem to have thought of everything.

And while you're there, you might also want to do some comparison shopping on credit cards. You can compare the many kinds of cards available and shop for the best one for you.

Catnipper Eats All Our Catnip!

I'm not going to name names (Tiger), but somebody ate all of the catnip plant I've been carefully nurturing along. I just hope he didn't try to drive or do anything requiring skill and non-silliness afterwards.

He ate it all the way down to the ground. Not even a stem left. And the local plant stores don't have catnip, so I've ordered a packet of seeds -- 100 for $1.45 plus $2.95 shipping. It appears to me that there's something wrong with the math there but for my cats, I'll overpay shipping. If it were a chocolate plant, I'm sure they'd do the same for me.

I'm just sorry I didn't get to watch. He's a wild man as he is.

Things We Don't Need: Kitty Tanning Bed

Does your cat like to sit in the sun? Then maybe you ought to buy a Kitty Tanning Bed. Because, you know, your cat needs a tan. Ever looked under the fur? Your cat may be fish-belly white. Heavens! Can't have that. Then again, just how would your cat get a tan unless you shaved it?

For a really funny story about this worse-than-useless product, go to Gizmodo here.

I'm So Sorry the Cat Likes Me Best

Photo of Lily and Izzie when they were both kittens. Izzie, the indoor cat, likes my lap and my lap only. When the three humans in our family are sitting down together to watch "Lost" or whatever other show we can agree on (not yet found), Izzie hops into my lap. If I hand her to Lily, Izzie hops right out of Lily's lap and into mine. I feel sort of bad about this, as I know what a pleasure it is to have a cat purring in your lap.

So Lily and I switched chairs. Izzie still hopped in my lap.

"Make yourself uncomfortable, Mom," Lily says. So I stick my arms and legs up so that my lap is the Himalayas, only to have Izzie hop on anyway.

Lily so wants to have the cat in her lap that she squeezes into the chair with me. We really don't fit, but I figure it won't be much longer before my teenager won't like to be in the same house with me, much less the same chair, so I cope. The cat will join us in this pile of bodies. Everybody's happy. Sort of.

"Mom, that cat is biased. She only likes you," Lily says. "And she's my cat. I bought her with my own money. Izzie is mine, not yours."

"I'm sorry," I say.

"I've never done anything to that cat. Why won't she sit in my lap?" Lily asks.

"I'm probably warmer and softer," I say.

"I'm going to get you a kitten for Mother's Day," she says. "That way you can have your own cat."

Are Kittens the New Flowers?

I saw something in the bridal section of the Sunday paper a while back and I can't quit thinking about it. There was a huge picture of a smiling bride holding, not a bouquet, but a white kitten. It looked even stupider than it sounds, and I like kittens.

I have some questions. Did she carry the kitten down the aisle? Was it sedated? Was it her kitten, or a borrowed one, like the bouquets you use for a wedding portrait? Will her bridesmaids be carrying pink kittens? Or perhaps dachshund puppies?

Am I missing something?

Who Says Cats Don't Care About People?

I love cats, but I'd hate to think my life was in their paws. When you think about cats and fireman, for instance, you think about the cat going up the tree and the fireman coming to get the cat down. You don't think about a cat alerting its owners, Lassie-style, to the fire smoldering in their laundry room. You don't think about a cat saving its owners' lives.

Here's a story for us cat lovers to mention the next time our cat-hating friends (not that we'd still be friends) tell us that cats are selfish and useless, which we all know to be true even if this story disproves that:

In Newberry County one woman is thankful her cat would not let her go to bed on Monday night.

 

"He kept nudging me, so finally I got up and went to go check," said Amanda Moss.

 

Amanda Moss says at her cat Cash's urging, she went and checked the kitchen and her laundry room.

 

She smelled smoke in the laundry room and got her husband.

 

He lifted the cover off of their hot water heater and found a small fire already burning.

 

He and Moss' father were able to get the fire out before it got any bigger.

 

And now Cash is getting some star treatment.