LifePundit

I'll Bet You Would Talk to the Dog

A Toyota pulled up beside me, and in the back seat, which was aligned exactly with my seat, a large brown dog ran to the window and looked at me like he had something to say. (Yes, I am sleep deprived.) This dog had a very expressive face, with eyes that locked onto mine and I felt like... well, like I was supposed to respond. 

So I said, "Hey, Dog." My teenage daughter in the seat beside me ignored this. This was Mom as Usual. I talk to animals. The ones at home talk back.

Then the dog's window rolled down. And he was looking at me like he had something to say, so I did the polite thing and rolled my window down, too. Really. 

Somehow, I was expecting a conversation. The dog looked like he was, too. So I said, "Hey, Dog. Having a good trip?" 

The dog didn't say anything, in fact he scooted up between the driver and passenger in the front seat, as if to tell on me. 

"That lady is talking to the dog," the driver said. The passenger glanced back at me, and I couldn't hear what she said. I'm glad about that.

The dog didn't hold up his end of the conversation. I was feeling let down. Hot air poured in the window.

Lily, my daughter, said, "Mom, did you just roll down the window to talk to that dog?"

"Well, he rolled his window down first. I thought it was the polite thing to do."

Lily slid down in the seat. "Mom!"

I rolled my window back up and pretended to look straight ahead until the light finally changed. The dog came back to the window and stuck his head out of the window, but I didn't say a thing this time.

How to Find Your Rabbit a New Home

Meet Clover, our pose-able bunny. Now say goodbye to her.

You can't really appreciate her from this photo, but I'll try to explain. If you lay her down on her back, she will stay there. If you move her feet/legs into different positions while she is on her back, she will keep them where you put them. Yes, she's a pose-able rabbit.

We've been posing her for two years. But after you've run through all the poses, exactly what do you do with a rabbit?

We decided that maybe she needed another home. A more creative home, where perhaps she would be free to pose however she desires. But nobody I knew wanted a bunny. Not even a pose-able bunny.

Then one day, an e-mail from a 4-H leader landed in my inbox promoting a chicken project. So, I hit "reply all" (yes, if I need to get rid of a rabbit bad enough I will spam you) and suggested that we had a rabbit suitable for a rabbit project. Complete with hutch, etc.

And I was deluged with responses -- none of them threatening to turn me in for spamming. So Clover now has a new home. Happy Easter, Happy Bunny, Happy New Family. Happy Me.

But that wasn't the end of it. Another parent with an unwanted pet saw the brilliance of my spamming the 4-H mailing list and the next thing to hit my inbox was an e-mail declaring: Free Hermit Crabs to Good Home, All Supplies Included.

I don't know if those hermit crabs found a new home or not, but we had a hermit crab once. Worst pet ever. It never moved while you looked at it. I would place the shell the crab was hermitting in in one location in the cage/tank, and if the shell was somewhere else the next day, I took that as a signal that the thing was still alive. I soaked it on schedule, fed it, saw nothing to clean up but cleaned it up anyway. We had to move it out of Lily's bedroom because it could scale the plastic walls of its tank, making a terrible screeching sound like claws on a chalk board. You not only couldn't sleep with that noise -- you couldn't breathe. If you turned on the light, all you saw was Still Life with Crab. Don't know how it did it but it did.

One day the shell stayed put. And it stayed put the next day. And the next day. What a heartbreaker that was (just kidding).

But that's still not the end.

Next to land in my inbox was this reply-all message: "Don't need a chicken, a rabbit, or a hermit crab, but will raise you a horse." And thus went the pitch for a non-free to good home horse.

I assume all is well with Clover. I told a friend what had happened, and she said, "You do know what they do with 4-H rabbits."

Uh oh. "What?"

"You do know what they do with 4-H cows and pigs," she said. Yes, I know. I hadn't thought about this. In the 4-H horse projects, you don't eat the horse.

"Well, they said they'd send me pictures," I said defensively. "And she's a small rabbit -- not much meat."

"If they said they'd send you pictures, it's probably all right. Just hope they don't send you recipes."

Thanks a lot. What else are friends for?

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.

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.

Forgot to Tell You -- I Need Three Mice for My Science Project

The science fair project proposal was due. The night before, Lily said, "I forgot to tell you. I need to get three mice for my science project. The teacher said that they can be class pets when I'm finished with them."

When she's finished with them I'll be the class pet.

"We're not getting any more rodents, don't you remember?" I said. We had six hamsters in succession. We got the rabbit in an agreement with her that  we wouldn't have any more rodents.

"But these are for school."

I'm a soft touch, so I did try to think of a way to make it work, but all I could do was smell rodent urine in my mind. "How long will your experiment last?" Rodent urine makes a special imprint, even if you think rodents are cute.

"I don't know. A few months?"

Her experiment was about learned helplessness, which is how I was beginning to feel.

I was the one who told her about learned helplessness. I heard a podcast about it and wish I could find it to link to it. The basic story was this: Somebody did an experiment where one group of mice got to go play in the equivalent of a mouse Disney World and the other group had to sit in sad, unstimulating confinement. I don't know what the control group did -- probably housework -- not enough to make you off yourself, but enough so that you felt like your world wasn't toppling in. Over time, the mice that went to the mouse Disney World were confident and ready for anything. The mice that sat in sad confinement day after day grew to believe they were in sad confinement even when taken to mouse Disney World. They were stuck because they thought they were stuck. They had learned helplessness.  I think there's a good life lesson here for teenaged girls. If you don't believe you can do something, you can't.  That's why I'd told Lily the story to begin with.

I could see her attraction to this experiment. More pets. Mice are cute. Get to build a mouse Disney World (would she be able to make the other mouse sit in sad, non-stimulating confinement? I'm sure she couldn't. All her mice would end up in Disney World, I promise.)

But dern it all, I'm done with rodents. The smell! The smell! I told her that she might be able to do it, but she had to buy all the cages. Three different ones. And they had to be where I couldn't smell them.

When her father got home, she gushed to him about it. He isn't a soft touch. "Heck no you can't have three mice. You've got a rabbit -- and no more rodents."

Very clever to try to slip three mice by us in the last minute. "But my proposal is due tomorrow!"

She came up with something else, which was a lesson in non-helplessness on its own.

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.