LifePundit

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."

Meet Clover, LifePundit Tech Support

I've been a little under the weather with the same thing that's making everyone else cough and sneeze. The only thing I've got to say is "hack hack hack." Since I'm pretty much speechless, thought you might like to see Clover, my tech support.

If you put Clover down on her back, she'll stay put. Forever. (She was raised by a family of home-schoolers and I imagine has been seriously tamed.) You can even pose her, positioning her paws and legs in different spots and she'll stay there. We call her our "poseable bunny." She'll even stay there with a whole room full of people laughing. I took a video clip of this to put on this blog a couple of months ago, but she vibrates in a way that makes it look like bunny torture so I didn't post.

She's cute. I'm not (at least not at the moment). Use your hand sanitizer even if you haven't been anywhere.

Galapagos Tortoises Have Itchy Necks

When you're 100 years old and are built like a refrigerator, you're never in a hurry. Here's a photo (click to enlarge) of my friend and neighbor, who's a reptile keeper at the zoo, with one of her charges. She let us into the Galaps enclosure and showed us how they liked their necks scratched.

We scratched and scratched (not sure how to describe the skin -- kind of dry but not quite scaly -- not gross but I'm glad my neck doesn't feel like that). Every person had a tortoise and every tortoise was in heaven. They really are very engaging creatures. Very peaceful. (Of course, so am I when I'm getting a massage.) And we scratched and scratched some more. Soon it was beginning to feel like a chore.

"How long do they like to be scratched?" we asked.

She answered, "They'll never be the ones to walk away."

I guess when you have that kind of concept of time (and really, who walks away from a massage?), you're not in any hurry.

One bit of advice: if you're visiting a Galapagos exhibit at a zoo and want to attract the tortoises to where you are standing, put something white on the ground. If you've got on white tennis shoes, put your feet where they can see them. They'll come to the white object. Don't know why, but the speculation is that they seek sources of calcium, such as old bones.

Another interesting thing about them is that they clearly knew the zookeeper and came to her. She said that they also know the zoo vet, and go running away, bumping into each other like bumper cars.

I want one.

I probably should have put this post at The Clock Stops Here, since the Galaps seem to have figured out how to age gracefully.

We Are Now Out of Hamsters (RIP)

Our last hamster, Oreo Milkshake, died today. Went to sleep and didn't wake up. He looked like Don King. Click to enlarge.

We were going to do our Christmas card with him -- the rest of us wearing Don King wigs. We didn't get that far.

That puts us at only seven pets. Oreo won't be replaced because that was the deal when Lily got her rabbit: if you want a bunny, when Oreo dies, no more hamsters.

Most of our hamsters have had peaceful departures. Or transitions, if I'm going to use hospice-speak. One of the most tragic was one named Princess, a black bear hamster and quite a sweetheart -- and escape artist. Unfortunately, she had kind of a Bluebeard's Castle kind of experience. She got out one night and though she could have had the run of the house, she chose to slip under the one forbidden door. Tiger was in that room -- the only room in the house with a cat in it. The next morning I found four tiny paws neatly left on the floor mat -- and a very contented-looking Tiger. (I didn't tell Lily -- she thinks Princess ran away, which, in a sense, she did.)

The worst was Vanilla Cream, a young male hamster that developed giant tumors. He was a beautiful, friendly hamster who would stand on one foot and spin his wheel with his front paws while we ate supper. Great entertainment. But the tumors.... When they dragged and made it hard to walk, I knew it was time for him to transition. Do you know that a vet will charge you $35.00 to put a $6.00 pet to sleep? I couldn't make the math work on that, so I sought alternatives.

I called my friend who works at the zoo. She consulted the zoo vets and one of them said to tell me to put Vanilla Cream in two Ziploc bags and drive over him. (This is what she does to injured squirrels she finds.) Everything about that horrifies me.

Somebody else suggested the freezer, but I couldn't do that either. (I was afraid he might transition into hibernation, though I think that unlikely. It mainly seemed a slow, cold way to go.)

I really did consider the $35 euthanasia, but that just seemed wrong. Plus I'd never hear the end of it.

So I called my niece, the horse vet, who was out on maternity leave so she didn't have the euthanasia drugs (which are apparently well controlled, especially in horse-sized doses), but she said she had vast experience in quick transitions for lab rats. So, bless her heart, she came over and transitioned him.

I'll be sad not to have hamsters. Then again, after six of them, it's time to move on. Just one of my transitions.

Oreo Milkshake's funeral is this afternoon.