Obie

Carolyn's cat Obie passed away yesterday at the age of 17(?). I adopted him from the Idaho Humane Society back in 2002, before we were married. The last couple of years he started to have problems and he got to live in the garage. Obie wanted to be an outdoor kitty and he had free range to come and go as he pleased.

Since last summer though he has only ventured out of the garage when I was working in the driveway. We set him up with a couple of large (4' x 2') litter boxes and his own elevated, insulated, and heated sleeping platform. He got fresh food and water twice a day and he seemed relatively happy right up until the end.

We suspected his time was coming to an end when he suddenly stopped eating and started hiding out in the corner of the garage under my workbench. I was able to coax him out briefly on Thursday and he seemed fine.

Obie is buried in the back yard in a protected area next to my cat Miu. A couple of impatiens were planted over the graves.

Cat Sitting

This last week I've been cat-sitting for some friends that are out of state on vacation.  They have three cats, just like we do, and some of them have issues, just like ours do.

The "work" of cat-sitting is pretty much a few minutes of feeding them and scooping their litter boxes.  I do play with them a bit, but I've found what they want more than anything is to just be around.  All three cats seem perfectly capable of entertaining themselves.

Unfortunately that means doing some things they shouldn't be doing.  It is interesting to come over and see what they've gotten into while I was gone.  I try to spend several hours over here to keep them company.  They like having a warm body around so I indulge them while I hop online and work on homework....or my blog like I am now.

One cat has been hiding out big time all week.  She's a shy one that will hide under the sofa downstairs or maybe behind the entertainment center upstairs.  She wants to be around, but not seen. I think she's a "man's cat" since she wouldn't let my wife pet her, but I got to a little bit yesterday.  Today I was completely surprised to find her rubbing up against me.  I snapped a quick picture of her rubbing against the coffee table before she took off for parts unknown.

Well, unknown until I found her on top of the entertainment center along with one of the other cats.

This has been an interesting week, that is for sure.

Polly Update

I've blogged a couple of times about Polly, our Tortoiseshell kitty.  She was "interesting" when we first got her and I got to learn the meaning of "tortitude".

We got her last September and as expected she slowly started to warm up to the other pets, but we were still having some big problems, namely she would attack the other cat (out of the blue) and she enjoyed peeing on the dog's bed.

This simply would not do, but I'm not one to give up so easily and dump her back at the shelter.  We were the second home she had been placed with from the Idaho Humane Society and we thought maybe some of her problems stemmed from not having a stable home.

After an incident where we thought Polly might have had a bladder infection....turns up she was just trying real hard to get every last drop of urine onto the dog bed....the doctor suggested we put her on some kitty prozac.

We were hoping to avoid drugs, but in the end we relented.

Miu

I've just finished with what was arguably one of the most difficult tasks in my 40 (almost 41) years of life, properly burying my cat Miu.

Miu passed away several years ago and I simply did not have the hart to bury her.  Instead I placed her in a cardboard box and put the box in the garage freezer that we really don't use.  I thought maybe it would be easier to wait and bury her after some time had passed.

I was wrong.

Unique Exercise Routine

The wife and I are looking at a possible weekend trip for a networking event and since it is not even a whole weekend away I've been considering what to do with our cat Polly.

Polly needs to take her medicine every day and dropping her off at a friend's house or a cat-sitter isn't really an option because a good part of her crazy behavior seems to be due to the stresses of being shuffled around.

This is your cat on drugs......

This morning Polly was started on a kitty dose of generic Prozac, Feline Fluoxetine....if you will.  For some reason I was against dosing the cat, but she is still having problems fitting in.

For the most part the dog and the cat like Polly, and I have no idea why.  Tessa wants to play with Polly and Krystal lets Polly into "her" room and has no qualms about sharing the bed.  Polly is content to steal Krystal's food and Tessa's water, but likes to pee in Tessa's bed and refuses to come on our bed if she knows Krystal is in the room.

Tortitude?

Everything is slowly getting used to the new pet dynamic that was brought into being when we adopted Polly.  There is still much hissing going on, but everyday it lessens.  Our other indoor cat, Krystal Meth (believe me, it was an appropriate name when we got her) for the most part could care less.  Our dog Tessa occasionally tries to play with Polly, but few cats would want to have anything to do with a big dumb dog.

Having Polly has been interesting.  She is very talkative and inquisitive.  More so than other cats we've had.  Polly likes to jump up on everything just to check it out.  Catching her in the act of jumping up on the kitchen counter is near impossible.  I'd only know she's doing it because she isn't so graceful jumping down as she is up.  At night she loves to rub against your face as you try to sleep and she loves to get in under the covers.  Our only saving grace so far has been Krystal.  Polly won't jump on the bed if Krystal is already there.  They have been switching off roughly every other night so I get a good night's sleep 50% of the time.

In reading up on Tortoiseshell cats I've found that they are almost always female, just like any other calico, but 1 in 3,000 males might have that coloration due to having a XXY genetic anomaly.  Evidently the coloring is tied to that same chromosome as sex is.  Evidently it is somewhat common for these Tortoiseshells to have a bit of an attitude.  They tend to be independent (even for cats), feisty, and   unpredictable.  Some have gone so far as to describe this particular mix of personalty traits "Tortitude".

Oh yes...Polly is full of Tortitude.

Polly

I woke up to this!

I've already blogged about adopting Polly, but aside from that initial post I'd been relative tight-lipped about it.  I found out later that day that some friends of ours had been to the same Zamzows less than an hour before I went there and they were similarly enthralled by her.

Hypocritical bastard....

...thy name is Christopher.

For years I have had one simple rule when it came to pets: we could have no more than one per bedroom, fish not included.  My wife and I used to share our small three-bedroom home with three cats.  Simple enough.

I was devastated when my cat Miu died.  Although I had always considered myself a dog person, I was shocked at how much I loved a "stupid cat".  When we got Tessa it was because my boss wanted an office dog.  That brought our pet total back up to three, but Obie soon was banished to the garage and is now strictly an outdoor cat.  I cannot have a cat spraying indoors and being destructive.  He liked the garage, but not nearly as much as he liked crapping everywhere but his litterbox.  This winter his kitty door from the outside to the garage will feed into the oversized dog indoor dog kennel I bought for Tessa.  Now I'm kind of glad I bought on that was too big.

This morning I was running errands.  I stopped at the store and bought Obie some canned food and picked up another bag of kitty litter for Krystal.  Normally I leave these things for Carolyn to do since they are her cats, but Obie needed food and the litter was at a good price.

I also needed to stop at Zamzows to look for a replacement light for my aquarium.  I thought one bulb had burned out, but instead it seems one of the ballasts is out.  When I went to the Zamzows on Fairview I met Polly, and she simply amazed me.  Extremely affectionate and talkative.  As I type this she is rolling around in the cage and talking to me.  There was just something about her.  I called my wife and asked if I would be a total asshole if I brought home another cat even though I've been telling her for years we had enough.  When she said yes I started to cry.

I know, manly thing to do....but I couldn't help myself.  I quickly adopted Polly and brought her home.   Tessa's old kennel is setup in the living room so the other animals can safely get used to Polly.  Tessa was extremely inquisitive, as I expected, but she is more interested in just getting a bunch of good snootfuls of the new girl.  Her hackles didn't come up at all.  Polly went into a defensive stance and eventually hissed at her, but it took quite a while.  When Krystal finally entered the room, well she paused and stared for a while before hissing.  Polly got a little submissive, laying down and extending a paw while chatting all the while.

Sick Kitty

My cat Miu is currently sick and at the cat doctor getting IV fluids and a series of tests. I don't know how bad she is.....the vet promised to call me tonight with an update, but she didn't. For $600-$700 for the tests and care, I should have gotten the *&^#%@ update.

We returned from vacation Monday and everything seemed fine, but Tuesday she didn't seem to eat or drink any. By Wednesday she was pretty compliant. She'd simply sit whereever you put her and she wouldn't put up any resistance. Stuff that would warrant a quick nip or at least a growl or thrashing tail went totally ignored.

I managed to get a little water in her last night using a small squeeze bottle.....and a little more this morning. I tried to get an appointment with the vet at the humane society, but they couldn't fit her in and couldn't locate our pet records. Lucky I could get an early afternoon appointment with the Cat Doctor here in town.

I told myslef I'd never "waste" that kind of money on a cat, but when presented with the bill I simply couldn't say no. Lucky I have an extra paycheck this month. That money was slated to pay my boss back for my vacation hotel bill, but I'm sure he'll let me take care of this first.

Hopefully Miu will be fine. I'll draw the line at any surgery......I just wish I knew what was going on.