The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Science & Nature => Topic started by: Golfhaus on May 28, 2005, 07:19:43 pm
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Given the number of animal lovers in here, this seemed like a logical place to vent. We put my cat to sleep this morning. Not a real fun way to start out the Memorial Day weekend.
My mom called me this morning to let me know - Tiger was falling apart. Not making it to the litter box... her back legs giving out under her as she walked... not recognizing people or things that she once enjoyed, like getting her fur brushed. She was old. This was her 19th year. She joined our family on Labor Day 1986, the last day of summer before going back to school. I was 9. My sister was 7. My mom was pissed off at my dad. He had mentioned the presence of a stray cat where he worked. Mom said, "No way." He came home, snuck in through the garage, opened the door, dropped off a meowing furball, and left to return to work. I've forgotten (or repressed, who can tell) a lot of memories from my childhood, but the day we got Tiger has always been there, my memory of it as clear as my memory of waking up this morning.
She was never a people cat. Lisa and I tormented her when we were kids, and she developed a pretty fierce dislike for people because of it. But when I got to the house and picked her up, she let me hold her for about 10 minutes. That was about seven minutes longer than her personal best. I just sat there and cried, while I tried to have my last conversation with her. Do I apologize for all the times I trapped her under a laundry basket when I was 10 and playing zoo? Do I thank her for all the quiet afternoons she spent perched in my bedroom window, watching the scene unfold in our front yard while I farted around on my Apple IIc and Dell 486? I didn't know what to talk about, so I just cried and told her I loved her. My sister cried. My mother didn't. She never had much of an emotional attachment to the pets, and I almost resented her being there. "You must experience this much pain to enter."
It took too long at the vet; mercifully, the important part came quick. She hissed at a dog in the lobby, meowed to be let down off the table to walk around while we waited. She died with her eyes open; I was the last thing that she saw. I brought her collar home with me. I don't know if it will stay with me, or if Lisa will end up with it.
We have one more pet between us, a dog who is old, too. Her time will probably come by year's end. I have no idea what I'll do then, without any of my childhood pets. Without any of the creatures that were my best friends when I went through my mostly-friendless adolescence.
It sucks that people are such assholes and allowed to live until their seventies, but animals - who love unconditionally and often form the bedrock of our families - are lucky to see 20. That seems pretty backwards. I'd certainly let the world give up the dick that flung spitwads at me in 7th grade for another fifteen healthy years with my cat. The dude that gets in fights at every bar he hasn't been banned from yet and then tries to get the women to come home with him in his tricked-out pickup truck can take a dirt nap now for all I care if it will get me another decade with my dog. The world would come out ahead in the end.
She's been dead for three hours, and it already feels like months.
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I'm so sorry for your loss. Pets can be members of our families and it can hurt just as much to lose them.
But she's probably not driving a Subaru Brat around now, anyway.
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I feel you. Sorry to hear that. Rest in Peace Tiger.
~Paul
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We had to have my cat put to sleep last summer. He was 20 and seeing as I'm an only child he was often my only companion.
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I'm so sorry. My parents had to put down my childhood cat recently, too; she was 20, and I can't clearly remember any time before her. I wasn't there for the trip to the vet, but spending Spring Break at home without her was very strange.
I'm not sure what to say to be a comfort, but it sounds like you took the best care of Tiger you could. It's good that you were able to do that for her.
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Sorry to hear that.
We put my dog to sleep nearly two years ago, right before my birthday. When I'm home I still find myself expecting him to be around. We'd had him since I was 9, and he slept in my room nearly every night until I left for college.
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I'm so sorry for your loss. Pets can be members of our families and it can hurt just as much to lose them.
But she's probably not driving a Subaru Brat around now, anyway.
For sure... she's probably chilling at one of Blister's parties, macking it with another cat, saying "I shoot my gun and fur brushes be dancing. They be all 'Have we brushed you enough Tiger?' and I'm all like NO."
Thanks for the kind words, everyone.
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My deepest and most heartfelt condolences go to you and your family, Golfhaus. I've never been a cat person- dogs for me- but I know what you're going through. My folks gave away my childhood dog when I was in college. I never got to say goodbye.
My aunt has a cat named Miss Kitty (she's not too creative, my aunt) who's 23 now. I'm amazed she's stuck around so long. I just hope our new pit-mix Oscar hangs out with us for quite some time. He's young, so it'll probably be a while before we lose him. Our english bull Chelsea only made it to 9 before subsiding to seizures (common in englishes). It's been four years since then, and our new one arrived only last week. We just hadn't recovered enough.
I never know what to say to anybody who's lost someone close to them. I've been lucky enough to lose only a few people and pets in my life, and every time hurts like it's never happened before. No one ever replaces anyone lost; they only succeed in their place.
"'Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." You'll make new friends of animals, and you'll always remember your childhood pets. If having them around isn't enough ,and it rarely seems to be, having your memories of them will always keep them by your side.
Sleep well tonight, with love in your heart, and memories and dreams of your friend.
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That's some heartfelt writing. I've been pondering what will happen when my 16 year old cat finally comes to the end of his life - I've had him since I was in college. He's seen just about everything important that happened in my life from a front-row seat. He's logged 5,000 miles and 13 different addresses. There were times when he was more like a brother than a cat. A very good nonjudgmental listener, too.
I'm having trouble composing myself thinking about this - so I know that your sense of loss is profound and I feel for you.
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I'm not sure what to say, but I have to say something.
All of the pets my family had as a child were older than I was, and even though they all liked me (once I grew out of torturing them), they never really seemed like they were mine. It always hurt when we lost them, but I never felt as bad as my sisters did.
About twelve years ago, Sylvester showed up at our house. He was already relatively old (we never figured out how old, exactly) and covered in scars and stringy, matted fur. He looked like he'd been living ferally for a long time, but he immediately took to us like we were a long lost family.
He was the sweetest, dumbest cat I've ever known. He got confused walking into new rooms. He fell off of chairs and tables. He followed us around close enough to get stepped on almost every day, but he never learned better. If you were sitting down, he HAD to be in your lap. It was not optional, it was pure desperation on his part to get there. He pressed himself into you and purred for hours if you'd let him.
It's been almost two years since his body finally shut down, and I still miss him in a way I don't quite understand. I feel better when I think about how he probably would have died left on his own, and how we gave him ten years of luxury in return for ten years of unconditional love.
I guess what I'm saying is that the time we have with our pets is something to be grateful for. It's even worth the hurt when they leave us.
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What a beautiful, well expressed sentiment. I have only one change:
I guess what I'm saying is that the time we have with our pets is something to be grateful for. It's even worth the hurt when they leave us.
I guess what I'm saying is that the time we have with our [pets] loved ones is something to be grateful for. It's even worth the hurt when they leave us.
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Sylvester sounds like a wonderful cat. It sounds like your family was blessed to have him and he was blessed to have you.
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Wow props to all who have felt the furry snuggle and lost. My deepest condolences.
Cat Story for Cat People who Love Cats:
For three years I worked at a used book store that was in a strip mall with a vet clinic, and I remember near the start of my long run working there, that the first time I got keys and the alarm code, that when I came to the back door of the store to unlock it for the first time in my career, in ran this orange cat. I freak, thinking "Oh, god, I've only opened the door and I've already screwed up." I go into the store, and the cat is totally laying in the middle of the large, 8 foot x 12 foot comic bin, glancing at me all casually. He is ugly, old, and has clumps of fur missing. So I go to one side of the bin and of course he casually shifts out of reach, then to the other, and again he shifts. I continue with my frantic attempts to get him, then realize it's well past opening time, so I open up the shop. The cat continues to lie on the bin of comics, gazing at me, looking very relaxed. Finally my co-worker saunters in about an hour late, glances at the cat and says "Oh, Thomas is here." It turns out that Thomas the cat is 19 years old and belongs to the vet clinic, and he regularly escapes and gets locked out over night, or even over the weekend. The clinic has several other cats that have no interest in escaping, but not Thomas.
So at my job at the bookstore, maybe two or three times a week Thomas escapes from the vet clinic and saunters down the sidewalk, and waits patiently for a customer or one of us to come and open our door, and in he comes. Even though my boss is allergic to cats, he can't resist Thomas' charms, he ends up petting him and sneezing at the same time. My boss mutters "damn cat," but then I catch him smiling at Thomas as he drinks water out of the bowl we always have out for him on the counter. He is allowed to vistit whenever he likes. The clinic tries everything to stop him from his wandering, naturally fearing for his safety, they put a shock collar on him, and discover that he is a masochist - he intentionally shocks himself over and over again, swerving in and out of the door repeatedly for the fun of it. Since the collar does nothing to keep him in, and seems to instead incourage him to hand out by the door nearly tripping people, they take it off. He insists on being carried as I shelve books, licking my neck with a very rough tounge. He eats my Pringles. He knocks books over. For three years, Thomas is almost always around. His fur falls out more and more, and he even tugs chunks of it out when he gets bored. He has such a paunch-belly that more than one customer asks me "Is that cat going to have kittens?" "No, he's a boy." One weekend - a long weekend - the vet clinic locks Thomas out, so we keep in the back room, and he eats my co-workers A & W leftovers, bun, lettuce and all, knocks over more books, and takes a big dump on the floor that leaves a perminant orange stain that I could never get rid of no matter how hard I scrubbed.
I moved on to bigger and better things career-wise, but still visted the old store, and often still, Thomas would be there, and he'd remember me and come for rubs.
Recently, I was reading the paper -rarely if ever is there any pet obituaries, but that day, because there was a very long one, it caught my eye. It read "Thomas the cat, 25 years old," and had an exceptionally long tribute that thanked me and several other staff members at the bookstore personally. It turns out that Thomas had been abandoned at the clinic at the age of 15. He was old and needed some expensive treatment. The clinic had assumed, that at his age, that if they welcomed him into the clinic as an in-store-pet, that he wouldn't be around for long. Instead he stuck around for 10 years. Apparently, he was also known to the staff of the Domino's Pizza that was also part of the strip mall, though they were supposedly not giving him food. I cried when I read about Thomas' life of misadventure turned good. He had found a home for himself, even if an unconventional one, among the soft-hearted merchants of a strip mall. I remember him smuggly gazing at me from the comic files, knowing that he had it made, and some silly girl wasn't going to bother him.
The last time I stopped by the old book store, which is always a cluttered mess, I noticed that a special place had been cleared, and there framed on the wall was Thomas' obituary in a frame, with my old bosses writting over top "An old friend..." My old boss saw me looking at it, and muttered under his breath, one last time for good measure, "damn cat."
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I think the awesomeness of your story has stunned everyone into silence. I'll break the silence to declare that I loved reading this tale of yours.
~Paul
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The story actually gave me a little lump in my throat, which caught me completely off guard. This is the internet, god damn it.
I guess I wish that nice stories like that happened more often. You usually just hear about strays in the context of what horrible, horrible twelve-year-olds end up doing to them, and it just makes my blood fuck*ng boil.
This thread is like the recent Grant Morrison comic WE3, in that immediately after reading it, I want to rush home and spoil my pet.
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Gosh, golfhaus, I am so sorry to hear about your kitty. I am so ridiculously attached to my cats, it's not even funny. I love animals, and their unconditional love has helped me through many a hard time. I don't think I would have made it up here on this godforsaken Alaskan rock in the middle of the Bering Sea without "the boys", Milan and Lennybruce. I have bad allergies to cats and dogs, but that doesn't stop me from picking up my cats and kissing their wee little noggins. I get fur up my nose and have sneezing fits, and my sinuses swell up, and my eyes get all watery, but I just take Alavert or Claritin like it's candy, and it's all good. Some things are worth it, and "the boys" are definitely worth it.
Your story about Tiger reminds me of a good friend of mine, who had a 23-year old cat named Golda. It nearly killed her when she had to have the vet euthanize her cat.
I am seriously afraid of the day where Milan and Lenny will no longer be with me. However, it reminds me of that scene in "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" where Jim Carrey's character walks into the Lacuna office. He sees a grieving woman clutching photos of her dog, the dog's leash, food bowl, etc. At that moment I realized that no matter how painful it is when Milan and Lenny die, I would never want their memory erased. There's the well-known quote about "it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all," and I definitely think it's true.
As far as dealing with grief, there was an article today on NPR about a new type of therapy that helps people deal with grief. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4674922
Personally, I had PTSD and a host of other comorbid afflictions due to some fucked up stuff that happened to me as a little kid and teenager. EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (http://www.emdr.com), really helped me with that. Your mileage may vary.
Zartan, I could not agree with you more. People who hurt animals and children...well, let's just say that there's a special place in hell for those sons of bitches. Gah, I am getting all choked up. I had better bring this to a close.
Kitties are the best. I love them so much. Tiger, I am sure that you are in kittyheaven getting all the love and brushies that you so richly deserve. Peace.
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I think the awesomeness of your story has stunned everyone into silence. I'll break the silence to declare that I loved reading this tale of yours.
~Paul
Thanks Paul
Truth be told my original post was around twice as long, about a funeral of an old family friend that I had gone to a week ago, and how I'd come home and cried, which alarmed my cats, and put them into the "you must rub me, I must sit on you" - mode. Then I started crying about the idea that my cats would die, and I'd have to deal with that grief. Then I got angry about the fact that it's a rare workplace that would give time off for pet loss. Then I started thinking about my dog, who we put down at the very clinic where Thomas lived. Then I thought about Thomas, and I was sort of sad-happy.
Thanks golfhaus, for starting a thread about pet loss - it's something that's hard to talk about with those who aren't animal lovers, so it's nice to have a little forum here. I hope you're doing okay. I know that for weeks after my dog passed away I kept thinking I heard the jingle of his collar one room over, and I was filled with a lot of sadness and anger about the whole situation. I'm glad to hear, painful as it was, that you had some special time to be with Tiger before you let Tiger go.
We'll all give our own critters some extra love today thanks to you.
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Grief over the loss of a pet, it's very real yes. I lost my dog in 2000 and I still think about the good times we had together. He was only with me 6 years yet he made a major impact on my life. I'll never forget about my Mack. He got heartworms and I had to put him down because I couldn't stand to see his arrested breathing. He was suffering. I dug him a hole underneath a beautiful oak tree and my father built him a box. We got all of the children [who loved Mack so much and vice versa] and we gathered by the gravesite. We went around the circle and each one of the little ones gave their testimony or eulogy or whatever and then my Dad and I lowered his box into the hole. Everybody helped pour the dirt over the casket and afterwards we had a bunch of hugs. In all honesty it was the most moving memorial I have ever attended.
A lyric is called to mind. It's Jerry Jeff Walkers Mr. Bojangles, which everybody knows, but in case you aren't it's about a man who meets a carnival dancer in a drunk tank who proceeds to tell his life story. The lyric goes...
"He spoke with tears of 15 years how his dog and him travelled about
the dog up and died, he up and died, and after 20 years he still grieves"
I love that lyric.
~Paul
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I killed my daughter's giraffe on Tuesday. I told her that he had to go back to the ocean. She was OK with it.
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I killed my daughter's giraffe on Tuesday. I told her that he had to go back to the ocean. She was OK with it.
Be grateful for the time you have. All of my mother's giraffe-killing adventures happened after I was of the age of reason, so I was well aware of what precisely she'd done and was suitably mortified. (This may be why I don't have giraffe anymore.)
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I killed my daughter's giraffe on Tuesday. I told her that he had to go back to the ocean. She was OK with it.
"Finding Nemo" has given many a parent the perfect out. Because "All drains lead to the ocean" now.
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Yes. In fact, I told her that Moe was now out swimming with Nemo and Dory. She was OK with it.
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Usually, I'm a pretty good giraffekeeper but something just tore through my angelgiraffe last year - they were 2 years old, and getting big - they were breeding and everything, so the environment must have been OK - but then this white filament grew on everything and just took them out within a week. It was very nasty.
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I had a goldgiraffe once and then it died. I am still sad about this, and this is why I shouldn't ever have even disposible-type pets.
I am considering having a small plant funeral for my friend's aloe plant, which died under my care.
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Man, an aloe vera ain't no kinda pet.
~Paul
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My cat Tenchi died about three years ago. It was the strangest thing. The last time I saw him alive he was apparently perfectly healthy and happy, getting his pet on in the hallway with my husband. No more than ten minutes later I found him on the kitchen floor, apparently sleeping. Then I noticed his staring eyes and protruding tongue.
He was a young cat, about 3 years old. He had no health problems. He showed no signs of distress prior to keeling over. He did not vomit or excrete any waste, nor did he appear to have convulsed, as one might expect if he had been poisoned.
We gathered up his still warm and supple body and took him to the vet. He said he couldn't be sure without an autopsy, but he imagined that Tenchi had died due to a brain aneurysm or embolism.
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Since we're sharing sad pet loss stories, I'll tell you about Jack.
When we moved out here to the country we decided we would get a big dog -- for protection and pretty much because we could. We did a little research and came up with boxers as our desired breed. We watched the classifieds and one Sunday afternoon I called about an ad. Sounded like a good deal, so I drove a couple hours south of here to the breeder's place. They had one male puppy left. I took him.
He cuddled in my lap all the way home. About halfway there I got a flash of inspiration about what he should be called. For those of you who don't know, my last name is Dempsey (Hell, it's been on national TV, I figure my privacy's shot anyway). This dog had to be named Jack. Get it? Jack. Dempsey. Boxer... Anyway.
Jack was a wonderful puppy -- friendly and playful. He grew to be an absolutely beautiful dog. He was solid fawn with a small white patch on his chest. He was very well proportioned and had the most expressive face. People would stop to admire him. He loved it.
We went to obedience school together. He did OK. He was no lackey, but he understood the concept of heel, sit and stay. We played a lot and he loved to run around our yard.
When Jack was about 18 months old Mrs. West noticed that he wasn't feeling well. I couldn't tell a difference, but she's apparently more sensitive to these things than I. At first we thought he might be lonely. We got him a companion, another boxer -- Ginger. Ginger, my big schmoopy, is still with us. He loved Ginger and Ginger adored Jack like an idolized big brother. But Jack got worse.
We took him to the vet. Whipworms they told us and sent us home with medicine. The medicine was hard on him, but he expelled some wormy looking stuff and we were optomistic that'd he'd start getting better.
He didn't. He still wasn't eating much at all and he got skinnier and skinnier. We went back to the vet a couple more times and got different medicines. Nothing worked. Finally they decided to do exploratory surgery.
When the opened him they found that he was riddled with cancer. It had spread so far and so fast that there was nothing they could do. They did the surgery over the weekend while we were out of town to go to a special party for my 92 year old Grandfather. They called me at the party and let me know. Mrs. West and I came straight home. The first thing the next morning, a Sunday, Jack died in my arms. I think he knew what the vet was doing when he gave him the shot. He was scared and in pain. I hope I was some comfort to him. I tried to be.
I brought him home and buried him in a sunny spot in the yard. Just a couple weeks ago I planted a climbing rose near his resting place.
I miss him and I always will.
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I confess that I still miss Rex occasionally -- big, dumb red tabby half-Manx, ten years old, a deeply loving but very stupid cat who ran away last summer shortly after my family moved and was never seen again. It took my father months to forgive himself -- "I know I'm the one who let that damn cat out by accident" -- and his absence is still felt, even with two kittens taking the place of the cats we moved with. (The family's been in the new house almost a year and has entirely new cats; apparently two moves was just too much for the previous cats.) Part of me still mourns after Nermal, a cat we had during my childhood, who was always a little "off" and whom we found dead in the raspberry bush one day. God, I cried and cried. I think I was eight when she died? And I just kept crying.
This is why I can't deal with giraffe anymore, I think. Cats and dogs at least can give you years of love and lasting good memories; giraffe you get just attached enough to to grieve over without giving you any real memories in return. Just too disposable for me.
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My cat Tenchi
this thread is very sad, and i generally try to limit my posting to the internet to either being a dick or to attempts at humor that fail to fail to suck.
pets are wonderful creatures, absolutely the last solace one can find in a mad, mad, mad world.
i can't state anything else coherently, but that dogs and cats are wonderful creatures and that if Heaven exists it must surely contain an infinite supply of couches to chew on and to scratch.
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Sad story, Golfhaus, but you seem to be focusing on the positive aspects of you and your cat's relationship, not the regrets. A good outlook.
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It sucks that people are such assholes and allowed to live until their seventies, but animals - who love unconditionally and often form the bedrock of our families - are lucky to see 20. That seems pretty backwards. I'd certainly let the world give up the dick that flung spitwads at me in 7th grade for another fifteen healthy years with my cat. The dude that gets in fights at every bar he hasn't been banned from yet and then tries to get the women to come home with him in his tricked-out pickup truck can take a dirt nap now for all I care if it will get me another decade with my dog. The world would come out ahead in the end.
She's been dead for three hours, and it already feels like months.
Quoted for truth. Y'know, one of my friends saw me cuddling Milan and Lenny when they were yearlings, and he said, "Somebody nice, what are you gonna do when they go to kitty heaven?"
I was very surprised that he would say that, because he implied that I was too attached to them. Just because they're not going to live forever doesn't mean I should avoid loving the little rats. Living life by avoiding emotional attachment so that you're not let down later...that's not living. That's a hollow semblance of what life should be.
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Wow, er, a Zombie Thread alert! seems somehow inappropriate (given the topic) , so I'll post a pic of the baby kitty one of my neighborhood feral cats had.
(http://www.fotolode.com/images/jaydub/babykitty.jpg)
I've got to find a home for this little guy. I'll probably get the mom spayed as well - though I don't know what to do with her either. Damn people and their carelessness with their pets! (My little neighborhood has something like 10 feral cats, most of which use my front garden as a litter box).
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That is a super-fluffy baby kitty.
Feral cats really sadden me. People around here have the laxest standards for cat care I've ever seen, which really shocks me somewhere where there are quite a few wild predators. We've tried to do our part; we never let the cats out, both the cats we've adopted have been from the shelter (one of whom was found abandoned in a ditch as a small kitten), and we've let one of the neighborhood feral cats live on our carport. In a perfect world, we'd capture the guy, get him fixed and vetted, and try to find him a home, but he's an old and rangy feral cat, and we figure the best thing we can do is just make sure he has shelter and a little food for however long he has left.
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I've had to get out the shovel twice to take care of wild ones in my neighborhood who got hit by cars. I checked them for collars before burying them, and thought lugging their corpses from door to door wouldn't be much appreciated. They were both barely past kittenhood themselves. I don't want that future for this little guy, but unfortunately with my wife's cat allergies he can't stay with us (I think he's a he, but I haven't messed with him close up, not wanting him to imprint on me and make our eventual separation even sadder).
Also, I don't want his mama to move him until I find him a home, and I figure she might abandon their nest if I take too much interest in him.
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That's some heartfelt writing. I've been pondering what will happen when my 16 year old cat finally comes to the end of his life - I've had him since I was in college. He's seen just about everything important that happened in my life from a front-row seat. He's logged 5,000 miles and 13 different addresses. There were times when he was more like a brother than a cat. A very good nonjudgmental listener, too.
I'm having trouble composing myself thinking about this - so I know that your sense of loss is profound and I feel for you.
I forgot about this thread. As it turned out, I know that I couldn't have guessed what it would feel like. In March 2006 I had to put old Spanky down after his kidneys failed. We spend $1200 dollars or so the last two weeks trying to keep him alive, and I now know that what I was buying was time for me to be ready to let him go. He was suffering and there was just no reason to keep him alive for me at his expense. So on a spring day I took him to the vet and came home without him. I don't think he knew exactly what we were doing, but I did and the vet staff were very good. I'm not a big cryer but I definitely spent that day in a lot of grief. I've never understood people who seem incapable of having feelings for animals, especially the obviously sentient creatures that, I believe, do feel love and express love in their own way. I think it's kind of sad, actually.
Aug, excellent post about Jack. That was a tearjerker, too. I'm looking forward to getting a dog when we move off this island. I'm not looking forward to that inevitable event, but we are intertwined in a vast system of births and deaths and it's something to accept, not to understand nor to struggle against.
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Re: I miss my cat.
Perhaps you should try a new scope. Or maybe less caffeine.
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Re: I miss my cat.
Perhaps you should try a new scope. Or maybe less caffeine.
Shaddup, you!
I've married a woman allergic to cats, so there are no more in my future. That makes me kinda sad. It makes me laugh, though, that the two threads that I started that tend to surface are the ones about things around me dying. That paints a very morbid picture. I need to get Mr. Bear back on here to balance that out.
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Shaddup, you!
I've married a woman allergic to cats, so there are no more in my future. That makes me kinda sad. It makes me laugh, though, that the two threads that I started that tend to surface are the ones about things around me dying. That paints a very morbid picture. I need to get Mr. Bear back on here to balance that out.
I have very bad allergies. However, some Zyrtec or Claritin and some Flonase has ironed all that out. My cats sleep right next to my head and I don't have any problems.
Then again, the first few months I had Milan and Lennybruce...well, it was pretty rough. But having a sweet kitten asleep on your chest is worth all the allergy bullshit, especially because I toughed it out until I got used to it. Then again - I'm dedicated and not everybody is that gung ho about cute kitties. Some people might flinch in the face of allergy suffering. The little dudes were totally worth it. Your wife might not feel the same way I do.
They do have the hypoallergenic cats from Allerca (http://www.allerca.com/), though. Look at how damn cute the front page kitty is!!!
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We have new kittens.
Well, not brand new. But they've lived long enough that they've emerged from wherever their mom had them hidden and are hanging out in the general cat population. Cute! One orange, one gray striped.
Circle of life and all that...
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We have new kittens.
Well, not brand new. But they've lived long enough that they've emerged from wherever their mom had them hidden and are hanging out in the general cat population. Cute! One orange, one gray striped.
Circle of life and all that...
Awww... is there some agency that will help with the costs of spay/neuter? I hate having feral cats runnin' around. Are these guys feral?
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They do have the hypoallergenic cats from Allerca (http://www.allerca.com/), though. Look at how damn cute the front page kitty is!!!
These are probably a scam - there are lots of reasons to be suspicious of this company, like this story (http://www.itchmo.com/hypoallergenic-cats-denied-to-high-allergy-sufferers-2019) about how they refuse to sell them to people they think are highly allergic - perhaps because those are the people who are really going to notice that it's a crock of bullshit? And here's (http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20061025-9999-1b25ashera.html) another one about another weird idea they have for selling cats for thousands of dollars. This (http://www.itchmo.com/ceo-with-sordid-past-linked-to-flexpetz-dog-sharing-service-2018) is also interesting.
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These are probably a scam - there are lots of reasons to be suspicious of this company, like this story (http://www.itchmo.com/hypoallergenic-cats-denied-to-high-allergy-sufferers-2019) about how they refuse to sell them to people they think are highly allergic - perhaps because those are the people who are really going to notice that it's a crock of bullshit? And here's (http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20061025-9999-1b25ashera.html) another one about another weird idea they have for selling cats for thousands of dollars. This (http://www.itchmo.com/ceo-with-sordid-past-linked-to-flexpetz-dog-sharing-service-2018) is also interesting.
They talk a lot of shit about how their pets are developed by scientists. But isn't what they are doing just selective breeding? It's not like they're doing sophisticated rocket science here. Ahh...one of the articles omba linked was about just that. Thanks for the links.
Wow, I had no idea about all the fraud and sordid business practices behind these folks. They're claiming on their website that they're going to put a 12-month hold on accepting new clients, since their waiting list is already 2 years long. I agree with you, wombat - the whole thing sounds really bizarre.
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Awww... is there some agency that will help with the costs of spay/neuter? I hate having feral cats runnin' around. Are these guys feral?
Yes: http://www.lovethatcat.com/spayneuter.html#states (http://www.lovethatcat.com/spayneuter.html#states)
My mom and I have 3 feral cats that live in our backyard that we got fixed and give shelter/food to. After the mommy cat had a litter we got the kittens fixed and adopted, then got her fixed and haven't seen any kittens since. I'll miss them when theyre gone. I don't recall any of this costing any money.
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Awww... is there some agency that will help with the costs of spay/neuter? I hate having feral cats runnin' around. Are these guys feral?
They're barn cats. We feed and water them, and that's about it. I highly doubt we could catch them to spay or neuter even if we tried. Ray knows. (http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=11262002)
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We Trapped the mommy cat with a large crate, towels, and her biting straight thru my firefighting gloves.
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dude, orange kittens are my favorite. The concept of the orange cat... is a great one.
Of course, I have had 3 grey-striped cats and a black cat.
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We have neighbours who feed the feral cats in our neighbourhood. They give them names and such. For the first three years we lived here, a cat they fed used to just come into our yard and stare at us, or at the house in general, four hours and hours. He was a handsome brown tabby fellow, with a white chest and tummy, and absolutely no interest in human attention. He would be in our yard, just sitting there, almost every time we looked out. I liked to say that he used to "own" our lot back when it was an abandoned lot before our house was built on it. Before we knew his name he was "the cat who owns our yard" and after our neighbours explained the situation and told us his name he became "Toby: the cat who owns our yard." Last fall, a litter of about 8-9 kittens appeared on our yard - all were brown tabby kittens. Toby was around, as was a scruffy female tabby. It was horrifyingly cute to see these kittens just laying on our front yard, with mom and dad and a few other random cats around, there was one day where I counted 15 cats on our front lawn. After a while we didn't see the kittens anymore, and the Humane Society had an ad in the paper to adopt tabby kittens (with photos!) each named after our street, with a number following. Toby was still around at that point, and for some reason, he came up to me and let me pet him twice. The first time, I was confused as to why he was walking toward me, at eye level, across my neighbours fence. The next time was a few days later, and he just came straight for me as I walked down the side walk. Maybe he missed them. Toby disappeared this winter, and we've never seen him again - gone the way of many a feral cat in the cold winter months. But this spring, a "teen" cat appeared: brown tabby with a slight tuft of white on his chest. At first glance I thought it was Toby, but no... he'd too young. I've dubbed him "Son of Toby" and he seems to have taken to lounging on our front step. He's people-shy, just like his dad, and sometimes I see him following around that ratty female tabby who must be his mom.
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damn, dude, cats that aren't my cats are so rad.