Lion and Magic Boy

I know, you’re on the edge of your seats because you haven’t reached proper closure over the matter of my cat and his bloody leaking ass.

I don’t blame you. I find it immensely interesting myself.

I will mention that the scratches are healing nicely from giving attempting to give the cat his anti-ass-blood medication. They probably won’t scar. Much.

And I will mention also that apparently he can get by okay with just one pill every other day, instead of twice every day. Which is very good news.

And I will mention also that either I have lost my sense of smell again, or the output is not as heinous and room-clearing as it had been. Which is very good news indeed.

But.

This morning, when I descended the stairs on what I might add was a morning of The Two Hour Delay (due to the .75 inches of snow we received last night, completely closing Eric’s school), I noticed something unsual on the rug near the front door. Spots of, what is that? Cat-throw-up? Ew. Okay, whatever, I’ll clean it up (like anyone else here is going to).

Later, on the bench near the window, as Eric waved goodbye to Nathaniel and Serena as they clambered into their two-hour-delayed bus, I noticed some, spillage? On the bench? Of some, wet substance? Okay, whatever, I’ll clean it up.

I wonder what that is?

Hey! I should call the vet, and see what he thought of the stool sample I left for him last week (the cat’s stool sample. Don’t even go there).

Me: Hi, vet?

Vet: Hi.

Me: So, what did you think about the sample I left for you?

Vet: Very nice. But negative. No parasites.

Me: Oh.

Me: What does that mean?

Vet: Well, you could biopsy a section of his intestine…..

Me: Surgery? On my cat?

Vet: Well, it depends how far you want to go with this.

[are cats that expendable? He's already part of the family!]

Me: Is there anything else?

Vet: Well, you could give him steroids. How are you at giving him pills?

Me: I don’t want to talk about it.

Vet: Well, you could bring me a better sample. That one was mostly, uh, litter.

[I got what I could. I am not a professional stool sample collector. Besides, the container was like an inch long. What am I supposed to fit in that?]

Vet: And I can give you more of the medication to, uh, stop him up.

[I love those medical terms]

Me: So, my options are, surgery, medication, or more medication? For the rest of his life? Because we don’t know what’s wrong?

Vet: Yep.

Okay then. While I was on the phone with the vet, I noticed yet another wettish spot (what is that??), or series of spots, behind the chair that Eric deliberately pretends to fall off of. Okay, [sigh] I’ll clean it up.

This is about the time it dawned on me that all these wettish spots are not cat-throw-up, no not at all, in fact I would be very very happy if they were cat-throw-up, because what they are in actuality are the wettish and sundry leakings from the ass of the aforementioned cat.

Then I bundled the cat into a blanket (which shall heretofore and forever more be known in this house as The Cat Blanket), covered one of his pills with butter (my mom is a smart lady), and pried open his growling jaws and tried to drop the butter-pill in before they snapped shut. Second try, bingo. I clamped his jaws closed over the butter-pill and held him. His head dived into the blanket and disappeared. I held him for a minute until he relaxed, then I uncovered his head while he growled at me. Those pills must really taste awful. Then I let him go and couldn’t find the pill or the butter anywhere, so he may have swallowed it. Then I put him into the bathroom to chill and stay off the carpet while the pill took effect.

After two hours of meowing, I let him out, and he watched me while I cleaned up the puddle of ass-leakage he left in there. He was contrite and apologetic, and sat on my lap for at least an hour afterward.

I think we’ll leave the story there for now. He’s a sweet kitty and I hope we can find out what’s wrong. Did I mention that he’s Serena’s cat?

[tags] cat, cats, stool sample, scratches, diarrhea [/tags]

Although Serena turned 7, a pivotal age, this past Monday, I didn’t have a chance yet to do more than mention it in passing as I wandered off to other things.

I didn’t yet mention, for instance, how The Ex picked up the children on her Big Day to spend an hour or so with them, then proceeded to take them to a nearby diner and thereby ruin their appetites for either dinner that I prepared to Serena’s specifications or for her cake, a lovely angel food cake with sliced strawberries that we finally got around to eating tonight, two days later.
Nor did I mention the fact that one of the kittens, the one who ostensibly belongs to Serena (but we all know the cats are mine since — surprise! — I’m the one who feeds them regularly), has developed diarrhea since we’ve had him, becoming especially malodorous and texturally difficult to scoop of late as well as causing the scooper much gagging and retching despite a trip to the veterinarian who simply suggested to keep experimenting with different foods until we find one that doesn’t cause that. Hey! Thanks, vet! And here’s my $150 for that great advice! Oh, and I’ll be happy to throw out that $15 bag of organic catfood now too while I’m at it! So this kitten, the gorgeous golden-eyed sweet boy she named Shadow, suddenly began bleeding on Serena’s birthday. From the ass. Dripping bright red spots all over my nice light-beige rented carpet. (And he’s also suddenly been slightly incontinent on my computer chair, the one in which I am sitting right now, but we won’t discuss that now. Now we are talking about Ass Bleeding, which you will agree is a much bigger problem.)

Oh, I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking “Is she sure that cat’s not a girl?” Yes. Quite sure, but thanks for the thought.

So I’ve got exactly 1.5 hours while the children are with The Ex to:
1. Bake a cake.
2. Wrap presents.
3. Cook dinner.
4. Find a vet who is open at 5:15 pm and take the cat in for evaluation and hopefully an instant cure, as I can’t have a cat walking around dripping blood from its ass on Serena’s birthday.

I find the vet’s number from the previous week’s useless and expensive visit written in my handy little book, purchased from the grocery store for $1.67 (on sale), where I’ve decided to write down such things and to thus cut down on the number of 2×2″ pieces of random paper littering my keyboard tray, and I call it. There is no answer, so I leave a message, wondering at the time why this vet who’s been there for years and has put down two of my cats in the past (should I be looking for a new vet, you think?) does not have an answering machine message that mentions the name of his practice at all.

Minutes go by, the cake is now in the oven, a command decision has been made regarding the wrapping of presents, and the cat is in the bathroom downstairs which contains no carpet, one paw indignantly thrust under the door in a futile attempt to escape his prison. The cat’s brother, Nacho, has stationed himself on the near side of the door and occasionally glances reproachfully at me when he is not thrusting his own paw under the door in a heartwrenching act of solidarity. It strikes me that it is possible that I called the wrong number when I phoned the vet, and I check my book against the phone’s redial capabilities to be sure. No, it’s the same. Then I find the number again online. Oops, one number was transposed. I’m sure the recipient of that message must have gotten a good laugh from my woeful tale of “rectal bleeding” and “incontinence”. I briefly consider calling them back to leave a second, explanatory message, but as time is not my ally this night I forego this idea in favor of phoning the actual vet.

He’s there. At 5:20. I’ll be right over with the cat, I tell him.

Too bad there’s a cake in the oven. I weigh my options. The cake wins; I wait 15 minutes.

The cat must be left overnight so the good doctor can obtain a stool sample (now why is it I have no trouble typing “rectal bleeding” and “ass” but somehow “stool sample” gives me pause? why?) so as to determine the cause of the malady. Again I weigh my options: do I cram BOTH cats and their litter box into the tiny bathroom overnight and clean up all the ass blood in the morning, or do I leave the cat with the vet?

I wave goodbye to the cat and race back home through darkness and a weird thick fog to cook the dinner, none of which will end up eaten that night.

The next night, Day Two of Birthday With The Ex ensues, another 1.5 hours, this time dinnerless (leaving me to purchase, procure, and prepare the dinner for the children even though the 1.5 hours landed squarely during the Dinner Hour), and I use my time alone to retrieve the cat, now with an Ass Cork installed or perhaps having received some medication (which I get to give him the remainder of in pill form, and we all know how much fun it is to give pills to cats).

The children come home, Serena clutching a brown furry creature-thing. With googly eyes. She says it’s a dog, but it’s clearly a groundhog. I wrote about it on Babble today. Don’t let my wimpy review steer you wrong — this thing. Is. Creepy. I hate it. It required new batteries last night and again today in order to work, and we have no other batteries. Wait. That could be good. Because I’m not putting 4 freaking AA batteries in this thing every day. And the thing is silent without the batteries.

Muahahahaha!

[tags]poop, cats, kittens, ass cork, ass blood, veterinarian, batteries, birthdays, Scoozie[/tags]

I have no sense of smell.

No, this isn’t a permanent condition. Many have been the times when I have buried my nose in Eric’s neck, just at the soft junction of his neck and his shoulder, to breathe in the sweet little-boy smell concentrated there that too soon will turn into soccer sweatiness and will-you-please-take-a-shower, and is that puberty knocking already?

But apparently the result of the massive sore throat I had before Christmas, which I stoically avoided mentioning having turned into a multi-day headache, the kind where your head explodes and your brain leaks out your nostrils every time you deviate slightly from a complete upright position, is that I no longer can smell.

Which makes eating sort of a useless exercise.

Which also means that the desperate scratching heard coming from one of the kittens inside the Igloo-shaped cat litter box not six feet from where I am sitting, means only one thing. Mute anxious eyes implore me to relieve those poor kittens, olfactory senses quite intact and superior to mine as it is, from their suffering:

CHANGE THE DAMN CAT BOX!

I seriously can’t even tell that there’s a double kittenweight of poop lying there in its rectal glory not six feet from me.

La la la la la.

See? Can’t even tell.

I hear that sometimes the sense of smell can be affected by illness for months.

Hmm.

The judges have spoken: the names of these two cute little guys are officially (drum roll). . . .

Nacho and Shadow.

Here they are again, in all their cuteness:

Thanks to everyone who entered the somewhat bogus (my apologies for that, but I did publish a disclaimer about the capriciousness of the judges) contest to name these guys.

Contest entrants (in order of appearance) were:

1. Susan who has no blog but who knows a lot about naming cats.
2. Sween of Space Monkey Pants who also wins an honorable mention (tie) for the most names submitted.
3. Suzy of Suzy Q’s Life who was also my first Commenter. Evah.
4. Leslieann of Super Duper Jack whose blog I seriously need to spend some time on.
5. Rebecca of The Quiet Storm who did not have any cat names but wished to win a vacuum cleaner and she did! Really! Dreams really do come true, and also she gets a mention for having the longest URL.
6. Feather of Tatterdemalion, who is a Writer and also does not like Thomas Kincaid, so she’s clearly pretty okay, and she ties with Sween for most names submitted.

Thanks, everyone!

[tags]kittens, names, contest, rigged[/tags]

You know the Cat Lady? Everybody knows a Cat Lady. The Cat Lady is the semi-scary old lady who lives at the end of the block, yard slightly unkempt, seen once a day as she shuffles to the mailbox at the curb, wrapped tightly in a long grayish shawl-collared sweater, which upon closer inspection (if you ever got that close) would reveal constellations of moth-holes.

Children avoid the Cat Lady’s house at Halloween, as it’s the only house on the block that doesn’t have lights streaming through every window that night and crazy-toothed grinning pumpkins lining the walk up to the door, thrown open wide to welcome the flotillas of nervous and grinning or sated and entitled children who accost every house with a demanding “Trick or treat!” The Cat Lady sits alone in her house, perhaps the blue light of the television visible once in awhile through tightly-drawn, ever-closed shades.

No one thinks much about the Cat Lady, not until her grown children come a-knocking one day after not having received their monthly phone call. Or maybe it’s the smell which has begun to permeate the yard next door, which after several days makes the neighbor wonder if everything’s all right at the Cat Lady’s house.

The police are summoned, and the door is knocked down. The fetid odor of over-filled litter box nearly knocks everyone over, everyone who a minute before had been crowding in together to see what was inside. Now they shift their feet uncomfortably and try not to look each other in the eye. They all ask themselves the same question: Which one of us is going to have to go in?

The son won’t; he runs the other way during a crisis that may involve blood or hospitals. The daughter nearly fainted. Finally one of the police officers stumbles in, a cloth clutched over his face in a futile attempt to mask the smell.

Inside the house is filled with cats, a living carpet on the floor, the furniture. Faint meows emanate from distant rooms, and the smell of ammonia, coupled with the strong sweet unmistakable odor of death, permeates the house. The officer wonders idly whether they’ll ever get the smell out.

He picks his way through each room, then finally stops short and calls to his partner. he can’t look away, mesmerized as he is by the almost unrecognizable scene before him.

The woman has been dead a long time, he thinks. Days, maybe a couple of weeks. And those cats sure must have been hungry.

Yep, I’ve seen my future just now, as I moved one of the New Boys aside slightly to make room for me to sit down at the computer, clutching my dinner of instant mashed potatoes (it hardly counts that they’re organic), still in the pot.

These little sweet boys arrived here yesterday after much premonition and preparatory discussion about cats and kittens and the obtaining of such. I never dreamed we’d have not one but TWO kittens, but there they are, and aren’t they gorgeous?

The only problem is, besides the obvious magnetic qualities of the litter box and the cat food (Eric’s already tasted some kibble*), these boys need names! They’ve been fostered since I think August along with their brother and sister with a wonderful and warm volunteer who named them Dylan and Wyatt. I’m not crazy about those names, although she explained that Wyatt means “water” and “warrior”, and since he was rescued from near-drowning when he was just a little guy she gave him that name.

Still, when I hear “Wyatt” I can only think of one thing: Earp.

Here he is, copper eyes and all:

And here’s his brother. The photo does not do justice to his emerald eyes:

So, help us out! Whoever posts a comment with the winning names gets a, uh, LINK! To their blog! Yay! And a nice mention about their cat-naming prowess. How can you resist?

But I have to warn you: Nathaniel and Serena will be judging this event.

UPDATE AND DISCLAIMER: Due to the overwhelming commentudinous response received thus far, as well as the almost certain whimsical capriciousness of the judges, I’ve decided to reward everyone who comments with a link! NOW I dare you not to comment!

*When I was about 10, we had six cats. Six! When the cat food Meow Mix came out, my mom was taken in by the advertising and brought some home. Four flavors! Beef, chicken, liver, and tuna. (Which has been changed since then to reflect our evolving palates to chicken, turkey, salmon, and “oceanfish”.)

My mom was so taken by the idea of Four! Flavors! that she suggested we try it to see. Not just her, mind you, but us! me! That’s right, feed your kid cat food.

I did try it, one of each. It was salty, and savory, and they all tasted about the same, although for obvious reasons I immediately detested the Liver flavor.

Thanks, Mom. I’ll never think of cat food the same way again.

[tags]cats, cute, names, Meow Mix, bleeah[/tags]

[tags]kittens, names, help[/tags]