Month: April 2012

I just recently gave notice at my place of business to accept a new position.  I’m really excited about my new opportunity, but I’m also really going to miss a lot of the people I work with.  One of my co-workers, whom I recently just got to know because of our mutual love of cats, was nice enough to bring me a napkin with a New Yorker cartoon on it that had a guy standing above a cat, who was next to the cat’s litter box.  The caption read:  “Never, ever, think outside the box.”  I was touched by the gesture, but also amused, because when you live with six cats, you realize that they’re never, ever going to take this piece of advice seriously.

My house is never sparkling clean.  Or hardly ever, anyway.  That’s because, with a household full of felines, a lot of valuable house-cleaning time gets taken up by cleaning up after them instead.  Several of them have nervous tummies.  Mango scaredy-scats pretty frequently, and several of the males like to let the rest of the world know that they own this corner…or this window…or this couch.  Yuck.  So, consequently, we’re often on “seek and destroy” missions for cat urine, or dodging the gems Mango leaves us when she gets scared out of the litter box, mid-poop.  I know living in a house full of six cats must seem exotic and glamorous to some (ha!), but it has its down-side too.  There are litter boxes and hair balls, and just plain old run-of-the-mill vomit.  That old adage about dogs having owners and cats having servants really could not be more true in our case.

Mister has a particularly operatic way of alerting us if he’s getting ready to launch.  When Mister eats something that he finds doesn’t agree with him (usually a piece of plant he has snacked on), he begins what could only be described as something half-way  between a caterwaul and an aria.  If you can imagine someone saying “owWOWwowwowwowow…owWOWwowwow…” with a truly breathtaking range of notes and crescendo, you can almost get a sense of what this is like.  The first time I heard it, it terrified me.  Then, after a few times, I realized that this was just Mister, announcing to the world that his food had rebelled at the possibility of digestion and was beating a fast retreat.  I consider it a kind of “early warning system” for getting him off comforters and couches and things that will be difficult to spot-treat. 

I think we hit an all-time personal low this week, though, when Otto (bless his heart) tried some kibble early in the morning that turned out to be a little too rich for him.  In response, he came back to bed, crawled under the covers with Sean, got between his legs (as per usual) and promptly yakked all over him.  The Otto model, of course, does not come equipped with an Early Warning System, so at first, Sean was just puzzled by the warm, wet sensation between his legs and on his shorts.  Then, when he woke up enough to realize what had happened, he got out of bed, trailing pieces of half-digested kibble out the sides of his underwear.  If that’s not the most humbling thing that’s happened to him in a while, I’d be surprised.  Luckily, I was in the shower and missed most of the excitement.  

We immediately switched back to the old food, and Otto was fine.  There’s a certain amount of sweetness there, that he would look to Sean to provide comfort when his tummy wasn’t feeling well.  It’s sweetness we hope not to…ahem…bring back up for a while though.

As you already know, Dear Readers, Otto loves a good walk.  Okay, that’s not really true.  Otto loves for us to put his harness on him and take him out to the back or front yard, but Otto does not, strictly speaking, walk while doing so.  Mostly he just plops on the ground and rolls around, purring and squinking up his eyes contentedly.  

So last Sunday, when we were taking some broccoli stalks out to feed the chickens, who live with our neighbors a few doors down, we decided to take Otto with us.  Since Otto was not really big on the walking part of the walk, we carried him instead.  Sean fed the chickens while Otto sat on the ground in front of me, staring warily at birds that are as big as he is.  You could see him trying to work it out, how on earth these things that looked like birds and sounded like birds and smelled like shaky treats and mush could possibly be as big as Otto.  Something just wasn’t computing.  We inched him a little closer. Still wasn’t making any sense.  The chickens seemed completely unfazed by the feline attention.  Finally, Otto got bored and we “walked” him back home. 

Then, this morning, I got to finally witness Otto enjoying Sean’s new sauna.  Here’s how that works:  1.) Sean gets in the sauna without Otto.  (This particular morning, I got to be a part of that step as well.)  2.)  Otto comes downstairs looking for Big Buddy and stands outside the glass door of said sauna, getting more and more vocally insistent that Sean needs to let him in.  3.) Sean lets him in and Otto puts his face into the infra-red heaters for a few minutes, then sits down on the bench, smiling and purring up a storm.  Otto has pretty much decided that the sauna must have been purchased for Otto and Otto alone.  I’m sure he thinks of it as the Big Warm Cuddle Box, since it’s got everything he needs in it for a good time:  lots of warmth, a Big Buddy, and a small enclosed space where other Buddies (i.e. Elroy) cannot find him and bother him.  

Okay, so maybe we did really buy it for Otto.  It’s nice that he lets Sean and me use it now and again.

Another vet home-visit has come and gone.  Much of it went the same as the last one.  Elroy and Reggie were both particularly frightened and non-plussed, respectively.  Wanda needed three people to hold her down so the vet could examine her while simultaneously holding on to all of his digits.  (Seriously, that little 12-pound body packs a lot of punch.  A vet tech and TWO big buddies were struggling to keep those vicious little jaws and claws at bay.)   Mango scaredy-scatted everywhere (as usual) and Otto thought this was a big party where he was the guest of honor.  He purred through the whole thing, even the part where they had to draw blood out of his little leg, and basked in all the attention.  After he was done (I think we did him second), he hung around the examining table, nonchalantly cleaning his paws, as if to say, “when’s it going to be my turn again? Not that I care or anything…”  Sadly, Otto only got one turn.

Mister was the only one whose behavior changed appreciably from the last time.  When I caught up with Mister, whose turn was a couple of cats after Wanda, he and Wanda were hunkered down under one of the love seats in what appeared to be an athletic huddle or at least a very serious pow-wow.  While part of me made note of the alliance at the time and tried not to make too much of it, it turned out that Wanda must have been giving Mister some tips on how to handle the vet.  Perhaps she’d taught him a few jujitsu moves too, in the short time between her examination and Mister’s.  All I know is that Mister came off the ropes like Mike Tyson in a bad mood and on some kind of cheap hallucinogen.  I tried to tuck him into my body and hold him so he couldn’t see, with my hand slightly over his face, because usually, not being able to see seems to help him with his anxiety.  He responded by biting my hand in this quick little chattery, knawy manner that was kind of like being attacked by a sewing machine needle.  He did not, however, break the skin.  I think he was just sending me a warning volley with his teeth that if I did not let him off this table right now, he was going to be plenty mad at me.  We were supposed to take his blood too, given his challenges with his kidneys and his thyroid, but we all realized, a few more warning volleys later, that this was not going to happen.  One of the other weird things that Mister was doing was making noises the frequency and pitch of which have probably only been heard in deep space.  I have never heard an animal make the kinds of noises Mister was making before.  I’m thinking that natural selection probably takes care of that.  

Even though I managed to make it out of that particular scuffle unscathed, Dr. McKisson unfortunately did shed some blood over it.  He took it all very good-naturedly, and was pleasantly surprised to see Mister back to his old self again, after his apparent stroke and subsequent full recovery.  

All of the buddies seemed to be doing well, except for Elroy, who had some gingivitis and is going to need a dental next week, and Mango, one of whose front claws had gotten ingrown and had impaled her paw.  Ouch.  It’s not like we are able to have any contact with her or get close enough to her to realize there was an issue, but it’s hard not to feel guilty nonetheless when one of the buddies is in trouble and we don’t even know it.  Dr. McKisson was able to extract the claw, which produced a fair amount of bleeding from poor Mango, but he said she should heal up and be fine in just a few days.  Clearly, we will have to make more of an effort to catch her more frequently and make sure her claws get clipped.  

Otto’s blood work looked “gorgeous,” per Dr. McK, so we’re thankful for that.  And also thankful that we’re not going to have pay for anyone’s finger-reattachment surgery, at least after this go-round.