Monday, July 18

Because Every Day Is A Good Day For Cat Blogging


Official First Day Portrait


Name: Random (provisional; cats don't get their official names around here until sometime after teething, which has resulted in at least one vet visit when I couldn't remember what name they had for cat I'd brought.)

Location: Guest Room

Sex: male, already neutered
Age: 3 months
Catalog description: pretty much all the features of the larger models in a smaller, high-energy package

Acquired from: very nice animal rescue people who had an adoption show at one of those big box pet places to which suburbanites bring their poop-eating Irish wolfhounds in the belief that animals just love to shop at specialty stores

Adoption delayed by: being in line behind a woman who wanted to have her selection declawed and chose to argue the point

Color: medium gray. I've never had a solid-color cat before, except white, and since the guest room is green I thought he'd look good in there. You may notice from the pic that he seems to have been trimmed in silver fore and aft, and there's three shades of gray on his face. Plus faint tabby markings on his legs which are a little less prominent than in the picture, and a very faint tabby bullseye on his flanks. His two brothers were uniquely colored, too: one had more tabby markings but was a lot more silver, and the other was calico-patterned but without any cream or orange. Random was the biggest of the three.

Likes: cat toys, running around at high speed, the wastebasket
Has Already Developed: taste for human blood
Dislikes: getting his nails clipped after developing the above

Despite decades of experience, what went ill-considered: the amount of work involved in kitten-proofing a house that hasn't had one in a decade.

Hasn't been formally introduced to: Mr. Stinky, aka The Cat Who Refused To Urinate. My wife took him to the vet last week while I was in Michigan, and they found crystals in his urine. In a follow-up phone call the vet suggested putting him on Science Diet CD. By Saturday morning there was blood in his urine. The vet said keep an eye on him, the CD's breaking up the crystals and they've probably cut him some. By Saturday night he was going downstairs to the litter box constantly but producing no urine. He was restless. His bladder felt full to me. At 3 AM I decided that was enough and took him to the emergency hospital (motto: Please slip credit card under the door, then ring bell).

The late Lowell (Boy) had FUS and got blocked three times, each time on Friday evenings meaning the emergency place is the only option, so I know 1) it's serious and 2) I'm about to pay through the nose, which I understand is just the cost of having 24/7 availability. But it turned out he wasn't blocked, he just has a tiny bladder (in a 14 pound, not overweight cat), and he urinated while being examined, so he wasn't catheterized and I wasn't soaked. But the vet there thought he shouldn't have gone on CD quite so abruptly (I was mixing it half-and-half with his regular food). Which is about the tenth time in my life I've had two vets tell me two different things in the same week. God knows if I could afford healthcare for myself I'd get a second opinion every time.

Two things about the emergency vet's: 1) when I got there they were watching Animal 911 on teevee; 2) there was an office person, two lab assistants, plus the vet there, and they were all young women--the vet looked no more than 23--and they were absolutely captivated by Stinky, as most people are when he can't run away from them. "He's so handsome!" said the office person. "He's so handsome!" said one of the lab techs. And he is, plus he's endearingly dim-witted. I was turning on the charm myself, and if I wasn't such a good moral Midwesterner I'd be writing this to Penthouse Letters right now.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, gee. Random is lovely, and I hope he settles in well.

I've got one who never outgrew her thirst for human blood, we named her Iala, which is a Romanian sort of vampire cat. She stays young and kittenish by bathing in the fresh blood of me several times a week.

I hope Stinky gets better, middle of the night ER visits suck whether you are feline or human. (I got to do it myself again last night, though fortunately I at least have health insurance almost as good as the cats do.)

I hope you keyed the car of the woman who wanted the cat declawed. Why the hell would they even *consider* letting her take one home after that?
Personally, I like my furniture less than my cats. Anyone who doesn't, has their priorities seriously screwed up.

James Briggs Stratton "Doghouse" Riley said...

I hope I didn't slander the animal rescue folks: they were not going to let the woman take the cat until she agreed not to declaw, and the woman who was handling the requests was reading her chapter and verse about it while the other kept going on about her previously destroyed couch and how she couldn't let a cat out because of toms in her neighborhood, etc. etc. Meanwhile, there's a perfectly wonderful 7-year-old Manx female in a cage right next to us who would have been a perfect indoor companion for the woman, but of course she had to have a kitten. She signed the release promising not to declaw, and there's a waver allowing home visits to make sure you live up to the bargain, but, of course, no guarantee. I hope the declawing horror stories made an impression.

Anonymous said...

Dear Penthouse Forum,

I'm a curmudgeon of a certain age in a large Midwestern city that rhymes with "Take a crap with us." I never thought I'd write you a letter until a Saturday night emergency cat bladder problem turned into the most amazing night of my life...

Anonymous said...

corndog, love that.

Thanks for clarifying, Doghouse. They've been known to demand contracts from people, here, who want to use scoopable litter, which they don't think is safe. I'm ambivalent on that, but declawing is truly sick.
One of mine is terrified by the idea of going outside, and the other one goes out only on a leash, but it always seemed like they need their claws to defend themselves against me, if nothing else. I'm this gigantic huge thing that doesn't understand anything they tell me, and doesn't always look where I'm walking, and doesn't always know when they're done playing. They have to have *some* way to let me know stuff. I'm with you, I hope they made an impact.

Kittens are indeed cute, but given how quickly they grow up, it seems a little silly to make that a more important factor than the cat's personality.

handdrummer said...

Well, one thing for sure, Random has learned the first lesson of being a blogger cat, the art of the irresistable pose. What a handsome little devil.

And best wishes to Mr. Stinky. Hope his problem passes quickly (Sorry>)

Anonymous said...

Handdrummer, nice one. Poor Stinky. At least he has the potential to be a chick magnet.

Anonymous said...

Hey, that's a good point. Looking at little Gorgeous up there, and hearing about the vet visit, c'mon, fess up, you deliberately pick out cats that will have the chicks all over you going "Awwwww, he's so *adorable*!"
Does your Poor Wife know about this??