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.