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Riley can’t believe — simply cannot believe – that Moondoggie is lying in her sun patch. Nevertheless, she remains confident that if she just STARES at him long enough without blinking…
…she can wish him into the cornfield.
Later, however, amends are made through an eagerly offered, and grudgingly accepted tongue bath. Fellas, take note.
“Oh all right, if you must, I suppose I can put up with it…”
When my husband is out of town (quite a bit) my cat Peanut sleeps on his pillow, over which I place a towel. When Peter is home, and sleeping in ‘his’ spot, Peanut sits and staaares at him. And stares. And stares! Peter isn’t intimidated, tho, and eventually Peanut stalks off to sleep in the guest room.
Dang it, every time you post a picture of these two darlings together, I want to run out and get another cat to keep Kitty Cheese company. Kitty Cheese looks so much like Moondoggie, it’s easy to slip into rosy fantasies of my rather thorny cat playing happily with a feline friend. The reality of bringing in a gato nuevo would probably be bloodshed and sleepless nights, alas.
I love your cats. I love everybody’s cats.
I’m probably not coping too well with the cat thing at this moment, though. I spent some time in IRC the other day with the friend of a friend, who wanted to know how old Cypress is, and then went on about how well, she’s old, and really, she’s going to die soon anyway no matter what you do, so it’s really mean to take her in and get her tests to see if she’s got a liver problem, you should just be nice to her in the time you have left. “I’m not trying to be insensitive,” says this person, and I wonder how much worse that conversation could have been if she *was* trying to be insensitive.
So I’m doing a certain amount of screaming. But she’s honestly not that old, for God’s sakes, and she’s not acting sick or in pain. She’s not even especially unhappy except when I’m trying to give her pills. But I can feel her damned ribs and her spine, and she’s eating when I manage to give her something she likes but she’s not really eating enough of anything, and the vet thinks we should get her a liver biopsy, which I admit seems like a horrible thing to do to her, but I’m not really interested in watching her starve to death either, or putting her down before we establish that there really is something wrong with her. I can’t even imagine just letting her die if all this is is that I can’t pick out food she wants or if a whole appetite stimulant pill as opposed to a half one will help. (Really, she wouldn’t even notice the difference, she hates me over a half pill, she’d be just as happy to hate me over a whole one.)
So, fuck the woman, she’s going back to the vet tomorrow, and we’re going to get a referral to the cat clinic. The vet actually does like her, and I sincerely doubt they get any financial incentives from sending us to another, more specialized vet, so if he thinks this is a good idea, I’m inclined to trust him.
But I still don’t want her being miserable, and I hate having to decide this. She deserves way better than she’s getting out of us.
So right now I can’t even look at your babies without crying. Hell, right now I probably couldn’t look at the famous Sadly, No! attack kitties without crying.
But they’re beautiful, and thank you for sharing them with us.
Also, I’m sorry for dumping all of that on you guys. Don’t feel like you have to respond to any of it, I just needed to say it to people who don’t know my cat and probably won’t be upset by my saying it.
My Black was 13 years old and had Feline Aids. He escaped one night and landed in the Kitty Klink; came down with Kennel cough as a result, and was sooo sick. I fed him with a syringe, spent $1000 at the vet, and then found his kidneys were shot. So for 2 years I gave him saline water under the skin every other day, every day in hot weather. He was fat, sleek and happy till the end. After he died I told myself it was for the best he went quickly and all that. But my husband told me I was crying in my sleep, sobbing “I’ve lost my kitty!”. Five years later I still tear up remembering my dear Black Cat. So keep your kitty with you as long as she is happy, don’t let others tell you what is kind!
What Kathy said, D.
(sending healthy kitty vibes to you!)
WHAM!!
Oh, fuck, D.–I’m so sorry!
It’s really, really upsetting when a beloved pet is undergoing a significant degeneration in its health. My current labrador is in very good health, and probably has something like a decade ahead of him, but the previous one went slowly and horribly. It was so emotionally draining that my dad wasn’t open to getting a new dog for over 3 1/2 years–and we’d always gotten a new dog fairly soon after the previous one died, but he’d been particularly attached to the previous dog, so it was like losing a part of himself. Plus, dad was home alone with the dog when the heartwrenching decision had to be made–I was in Washington, D.C. for an extended visit with my then-boyfriend. I wanted to go home to say goodbye, but he was really suffering at that point, and delaying his being put to sleep would have been cruel.
There’s no need to rush to euthanize. But, if and when the time comes, it’s a mercy. You’ll know when that is.
Uh oh. Here’s somebody looking for some breakfast!
I’ve got a migraine right now you could grind wheat on, but I wanted to say thanks.
I worry about whether the point comes that the vet just thinks it’s too much trouble to keep her alive even if she’s not unhappy, and she’s not. She still curls up with me and purrs, she still enjoys the catnip. She just isn’t that interested in eating anymore.
I assume that it’s not common practice to put cats to sleep just because they’re hard to feed, but I honestly don’t know. Like I said, my vet likes her, despite the fact that she is not a friendly cat. I’m not sure I will know when the time comes, but it’s easier if I can trust that the vet will.
Anyway, we got a referral to the specialist cat clinic, and she’s not lost more weight in the last week, though the vet says he doesn’t want to increase the appetite stimulant because it will probably just sedate her, and obviously she’s not going to eat while she’s asleep.
We took the other cat in for her distemper and her checkup, and he says she’s lost a pound and a half in the last six months too, she’s actually at fifteen, and we’re pretty good with that, though he’d like to see her lose another three to five, which should be fun with me leaving Meow Mix out for the other one.
I might have to build a little box with a hole just big enough for Cypress to get in and put her food in there. 
D., dear heart, you have all of my love and sympathy in Cypress’s time of need. Don’t let any asshole tell you what YOU know needs to be done, when and if, and that you shouldn’t do everything possible to save your baby.
Couple months ago, a moron here at L’Hotel du Fucktards killed Smudge, the first feral kitten that I ever trapped & neutered, and the one that I had to nurse back to health after he got an infection. He was my baby — still came to me every time that I called him, let me pick him up and pet him when I brought the precious kitty grub, etc.
Then last week, THIS SAME FUCKING MORON (engine block death, allegedly, like Smudge’s allegedly was) killed his sister, the badass and supremely dangerous Tommie Two-Toes (she had a brown spot over two of her toes, with white mittens on all four feet), but at least THIS TIME, the LandSkanky called me and TOLD ME ABOUT IT, and let me bury Tommie myself, instead of keeping it from me for FIVE FUCKING DAYS and throwing the body into the dumpster like they did Smudge.
Then my friend Kathy did the most thoughtful thing for me — she made a watercolor print of one of my favorite photos of the two of them, and printed it on canvas and framed it for me. I still can’t look at it without tears in my eyes, but it was one of the most thoughtful things that anyone’s done for me in a long time.
So you hang onto Cypress as long as you can, darlin’ heart. And anybody who wants to fuck with that, send those morons to ME. See how easy for them to tell ME to kill a cat that I love. I’ll be waiting with my tire-tool and baseball bat. You fight for that cat, because Cypress is every bit as much your family as any biped will ever be.
And Scott, I love the hell out of your cats — you can just see the personality that emanates from those spoiled-rotten chirren. Do they even know how good that they’ve got it?
I’m so very sorry that you’re going through this with Cypress. I lost my Faridah Peeples a year ago, and it was a long slow process as she got ill and then worse. Her doctor, who had known her for nearly 17 years, said I should enjoy her as much as I could and she would let me know when she was ready to go. And she did. I send good thoughts to you both.
I really appreciate this. Not just letting me vent, which I can’t really do in front of my partner who also loves Cypress, but you guys are also, oddly, giving me some hope.
Cypress has an appointment at the specialist cat clinic next week, they’re calling for her files and will talk to her vet to see what he thinks might be the next step. I described what was going on, and they pretty much didn’t see anything that seemed like a serious problem (She’s an older cat who’s not eating much in the summer and weighs ten pounds, which they seem to feel is not a bad weight for a cat, and the only blood test result that looks at all funny is slightly elevated liver enzymes. They pretty much have me pegged as a paranoid type.), but they’ll see what they can find anyway.
Meanwhile, we’re finding foods she’s actually happy to eat, although Dick Van Patten is a freak who puts whole peas in the salmon chowder. What the hell?
Annti, no details because I can’t really stand to think about it, but you have my sympathies, even if I haven’t been able to think of anything useful to say about it.
Thank you, baby. I know what you mean.
If I had your e-mail, once this whole Cypress thing is healed and she is well on her way to returning to her sleek, spoiled-rotten, sapphic simpatico with the universe, I’d tell you about something even worse than what they did to my babies, and how it resulted in another tiny death, and me stranded with EIGHT FUCKING CATS to get homes for, or to find a safe barn to let them hunt barn-rats around.
“People” suck. Animals rule. That’s my whole approach to the planet.
You do have my email, Annti. I’m the dsidhe in your mass mailing list. Also, my email is on my blog’s profile page and, uh, on all of my other webpages too. Even the ones I’m officially pretending aren’t mine but which are pretty obvious to anyone who knows me.
Don’t tell me anything horrible for a while, though, okay? I’m still trying to cope with Cypress, the housemate, and the goddamned zombies, which are really starting to get to me. You know, it’s been, um, days since I’ve slept…
I know, I know, I was trying to spare you the horror stories, y’know?
Like I said, once Cypress pulls through — and you can read it out-loud to the zombies and skeer those mofos off ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!!!!
XOXOXO
I know. But you’d be surprised how many people have felt this is the perfect time to tell me shit because, hey, I’m already miserable! It’s the same logic that makes people make popcorn when I have a migraine.
Something to say?
I do notice that, in the second photo, Riley has the curled paw of pleasure going.
It could be that she’s still going for the feathers, but I don’t think so!
Left by Doodle Bean on July 27th, 2007