Out and Back

Sic 'em, Tisbe!

This walking slag-heap (who lives in nearby Georgia) thought it would be nice to feed live cats and kittens to his pit bulls.  What an utterly pathetic excuse for a human being.  I'll bet you a million bucks he's one of those good ol' boy types who didn't neuter his dogs, either... afraid it would take away their manhood or some such bullshit.

Too bad he never met my cat, Tisbe. She'd have taken his face off.  If the judge who sentences him is looking for a creative punishment, I'd be happy to loan Tisbe to the cause.

I'm well aware of the link between cruelty to animals and cruelty to humans.  Men who abuse animals frequently also abuse women and children, and I think the punishments for these kinds of offenders should take that fact into account.

Get him, Tisbe!

She's a bitch...

Here's Lady Rotten, starring in her very own film.... enjoy!  Semi-regular posting to resume soon.

(And I promise, no more fish movies until I get my kuhli loaches!)

Under the Sea

Here's a short film I did of our 29-gallon aquarium.  This was before we moved Lady Rotten to her own little tank:

St. Agatha's Home for Wayward Mollies

So Lady Rotten has been acting up a great deal of late.  She's already killed one boyfriend, and last evening after her dinner of organic frozen peas, she started haranguing not only the new creamsicle molly, but every other fish in the tank as well.  She's acting like a real snot, but I'm attached to her.  I love that I picked out a ballbusting female molly.  Rather than return her to the store where we got her or isolate her in a breeding net, we decided to get her her own place.  We found a small hexagonal five gallon aquarium and started preparing it for her last night.

I love the kitschy decorations you can find for aquariums... the deep-sea divers, the sunken treasure, and the brightly-colored gravel.  My husband is more of an aquarium purist: our 29-gallon tank has natural looking substrate and live plants, but he gave me carte blanche and as a result Lady Rotten's new home is so bright I can't even look at it for very long.  See below:

Yes, those plastic plants glow in the dark.  Of course they do.

Something fishy....

The latest activity my husband and I have undertaken in the continuous quest for something to do has been to put together a 29-gallon brackish aquarium.  Since we started it, we've acquired a total of nine fish, one of which has since shuffled off this mortal coil.  (It was a silver molly, and his companion, a female dalmatian molly, bugged him to the point that he got stressed and succumbed to some kind of fishy illness.)  I've named the dalmatian molly "Lady Rotten," after the nickname given by the press to Mary Ann Cotton, a 19th century English murderess who killed three husbands, a lover, a friend, her own mother, and twelve children (some her own and some step-children) with arsenic.

In addition to Lady Rotten, we have two other mollies in the tank: a creamsicle molly and a pretty black molly.  We also have three guppies, two platys, and a bunch of algae eating snails.  As soon as we can get some, we're going to add three kuhli loaches to the mix and our aquatic menagerie will be complete.

I originally wanted clown loaches, but after learning about how big they can get, I realized there was no way we could keep even one in a 29-gallon tank.  They're a fairly common sight in most aquarium stores, so I enjoy visiting them when possible.  Their funny behavior cracks me up... they dance around each other and also like to "play dead" by lying on the bottom of the tank.  Whenever I put a hand up to the tank, they come over to see what I'm doing and if I've got food for them.

I was writing in an email to a friend not long ago that I was a bit dubious about taking on pets that I couldn't cuddle, but I have to say it's been really fun picking out the fish, watching them explore the new aquarium, and, of course, watching our cats watch them.

Here's a hilarious video of another kind of loach, a yoyo, shaking its thing on the undersea dance floor.

Happy Tisbe Day!

It's Tisbe Day once again... since Tisbe was a stray and we don't know her birthdate, we decided that the day she arrived in our yard can be her special day.  We only have an approximate idea of how old she is, too, so I figure that today she's four or five years old.

She celebrated by throwing up her breakfast (not an uncommon thing for her to do.)

Belligerent pussy

Please help me caption this photo.  What do y'all think Tisbe is saying?

For your consideration...

My husband and I collaborated on this short film this afternoon.  I shot the footage, and then he edited it and added the music on his Mac.

Somehow, I don't think the Academy will be knocking on our door anytime soon, but it was still pretty fun:

Fierce creatures

Some more cat pictures for your viewing pleasure.  Aren't they cute?

What are you looking at?

Tisbe is ready for her close-up!

I got a new toy today... a Canon PowerShot SD30 digital camera.  It's so teeny-tiny you can practically slip it into your bra, if you wear one.  And it takes wicked good photos.  The one to the left is Miz Tisbe, peering curiously through the railings of the upstairs banister as I snapped her photo.  (I love how this camera even makes the shutter sound when you take a picture.)

With all the traveling I'm going to be doing, I thought it would be nice to have a little camera to keep a record of the places I go.  (Although I have a feeling I'm going to be taking a lot of airport photos.  Hopefully that won't get me in trouble with Homeland Security.)

In other news, I'm writing this post in my living room, while my husband sits on the couch reading William S. Burroughs' Nova Express.  He occasionally reads snippets aloud, and I am finding that Burroughs' crazy-yet-masterful manipulation of the English language is starting to make my head hurt.

Fish and chips and vinegar

It's official.  My cat, Tisbe, is the weirdest cat in captivity.

Yesterday afternoon, my husband and I put up our Christmas tree.  We've owned a six foot artificial tree for several years now, and we've used it (counting this year) four times.  Two years ago, we were away for Christmas so we didn't bother with putting it up, and last year I was determined to take advantage of the eight-foot ceilings in our house and have a live tree, so we didn't use the artificial one then, either.  Now that we're living in an apartment complex again (where there are typically rules that forbid live Christmas trees) we busted out our fake tree for this year's festivities.

Last year, Tisbe seemed pretty indifferent to the live Christmas tree.  She enjoyed sitting under it, posing royally on our red velvet tree skirt, but that was about it.  She sniffed occasionally at the needles and may have taken a taste or two, but in general she left the tree alone.  I was relieved, because given her propensity for erratic behavior, I would not have been at all surprised if she had decided to climb the darn thing.

We didn't anticipate any weirdness with the artificial tree.  If anything, its artificiality practically guaranteed that neither of our cats would be attracted to a piney scent.  Right?  Wrong!  Tisbe was very interested in the tree once we put it up, and she expressed her interest by a) lying under it, b) smelling it, and c) tasting it.  I saw her mouthing one of the lower branches and chased her away, assuming I'd stopped her before she'd had a chance to ingest any fake needles.  Wrong again.  A little while after we'd finished putting the ornaments on, she started making those telltale "cat about to barf" noises.  My husband swept her up in his arms and rushed her over to the linoleum by the front door so that at least her barf would be easy to clean up (I have yet to discover an effective way to totally eliminate cat barf stains from carpet.) She brought up a good mouthful of fake Christmas tree needles.  Delicious.  As if that wasn't bad enough, the UPS guy arrived with a couple of packages just after she finished, so I had to make him wait while we wiped up the vomit.

My husband and I both thought that Tisbe might connect the fact that she'd thrown up with the fact that she had tried to eat the fake Christmas tree, so we decided to observe her for a bit to see if she'd learned her lesson.  Wrong again.  Before we knew it, she was back to sniffing and nibbling at the tree, so we knew we would have to resort to extreme measures to keep her from both barfing up fake pine needles for the next week and potentially hurting herself more seriously by ingesting them.

I'd read somewhere that a good way to keep cats out of the garden or off of furniture is to spray distilled white vinegar around, so we got some, poured it into a spray bottle, and sprayed the lower branches of the tree.  Fortunately, it had the intended effect: neither Tisbe nor Dora showed any interest in going anywhere near the tree.  Unfortunately, our apartment (at least the downstairs) reeked of vinegar for the rest of the night.  I spent the evening pretending that I'd been eating fish and chips and burning a scented candle to eliminate the excess odor.

Who ever heard of a cat being more interested in a fake tree than a real one?

Postscript: The pictures are from last Christmas, when we had a real tree.

The Art of Sleeping

Check this out.... this cat of mine (Dora) is a world-class sleeper.  And she looks so gosh-darn cute doing it, too...

All together now.... "AWWWWWWWWWW!"

 

Driving around for a good cause

Hubby and I took some time yesterday afternoon to accomplish the typically distasteful task of getting our cars registered in South Carolina and acquiring South Carolina driver's licenses.  We were expecting the worst, because in our former home state of Pennsylvania, vehicle registration is at best, an arduous process, and, at worst, a nightmare.  (Sometime I will write about the time we tried to get my car titled and licensed in Pennsylvania.  We had purchased it -- and paid the sales tax on it -- in Missouri, and even though we could present proof that we had already paid the sales tax, the beeyotch that was assisting us refused to accept said proof and was going to make us pay the sales tax twice.  I raised holy hell.  Well, there.  I guess I just told you about it.)

Anyway, the process in South Carolina was a little complicated -- there are lot of documents that you have to gather, and you have to pay property taxes on your vehicle up front -- but if you plan ahead and follow the directions, it goes very smoothly.  Especially nice is the "gatekeeper" at the DMV who checks all of your paperwork before you're allowed to take a number and wait your turn -- that way, the folks who didn't come prepared don't waste the time of the DMV workers and the customers who have their shit together.

The coolest part about the whole thing was the custom license plate we got (see above.)  Proceeds from the sale of these specialty "no more homeless pets" plates benefit a program that provides low-cost spay and neuter services for low-income pet owners, and I get to be an advocate for a great cause every time I get behind the wheel. 

Disaster Preparedness, with your hostess, Dorabella

Yesterday morning, my husband and I got up as usual to feed the cats and fix breakfast.  Per their usual pattern, they ate a few bites of cat chow and headed to the sliding glass door to see what was going on outside.  Hubby and I stayed in the kitchen, brewing coffee, pouring cereal, etc.  All of a sudden, we heard a jangling of license tags and collar bells, and an orange blur flew past the kitchen door and into the powder room just inside the entrance to our place.

We didn't see what happened, but we surmised that a dog was out running loose and decided to come up to our patio door to check out the cats.  In the process, said dog managed to scare the bejesus out of Dorabella.  I looked into the bathroom, and the poor thing was curled up in the bathroom sink, her little head tucked down and her tail puffed out to epic proportions.  It was clear she was doing her very best to hide from the vicious beast that had terrorized her moments before, even though she's so big she filled up the whole sink.  After a bit, she ventured out of the sink and hid behind the toilet until my husband coaxed her out.  She remained pretty wary for the rest of the day, though.

I felt terrible for her, but the whole thing was also hilarious -- seeing my cat trying to hide in a rather shallow bathroom sink gave me the best laugh I've had in weeks.

Mommy, we miss you!

Hurry up and get here!

Happy Tisbe Day!

Happy Tisbe Day!

If you have a pet, take a minute to give it some extra love and affection, and say a little prayer for all the animals out there who aren't lucky enough to have a warm, safe, loving home. 

Tisbe and I thank you.

Meow!

More stories about Tisbe can be found here, here, here, and here.  (Kind of like Tisbe herself.... all over the place.)  Check out the album for some more pics of Tisbe and her baby, Dorabella.

Dorabella

My husband took this picture of our cat, Dorabella, a few months ago.  It is my favorite picture of her.  I love the expression on her little orange puss (no pun intended) and I feel this picture really captures her personality.

I've written a fair bit on this blog about our other cat, Tisbe (Dorabella's mom) but I realized I haven't devoted as much bandwidth to her orange progeny, so I thought I'd try to remedy that with this post.

When Dorabella was born, she was easily the largest and strongest of Tisbe's four kittens.  (In fact, two of the kittens died within a week of their birth -- only Dorabella and her little brother, Pokey, survived.)  Dora's personality was quick to assert itself.  When the kittens were little, we would let them out of their "nursery" to explore the basement, and it was always Dorabella who managed to sneak up behind us and nearly get herself stepped on when we turned around.  She has trick knees and they dislocate once in a while, usually when she fails to "stick" a landing after leaping from a high place.  They pop right back into place, though, and the only sign that there was a problem is that she walks with a limp for a day or two after.

From the very beginning, Dora was not a snuggler.  She squirms away if you try to cuddle her, but she does enjoy being petted and played with.  She's got the loudest purr of any cat I've ever known.  She is also the most talkative non-Siamese cat I've ever met.  I wish there was such a thing as a "cat translator" so we can understand her meows.  She's got a different noise for every possible scenario.  When she's hungry, she says "meh!" a short, abbrievated meow that demands attention.  When she wants to play, it's "re-eh-eh-ew!" and when you ask her a question, she invariably responds with something that sounds like "wow."  There have been times when I could have sworn she was forming a word or a sentence, when I could almost make out what she was trying to say.  My husband is convinced that if she could speak English, she would be saying, "Entertain me!" over and over again.

She eats like a pig and sleeps a lot.  She's bigger than her mama now, and every time I pick her up I marvel that at one time I could hold her in the palm of my hand.  She loves Laughing Cow Cheese (which is what I usually eat for breakfast -- spread over an english muffin).  I've learned not to leave the foil wrappers lying around, because Dora so loves the Laughing Cow that she'll eat the whole wrapper in pursuit of the cheesy taste she craves.  When my husband empties a carton of plain yogurt, he'll put the empty container on the floor and before long, Dora's head is inside it as she laps up the last dribs and drabs.  She also has a thing for banana peels.  She doesn't eat them, but she loves to pick them up and carry them around the house.

She goes insane for laser pointers, feathery toys on sticks, and catnip mice.  She works herself into a frenzy chasing her toys around the house, and then collapses in a corner when she gets too worn out to continue.  When I come home from work, she is usually asleep in the wicker chair in our living room, but she always lifts her head and meows to say hello.  She's nothing if not well-mannered.

Well, most of the time.

Tisbe's new best friend

This news item caught my attention yesterday morning.  Apparently, this crazy little feline from Connecticut was actually put under house arrest for attacking the Avon lady as well as a half dozen other people.

Wow, and I thought my cat was bonkers.

Sick kitty

Tisbe is sick or something.  In the past two days, she's thrown up three times, and last night my husband said she was sneezing a lot.  Other than that, though, she hasn't been acting any differently than usual, so I am hopeful it is just a mild strain of "cat flu" or whatever (if there even is such a thing.)

My husband is too grossed out by her barf to clean it up.  He makes me -- the emetophobic one -- clean up Tisbe's barf.  Fortunately we have wood floors so it isn't like I'm working up a sweat scrubbing it out of carpet.  I have discovered that my emetophobia seems to be limited to human vomit, not cat vomit, so that is a good thing.

In other news, the weather forecast for our region this a.m. is not pretty.... snow, sleet, freezing rain, the works.  My husband gets to stay home when it's like this, but it would take a nuclear holocaust to shut down my place of employment, so it looks like I will be slogging on in this morning.  I have a feeling the roller skate is going to turn into an ice skate.

Pumpkin pie in the sky and flying cats

I spent Tuesday night making pumpkin pies and washing the "good china" by hand.  My formal china pattern is Royal Albert's Old Country Roses, and we got a lot of it as wedding gifts when we got married five years ago.  It was my paternal grandmother's china pattern, too, so when we got married my aunt gave us some of Nana's pieces to round out our collection.

My dining room furniture belonged to my maternal grandmother, Frances, and it includes a beautiful china hutch with a curved glass door.  I smile whenever I see the china sitting in it, because I find it sort of funny that some of my paternal grandmother's china is now sitting in my maternal grandmother's china cabinet.  According to my father, the two women could barely tolerate each other.  (He tells the tale of the two of them visiting at the same time shortly after I was born... apparently the tension between them was palpable but they were both trying their best not to kill each other.  I have no idea if the story is really true, but based on my recollections of my two grandmothers, I can see how they would have been like oil and water.)

While the pies were baking in my gas oven, filling the house with the delicious aroma of pumpkin and spices, I finished drying the last dish and bundled up my damp dish towels in a ball.  I headed to the basement door and heaved the ball of dish towels down the basement steps so that I could put them in the washing machine later.  Just as they began their descent, Dorabella appeared at the foot of the basement steps, and the dish towels landed with a soft, harmless plop right beside her.  She was startled by their sudden appearance, and jumped about four or five feet straight up in surprise.  It was as though there was a string attached to the middle of her back and someone had pulled her right up like a marionette.  My husband witnessed her leap and said, "What the heck did you do to her?"  I was laughing too hard to even answer and I sank to the floor in a fit of giggles.  It took me ten minutes to stop laughing... who knew dish towels were so frightening to a little orange kitty?

Later, when I went downstairs to feed the cats their evening portion of dry food, Dorabella scolded me with a very pointed string of meows, as if she was saying, "Where the heck do you think you get off throwing dish towels at me?"  But all was well again after she got fed... I guess the lesson here is that no matter how frazzled you get, it's nothing a few bites to eat won't cure, right?

Amazingly, in the midst of all this bedlam, the pumpkin pies came out perfectly.  They're in the fridge waiting for Thanksgiving, and I have locked my husband out of the kitchen to keep him from eating both pies in one fell swoop.

Kitty love

This post may be a little garbled as I am typing it with an eleven-pound tabby cat in my lap.  Regular visitors to this blog have probably read about Tisbe, our adopted stray mama cat.  If you've read about Ms. Tisbe, you know that she's a moody little furball whom I love dearly anyway.  She got her bath yesterday, so she no longer stinks, and she is presently plopped in my lap and purring like a lawn mower.  I am still terribly disconcerted when she snuggles and purrs, because she is normally standoffish at best and, well, bite-ish at worst.  A few months ago, my husband and I were working in our office and we had turned our desk chairs to face each other.  The room is small, so we weren't that far apart.  Tisbe slinked in, proceeded to hop into my lap, and then began to go back and forth between my lap and my hubby's lap, purring all the while.  My husband, whose usual response to Tisbe can charitably be called dubious, looked at me with a concerned expression.

"Uh-oh.  She's being nice.  What's the matter with her?"

No offense to the dog/bird/fish/turtle/iguana people out there, but I have to say it:  only a cat could elicit that kind of a reaction.  God bless 'em.

Happy Birthday, Dorabella

Miss Dorabella is one year old today!  I can still remember very vividly one year ago when I went down to the basement to check on Tisbe... I opened the door to her little room and there she was with four kittens around her.  There were two orange ones and two darker ones that looked more like her.  Dora and Pokey (the two orange ones) were the two that survived to weaning... the other two were small and sick and both died within about a week of their birth.  Today as I snuggle Dora, I wonder what kind of cats the two kittens we lost would have turned out to be?

Dora doesn't seem to know or care that it's her birthday.  I remember as a child how important it was to me to give little birthday parties for our dogs and cats, with party hats, singing, and candles which the dogs would usually try to bite instead of blow out...

Nowadays a little extra Fancy Feast, some treats, and a few extra pats on the head seem to suffice.  Dora did have a lot to say to us this morning, though.... so maybe she does know it is her birthday.

Tisbe day

I have decided that today, August 5, 2005 is officially "Tisbe Day."  It was one year ago today that Tisbe first made an appearance in our yard and that my husband and I decided to give her a home.  Since we don't know when her birthday is, we can assume that today she is a year older than she was when we first took her in.  So today is kind of a birthday for her, too.  Tomorrow, August 6, is our fifth wedding anniversary, so it is easy to remember Tisbe Day in conjunction with that.

It is hard to believe that Tisbe has already been our pet for a year, and even harder to believe is the fact that my husband and I have already been married for five years.  In some respects the time has passed very quickly.  As with a lot of marriages, our first year was probably the hardest.  Less than a week after saying our "I do's" we packed up our stuff and drove to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, where my hubby was set to start classes mid-month.  Our first apartment was a grimy, greasy, married-student-housing nightmare with an obnoxious woman downstairs who played her stereo too loud at all hours of the day and night.  I was jobless for the first four months we lived in Missouri, and the job-hunting was tremendously discouraging.  The cost of living in Cape Girardeau is very low, but so are the wages.  Also, as a woman and as an "outsider," I faced a lot of discrimination from people who were interviewing me, especially the men.

My poor husband contracted Mono about a month after our wedding.  We had no health insurance other than a basic "stop gap" policy we had purchased in the event of anything catastrophic, so we spent several hours in the local walk-in clinic and hoped that his case would be relatively mild.  Unfortunately, the older you are when you get Mono, the worse your symptoms usually are.  Hubby's throat swelled up and was so painful I couldn't get him to drink enough  fluids, and even when he was sitting upright in a chair it sounded like he was snoring every time he took a breath.  So we ended up in the E.R. at 4 in the morning on a Sunday, where he was injected with steroids, hydrated with an IV, and sent home with a prescription for prednisone.

The early months of our marriage were also punctuated by the extraction of my wisdom teeth, a move to a new apartment to get away from the ghastly neighbor, and a wretched job for me that I was forced to quit after less than four months.   I have always carried stress and tension in my digestive tract, so, as you can probably imagine, my stomach was upset nearly 24/7 for the entire first year of our marriage.

When August 6, 2001 rolled around, though, it was as if a psychological barrier just fell away.  My crazy stomach calmed down and a sense of normalcy replaced the surrealness of our first year as a married couple.  Now, five years out from our wedding day, it has only gotten better.  We have been through our share of stresses, fights, tough situations, and low cash flow and we've managed to stick together despite these and the other "slings and arrows" married couples typically face.  If there is one thing I have learned, it is this: marriage is hard work.  That sounds like a huge cliche, but it is the truth.  I am reminded of the quotation that I included in our wedding program.  It was said by Bishop Jeremy Taylor, who lived from 1613 - 1667:

Marriage hath in it less of beauty but more of safety, than the single life; it hath more care, but less danger, it is more merry, and more sad; it is fuller of sorrows, and fuller of joys; it lies under more burdens, but it is supported by all the strengths of love and charity, and those burdens are delightful.

New baby

My folks emailed the other day to share the delightful news that they are getting another cat.  Amadeus, their Abyssinian, has been quite lonesome since Violetta passed away, so Mom & Pop decided to get a little buddy for him (and for themselves, too.)

Their new baby boy kitty is somewhere in this photograph.  I was struck by how much the mother cat looks like my first cat, Buttons.  My parents have already picked out a name for the new guy: Ferrando.  (About ten years ago, we started naming our pets after opera characters, inspired by my former voice coach who had a little Beagle named Mimi.)  Between my parents and me, we have had the following opera characters as pets:

Baby Doe (The Ballad of Baby Doe)
Violetta Valery (La Traviata)
Carmen (Carmen)
Amadeus (Tales of Hoffmann)
Tisbe (La Cenerentola - this is Rossini's version of Cinderella, and Tisbe's one of the ugly stepsisters... little did I know how fitting her moniker would turn out to be!)
Dorabella (Cosi Fan Tutti)

Ferrando is also from Cosi Fan Tutti -- he is actually Dorabella's sweetheart, which is why my parents picked that name.  I doubt we will ever be able to formally introduce our Dorabella to my parents' Ferrando, but I'll post a photo of each of them when my folks bring Ferrando home.  I'm sure they'll make a lovely couple, despite the 3,000 miles that separates them!

In memoriam: Violetta

My parents called me Tuesday evening with the sad news that our longtime pet, Violetta, needed to be put to sleep.  She was a lilac point Siamese and had been part of our family since 1993.  She had not been very well for the past year or so... she'd struggled with chronic gingivitis as well as diabetes, and it was clear from what my parents told me that she was worsening.  She slept a lot, wobbled when she walked, had extreme difficulty eating, didn't gain any weight and couldn't make it to the litter box anymore, even though my parents put one upstairs for her about six months ago.  We all agreed it was time.

When we first got her, she was a tiny, nearly hairless kitten with huge ears.  Though we had picked out the name Violetta early on (we name all of our cats after opera characters) we called her Yoda for awhile because of her gigantic ears.  I swear they were full size from birth and she just grew into them.  She came to live with us the summer before my senior year of high school, and she and I bonded very quickly.  It was hard on her when I left to go to college the following fall, but she soon took up with my dad and all was well again.  When I came home from college for the first time over Thanksgiving break of '94, I swear she did a double-take when she came to the front hallway to see who was there.

Since she was named for the main character in La Traviata, Violetta Valery (think Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge), we would sometimes play a recording of the opera on our stereo.  One Saturday afternoon, she was laying on the living room floor while La Traviata was playing, and Alfredo (Violetta's lover) began to sing passionately, exclaiming "Violetta! Violetta!"  Our kitty's ears perked up and she started looking wildy around the room, wondering who on earth was calling out to her.

I trained her to ride on my shoulder when she was little, and for the rest of her life she was always content to be placed on a shoulder (mine or anyone else's) and take a trip around the house.  She didn't like to go outside or ride in the car, but she was very good at playing fetch.  Her favorite thing to fetch was the paper part of the wrapper (not the foil) from a stick of Wrigley's Spearmint gum.  My dad would fold the paper carefully into a tiny square and flick it across the room.  She would run to get it and bring it proudly back to wherever dad happened to be sitting and the game would start all over again.

Her tail had a personality all its own.  The breeder that sold her to us also had dogs in her household, and we think that the tip of 'Letta's tail got nipped off by one of the dogs, or perhaps by one of her litter-mates.  So her tail was always a little shorter than it should have been and it tapered to an abrupt end.  When you scratched or petted her in the right spot, she would begin to purr loudly and the hair on her tail would stand on end to the point where it bore a striking resemblance to a bottle brush.  (The stumpy end added to the effect.)                                     

Her favorite treat was Gerber baby food in chicken flavor.  We would give it to her as a special snack when she had to take a pill or if she was looking skinny.  I used to sit in the kitchen with her in my lap and spoon feed it to her from a little bowl.  She would lick the spoon completely clean and wait politely for me to give her the next bite.  This past Christmas, when it was clear that she was having trouble eating regular cat food, I took on the duty of feeding her the chicken baby food since I seemed to be the only one for whom she would make the effort to eat.

It is amazing how a pet becomes such a part of a family.  I can't believe she is gone. 

Stumped the veterinarian!

Tisbe and I went to the vet Monday morning, and we have him completely stumped.  Dr. O is no slouch when it comes to diagnosing and treating cats (he has many, many years under his belt) so when he told me that he wants to share Tiz's history with some other vets he knows, I was simultaneously worried (because her condition seems to fall outside the normal parameters of kitty-weirdness) and impressed (because he wanted to get more than one opinion before proceeding with a course of treatment.)

The good news is that Tisbe's kidney function is good, as is her blood sugar.  Dr. Obenski also mentioned that if she had a brain tumor or something she would probably have died by now (she first started displaying this weird behavior about six months ago.)  We also know that she doesn't have FIV or Feline Leukemia, so I think the vet is leaning toward the possibility that she has some sort of hormonal problem, which could be caused by any number of things.   I would not be surprised if he sends us off to a veterinary endocrinologist or something.

He asked me what our feelings were about Tisbe -- had we brought her in because she was impossible to live with?  Were we worried for her well-being?  Some combination of both?  It was interesting to think about why I had sought treatment for her when he asked me about it... and frankly, even though she is a royal pain in the patootie sometimes, my main motivation for getting her checked was simple: I can tell she feels bad and I don't want her to suffer when she doesn't have to.  And, as I said before, despite her strangeness, I can't imagine not having her as a pet.  I love her to no end.

I'll post another feline update when I hear from Dr. O.

More cat issues

Our poor kitty, Tisbe, has an appointment at the vet tomorrow morning.  She was spayed in November but she has been randomly lactating on and off over the past few weeks, which is very strange.  She has also gone potty outside her litter box a couple of times, and she is showing almost all of the symptoms of a disorder called Feline Hyperesthesia Syndrome or FHS for short.  I am hopeful that the vet will have some answers for us, and that we will be able to find a way to help her feel better.  She really is a terrific cat (she was very interested in my in-laws when they arrived for their visit this afternoon) and she can be very sweet and loving when she is feeling OK.  She even tolerated her bath pretty well today, despite a bit of fussing and growling.

My husband and I went to the opening of the new PETCO store in Whitehall on Friday night and we saw one of the groomers using a special muzzle on a cat she was grooming.  It shields their eyes so they can't see what is happening, and they are less traumatized by the whole bath experience.  Unfortunately, PETCO didn't have them for sale, so I went hunting on the 'net and found one here.  I think I'll order a couple for the next bath time, because both Tisbe and Dora hate to be bathed.  We have to do it to keep the allergens down, though, so anything we can do to make the experience less stressful for them, we will do. 

Tisbe has been our pet for less than a year, and already I can't imagine life without her.  Despite her strange behavior and grumpy attitude, I love her to death.  She has personality, if nothing else.  And her crankiness makes it that much sweeter when she hops into my lap, settles in, and starts to purr.

Hopefully she will be feeling better soon.

Psycho kitty

Our cat, Tisbe, is a nut.  When we took her in, she was pregnant, and I'm pretty sure the hormones contributed to her sweet disposition.  We had her spayed after the kittens were weaned (sometime around Thanksgiving) and she still seemed fine.  Then, we went away for the Christmas holidays, and when we returned all hell broke loose.

Tizzers turned from a friendly, snuggly lap kitty who tolerated everything from pills to Revolution into a cranky, sullen hellcat who wouldn't so much as let you rub her ears without trying to bite off a couple of your fingers.  Back to the vet we went, and she got so freaked out that they had to restrain her with those big gloves that are usually reserved for the most feral of cats.  Our wonderful vet, Dr. Obenski, figured it was probably a hormone thing, so he prescribed a course of synthetic progesterone and instructed me to give her half a tablet every other day until the medicine was gone.

Fortunately, the pills were small and I acquired a pill-splitter from my local CVS Pharmacy, but it took both my husband and I to restrain Tisbe in order to shove said pills down her throat.  After two traumatic nights of yowling, screeching, biting, swearing, and band-aids, I hit the grocery store and picked up some baby food in chicken, beef, veal, and other mouthwatering flavors.  Each night Tisbe was to get a pill, I crushed it with the back of a spoon and mixed it with some Gerber, and then served it to her on the kitchen floor.  She snarfed it.  I'm not kidding -- licked the plate completely clean.

After about a week, we started to notice a difference in her personality.  She wasn't such a snarly, chompy little snot anymore... she started crawling into my lap on occasion, and she would even tolerate her weekly baths without so much as a growl.  Her attitude has definitely improved since January, though she still has a tendency to bite and claw when she gets overstimulated.  Fortunately, she doesn't do either hard enough to break skin, which is good.  I think she thinks she's playing, or else she's dealing with what Dr. Bruce Fogle terms the "primitive conflict" that all cats have to some degree:

On one hand, petting is comforting and reminiscent of mother's licks; on the other, unrelated adult cats never touch each other except when fighting or during sex.  With these mixed signals, most cats eventually feel uneasy.  Some just mouth you, putting their mouths around your hand, but not biting.  Others clamp down.  Follow your cat's lead and do not pet to excess.  This is a primitve conflict, hard to overcome without diminishing the relationship your cat has with you.

From Cat Owner's Manual by Bruce Fogle, DVM, MRCVS

We've gotten pretty good at dealing with Tisbe and her neuroses -- most of the time, we just leave her alone when she's cranky, and we welcome her affection when she's not.  (She's laying on the floor beside my chair as I type this.  Of course, she chomped on my foot as soon as I tried to pet her with my toes.)  I've also found that a little catnip will mellow her right out, though I try not to medicate her that way too often, because I don't want her getting the idea that she gets a reward every time she tries to bite me.

She took the cake on Saturday, though.  I was testing out my new hand-held Shark vacuum when without warning, Tisbe leapt out of nowhere and attacked it.  Her fur was standing on end, her claws were bared, and she was hissing at that evil vacuum cleaner like it was the anti-Christ.  I shut it off for a few minutes and chased her away, but not long after I went back to my cleaning she returned and took another mighty swipe at it.  Every other cat I've had has been deathly afraid of the vacuum.  One hides as soon as the machine comes out of the closet and does not reappear until at least an hour or two after the vacuuming is done. 

Leave it to Tisbe to take on the Shark.