Demon Cat From Hell at the East Hill Animal Hospital
The Qatari Cat occasionally has a little problem with cleanliness and hygiene, and since we don’t know if it might be a sign of something serious, we booked an appointment with a vet, the vet everyone talks about as being the best vet in town, so caring. We’ve visited her operation on open house day and we were impressed with her professionalism and knowledge, so we called her.
It was a really really good thing we did. When it came time to take him to the vet, I just plonked the cat cage down next to him, picked him up and put him inside, before he even really knew what was happening. He complained all the way to the vet, but nothing serious, like our diabetic cat who hated car motion and always threw up and defecated when we would take her places. 😦
We signed in, visited with the three little kittens seeking adoption, and then, our name was called. We took QC into an examination room where the assistant weighed him and stroked him and told him how sweet he was. He ate it up. He was as good as gold.
The vet came in, and took a look, said it didn’t look serious but that sometimes you see this problem in big cats and long haired cats, so they would just clean him up a little and shave his bottom.
“Hold him down like this,” she showed her assistant, and the Qatari cat cooperated. Er, well, he cooperated until the first vibration of the razor hit his hind-end hairs, at which time he did an instantaneous transformation into The Demon Cat From Hell, twisting, howling, hissing, trying to bite or scratch, little legs going in reverse, back writhing . . .
“I can’t hold him!” the assistant cried, and she hid her terror, but her voice trembled.
“Get the towel,” the vet said calmly, as she held him down with her two strong hands while the demon-cat-from-hell told her he intended great harm to her as soon as he could get free. She threw the towel over his head, which only made him madder and squirmier, but as the vet tech struggled and held the Qatari Cat down, the vet calmly continued with the “grooming.”
“We use these to clean the bottoms,” she said, pulling out those antiseptic wet-wipes we all carry around to wash our hands when there is no water around.
I just laughed. I have chased the Qatari cat around with warm wet cloths, with wet wipes, with towels . . . he does not like anyone messing with his bottom.
“Now that you’ve shaved him, I think he’ll be OK until the next time,” I said.
Trust me, Qatari Cat, when he is rational, knows I am the alpha. He obeys me. I can tell him to come in out of the garage and he will come; I can pat the bed and he will come lie down next to me. He knows my signals and he acknowledges my Queen-of-the-food-supply-and-warm-body status. Mess with his bottom, however, and all rational thought (in cat terms, rational thought, not our terms) flies out the window as the basest of instincts takes over.
Here is the sweet part. The clinic wrote us a thank you note for our visit. When it came in the mail, I was almost afraid to open it, afraid they would tell us that unfortunately, their practice is full right how and that they would like for us to find another vet for the Qatari Cat. Not so. It was a genuine thank you note, thanking us for our visit. They are totally a class act.
Cats in Cages
For four months now, since we moved here, AdventureMan and I have been looking for a good cat hotel for the Qatari Cat. When we are away for short times, our son and his wife look in on QC, making sure he is well fed, well loved, etc. but if we are going anywhere for a longer time . . . we don’t want to burden a family with two working adults, a baby and three cats of their own.
Seeking a good cat boarding facility in Pensacola has been daunting. The very best one we found prior to today had a separate, quiet floor where the cats were boarded, but the cages were sterile. There was one cat, who looked just like QC, and the veterinary technician said he was a BAD CAT, and poked her finger in at him and told him he was a bad cat. They had great dog facilities, play times, etc. Cats were . . . chopped liver
And that has been our experience, desperately looking around Pensacola for a GOOD place to leave QC. We have visited so many places, veterinarians, grooming places – cats in steel cages. One place had larger steel cages, but cats in dark, damp, smelly rooms, cats warehoused in the same dank, dirty place with DOGS, cats in steel cages, looking miserable. Honestly, how can we travel? We can’t leave QC alone too long; he gets really depressed and stops eating and stops taking care of himself. And visiting all these boarding facilities was just depressing. We would walk out with a pit in our stomach.
Today, we passed one place – it looked cute. AdventureMan said “you run in and see if they board cats” (it looked like a dog place). I walked in, and there were three women grooming dogs, and it was quiet. The dogs all looked really happy. No, they don’t board cats yet, not yet, because they want to do it right, had I ever heard of cat condos?
Yes! Yes! Like the Kitty Ritz in Kuwait, a place that understands cats, understands their need for security, for privacy in their litter, for some variety and some stimulation under controlled circumstances. We loved the Kitty Ritz, and we loved the cat hotel we used to take our cat to in Germany, where they had kitty condos and a cage full of mice that kept the cats fascinated for hours. Our cat loved to go there! They even knew how to give her insulin shots twice a day.
So we went looking, one last time, and we found what we were looking for, at Village Groomers and We Tuck ‘Em Inn in Pace, less than half an hour from our house.
The place is CLEAN. Orderly. The cat dorms are roomy, one room for sleeping and observing, another room with litter and food. Each cat has his or her own drawer with his or her name on it with special foods and cat toys and blankets – anything from home to help the cat be content and secure.
We reserved an upper dorm for Qatari Cat. It gives us so much peace of mind knowing he will be well taken care of.
Grumpy Wednesdays
I always get up grumpy on Wednesdays these days. My early water-aerobics class at the Y helps my mood, but when I get home, I have the dreaded cat litter to take care of. Thursday is garbage pick up, so Wednesdays I dump out all the old litter, wash out the litter box, dry it and refill it. I gather up the garbage from all over the house, put it in the can, move the can to the curb and then it’s picked up on Thursdays.
I think it took me all of 30 minutes.
I probably grumped about it about three hours, until I had it done. It occurred to me that I was letting a very small (but unpleasant) amount of time totally spoil my outlook. Literally, doing the job, doing the job well – takes minutes. Why do I grump about something so small?
Cleaning out cat litter is not a pleasant task. When I was pregnant, AdventureMan took over the job, because cat litter can hold parasites harmful to babies. Thirty years later, AdventureMan looked at me speculatively, his eyes all squinted up, and said “Isn’t the risk to your pregnancy about over by now?”
LLOOLL!
Bionic Cat
You can read this entire story at The NPR Website
No Mouse Is Safe: Cat Gets World’s First Bionic Paws
by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Oscar, the cat with a pair of prosthetic paws, is seen in an undated photo.
June 25, 2010
Oscar the cat may have lost one of his nine lives, but his new prosthetic paws make him the world’s first bionic cat.
After losing his two rear paws in a nasty encounter with a combine harvester last October, the black cat with green eyes was outfitted with metallic pegs that link the ankle to the foot and mimic the way deer antlers grow through skin. Oscar is now back on his feet and hopping over hurdles like tissue paper rolls.
After Oscar’s farming accident, which happened when the 2 1/2-year-old-cat was lazing in the sun in the British Channel Isles, his owners, Kate and Mike Nolan, took him to their local veterinarian. In turn, the vet referred Oscar to Dr. Noel Fitzpatrick, a neuro-orthopedic surgeon in Eashing, 35 miles southwest of London.
Together with biomedical engineering experts, Fitzpatrick gave Oscar two metal prosthetic implants that are a bit wobbly, to imitate a cat’s natural walk. But first, he covered the brown implants with black tape to match Oscar’s fur.
Fitzpatrick said he and biomedical engineers designed the artificial paws so that they would be fused to the bone and skin. “That allows this implant to work as a seesaw on the bottom of the animal’s limbs to give him [an] effectively normal gait,” he said. “Oscar can now run and jump about as cats should do.”
Qatteri Cat in the Pensacola Sunshine
Haven’t done a shot of the Qatteri Cat for a while, and I am always getting requests. He is sleeping with his Dad (AdventureMan) right now, keeping him company while he takes his JetLag Nap.
Here’s a shot from earlier in the day. We get the early morning sunshine, and the QC takes his morning sunbath, watching the world go by:
He is losing a little weight, slowly, the way the vet recommended. When you know how many people in the world are going hungry, it is obscene what a Diet Cat food costs. 😦 The QC now weighs under 20 lbs; this is a good thing.
This is a tiny little Qatteri street cat, found wandering, cold and hungry, with an eye infection, on the Corniche in Qatar about 7 years ago. We have promised him no more long airplane trips; it was just too traumatic for him. But – that was yesterday. As long as the sun is shining and the Qatteri Cat is warm, hey, life is good. 🙂
Pensacola Navy Exchange and Customer Service
One of the things that totally blows us away in the United States is customer service. Every now and then you run into bad customer service and it is so noticeable because most of the customer service is so GOOD. It is so good so often that you take it for granted, if you haven’t lived in countries where sometimes they treat you like you are lucky they notice your existence and maybe you aren’t good enough for their product, LOL!
I have a sweet, very elegant Indian friend in Kuwait. One time she told me she wanted to buy a beautiful pen for her husband, but when she went to the store, the man behind the counter didn’t want to show her the pen she wanted – because she is Indian. She said “here he is, working behind the counter, and he treats me like he doesn’t think I can afford to buy the pen I want to look at!” How insulting is that??
Oops. I digress. Sorry.
We decided to check out the Navy Exchange in Pensacola. Pensacola is a big military retirement area. It is a beautiful place, beautiful white powdery sands, green to turquoise to blue to purple waters, green palms and trees and right now azaleas blooming everywhere – many military people think it is heaven on earth, and come back to retire here. It’s a fun place, the Blue Angels practicing on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings; you can hear them thundering through the skies and over the Gulf, practicing their moves.
We get to the exchange (the souks, for my Gulf readers 😉 ) I am disappointed – it’s small. There is another building, but it is also small, and I am looking for big appliances, like a clothes washer and dryer. As we are leaving, a store guy asks us if we found everything OK, and we said ‘no, not really’ and he listened to us and then laughed and told us we were at the wrong place, and he took his time to tell us how to get to the right place, and to make sure we understood.
When we got to the right exchange (and it is HUGE!) there were lots of parking places – I love this place. We parked next to a reserved space. There are lots of reserved spaces – remember, this is a military base. The commander of this, the commander of that, a space for flag officers (generals) and then . . .this space. It gave me a big grin. And there are TWO of them, right in front of the Naval Exchange:
In my seven years in the Gulf, in Qatar and in Kuwait, I saw some amazing changes, including going from total disregard of handicapped spaces to increasing respect for the handicapped spaces. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a couple Expectant Mother spaces reserved in front of the Co-ops, and maybe in front of Toys R Us, and the hospitals?
Once inside, I was looking at washer and dryers, and a lady asked if she could help me. I said no, but then I couldn’t find the ones I was looking for, the ones recommended by Consumer Reports and I saw the lady behind a counter so I asked her. She said if we didn’t see them, we could order them, looked them up and told me the price, which was only minimally lower than I had seen them off base, except that on base we don’t have to pay the sales tax, which would make a difference.
But then, she started telling me more. Right now, we could take off 15% for this sale, and get a $50 mail-in rebate (better!) but if I could wait to order until April 12, the price would be 20% off for three days (woo hoo, even better!) AND if I used my Navy Star card for the first time, I could take an additional 10% off anything I purchased on the first day (WOOO HOOOOO, better and better!)
We are about to set up an entire household in a country where we haven’t lived for 12 years. We need EVERYTHING. We’ve been saving, so this isn’t going to put us in debt, but it’s like God just handed us this huge gift when he sent this woman our way to explain how it all works. So I applied for the credit card and was instantly approved, and I asked if I should put AdventureMan on the card and she laughed and said “no!” because what if we wanted something else BIG down the road, then he could apply for his own card and we would get the 10% all over again.
Now, my friends, THAT is customer service. What a woman!
Washer
Dryer
Vacuum Cleaner
2 Plasma TVs
wireless BlueRay/DVD player channels Netflix
All-in-one fax/scanner/printer
etc.
We are going to save a bundle.
First, AdventureMan is coming with me to our Water Aerobics class at the YMCA. He has toured the Y, met the instructor, and no longer thinks this is going to be ‘girly’. From there, we will head for the NEX (Naval Exchange) to make our purchases and place our orders.
Next week, the major start-up grocery shop. Imagine, starting your kitchen once again from scratch. No, I have pots and pans and tools, but the basics, from salt and pepper, through olive oil, flour, sugar, etc . . .everything. oh, AARRGH.
Ketchup Entry
“It’s been five days since you blogged,” my friend wrote to me. “Isn’t that some kind of a record?”
Well, no.
Back when I went to Damascus for Christmas, it was also the Eid al Kebir, and I was gone for a week and everyone was so busy with their own celebrations that no one really noticed. 🙂 Well, maybe my Mother. 🙂
This time, it has to do with AdventureMan.
AdventureMan became semi-retired this last week. He and the Qatteri Cat flew to Pensacola, where we met up and now the three of us are staying in a hotel while our heroic contractors are battling to have us in the house by April 15th. Will we make it?
The Qatteri Cat was totally freaked out by his long long trip to the United States. First, for all my annoyances with KLM, we have to tell you that they are totally superb when you are shipping an animal with you. At every stage of the journey, they kept AdventureMan informed on QC’s progress, and he was in great shape when he arrived, except that he was really, really scared. He didn’t understand any of this, the long flight, all the noise, the vibration and then the hotel room full of strange smells of a 1,000 previous guests. (If you are a cat, you can smell things we can’t even dream).
He is OK now. He has a short memory.
Meanwhile, AdventureMan and I have been doing the business of getting ready to get settled, and at the same time, AM is jet lagging. I tell him I think he is catching up on months of sleep deprivation, and he says he thinks it is just jet lag. It makes me happy to see him sleep.
Today, we went by the house so I could pot a cherry tomato, a very special heirloom tomato that I found at the Emerald Coast Garden Show this last weekend. It is a black cherry tomato, and I have never seen one! I have sent for some other heirloom seeds; I love cherry tomatoes and grape tomatoes, tiny little tomatoes with intense flavor. I love to mix them all together with some green onion tops and just a little lemon-y vinaigrette dressing, maybe on some lettuce. YUMMM!
Anyway, AdventureMan likes gardening, too. He comes by it honestly, both his grandfathers gardened. One of them had chickens, too, and grew peanuts, and corn as well as a garden full of vegetables. I garden on a much smaller scale. Mostly I plant things that will take care of themselves – lavender, rosemary. Here, in the mild climate of Pensacola, basil becomes a perennial (I saw that in Kuwait, too, at our Kuwait gardening friend’s house) and I have planted some bougainvillea, which I am hoping will be hardy enough to weather an occasional cold winter or two like the last one.
When we got to the house – and this is Sunday, in the heart of the Bible-belt deep South – the ceiling and drywall people were there, working on a ceiling. We were surprised to see them there, but we know they are all trying really hard to get us into the house as soon as they can.
I was thinking AdventureMan was going to kick back and take it easy, but it hasn’t turned out that way – we are up and at-’em every day, and we have accomplished amazing things. More about some of that in future posts.
Just wanted to let you know I haven’t forgotten about you – just haven’t had the opportunity to sit for very long to organize my thoughts.
Cocoa Mulch Warning
A friend sent this to me today and asked me to share it with all my pet-owner friends. 🙂 I know there are a lot of you:
Please share this with all the pet owners you know and ask them to do the same – the information you take a few minutes to share might prevent the senseless loss of other pets.
Please tell every dog or cat owner you know. Even if you don’t have a pet, please pass this to those who do.
Over the weekend, the doting owner of two young lab mixes purchased Cocoa Mulch from Target to use in their garden. The dogs loved the way it smelled and it was advertised to keep cats away from their garden. Their dog (Calypso) decided the mulch smelled good enough to eat and devoured a large helping. She vomited a few times which was typical when she eats something new but wasn’t acting lethargic in any way. The next day, Mom woke up and took Calypso out for her morning walk . Half way through the walk, she had a seizure and died instantly.
Although the mulch had NO warnings printed on the label, upon further investigation on the company’s web site, this product is HIGHLY toxic to dogs and cats.
Cocoa Mulch is manufactured by Hershey’s, and they claim that “It is true that studies have shown that 50% of the dogs that eat Cocoa Mulch can suffer physical harm to a variety of degrees (depending on each individual dog). However, 98% of all dogs won’t eat it.”
*Snopes site gives the following information:http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/cocoamulch.asp *
Cocoa Mulch, which is sold by Home Depot, Foreman’s Garden Supply and other Garden supply stores contains a lethal ingredient called ‘Theobromine’. It is lethal to dogs and cats. It smells li ke chocolate and it really attracts dogs. They will ingest this stuff and die. Several deaths already occurred in the last 2-3 weeks.
Theobromine is in all chocolate, especially dark or baker’s chocolate which is toxic to dogs. Cocoa bean shells contain potentially toxic quantities of theobromine, a xanthine compound similar in effects to caffeine and theophylline. A dog that ingested a lethal quantity of garden mulch made from cacao bean shells developed severe convulsions and died 17 hours later. Analysis of the stomach contents and the ingested cacao bean shells revealed the presence of lethal amounts of theobromine.
**PLEASE PASS THIS ON**
Feast of Flowers
Things get a little chaotic in a house with a newborn, so this morning I was giving the many baskets of flowers a critical eye, so that we could get rid of some which were fading.
There was one; I figured I could rescue it by taking out a couple wilted blooms, so I put it on the kitchen counter, but then I was needed to hold the baby.
Next thing I looked, all three cats were having a flower feast. By the time I grabbed the camera, the shyest one had jumped down:
Memo to self: Keep flowers in high, unreachable place.
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