Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Cat Update

I've gotten a couple of emails since I posted about the poop machine, er, I mean cat.

To quickly recap, Jules and I got a previously traumatized cat with some wacky problems. I even went so far as to drop some money on a cat behavior consultant, thereby earning myself some of the most palpable shame I have felt in years.

Anyway, the update is this: the cat has had two teeth extracted by the vet, one which was cracked and the other which was abscessed and was one of the most gnarly things you will ever see. Pumpkin also is constantly on some kind of medication for her ears which get this gross goopy buildup if left alone for a couple of weeks.

The cat at this point has cost us more money than I even want to think about for fear that I will start lighting money on fire in an effort to ensure a greater degree of value/amusement for my dollar.

In all seriousness though, the cat has been better behaved since those teeth came out. She still poops next to the litter box, but we have at least mitigated this problem by putting the boxes in the basement where nobody goes anyway. Of course, having said that, the cat did decide to drop a bomb in my office this morning after I didn't close the door the previous night, so I don't know that there's really progress so much as there is rationalization.

But at least the cat doesn't yowl and holler nonstop and is definitely much more low key than it was before. She's also the most affectionate cat I have ever seen.

This much headache over a cat and some of you actually have kids. I can no longer tell which of us is more insane.

5 comments:

Andy said...

myao

Anonymous said...

If it makes you feel any better, my girlfriend and I were arguing this weekend over who was responsible for the increasingly frequent incidences of the refrigerator door being left ajar when one of our cats calmly walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, helped himself to a hunk of meat, and walked off. Short of installing child locks, I fear there is no realistic option other than training the cat to simply close the door when he's done like the rest of us...

Anonymous said...

bHey, at least you can put a diaper on a kid! I would imagine that trying to do that with a cat would lead to about as much pain and fleshy trauma as going hunting with Dick Cheney...
~Karri

Anonymous said...

Hey Son, have you tried putting the litter box up on a short table. Maybe if the cat had to jump up to use it and there was little room the cat would use the box and not the floor. Of course if the cat doesn't like to jump then it may just can the box all together. You have tried everything else it might be worth a try.

DAD

heather (errantdreams) said...

Glad to hear Pumpkin is doing better. When the vets delved into our cats' dental health... oy! Our little girl had most of her teeth out, and suddenly we understood why she didn't like any kind of food she had to chew. Underneath that tartar she had... nothing. She was chewing with tartar.

Then of course she reacted to one of the drugs they gave her, and developed lesions... yeah, I can relate to the vet bills. =/

But you know, it's worth it. (I say this as Selene lies on my lap, making it tough for me to type, with her face planted against my forearm. It's the cutest thing in the world. And yeah, I say this having gotten up at 2:30 am to clean up two cats' worth of barf.)