I am continuously amazed by the human capacity for cruelty and stupidity. Here we have a man, a former professional baseball player and sometime-actor by the name of Joseph Petcka, who claims he brutalized and killed his (presumably ex) girlfriend’s cat because “he attacked me”.
It was 38 degrees Celsius here on Wednesday. It was about 32 today, and about the same on Monday and Tuesday. I like warm weather, but “warm” to me is 25 degrees.
We’d probably have central air conditioning in our house if this kind of weather was common. Instead, we make do. Our house has “top opening” windows, so in-window air conditioning isn’t an option for us either. I bought a portable AC unit a couple of years ago, the type with the big hoses you are supposed to route through the window…but guess what? There isn’t any real way to mount the hoses / vents in top opening windows either. I can jury rig something with tin foil and cardboard (I’m serious), but it is generally more hassle than it’s worth.
Our cat, Rommel, died on Wednesday. Irene raced him to the vet when she found him in a diabetic coma early in the afternoon. The vet was unable to revive him.
Rommel has been with us most of his life: over 13 years. We adopted him from the SPCA in Edmonton when he was about twelve weeks old.
Iris was spayed yesterday. I was worried about the process, moreso than for our other cats. For some reason, I have emotionally tied myself to Iris in a similar way to how I did with Whisper years ago. And Whisper ultimately broke my heart when her little body gave out after her spaying operation.
Our cat, Rommel, has had a rather checkered past when it comes to his own health. He entered our house as a basically healthy twelve week old kitten nearly twelve years ago. Within a few months he had fractured his kneecap (resulting in six weeks in a cast), and within a year he’d had several abscesses, various stitches added and removed, and numerous x-rays. In more recent years he’s developed a growth in his mouth called a stomatitis, for which he has had several surgeries, regular steroidal treatments, special hypoallergenic food, and periodic doses of anti-biotics.
I have a couple of kitten pictures of Iris and Bilbo that show how a fourteen year old and (at the time) a 14 week old kitten can co-exist.
Our kittens are growing up…Nimbus goes tomorrow to have his “bits” removed.
It’s a comparatively minor operation for the male cats, with very little risk. It’s also essential if you consider yourself an even remotely responsible pet owner.
On Thursday Iris woke up with a limp. She was favouring her right front paw, and was acting somewhat depressed. We took her to our friendly vet, Doctor Michelle, who couldn’t find an obvious problem, but suspected a puncture wound hidden somewhere. Dosed with an anti-inflamatory and a prescription of antibiotics, we took the little one home. She perked up, had a big dinner and seemed much happier. I gave her the first dose of antibiotic. Part of the “prescription” was to keep her calm…yeah, right- Iris is a million mile an hour kitten, so slowing her down was about the best we could do.
Nimbus has been with us for over a month now, and has been doing a great job doing what kittens do. It seemed like a good time about four or five days ago to take a batch of photos of him, and I’ve just finished putting them into the gallery.
We weren’t going to adopt another cat.
You know we are in trouble when my post starts off “We weren’t going to adopt another…”. And once again, it’s Irene who wedged the chisel into the cracks in my steely resolve. There were feral (semi-wild) kittens, you see, at the rescue shelter where she volunteers. And one of them was very scared, and curled up and buried his head in her sweater and purred when she was there. And it was very sad, and very cute, and couldn’t she please bring her home?