Scruffing the Turtle Neck

Scruffing a Turtle Neck

            Kittens are scruffed by their mothers.  It’s the process where the mother cat can pick up the kitten by the back of the neck to carry it.  All cats do it from small domestic house cats to lions and tigers and bobcats and civets.  Usually people can also carry a small cat this way or hold a large cat this way to immobilize them.  But of course, with a large cat, you have to support the rest of their body as well to not hurt them while they are hanging in the air with gravity pulling on all their internal organs.   This is quite handy when you need to do something like give them medicine or cut their claws or brush out knots in their fur, clean their ears, etc. etc.  You get the picture.  The scruffing works because the cat should have had this done to him/her when he/she was a kitten and mom needed to be dominant and hold order.  It semi-immobilizes them for a bit and usually makes them a bit calmer which can be real useful if you have a cat that’s about to get into a fight. 

            Our problem with our cat, Godiva, is that she was an early abandoned and abused kitten and we got her from the rescue service that held adoptions at the neighborhood pet shop.  So we can’t honestly say how much scruffing she ever had by her mother but at some point, she came to associate scuffing with bad things and probably things that hurt her so she learned a coping technique to avoid being scruffed.

            If you have read anything on my cats and Godiva in particular, you might recall that she is very good at imitating other animals.  She does a good squid imitation: where a squid releases ink to disappear from predators in a cloud of ink, Godiva releases fur in the hopes of disappearing in a cloud of fur.  She also does a very good otter imitation where she lays on her back with her paws tucked up on her chest and stomach.  She will hold a catnip banana on her chest and can lie for hours in this position.  She also almost has an owl imitation down pat and can almost turn her head around 180 degrees.  She’s working on that one as it isn’t perfected yet.  And there are several others she does.

            Godiva’s coping mechanism for “scruff avoidance” is to imitate a turtle.  She doesn’t have a shell to withdraw her head but she tucks her head down and shortens her neck.  It appears that she is pulling her head closer into her body.  Suddenly there is a lot less fur and neck around to scruff.  She’s gotten a turtle neck and should you be able to grab her anyway and try to scruff her, she’s very good at squirming and turning her head in her turtle neck position so that it breaks the scruff and she is again free.  We have tried over the years to get her scruffed for the vet or for her nail trimming or for whatever and we haven’t ever succeeded in getting a good scruff on her that immobilizes her long enough to do anything.  Turtle neck and twisting every time.  We have no idea what happened to her as a kitten but even after 9 years of loving attention, she still turns turtle when we try a scruff.  To trim her nails, I have to sneak up on her when she’s asleep.  Usually I can get one paw trimmed before she’s awake and away.

            I’m glad my cat is so talented to be able to imitate so many different animals but it would be handy to be able to scruff her.  Just not going to happen to my turtle neck Siamese.  

Taming the Were-Lion OR A Perspective of Love

Taming the Were-Lion OR A Perspective of Love

            We’re always had cats, as long as I can remember.  When I was little, they were scruffy “barn “cats that lived outside and came in to top up their nutrition in the way of cat food and milk and to lie in front of the fireplace (sometimes a mouse went free if they really liked the cat food of the day!).  I would sneak them into the house in the winter and they all learned that climbing a tree and crossing the roof to my bedroom window was a sure warmth winner.

            One of the first things I did upon leaving the familial birthplace was to buy a pedigree Siamese cat (which I loved that breed thanks to Lady and The Tramp (even though Am and Si were villains in that movie)) I also decided said cat would become and always be a housecat.  No dog, no cars, no wildlife would threaten my precious bundle of fur.  The dynasty of house cats continued as one of the first things my husband and I did when my daughter reached a responsible age was buy a pedigree Siamese cat for her too.  The love of cats lives on in her and even reached a higher degree.  Unknown to us until she was older, she became “the goddess of cats” in that almost any stray, unknown, un-pedigreed, or hurt cat would come to see her when she was in the vicinity.

            Fast forward to daughter grown and living on her own with cats, we’re moving overseas to begin my husband’s ex-pat career and our cats must be given to loving homes because we didn’t have the money to ship them with us AND they were backyard adopted cats (except one who was a piddler) so we didn’t feel too horrid for finding them good homes.  And it was amazing how fast we placed 3 adult cats to loving homes.  We remained cat-less for a number of years but took any opportunities to care for cats including babysitting cats at our apartment in Singapore.

            We remained cat-less through a couple of rotations on the ex-pat roller coaster but decided to adopt and give some cats that started out with a rough life a very good home of love and luxury.  Hence we headed off to the local pet shop one Saturday.  Our intent was to get adult cats but I had to buy something in the back of the store and by the time I returned to the adoption area, my husband was cuddling a small bewildered and upset Tortie-point Siamese kitten.  How anyone could abandon anything so gorgeous and precious is beyond me but Godiva went home with us that day, 9 years ago.  And since we don’t believe in one cat living  alone when we’re off to work or whatever, Puff went home with us that day too, a brown Mackerel Tabby.  I grew attached to Godiva more than Puff and Puff became my hubby’s cat.

            Godiva is sweet and loving and fluffy and soft and cute and pretty and funny and adorable.  She makes us laugh when she rolls over to have a belly rub (she’s been called a “belly-Ho” because she’ll roll over for anyone!)  Puff is a bit harder to love as he’s well named because he’s afraid of everything and when he was little, the smallest noise would make him puff –up to appear ferocious.  Godiva was kind and loving to everyone.  She wasn’t afraid to go anyplace with me and hardly ever hissed or growled except when in mock battle with Puff.  So imagine my surprise when around the age of 2 (her age, not mine), she went to the vet for a bit of an infection or belly ache or whatever (can’t even remember why she went now) and suddenly the vet is “expressing her anal glands” which in my opinion didn’t need doing and if I had known what the vet planned to do, I would have stopped it.

            This one act is what changed my sweet baboo into a snarling, clawing, hissing, growling, snapping, and biting were-lion.  She so hated this procedure that since that episode (7 years ago), she has hated any vets and vet office and lets them all know it the minute we walk in the door.  She is extremely difficult in the examining room and vets have barely been able to touch her.  She must be dragged kicking and screaming from her cage to get onto the examining table and sounds like she is being tortured.  Whenever I leave from the vets examine room, all eyes in the waiting room are on me, wide eyed in terror and disbelief from the sounds they have just heard – their pets quivering in fear at the imagined torture they must now face upon entering through that same door.

            As such, it usually then falls to me to help hold her because she is calmer with me involved.  That doesn’t mean she stops snarling and hissing and growling and fighting to escape, it just means they have maybe a 20% better chance of touching her and examining her.  Last night we had to do an emergency run to the vet because Godiva was doing the “I’m in pain, Mama!” cry.  That changed to the “snarl – why am I in the cage, Mama?” to “growl and hiss – hated vets office, get me out of here!!! *($%!***!!*%#)”

            The vets are great in that they are worried she might bite me. (She never has except for play bites and when she is injured and my fingers get in the way of her mouth) I said, she probably will if she gets a chance and my fingers get in the way so this vet offered to take her into the back with her “properly trained in handling irate animals” personnel so they could examine her.  Less than 10 minutes later, they were back.  The vet said they couldn’t touch her or get her out of the cage!  My sweet baboo has gone were-Lion again and turned into the snarling monster of the beasts.  The vet suggested that maybe it would be better after all if I held her so Godiva comes back to the examining room, still yelling at the world through her cage door and I am able to grab her and get her out and hold her while the vet has a look.  Poor baby.  She has some kind of infection again but since my regular vet had been working on it for the last month, the emergency vet thought it best if I get medication from them.  She was able to give Godiva a pain injection so she could make it through the night.  The emergency vet was also amazed that her “trained personnel to handle irate animals” was unable to handle her and yet I could grab her and hold her and calm her down (to an extent) so that she could be examined.  We trudge back home with her doing the minimal snarl and growl and hiss from her cage so we know that she isn’t happy with the world, still, and then she does the “get away from me” to Puff and for once, he seems to understand he is going to get his clock cleaned if he messes with the were-lion.

            Sweet baboo has become a mess from being at the vets.  She always does animal imitations when the purpose suits her.  At vets, she does her best squid imitation but instead of squirting ink to disappear, she drops a whole kitten’s worth of fur and figures she can disappear into a fur cloud.  She also tries to imitate monkeys who will fling their feces at targets.  She just lacks the flinging part but has the getting out the feces in case she ever figures out how to fling part well in hand.  So once home, she needs to be cleaned and we need to start her on her medication.  I am able to get most of her wiped off until I start on her lower belly which still must be giving her some pain as she scratches out while trying to turn over and leave and I get stabbed a couple of times in the arm.  We have to grab her again to give her the meds and it is a huge syringe that has to be pushed into her mouth but it is so hard to push it that I need my husband’s help to hold her and push the syringe.  She didn’t get all of her meds, maybe about half.  The rest went all over me.  We should have waited about ½ hour as she mellowed from the pain killing shot and turned back into my sweet baboo. 

            Today I get to take her to the regular vet to see if they can figure out what is wrong with her.  I hope I don’t have to leave her because she will turn into a were-lion once we reach the vets door and I don’t need the death of a trained professional in animal handling on my conscious. 

            Obviously we love our cats.  We joke about my daughter’s cats and call them our “grand-kitties” since we have no grandchildren.  We laughingly figure out the relationships between our fuzzy “kids” and my daughter’s fuzzy “kids”.  And when necessary, we spend a heap load of money on them as in last night’s emergency vet.  When you love your pets, the money is paid, albeit sometimes with a huge grimace or a juggle to take the money from something else, but we would find the money somehow to keep them going for we love their companionship, their antics, and their love back to us (yes, yes, some don’t agree that cats are that loving but ours are).  So our perspective is that the money is the least of the problems when your loved one needs help.  And anyone who loves their dog, cat, rabbit, bird, fish, snake, hamster, fox (I add this because someone I know had a pet fox) will somehow try and find the money to help their pet in distress.  It cost us 145 POUNDS to go to the emergency vet last night and walk in the front door.  Then we had to pay for the meds and any other treatment Godiva got.  Luckily I didn’t have to pay for an emergency room visit for any human personnel at the local A&E.  When we walked into the vet’s office, a couple were paying and getting ready to leave.  Their pet of love was a large rabbit!  So 145 pounds for the rabbit was also an acceptable price when dealing with their love of their pet.  I do admit that I might not have felt so inclined to spend that much on a pet rabbit but what do I know. Love is powerful and ya gotta do what’s necessary to work it and keep it going even if it means a lot of money for the life of an animal that is probably not going to last your whole life.  The time our cats spend with us is ever so precious and wonderful and worth the money.  Perspective!

OMG! Not Again

OMG! Not Again!

My poor kitties. I know they love us and love living with us. Who wouldn’t because they are spoiled horribly and their every whim is attended to and they get the prime sleeping spots on the bed. But they have had reason lately to wonder if being “our cats” is such a good thing after all.

Last year we did the travel thing. From April until January of this year, we moved around the country in short bursts of anywhere from 1 night stays to 2 nights to one week to one month to 3 months at the longest. It served to make Puff a bit spookier and Godiva is now definitely a cat with motion sickness issues.

Background information: In April we were still in Toronto, Canada with our daughter and needed to bring the cats back across the border into the United States. This was quite an easy accomplishment in the end and even though I had tons of paperwork with me, the border guards barely looked at the cats and waved us through. I had taken the cats to the vet and gotten a checkup for them and rabies shots. Turns out, it was harder to get the car back into the U.S. than it was the cats.

In October, my husband received his new assignment which should have had us moving to the U.K. last year BUT as luck was not with us, the assignment was put on hold. Before it was put on hold though, I had to take the kitties back to the vet and get them another rabies shot so that they could pass the “titer test” that is needed to bring our lovely fuzzy children into the U.K. The titer test involved taking a vile of blood from each cat and sending it off to a laboratory in Kansas (of all places) to ensure that they are protected against rabies. Godiva did not enjoy that vet visit at all.

In January of this year (2011), we had to move back to Houston because the assignment is still on hold. Everyone kept saying we would be moving the first quarter of this year but my hubby’s company does not always keep its word when timing and other countries are involved. NOW it looks like we might be able to move in October which is right at the limit of the test results and the last rabies shot.

You have guessed it by now I am sure. I had to take the kitties back to the vet again for yet a third rabies shot in 18 months and will have to take them back next week for another titer test. Oh is Godiva going to be thoroughly pissed at me, and the vet. Every vet and web site I check says that many rabies shots will not hurt them though. They could probably spit on other cats by this point and project immunity on the other cats.

I hope that this is the last time I will have to do this to them but one never knows with businesses and governments and kitties and rabies.

Moved once again

After months of living out of our car and staying in hotels for anywhere from one night to one month, the kitties and I have landed, temporarily, in Houston. They have no idea what city it is, they just know that we have moved into someplace that is bigger than their last several homes. I don't think the cats adopted to nomad life quite as well as a dog would have. They both developed a few odd ticks and tricks. Puff has become a "hollerer". He will stand in a doorway and meow, loudly, constantly, until you come and get him. He's gotten very needy and wants to be with someone constantly. That's fine unless I have a lot of housework or moving chores that take me around the apartment. He can only follow me so long before he's exhausted, being a cat after all, and wants to sleep BUT must sleep where he can pop open an eye and see me. So he yells.
Godiva has developed motion sickness. She can hardly get into a car without barfing now. I try to make sure she hasn't had any food for awhile and try to go easy around corners but one corner at above 15 mph and "barf!" I think it is her protest for being in the car again.
We have settled into an apartment for several months, not sure how long. At the end of the time, we should be moving overseas again. I am worried how she will react to being in an airline cage for several hours. Can't have her showing up at an airport with barf all over the cage but I'll figure out something when the time comes. And for now, I always try to sit somewhere Puff can find a place to sit next to me. My next nomad trip will either have to be without them OR I will have to do it in a RV.

Time Disintegration

I have been working on teaching the kitties that they must sleep through the night as there will no longer be food left out for them and I will not get up to feed them in the middle of the night. This is mainly so that I can monitor Puff's intake as he must lose weight. Godiva isn't a problem as she's not overweight but she is a problem in that she apparently thinks she must have a few bites of kibble every 4 hours or so. As you can imagine, it's not so easy to teach 7 year old cats anything. I have managed to teach Puff not to holler during the night and that he can have a safe place on the bed but he must be quiet on the bed. This has worked out great. However, there is one problem with this in that he thinks I am the only one who has the power to enforce this "quiet at night and quiet on the bed" rule. When we are gone and my daughter takes care of the cats, he goes back to his old habit of wandering around at will and hollering.
We were doing fairly well with the training of sleeping through the night and no food bowls left out also. Daylight savings time did confuse them. I had gotten them to go to bed around 11 p.m. and not bother me until about 6 a.m. Daylight savings plan through them off key and they started bothering me about 5 a.m. This was still good though and a much improved time from the 2:30 and 3:30 a.m. feedings that Godiva, especially, used to insist upon getting. But again, it seems that I was the only one that could get them to "behave" during the night. I went away for a week and left them with my daughter, who dearly loves them also. BUT they somehow forgot all my hard work and started getting her up at 3:30 and 4 a.m. and demanding that they get food. She did not bend to their wishes but it made for a very short night of sleep for her.
When I got back, it seems that time has disintegrated for Godiva. She seems to be locked into the 4 a.m. time slot as her morning wake up call. She is not getting her breakfast until 6:30 a.m. but it still means that if she is awake at 4, then so am I. I am trying various techniques to overcome this and get her to stay quiet and asleep until around 6 but so far, no luck. Since we are currently and temporarily living in a one bedroom hotel room, there are a lot of factors that I cannot control, like the neighbor's alarm clock, the hallway noise, the cars passing, etc. I hope that these are contributing factors and eventually I will prevail over these small fuzzy animals with brains the size of walnuts. We shall see. In the meantime, I am getting a lot of stuff done on my computer in the early hours of the morning. Gotta look on the plus side for everything.

Cats and Bags and Lead Paint

Our Puff has recently decided that it is a great joy to lick bags. I am talking about the "green" bags that you get at different shops and stores so that you can bring them back to the store and thus avoid using plastic bags. Sometimes these "green" bags are plastic themselves and other times they are some sort of cheap cloth and will last through a good many trips to the store until they finally crumble away into component parts. I have several red ones that have come from Diver's Direct, a black one from a grocery store and several other plastic ones from grocery stores plus one that changes colors in the sun from Del Sol. Usually these bags are thrown on the floor as I empty them and then gathered to go back to the car. Since I am living out of a hotel room still, several of the larger red bags from Diver's Direct have been pressed into use as holding containers. Until a couple of days ago, they were sitting underneath the desk or underneath tables and such. There is no room in the minuscule hotel room for them to live in the closet.
I had noticed a week or so ago that Puff was spending an inordinate amount of time crouched next to one bag or another and licking the bag. He would dart off the minute I would holler at him to stop only to creep over to the bag again and start licking it again. Usually he could do this quietly so I often didn't catch him until all other noises would cease (hotel hall noises) and then I would hear the lick, lick, slurp, slurp as he lovingly laved the bag with his tongue. He's gotten a real oral fixation on these bags. He started doing it more and more until I decided it was a possible danger to him and finally found a perch above the television for the bags. I have no idea what attracted him to the bags and why he started licking them and progressively got more and more aggressive about it. My husband told me that he read somewhere that some of these "green" bags contain lead paint! Oh my gosh. I hope I have not inadvertently poisoned my kitty! I guess all that lead paint from ages ago has been sitting in warehouses waiting to be used for something. How ironic that it gets used in "green" bags. For now, Puff is unable to lick the bags. What will he find next?

Blink!

Those familiar with the British television program, Doctor Who, might recognize the title. If you are a fan and have watched the series, especially when David Tennant was Doctor Who, you will remember that this show featured stone angels who looked fine when you watched them but turned into evil beings who crept up upon you and killed you when you didn't watch them. So when you were in their presence, you had to look at them all the time and not even blink. These angels were also revisited in the current series with Matt Smith as Doctor Who.

My cats have developed these same sneaky feature, except the killing part, thank goodness. If I am watching them, they will sit across the room and gaze at me. Once I glance away or blink, they are closer the next time I look until finally, they are at my feet or about to get into my lap. It is amazing how fast they move and how silently they move and how close they can creep up to me without me noticing that they have done it. Since seeing the Doctor Who show with this feature, I always think about these angels whenever the cats are creeping. Don't Blink!!!