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Your cat will never threaten your popularity by barking at three in the morning. He won’t attack the mailman or eat the drapes, although he may climb the drapes to see how the room looks from the ceiling. ~Helen Powers
Yesterday evening I was gonna spend some time in the recliner (prime lap lump territory) when I noticed Kismet and Shiimsa cuddled together in it. That’s a first. Didn’t bother them, just went back to the dining table to read some more.
I had fed the canned food babies was getting ready to feed the dry food babies Wednesday evening when I noticed it was cold in the place. I have a pair of jalousie windows that face the alley and the long couch fits perfectly under them. The crank for the window on the right works, the other doesn’t. It’s not unusual to see the right window cracked just a bit cuz the tigers like to use the crank as a pillow and it gets turned just enough to crack the window. This time the window is open about 3 inches and I’m thinking, did somebody get out? I take a head count and guess who’s missing? Yep, Nagi. Keeping panic mode tamped down reeeeeeeal good I first feed the tigers then go around the block calling Nagi. Nothing. I go back in, planning to go out again after the tigers are finished eating. Couldn’t wait that long so I go out front and start calling. My neighbor across the street is out and we chat for a few minues and I go back to calling Nagi. It’s dark by now. I go back in, not looking forward to a night of walking the neighborhood. As I come back in I notice Feurae looking at something outside that window. I go over to look and guess who’s sitting on the windowsill outside. Got out that way figured he’d come back in that way. I had to climb into a huge bush to get to him but he just sat there while I put the latch onto him. I’d already taken the crank handle off the window. Not gonna go through that one again.
I think I learned something about Nagi with this little episode. Karen from the vet’s office first saw him chasing flutterbys in her front yard and we’ve always wondered how he got there. Since he came back to me in less than 20 minutes I have to think he was an indoor/outdoor tiger, used to being out and coming home when called. He may have been on the windowsill from the first time I went out for all I know. The mystery of how he ended up in Karen’s yard remains, however.
I’ve had Kismet and Brutus six months. I think Brutus is finally comfortable here. When he decided to sit in the kitchen and chirp at me while I’m doing the canned food routine I figure he’s really settling in. He really is a shy little guy but he loves the attention. Handsome little devil, too. I love his white toes, not paws, just the tips of his toes. Too cute.
He who knows men is clever,
He who knows himself has insight.
He who conquers men has force,
He who conquers himself is truly strong.
He who knows when he has got enough is rich,
And he who adheres assiduously to the path of Tao is a man of steady purpose.
He who stays where he has found his true home endures long,
And he who dies but perishes not enjoys real longevity.
Tao Teh Ching, 33, Lao Tzu
Share your tiger stories with us.
No amount of time can erase the memory of a good cat, and no amount of masking tape can ever totally remove his fur from your couch. ~Leo Dworken
81 Comments
This seems to be an appropriate time to link to The Cat That Walked By Himself (The Just So Stories)
Hey SD, glad to hear Nagi made it home alright. Those darn kids can sure raise your hackles.
oooooo, nice site. Thanks.
Smart as a whip he is. He’s fun to have around. Keeps me on my toes.
Howya been, man? Haven’t seen much of ya lately.
There are a number of sites you can find by google that have the public domain books, poetry, etc available.
TGIC (Thank God it’s Caturday)!
BTW, if Taoist philosophy works well for felines, what works for canines?
By any chance is he named after Nagi Noda?
(the lion hat is pretty awesome)
Wow, that’s awesome but no. Nagi is Lakota for shadow. Maste is Lakota for sunshine. The Afghan is cool. Had a purebreed on my pool route in LA.
Yeah, I use a number of them.
That’s “purebred”. sheesh.
Two more examples of Nagi Noda’s work. Here and here.
She was a very talented and funny pop artist who (sadly) died in 2008 at age 35 following surgery for injuries sustained in an auto accident.
Caturday!
what pretteh kittehs
will stop back later when I have the time
*smooches* my fellow cat-o-philes
That poodle exercise thing is hilarious and well done.
heh yer gonna be busy today. I’m gonna stay right here. Not gonna hit meself with a million ton stress hammer.
Really funny how it is simultaneously understated and completely over the top.
More examples of her video work here for anyone interested.
Not much point anyway, pretty evident the fix is in.
And then there’s Niko Noga
We’ll see.
Twins at Rays. Top of the 1st, Twins 5, with 1 out. Gonna be a loooong day.
Supposed to have been sunny and in the low 70s this weekend. It’s been cloudy, cold as shit and now raining all morning. Biiiiiitch biiiiitch bitch
Now that’s a fairly obscure sports reference… :-)
I watched him play at the University of Hawai’i when I was over there and told a lot of folks to watch out for the linebacker coming out of UH in a couple of years.
If I were a dog person I’d prolly see the same thing I do with felines. Since Eastern philosophy is based on an organic view of the universe it naturally includes all living things. Asians are quite comfortable with animals in their culture and belief systems.
One of my favourite stories:
The Chinese Calendar
Near the dawn of time, Buddha held an audience. He invited all creatures of the earth to attend.
On the day only 12 individuals answered his summons. To show his generosity and to thank them for their courtesy, Buddha devoted a year to each of the twelve animals who came, in order of their arrival on the day. They were the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and the pig. From this came the twelve zodiac signs of the Chinese calendar. Each animal is thus the symbol of the year that is named after it. Those born under a particular sign carry the characteristics and behaviour traits of that animal.
The cat did not answer the summons. It spent the day sleeping.
I have my own ways, I do not conform,
No one owns me, I lead my own leisurely life.
Chinese Couplet
Hi, thanks, SD, and sorry, dropping by only, it’s a traveling day – picking up Julie and her cats to bring them up here. But hope you’ve all noted warnings about increasing deaths from use of pest control on pets. See http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/35875
Like one of the commenters said it’s the lesser of 2 evils. If I don’t treat them once I see they’ve got fleas then it doesn’t take long before the place is infested. Sorry, but the natural stuff just doesn’t work with this many animals. Been there, done that. I use Vectra but I watch ‘em real close afterwards. Luckily I usually only have to do them for 3 months out of the year and have yet to have a problem.
Twins 12, Rays 3. That was painful listening.
Happy Caturday everybody. Glad Nagi didn’t wander far. Boy do I know that sick feeling when you realize he’s gone, and the mix of relief, joy, love when you first spot them and know they are back!
Hi, mocha. No, he didn’t go far. Being dinner time I think helped as well. It had gotten dark enough that with the lights on inside I had to get my nose up to the window to see him. No tellin’ how long he’d been sitting there.
HA! He was probably thinking “heh, guys, leave some nums for me, k? And SD, why you close window on me I’s right here”
heh If he could get back in through that window as I found it I’d have to add contortionist to his talents.
You have to wonder if all of them don’t have a little spring fever! I was out in the yard a little this week. Mid 60s and the longest run of completely sunny days I can ever remember in central Ohio. I was thinking of my Buddy and how he would have been demanding to go Out!
They’re definitely spending more time in the windows. I think the window got cracked and Nagi was bopping around and the window, I found out through playing with it, takes almost no pressure to open once it’s cracked. He pushed, it opened, he went out the side and onto the ground. Little devil.
Once I brought Min and Yang in for good they loved to plop on the cat tree in front of the north facing window in my old place and watch the world go by, especially Min.
Yeah, my old house had crank out windows. I hated those windows.
They’re so energy inefficient that you can’t install them anymore in FL.
Oh, Buddy loved to sit on an ottoman at the front window, or on the stairs where he could see out the door’s sidewindows and watch the world. He knew the school bus schedule and he knew when people were coming home from work. I’m sure in his mind, it was all his loyal subjects returning. One of my friends was over the other day and noticed there were still some balls on the floor in the living room. Well, I guess I’ve just been batting them around when I vacuum, I never noticed. Then I realized his ottoman was still against the window, covered by a beach towel with the blind up a little. I know she saw it too, she just didn’t dare say anything. It wasn’t that I left it that way on purpose, it just didn’t ever strike me, oh, he’s gone I can get rid of the beach towel and put the blind down.
In my old place there was a bush with berries the birds loved outside the window. Min, Yang and Blaze would be on the cat tree charming the birds with their chatter, 3 tails justa swishin’.
We didn’t have pets when I was growing up, so I never heard that bird/prey chatter until I was 25 and got my first cat. I thought she was having a seizure!
Hey, SD. Well, I finally caught up with Caturday on a somewhat more timely basis. Just gotta know when to look, I guess.
I have to go to the store soon to pick up some things to cook for my sickly older cat, Spot. As I mentioned last week, he has hyperthyroidism, high blood pressure (they took the BP on his paw. Strangely, he seemed ok with it.) He will have to take two different meds, one for each of his two condition for the rest of his life. Now they have also determined that he has a problem with his kidneys as well. So they sent me home with a can of food ($1.55/can) and a 4 lb bag of prescription dry food. So the cat, of course, won’t eat either one. He (and his mother before him) demanded their share of wet food, but they would only eat the gravy and leave the meat. I’ve never understood that, since they are street cats that my sister took in. I inherited them when she died. My own cat would eat nearly anything I give her. She even ate a bite of rye bread this afternoon.
The bad news is, I asked the doctor what I could expect if we do all these things for my 18 year old boy kitty. He said we could buy him some months. His exact words were, “Let’s put it this way. If he’s still around a year from now, we’ll know we done good.” So I said, and what if we don’t cram him full of meds (which I think are making him lethargic. Plus, he hates taking them.) and he said that then he would go down hill pretty fast. That’s pretty much what happened with the two I lost last year (they were also quite old.) Before I knew there was anything wrong, they were gone or going so fast I had to put one of them to sleep because she was suffering.
At this point I’m torn. I hate to see my cat running away from me or avoiding me because I might be wanting to force medicine into him against his will. And changing his diet to the point that he refuses to eat seems also a bit cruel. The quality of his life counts. I’m playing it by ear, but I may not renew the prescriptions if he doesn’t stop resisting taking the meds. And I can’t believe I’m likely going to have to cook hamburger and rice for my cat! We see if I can get him to eat that!
Difficult situation. Quality of life is the key though. If you can get him to eat the burger/rice you can crush his meds and mix them in with a small bit of food before he gets the bulk. Min would eat the canned KD with chicken.
I just noticed that these guys have adjusted to DST already. Hark, the Queen calleth. Din din, if you please, two-legged.
Ann, another suggestion on the food especially the dry is to not switch all at once. Try a mix of 3/4 old, 1/4 new and see if cat will eat that. If he eats it, let him eat that mix for 3 or 4 days, then try 1/2 & 1/2. If all goes well for a couple days, then move to 1/4 old, 3/4 new, and finally all new. You may also wish to try the mixing trick with the canned food as well.
Once he’s eating his canned, crushing the pills and mixing in his canned food works really well. If you have to give meds by mouth, a pill gun works really well for small pills. Since some meds are bitter, you can try hiding the pills in a gel cap. The gel cap is smooth and easier to swallow. I also used a restraint bag with Buddy, and although he didn’t love it, giving meds was much easier than holding him or wrapping him in a towel.
My Buddy had cardiomyopathy and when he experienced his first bout of heart failure, they told me we could probably get 6 months. He ended up living 2-1/2 years and he lived very well until the last 2 weeks. SD is right, quality of life is the key. Try a few things, and trust yourself to make the right choices for your cat. Good luck and let us know how he and you are doing.
Have a great week SD! Happy Caturday!
I’d start with the canned. I noticed with Min that she ate better with the canned than the dry so I dropped the dry mos ricki ticki. I switch mine to canned when they hit 15-16 anyhow.
cooking for your cat! i did this for my two old dogs for nearly two years, bought two largeish soup pots and every weekend cooked up batches of doggie stew, which i then froze in meal-size portions in plastic baggies. at feeding time the rest of the week i just took out the required number of baggies and warmed them in the microwave. turned out to be cheaper [by a small amount] than buying special dog food.
also, i found out recently that old cats just lose their sense of smell sometimes and warming their food [no matter what the food is] increases the smell, and quite often this is enough to increase their appetite too.
you might want to check around for a compounding pharmacy in your area. these can fill prescriptions for pets as well as for people and they’re making pet-friendly prescriptions in two ways: one is to flavor liquid medicines with things like beef, liver, chicken, tuna … and the other is to make ointments that you can rub into the skin inside the ear for those medicines where the active ingredients can be absorbed through the skin.
one other suggestion you might want to try on the medicines: i’ve heard of people crushing the pill, mixing it with a small amount of butter, and freezing that. giving a cat small frozen chunk of butter as its ‘pill’ can still be tricky, but maybe less objectionable than a real pill. ask your vet about this one first, because it might be that your kitty shouldn’t be getting the extra fat that this would add to this diet.
Forgot about that. Warming does help.
I used a compounding shop for a long time with Min’s bp med. Shop around cuz there can be quite the price difference between them. I halved my cost by switching to one through my vet.
I keep getting kicked out of FDL sites, so here’s possibly the only comment I can get in before running into trouble. Cahnstance is a night owl. She’s been out since 5p (3 hours, after having been in & out, mostly out, all afternoon, and won’t come when I call. Last night, ditto. Only at 5am, when I woke up after a troubled sleep and went outside to call, I heard her answer, but not come. Finally I figured out she got trapped in the garage and was safe. Tonight I know she’s not there. Oh dear, hope she survives the night. But what does this auger for the future? I can’t let her out after 5p?
Ah, yeaup. It’s spring and she wants to cruise at night. That’s how she survived in the city.
Have you been gettin’ in folks’ shit on the other threads? *g*
But momma worries. Last night was the worst night I’ve had in quite awhile. And she doesn’t understand the country dangers.
No. Some windows problem that closes down FDL. Only site where it happens.
Cahnstance is in, safe & sound. Whew.
Well, you know me, I’ma gonna preach indoor.
Good. Momma can breathe now.
What browser are you using?
There’s no way I can keep Cahnie indoors. She just luvs her some outside. She got introduced to my gazebo in the last week. It’s about 70 feet from the house. I carried her up and closed the door while I read. She investigated quite thoroughly. Today, also reading there, she came up on her own and meowed to be let in. Likes to be near me, which is why her after dark wanderings are so worrisome.
IE is the browser. I started having FDL problems after my computer was in the hospital for a major attack. But someone else, think it’s canadianbeaver, is having the same problem. I’m gonna contact FDL because I’m hosting a book salon coming up in 3 weeks and I need to be trouble free by then.
That’s a good idea about mixing the foods for starters. One problem that I have, though, is that I have 3 cats, two females (one in her early to mid teens, and one younger and pregnant) and the older tom. I think he’s about 17-19. So he’s pretty old for a cat. My problem is they’re all used to having dry food around at all times. I don’t know how I’d go about isolating his food from theirs, but I can’t afford to keep all 3 on the expensive prescription food. That 4 lb. bag was $18.30.
His two medications are both liquid, and they gave me syringes to use to give them. However, the food that I need to cook includes 1 teaspoon of “calcium carbonate” which only comes in pill form. So I bought a pill crusher to use for crushing that. I may be able to feed all of them the stuff I cook up. That could be interesting, and may also be fairly cheap. Hamburger, rice, a hard boiled egg, white bread, and calcium. I intend to also sprinkle some flour on the meat and make it into a gravy. Figure it’ll make it more acceptable to him.
Heh. Speaking of food, Cahnstance’s dish is full of the turkey meat left over after the broth was made. She completely turns up her nose at it. Only manufacturered food for her. (Unless in her many hours outdoors today she feasted on raw mouse.)
Thanks, I do appreciate the long, well-considered response!
Had to go in and meet a friend in the city (D.C.) today. The trains were packed and crawling because of the marches and protests today: immigration being the biggest one. The funny thing was that we were waiting (at the end of the red line metro) in this nice, newish train and then they suddenly pulled it out of service and made us go wait (for another half hour) in an older train in the station. There was no ventilation in this train, and it got pretty sweaty in there as people packed on to go to the protests. My feeling was that they didn’t want the protesters to get the new trains dirty. Nice, huh?
Cute story about the gazebo.
I recommend using a Firefox browser. My brother is a computer whiz and fixed me up with it. It’s pretty good at blocking a lot of bugs. And you also might download SuperAntispyware and some other free ones– they update them constantly to protect against new bugs. You have to run their scanners every month or so, and each scan takes about an hour– but it works pretty well.
You’re gonna have to change the food habit. Feeding Spot a special diet while he has regular food available all the time ain’t gonna work and feeding them all a prescription diet may not be good for them. They may not like it but recommended feeding is twice a day with no food left out in between. You can isolate Spot at feeding time. I would also have the older guy’s kidney functions tested. To have a base to work from if they’re normal.
There’s a method to making the oral syringe thing as gentle as possible. Put the syringe up against the outside of the teeth towards the back of the mouth. Slowly push the plunger and when the liquid goes through the teeth they’ll open their mouths and ya just squirt the rest in.
I emailed FDL and will wait to hear back before doing anything. If they find others are having the same problems, fine. If not, I’ll ask my guy about firefox. Always reluctant to change anything that has previously been working, being the computer moran I am.
Boy, my vet is way ahead of you guys (thankfully! Gives you a real feeling of confidence, you know!) He sent me to Pet Health Pharmacy (and I believe they have a women’s pharmacy included there, as well. I guess that means they do all humans and pets.) I never heard of ointments that could be put into the ears to be absorbed. Remarkably, the pharmacy is one building around the corner from the West Valley Democratic Party office where I used to go to work against Jon Kyl. It’s not there anymore, but I knew just where it was once they described how to get there.
They flavored the liquid meds with chicken. I no longer have to wrap him up to give him his meds (like when he was on amoxycilin which he really hated!) He still doesn’t like it and seems to avoid me more than he used to. He also seems lethargic and the pharmacist said it’s likely due to his hyperthyroid drug. It’s hard to determine whether he doesn’t come to me in my bed as much as he used to, to get his daily dose of attention, because of the new meds and food and changes in his weight and physical conditions, or how much has to do with bringing in the new female. If he’s jealous or feeling displaced, I hate to think what’ll happen when she has her kittens.
Kismet came with Tapazole ointment. I took her in to be checked the day after I got her and her thyroid numbers were high. Switched her to pills and increased her dosage. He doesn’t particularly like the ointment meds.
Yep. Spot will even turn his nose up at wet food if it doesn’t have gravy in it. He’s really picky. But I had a cat I named Bubbles because he reminded me of a big fur bubble bouncing over to me when I came home from work. Anyway, Bubbles was a real gopher catcher when we lived in a rural riparian area. My ex would find headless gopher bodies. He told me the cat eats the heads but leaves the bodies. The only thing we could figure out is that the gophers would try to bite in battle and so the head was his trophy. Cats are natures truest predators imo.
On my last trip downstairs, I found Cahnstance wrestling with the turkey morsels. So maybe she’s not so adverse, but merely unused to really good food!
I wish Fancy Feast would just sell the gravy sans meat. Then I could pour it over homemade chicken or whatever.
Hell, just buy some gravy in a jar. Nothing in there that can hurt them. Mine love it. I let ‘em lick the plate when I’m done. Saves washin’ it.
i would think that with the ointment meds, getting the dosage just right [and reproducible] would be more difficult. also, in a house with multiple cats, some of the others might well lick some of the medicine off in grooming sessions. mine do that with the flea drops — try to lick each other clean, and they all end up drooling all over everything. i always put out lots of yummy special catfood, and catnip, and catnip toys right afterward, in an effort to try to distract them until some of the flea stuff can soak in.
sounds like you have a wonderful vet!
Mine run from each other after I use Vectra. I do ‘em 3 at a time over the day. Hell, they try to run away from themselves after I squirt that stuff on ‘em. Yeah, ointments ain’t cuttin’ it here. Getting the dosage right is a problem for starters.
Oh! What a good idea. But I think they need the chromium or whatever minerals are added to the cat food gravy…
I let Littles lick my plate after I’m done eating fried eggs over-easy. She doesn’t like the egg white, only the yolk, and that only a little bit. Come to think of it, she may just like the olive oil and salt.
Oh, I thought you were gonna use it as a treat or as an addition to their regular food.
Time to leap into my tree. Catch y’all on da flip side.
Be good to yourselves, and all other living things.
Namaste
Niters SD. Have a good week.
They already did some testing, although they’d like a bigger sample. I hadn’t gotten the specimen yet when my appt. was due, but the doc got some urine when he took him in the back. He did test for problematic kidneys, but no meds for that yet. They’re going to try to get it under control with diet first I think.
I’m just now getting the hang of the syringe. At first I would get his mouth open and squirt the liquid in as quickly as possible, but that didn’t work out as well. Now I try to do a little at a time so as not to traumatize him or make him feel forced or drowned with the medicine, and he’s taking it with a bit more resignation. Doesn’t really fight me, just doesn’t help.
I’ve been taking my pets there since about 1985 and the same two vets are still in the same place. There was a brief period wherein I took my pets to Banfield, but that was regrettable. It was due to the fact that I couldn’t get one of my pets in when she needed to go and she had a large abcess on her face. I wasn’t unhappy with Banfield at first, but now I know it was a very bad move.
Banfield has an office at the PetsMart I use. I wouldn’t take any of my tigers there.
Urine will tell ya if there’s protein or sugar present, plus other stuff, but not how advanced the disease is. Presence of protein means there’s something going on with the kidneys but ya need blood tests for the details.
Oral syringes. Rinsing one out with warm water after each use you can make it last 10 days to 2 weeks giving meds 2-3 times a day. All the meds are water soluble. The little rubber washer will begin to stick and you can then use just a hint of olive/vege oil before each use to give it a little more life.
Hunh. I posted a comment early this a.m., but it isn’t here.
Anyway, as best I remember it was mostly Happy Caturday, and an agreement with eCAHN that not letting CAHNstance out after 5:00 pm would be the best, safest way to go.
My tigers act much the same if they’re allowed out after about 6:00 pm (recall that I am way south, so sunset is later all year). Once the sun goes down, they reeeeeeally don’t wanna come in, and get all energized. More likely to climb trees out of the yard, hang out on the roof and not come down, even head down the alley, none of which they do nearly so much in daylight.
With a wanderer like CAHNstance, I’d probably make sure she comes in with me whenever I go in. In fact, I’m keeping my guys in much more of the time than I used to, (before we had 5 dogs in the courtyard and one set of thoughtless neighbors, who own four of the dogs), and trying to only let them out when I can stay out there with them. They stick closer, and I feel better that way.
To console them, I’ve got some new toys, and try to make sure play time happens indoors every day. And Patchy has started to carry a ball to me, making his peculiar little I’ve-got-a-ball-in-my-mouth chirp. I call it that because that’s the only time he makes that sound. Then I know he’s ready to play.
Okay, happy Caturday again; off to try to break into the capitalist cesspool again, myself.
Thanks. I’ll try, but she’s getting very fast at sneaking out when I open the door for another reason.
oh,I hear you on that one! Patchy sometimes scoots right between my legs.
I’ve gotten pretty good at sort of stooping to put out a blocking hand, or using a purse or package that I’m carrying to block him, but every once in a while he makes it.
I’ve considered placing a baby gate just a few feet inside the door, from counter corner to fridge, just for the delay effect. But whether something like that works depends on your inside-the-door topography, and how urgent it is to keep the clever little puss indoors.
Good luck! Your CAHNstance is obviously a smart one.
I rarely use the front door and I’ve got a screen porch at the back to act as a capture zone. Then there’s always Nagi’s window.
There must be something in the air. Two fights this evening. Ptah and Feurae got into it in the computer room doorway. Don’t know how it started but I hear the noise, turn around and they were at each other. Broke it up. Feurae lost a patch of hair on the back of his ear. Ptah managed to avoid being bitten by Feurae, he’s declawed. Then about an hour ago I hear screaming from the bedroom and Brutus, Kismet, and Shiimsa are at it between the waterbed and outside wall. All noise and no injuries. Had a pair wake me up the other night too. Go out and turn the light on and everybody’s “What?” Gonna hafta get some chill pills for these guys.
And Patchy has started to carry a ball to me, making his peculiar little I’ve-got-a-ball-in-my-mouth chirp. I call it that because that’s the only time he makes that sound. Then I know he’s ready to play.
oh gosh, that’s adorable!
good luck with the capitalist cesspool!