We have a few ghost shrimp in my son’s fish tank.
A few days ago, I noticed one is pregnant:
Those are a bunch of greenish eggs in the abdomen. The abdomen is normally clear.
I searched the internet nad found that there’s a good chance the other fish will eat the eggs. Oh, well, no baby ghost shrimps for us!
I used to blame our mostly white-haired Sheltie for our household’s unrelenting pet hair problems. Back in 2001, the pet hair problems seemed to multiply after we got her.
Now that we are cat-less, the truth came out. It was Amelia, the Himalayan cat!
Bad kitty!
We’re living an almost shed-free life right now–at least until Sugar’s semiannual “coat blow,” where she loses the undercoat preparing for the change of season.
We finally had Amelia executed on Saturday.
It got to the point where if she was not cooped up in a crate or a bathroom, she was urinating on our floors.
We determined it was “time” while I was in the middle of mowing the lawn, so my wife brought her to the vet.
My wife knows how I joke that my dad is my family’s pet executioner (he had to put down two cats and a dog), so she asked me not to publicly call her the family pet executioner. Therefore, for the purposes of blog, my wife is not the pet executioner.
The cat’s corpse apparently ends up in a mass grave. That’s fine with me.
Some vets offer a service to have the pet cremated and return the cremains back to the owner. I feel that is a silly outgrowth of personifying animals. Sorry, cats are animals. Animals are no substitute for actual human companionship.
Overall, haven’t felt much sadness. Even though I liked her, Amelia got annoyingly messy and labor intensive towards the end. And she’s just a cat.
We’re taking a “cat break” right now. Growing up, I never understood why people didn’t immediately rush out in a pet acquisition frenzy after losing a pet. Now I understand. I am (temporarily) sick of scooping, messes, hairballs, and cat maintenance. And the neighbors have a new outdoor kitten that Alec and I can annoy.
Looks like this will be a kitty-free household soon.
We took the newer cat, Olivia, back to the SPCA on Saturday. I had been putting this off, but it was inevitable. She is simply not compatible with small kids. Her extreme skittishness caused her to hide almost all the time, so I was unable to even try training her not to scratch furniture.
I don’t know what happened. When she was little, she would sleep on me. Something changed in her head as she emerged from kittenhood.
We tried placing her with others in our area, but none were interested.
She was an SPCA adoption, so the return was free. (Normally there is a $50 surrender charge.)
Ameila, the older cat with fatty liver syndrome, has taken a turn for the worse. About a week after the hospitalization, the remainder of her skin started yellowing. Now even her eyes are yellowing.
The 2 week follow up vet visit was on Saturday, and the vet said she’s doing so poorly that he didn’t strongly recommend more treatment.
Part of me that wonders if Amelia is still treatable; I found an academic report that described “terminal” cats with hepatic lipidosis coming from the brink with feeding tubes, but my realistic side says the writing is on the wall. I am unwilling to spend more hundreds of dollars on a 12 year old cat who has never been particularly robust. And as much as I am upset at her upcoming death, I am definitely not one of those “furkid” types. I guess it’s just time.
The worst news: it’s not good when the nurse says “oh my gosh” when tallying up your bill! This vet visit set me back way more Benjamins than I ever wanted to spend on a pet. X-rays, lab tests, prescriptions, IVs, and 2 days of “hospitalization” aren’t cheap.
The best news: Amelia is home:
And everything in between: Ameila has a reasonable shot at recovery. The lab tests and X-rays didn’t find anything startling except markers typical of a cat whose liver isn’t working right. The blood test suggested somewhere around 20% liver function, and the X-ray didn’t find that her liver extended past her ribcage boundary, which is what the vet wanted to see.
Amelia is on oral antibiotics and Denosyl for several more days.
Here’s what her ear looks like:
Lovely yellow tint. The vet says this will stick around for at least 2 weeks because it doesn’t immediately flush out.
She seems a little off kilter: sleeping more and unsteady on her feet. Hopefully she’ll return to her normal geriatric (12 year old) self soon.
Just got a call from the vet. The bloodwork shows that Amelia probably has hepatic lipidosis. Fortunately, FIV and FeLV are ruled out.
Since the liver is screwed up, she has a lot of toxins in her blood, including but not limited to bilirubin. In addition to antibiotics, the vet is also administering a drug to help work that junk out of her blood.
Amelia’s biggest problem is a lack of appetite. Unless she starts eating soon, there will be no other available options besides unacceptably expensive interventions like tube feeding directly into the stomach.
The vet was not able to change the 50/50 prognosis yet since he does not have a firm diagnosis.
I took Amelia, our 12 year old Himalayan cat, to the vet today for her annual checkup. This is her:
Her inner ears are normally this healthy pink-tinged color:
Today that skin was yellow. This apparently means her liver is not filtering normal red blood cell breakdown products.
She also lost 2 lbs since her last checkup.
The vet said there’s a 50% chance this can be fixed. The problem could range from a treatable infection to terminal illnesses like FIV.
Shortly after the vet found the problem, he whisked her to get a blood sample and put her on an IV.
Alec is a little upset that we had to leave Amelia at the vet’s office. She’s the only kitty that gets along with him.
I should find out more on Friday.
The Dallas Morning News reports that Irving, Texas just enacted a pet tax. When you pay the tax, your animal gets a record in a database maintained by a private firm. Residents with untaxed pets risk a class C misdemeanor, a real offense that goes on criminal records.
Irving’s stated rationale is “to reunite more lost pets with their owners and continue driving down the rate of animals the Irving Animal Shelter euthanizes.”
Irving has already succeeded with the euthanization problem: they plummeted 70% in the past 3 years. Now 80% of Irving’s pet shelter pets get to live. Way to go!
But the other goal, reuniting pets with their owners, is silly.
Here’s how it works: owners of fixed and microchipped pets pay the least tax, $5. Owners get taxed $10 if the pet is missing a microchip and $15 if the pet is not fixed. These sound low, but how many taxes never rise? Trust me, these are introductory period prices. It won’t be long before that $15 tax rises to Dallas’s $30 tax.
Don’t get me wrong; I’d love to reunite all lost pets with their owners. But why should a city force owners to take a specific measure to help reunification? Are all pet owners incapable of managing their property?
I’ll bet a couple of dollars that 1. the vast majority of pet owners are responsible people, and 2. their pets either never get lost or, if lost, are found before they end up in a shelter.
Instead of recognizing that any problems are likely isolated to a very small percentage of pet owners, Irving has done what governments do best: harass and annoy everyone.
Pets who are not reunited are an intensely personal problem, not a societal problem. There is no legitimate rationale for Irving to force this on its citizens. A pet tax is another piece of nanny state interference into the private matters of citizens.
Dallas Morning News article: Irving dog and cat owners must register their pets
More updates on the ceiling collapse.
The ceiling collapse culprit may be more complicated than the short nails.
The house’s attic gable vents are above the den and the master bedroom. Coincidentally, the den’s ceiling collapsed, and the master bedroom has a slight ceiling sag. The insurance estimator theorized that some wind-driven high attic pressure plus the weight of the insulation plus improper nails may have caused the collapse.
The insurance estimator noticed a master bedroom ceiling sag, so he recommended that the insurance fix this by driving drywall screws into it and scraping and retexturing.
Today is the 7th day we’ve had no den and dining room. We are lucky since our house is still livable and functional.
The biggest inconvenience is losing 400 square feet.
The second biggest inconvenience is my skittishness about the plastic sheeting closing off the disaster area.
The closed room has three vents. Even though I shut them off, enough air leaks through to increase pressure in that room, causing the plastic sheeting to balloon out when the heater runs.
I have the sheeting held in place by 3″-4″ of that blue paint-safe tape, but I’m constantly afraid it will stop adhering and open up. If the heat turns on while it opens up, it will blow the insulation-laden air into the rest of the house.
In an abundance of caution, I turn the heat off when we leave and at night. My wife just loves those freezing cold mornings! :-)
The nice thing is if I open a window while the heater runs, the pressure differential sucks fresh air into the house. That’s a nice way to inject fresh air into this place!
Our TV is sitting in the hallway–the ceiling collapsed while I rescued it–but the only cable connectors are in the den. (Shortly after moving in, I removed the cable connections from the other bedrooms–I feel very strongly against having TVs in bedrooms). Therefore, we’ve had no TV for a whole week. I love it! Can we have no TV forever? Please?
Some day I’ll write why I hate many TV programs.
I hope to hear some kind of dollar amount from the adjuster early this week. The estimator made a mistake–ordered different resurfacing treatments for different parts of the wood floor of the closed off room–so that plus some other issues have been holding up the adjuster’s offer.
The inspector said our couch, love seat, dining room table set, and some less significant items are total losses. Apparently, it’s impossible to get the fine Rockwool particles out of the couches, and the cost of resurfacing the dining room table and its chairs exceeds the cost of a new set.
I am so glad I opted for the personal property replacement value coverage. The insurance company will cut me a check for these items’ depreciated values (i.e., garage sale values). Because of this extended coverage, we can buy new equivalents of these items and get reimbursed for the difference.
Since the entire ceiling is out, I’m seriously thinking of installing recessed lighting in the den. I’ll probably do it myself and ask the contractor to wait a day between demolition/cleanup and nailing up the new drywall.
The question is what kind of lighting to do? I only have 9′ ceilings in that main room, so I’m afraid traditional 6″ recessed lighting may look huge. Plus I don’t like how hot incandescents run; that room is already too warm in the summer.
I like the look of halogen recessed lighting, but some sites say these may be best for directional lighting. I may also look into dimmable compact fluorescent-based lights.
My younger cat Olivia, nicknamed “Mean Kitty” by my son, recently discovered how to shred furniture. Furniture shredding is unacceptable with new furniture, so I have a hard decision: get her declawed or give her away.
Even though anti-declaw arguments are exaggerated and full of holes (link), I am still uncomfortable with the procedure.
But even if I do it, I will have spent money on a kitty with a terribly defective personality. She is already reclusive, skittish, and dislikes my wife and son. She comes out only for me and only when I am in seated or lying down, and only when nobody else is around.
When she was a kitten, she was nice to everybody, and she wanted to sleep on me at night. I don’t know why she changed so dramatically!
Would she do better in a one person, no child household?
I hate giving up a pet, but I have a cat with a terribly defective personality occupying one of my two cat “slots.”
I don’t know what to do. If it has to come down to risking her being put down, I’ll probably keep her. But I may investigate placing her somewhere else.
My dog recently got heartworms. I counted my pills and realized I missed two doses over the past two years. Apparently, that’s all it takes!
The treatment costs varied enormously. The most expensive place was 226% higher than the cheapest one. These prices were quoted to me in April 2007:
| Vet | Price | Services |
| Hillside Veterinary Clinic 214-824-0397 |
$586.68 |
|
| Lakewood Animal Hospital 214-826-6601 |
$650.00 |
|
| Casa Linda Animal Clinic 214-328-5445 |
$891.88 |
|
| White Rock Animal Hospital 214-328-3255 |
$450.00 – $550.00 | (I didn’t write down the services they quoted.) |
| A&B Animal Clinic 214-328-7055 |
$393.50 |
|
I chose A&B Animal Clinic. Why pay extra for the same result: no heartworms.