New Visitors

This week, we appear to have some new regular visitors to the house/garden…

• A pair of mallard ducks, who seem to like the front garden. The drake appears to have one leg shorter than the other (he limps) so he’s already been christened “Stumpy“
• A pair of pheasants, who also seem to like the front garden
• The two black-and-white cats from down the road seem to be becoming more friendly with Psycho Cat, and they’ve been found inside the house a few times. (The ‘benefit’ of a cat-flap)  These two have been named “Ninja Bob” and “Scaredy Bob”, for reasons I can’t be arsed to go into right now.
• A new black-and-white from somewhere else has also been seen today. He’s been christened “Not Bob” (or, in my techie notation “!Bob”)

I don’t know how these new visitors will all shape up. I suspect that Stumpy and his mate are looking for somewhere to nest, as are the pheasants. They’ve all certainly found the supply of bird food etc. on the front grass (Calling it a “lawn” would be too fancy) which is probably a factor.  Of course, how that’ll factor in with the influx of moggies at the moment, gawd only knows…

Cat Shaving

Today’s the day of the annual cat-shaving farce.

As per last year’s comedy, I suspect he’s going to come back looking like a poodle – and well-deserved it is too.

The entire thing is caused by his long hair. Once spring comes, the winter fur starts to come out to be replaced with the shorter summer fur – but it all gets badly tangled up into existing fur, and he ends up simply disgusting, with clumps and matted fur, almost like dreadlocks.

So off he goes to the vets for the day, to go under General Anaesthetic (the only way to safely do this job without getting bitten/scratched/assaulted) get shaved/trimmed, and then we’ll get back a significantly trimmed-down cat this evening. He’ll be in an utterly foul mood – more so than usual – and starving hungry due to not having had any food since midnight. He’s already been foul today – when he wants food and it’s not down, he just yells, and yells, and yells. That’s been from 5.30 this morning.

He knows something’s happening, but doesn’t quite know what. Well, he will now, as Herself will have delivered him to the vets for 9am.

Depending on the level of trim he receives, there will likely be photos tomorrow…

Vomitorious

At 4.30 this morning, I got woken up by the notable vibrations of the cat being sick on the bed.

And then at 5.30.

And at 6.30.

I suspect that this is not an auspicious start to the week – although in some ways whatever else happens can only be an improvement.

There’s something quite spectacular about the method a cat uses for puking though – it’s pretty much a whole-body effort, with the entire torso of the cat heaving backwards and forwards before the stomach contents are expelled. Those efforts are enough to wake me up.

I don’t know what’s caused the cat to be so ill. On previous form, he’ll now sleep through the day (not that that’s any different to usual) and be back to normal tonight.

On the other hand, I’ll be shambling around for most of the day, having had a disturbed night and clearing up (all-told) six piles of stinking cat-puke.

Animals – Further Information

Following on from the comments on my post below about Animals vs. Sleep, I feel that I should explain a bit further.

No, Hound is most definitely not the master of the house. She knows her place, knows when she’s gone too far, and gets told off when she’s been naughty. The scratching at night isn’t done to prove who’s in charge, it’s her fixating on trying to get comfortable to go to sleep.

Psycho Cat, on the other hand, is a wilful piece of crap who is well known for not stopping scratching until he gets where he wants to be. He’s also well-known as a master of the Vindictive Shit®, where if he has been barred from the room he wants to get in to and long-term scratching has been unsuccessful, he’ll take a shit outside the door (or on some favoured item of furniture/clothing/technology – I’ve even had to clear cat shit off the camera bag before now) as revenge. As options go, I’d rather get up and let the little fucker in, rather than walk out in the morning into a pile of stinking cat turd. Go figure.

With Hound, there’s a lot of underlying stuff. At the start of December, the vet finally diagnosed her with a canine form of OCD, alongside her anxiety issues and general barminess. This diagnosis came about when he observed her method of “handling” stressful situations, which involves her standing with her head facing a corner, staring at the walls, and ignoring everything else that goes on around her. It’s the equivalent of “head in the sand”, also known as “Lalalalalalalala, I can’t hear you”. The vet’s never seen anything like it, but he feels certain enough about the diagnosis that he’s put it in her records (having been seeing her now for four years) and confirming to the pet insurance people that this is a defined condition, rather than a behavioural issue.

While apparently she’s always been a determined, focussed idiot (Herself tells the story of when she and the now-ex went to choose a dog, the garden they were all in had a large railway-sleeper border in the lawn. All the other pups went round the barrier, but Hound insisted on trying to get over it, and wouldn’t stop until she did so) the anxiety issues also come about because of mis-treatment by a vet while they were diagnosing her Megaoesophagus. I won’t go into details – but suffice it to say that if I’d been around at that time, they’d have been sued, and reported to the RSPCA / RCVS.

Couple that with the fact that (although I didn’t write about it here) back in November 2004, she had the next best thing to a total mental breakdown due to fireworks (and a badly handled situation) and that in early 2005 we seriously considered giving up on her, and taking her to the Dogs Trust or wherever, and you get an impression of how bad she could be.

Overall, while Hound does have her foibles, she’s generally well-trained, well-disciplined, and knows her place in the pack structure at home. And that place is not at the top, much as she’d like it to be. At the same time, she does have significant issues, and for the most part those are tolerated and understood – even when they make her into a total pain in the arse at the same time. Yes, we could have given her up – but at the same time, that’s running away from a situation, which is something neither Herself or I are overly good at. The additional knowledge that there’s no way that anyone else would take her on, let alone in her ideal situation (which would be to be on a farm somewhere, sleeping in a barn – that’s where a lot of the scratching behaviours come from, I suspect) means that we know we’re really the last-resort. She’d have no other valid alternatives except being put to sleep.

So yes, some of her obsessions are perhaps tolerated – but with eight years of experience with Hound, we know that there are some battles that just won’t be won. We’ve got through a lot with her – and she’s now three years past the usual life expectancy for a dog with Megaoesophagus – and the anxieties and obsessions are mainly tempered by the homeopathic pills she’s on twice-daily, there are some things that now just won’t be broken.