Don Draper

I don't like to do that crazy cat lady thing where you take pictures of my cats in all sorts of poses and costumes, but with Kal-el, Lex's brother, I can't help it. He's strong, silent and incredibly photogenic.  He's like, movie star handsome. He's the Don Draper of my cats, and he's getting fairly popular on instagram. Checkout all his majesty!

Spa Treatments

I consider myself a pretty reasonable gal, so when faced with the reality that I was going to have to spend a lot of time and money on my cat, I decided to postpone it until after I got back from my family vacation. My vet agreed with me intimating, that waiting another week wouldn’t kill him, so we made plans to take Lex for his spa treatment the Monday I got back, which was today.

Little Pigs all in a Row

I know that I’ll have to give him shots twice a day, so I’m planning on giving them during his breakfast and dinner. He can be relied upon to wake me up between 5:30am and 6:30am for his breakfast with incessant yowling. In terms of his insulin, this schedule is wonderful because I’m usually back at home 12 hours later, so everything will work out if we can keep the schedule.

I’m not sure that everything will work out though because this morning he began crying to be fed at 4am. I’m all about the virtues of getting up early, but 4am is unacceptable unless there are stables to muck and chickens to feed. After 45 minutes of scratching and yowling, I had to lock him out of the room. When I got up to feed him at 7, he had cried himself hoarse, which would be pitiful if he hadn’t made me get up at such an ungodly hour.   

By the time I had him in his carrier to go to the vet, he had rested his vocal chords enough to begin crying again.

It occurs to me that certain kitties who are about to undergo expensive therapies ought not wake their owners up in the middle of the night. I hope that once his blood sugar levels out he’ll feel better and let me sleep until at least 6. If he did that I could just stay up and work out, or do something else that would allow me to be smug for the rest of the day. He’d be like a little rooster.

It is time to feed your Lex. Then you may go to Zumba. 

He was very good at the vet, as he always is. Amy assured me that he’d be in a little kitty condo on the second floor of the vet office. Away from the stress of barking dogs.   I only hope that he behaves with the techs and manages to keep quiet for at least some of the time he’s not being paid attention to.  In many ways he’s like a client.

He's going to have to be more than cute to make up for his annoying screeching.  

Body Fluids

I deal with a lot of cat barf, puke or upchuck-- whatever you like to call it. I don't like any of these words, so I will instead use the word "panda." Before we switched to wet food, we would find random piles of pandas all over the house. Now the pandas are far more sporadic and less... fluffy when they are present.

I'm honestly impressed with the cats' ability to panda and rally. They do it better than any sorority pledge that ever lived.

In addition to pandas, the number of cats in my house means that I deal with a fair amount of pee and poop. Two words I have no problem with. In fact, there's a part of me that thinks the word poop is terribly hilarious, as long as the poop is where it's supposed to be.

This past weekend, it was not where it was supposed to be.

On Saturday morning there was cat poop.
On my bed.
Fresh cat poop.
On my bed.

In case you're having trouble appreciating the full horror of this situation, you must understand that the poop had left the cat while I was sleeping in the room. Inches away. If I had rolled over, it would have been disastrous, and we would have had one less cat. I'm not going to name any names, but the cat in question did not bother to wake me up to open the door, nor did it take the opportunity to vacate the room when I let another cat out earlier that morning.

The cat just pooped. On my bed. While I was sleeping.
I would have taken a picture of it, but you know what poop looks like, and I wanted to get it off of my bed and the sheets into the wash as quickly as possible. I'm sure you understand.

The strange thing was that I wasn't even angry. The cat in question has a tendency to void its bowels every time it's enclosed in a room for longer than 20 minutes. There's no point in being angry: just clean up as quickly as possible.

I think my calm acceptance of this defilement of means that I'm probably ready for parenthood.

Diabeetus

After Hurricane Katrina, in inherited two dopey-eyed, stumpy-tailed kittens from my friend Dana. Ok, there may some dispute as to whether she abandoned them or I refused to give them back, after caring from them all summer. The point is that I paid for their kitten visits, so Lex Luthor and Kal-El are mine now.

This baby Lex is mine. 

That was six years ago, and now they are big healthy grown up boy cats. Kal is an unobtrusive brown and black tabby, and Lex is a big black cat. He's the first one to the food bowl and the last to leave, after checking that the rest are empty. As a result, he was a moo-cow heifer cat for years.

A couple of weeks ago, he started loosing weight and became more whiney than usual. Lex has always been what pet adoption agencies would call 'vocal' and what I would call 'a horrible banshee cat,' but his yowling became more insistent around feeding time. He also seemed to ignore his dry food. Growing concern caused me to start feeding him wet food, which he ate happily. I made an appointment to see my vet-friend, Dr. Amy.

After an all the lab work came back in, found out that, although he is now a healthy weight, my formerly obese cat has diabetes.

Cat diabetes is the definition of a first world problem, because it's too serious to ignore, but not serious enough to have the animal put down. It is not the sort of condition for which one can hold a benefit. Not a successful benefit, anyway.

I demand money for gooshy food. Behold! I waste away!

So, in a couple of weeks (my friend is at a conference this week and I am going on vacation the week after) Lex will spend a couple of nights at the Vet's. His blood sugar will (hopefully) level out, and then he'll come home where he will receive a (tiny) shot every 12 hours for the rest of his life. Cat diabetes is manageable, but very very inconvenient. Fortunately, my roommate, a far more enthusiastic cat lady than myself, is perfectly willing to help with his care. My boyfriend is also willing to let Lex stay at his house when we are over there for several nights in a row, so I won't have to go back and forth between our houses as often.

I'm giving all of this a six month adjustment period. If the insulin doesn't work well with his system, or my big crybaby cat can't tolerate baby needles, then we'll figure something else out. Until then, I'll be writing about my experiences with him and the four other cats I own with my roommate. I'll be posting pictures and maybe even videos.

money pit. 

I'm about to spend a lot of money on my cat. I may as well embrace the fact that I'm a crazy cat lady (CCL) and start a blog about it. Good thing the internet loves cats :D